<i>The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia</i> by Neil S. Price: Some thoughts

A long, dark, cold Scandinavian winter, 1000 years or more ago: the sun barely, if at all, makes an appearance. In the northern, inland areas, all signs of life are completely covered in snow for months at a time. Only the reindeer manage to scrape below the snow to find sustenance. As a human being, you are just about totally dependent on this animal for food and clothing. In the southern and coastal areas of Scandinavia, you may not be buried in snow, but icy cold rain, driven by an unrelenting wind, pelts you mercilessly. In the dark sky you see the dramatic, frightening Aurora Borealis. Who are those spirits in the sky? Will summer ever return? Will warmth come? Will new animals be born? Will crops grow? How can I be sure?

And what of your own life? How can you be assured that you will enjoy health, good fortune, and life rather than their opposites? Why do some enjoy the former while others are doomed to the latter? Indeed, we all must die eventually: Why?

In the The Viking Way Neil S. Price allies archaeology with anthropology, folklore, literature, sociology, and psychology, to begin to illuminate the unrecorded beliefs of our Viking ancestors. Some of the conclusions that he reaches are familiar to me. Others are very new, and having just finished his book a couple of days ago, I'm still reaching for them, trying to integrate them into my view of how things must have been on the Swedish west coast 1000 years ago.

At stake is this pressing question: How did those people address the twin mysteries of life and death? Clearly in those northern climates (not only Scandinavia proper but also Iceland, Greenland, Orkney, the Faeroes, Shetland) there is not an overabundance of sustenance for all; survival was touch-and-go at best in certain places, perhaps slightly more assured in others. Famine, sickness and injury were probably never far removed from any of them. But it's very interesting to me that these people addressed life and death as a holistic totality, not as two irreconcilable things (i.e. life/good vs. death/evil) as in "we're going to eradicate evil." They knew better.

In fact, they saw very clearly that in a very literal way, death is necessary for the continuation of life. If no one dies, there simply won't be enough to go around. Perhaps the custom of exposing infants gained some legitimacy from this view. (It is known to have been a bone of contention in the Icelandic conversion to Christianity.) There is also a suggestion that the earliest Scandinavian kings were subject to death in order to secure the fertility and prosperity of their realms. And of course, animal and human sacrifice were also performed with, presumably, the same goals.

But how to make these sacrifices work? For that it is necessary to have some access to the gods or the spirit world, the agents who keep the machinery of the life/death cycle humming. It is here that Dr. Price places sei∂r, a complex of magical/religious practice that encompasses sorcery and ritual. He puts sei∂r in the context of circumpolar religious belief and practice, analogous to shamanism as it exists among the Saami, and more broadly in Siberia and North America.

My understanding of shamanism is limited, at best, though Dr. Price does an admirable job of providing an overview. I think it's safe for me to say that one aspect of shamanism has a connection to fertility: those dependent on the reindeer and on the hunting of other animals felt an urgent need to see that the animals who provided them sustenance were in turn replenished. This need for assurance regarding the continuation of life is definitely a concern echoed in the literary depictions of sei∂r.

But as Dr. Price points out, the twist here is in the translation of the above necessity to the Nordic context. How does this idea (understandable to us today in the concept of "sustainability") become useful for the support of a warrior society, in the context of the organization of warfare and larger fighting forces?

There clearly remains a link to fertility here, albeit a link that at first seems odd and elusive. Dead souls go both to Odin (the war god) and to Freyja (the fertility goddess). Dead bodies on the battlefield, however, become, as it says on runestones, "food for the ravens/wolves." In the past I always thought that this was either a simple statement of fact or a more poetic (and gruesome) way of saying that those guys were goners, but now I realize I was being both too literal and too figurative. It seems that those corpses were actually thought of as sacrificial victims dedicated to Odin (ravens and wolves being his animal helpers). This makes perfect sense in the context of fertility and rebirth, because those fallen soldiers were brought to Valhalla by Odin's valkyries so that they could live and fight again at Ragnarök.

In the sparse environment of the north, where kings and chieftains needed portable wealth to sustain their warrior bands, raids and battles became a way of life. Did what was essentially a fertility cult provide the underlying structure for the beliefs and more importantly, the rituals (in the form of sei∂r) needed to sustain these kings or chieftains and their culture? And how in the world did this all fit together?

I took the above photo in the summer, believe it or not, in Varberg, on the Swedish west coast, in between rain storms. It was a summer that made you wonder if Ragnarök was at hand. Click on photo to enlarge.

Swimming in Lane 2, Odin

On Friday I had the happy experience of finding and reading Neil Price's "The Archaeology of Sei∂r: Circumpolar Traditions in Viking Pre-Christian Religion," which I found while "surfing the net." (Many thanks to Dr. Price and to Brathair for making it available. The academically affiliated have no idea how much we ivory-tower refugees appreciate the access to papers and such that would otherwise be out of our reach.) The paper served, for me in any case, as an introduction to Dr. Price's work on shamanism as well as Viking age warfare. It pointed, at its conclusion, to the possible existence of a type of Viking-age battle magic that drew on both shamanic traditions from, presumably, the Sami and other northern neighbors, fused with the organized, larger-scale warfare of traditional Germanic societies.

On Saturday I was treated to my children's first swim meet of the season. Perhaps it was the unrelenting sun beating down on my head, but I found that the various "battle rituals" associated with the meet provided me a different point of access to Dr. Price's paper.

Dr. Price, and other eminent researchers, please don't be insulted! Obviously, you have made it a life-long goal to gain greater specificity, deeper knowledge, and a more thorough understanding of your subjects, and perhaps the type of observation that I am making will offend in its tendency to generalize or trivialize...but hear me out!

There was an air of expectation, excitement, focus. The pool was clean, still; lanes marked, chairs rearranged, flags flying, victory signs mounted, concessions displayed. Warm-ups and last minute strategies were completed. Then the chanting commenced. The swimsuit- and swimcap-clad, goggle-eyed figures looked elemental, dancing and splashing in the fractured, glittering water, lit by the sun. There were innumerable cheers. They began softly, grew in volume and pitch and ended in hooting and body percussion. Then the teams retired to the secrecy and darkness of the locker rooms, where veterans taught the novices some new cheers. Soon the swimmers emerged covered with geometric war paint and the team names inscribed on backs and chests. More huddling, chanting, and finally the boys with letters on their chests dove off the board, one by one, spelling the name of the team.

True, there was no magic or shamanism in evidence. But my children did perform feats that I hadn't thought possible. And a non-military person like myself, who, I must also admit, has never been on a sports team, gained perhaps a little bit of insight into a culture of long ago and far away.

A Tale of Two Parties

I recently read E. Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Shipping News. Set in an economically depressed Newfoundland town that’s kind of creepy as well as quirky, it was a lot of fun to read. Like a gallery of pencil sketches, bristling with odd details, that you are free to color in yourself.

One memorable scene is the farewell party for Nutbeem, a British expat who’s spent over a year outfitting a boat with which to make his escape. In Proulx’s words, the party ends up having “more in common with a parking-lot fight behind a waterfront bar than a jolly good-bye to Nutbeem.” When I finished reading the scene I immediately thought of the party for Doc in John Steinbeck’s classic Cannery Row. And then I thought of both of them in light of the posts on drinking I’ve done on this blog. (On the mythical origins of drinking and toasting and On the not-so-mythical outcomes of drinking and toasting.)

Both Proulx and Steinbeck seem to emphasize the ritual aspect of these parties. Each has a specific raison d’être that has been collectively agreed upon: the one is to bid farewell to Nutbeem; the other is to repay Doc for earlier events gone sour. Both authors describe the individual and collective preparatory action: securing valuables (including dependent children); hoarding supplies (especially drink, but also food); bathing (in the case of the flophouse bums on Cannery Row); and music selection. Steinbeck’s party is more structured, but both include drinking to excess, music, food, verbal pursuits (i.e. poetry or storytelling), and, notably, both parties come to a climax that includes fighting and destruction of property.

What is interesting to me is that the trajectories of these two parties are, as described by the authors, inevitable and even inherent. Both authors emphasize the organic, fluid nature of the party as a collective creation. That alcohol is the number one necessity is clear, and that its “inspirational” qualities allow the impulses behind the parties to be realized is implied. In Cannery Row, the activities that take place at the party reestablish the normal order and good-feeling of the neighborhood. In The Shipping News, the party and its culmination in the deliberate and wanton destruction of Nutbeem’s boat reveal the anger, envy, resentment and frustration of the men of Killick-Claw, who are trapped into either staying in this poor little town or leaving it. Both parties, ultimately, are expressions of the natural order and condition of the participants.

The aftermaths of the parties are also similar, in that both honorees (Nutbeem and Doc) seem fully accepting of the destruction. There is no anger, perhaps because there was no malice intended. Especially in the case of Nutbeem, it’s almost as if the outcome is preordained and as such, he takes it as a positive:

“I wouldn’t have made it anyway,” he said. “Storm coming. Gale warnings, sleet, snow, followed by deep cold, the whole string of knots. By Tuesday there’ll be fast ice. I wouldn’t have made it.”

Although, in fact, Nutbeem does leave Killick-Claw, by air if not by sea, it hardly matters, because the collective has spoken. Regarding ritual, Durkheim says, “men celebrate it to remain faithful to the past, to keep for the group its normal physiognomy…” I think it’s fascinating the way these parties do just that, in highly dramatic fashion.

Are there any other good party scenes out there?

On the not-so-mythical outcomes of drinking and toasting

If you read my earlier post On the mythical origins of drinking and toasting, you might appreciate this lighter treatment in the form of a video piece entitled Dinner for One. It's also known as The 90th Birthday Party or, in German, Der 90. Geburtstag. Originally written in England in the 1920s as a theater piece, it was recorded (in English) in 1963 by German television.

This short comic skit has become a cult classic in Germany, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Finland, German-speaking Switzerland, and South Africa. In some places it has, interestingly, become a New Year's Eve television tradition. (I've been told that Swedish TV started running it on New Year's Eve in 1972.) Combining slapstick with a sort of dignified pathos, it eventually arrives at a life-affirming conclusion.

I love this piece because it's fun to watch. I also love its tragi-comic read on the human condition, which at once recognizes the absurdity of, and the heroism involved in, persevering in the face of inevitable decline and death.

Weaving, War and Womanhood

In her history of textiles, Mary Schoeser has remarked that “…textile techniques and their terms readily become analogies for the mysteries of nature and the universe.” Both sides of the analogy are clearly linked with female endeavors and power.

In Greek mythology the three Fates, female figures in control of human destinies, are depicted as spinning, measuring and cutting the threads that represent individual lives. Norse mythology employs the same analogy, with the three (female) Norns depicted spinning the thread of life for the hero Helgi in the Poetic Edda. The metaphor that compares a human life with a length of thread is clear and understandable. The fact that the Fates and the Norns are female bears witness to the reality that women have traditionally been the spinners and weavers. The metaphor works particularly well, though, because there is an even deeper identification of women with the “mysteries of nature and the universe.”

Nowadays we are so far removed from the processes of spinning and weaving that we may well wonder, what’s the big fateful deal regarding these activities? In pre-industrial societies, textile production was an enormous part of life. It was parallel to food production in that both entailed harvesting or gathering as well as processing, and both must have been constant, ongoing activities. Children have watched their mothers doing these things for eons.

Food is undoubtedly a necessity, and clothing, even if not needed for warmth, is important for other societal purposes. Other textile items, including bags, baskets, fishing nets, sails, etc., are necessary tools. Through many generations, people—primarily females--developed and perfected the technologies and processes that allowed their families and societies to survive, adapt to varying conditions and prosper. Their successes rested on their knowledge of agriculture and animal husbandry, both of which could provide food and fiber.

(Am I wrong to credit women with all this? Jochens writes, “Although direct proof is scarce, few scholars doubt that women bore the chief responsibility for spinning and weaving in primitive societies, a conclusion supported by cross-cultural comparisons.” In addition, let me say that, even if my husband is normally in charge of the crops and/or the animals, what happens when he goes to war? Or goes on a trading or raiding expedition? Or travels far from home to participate in some sort of governmental assembly? Or simply has to work late at the office? If I want my family to survive, I had better know my husband’s business as well as my own!)

Thus women, through the ages, have been central to many essential activities. And let’s not forget the obvious: Because of their primary roles in childbirth and child rearing they are essential to life itself in a way that men are not. History and myth abound with stories of male raiders setting out to steal the neighbors’ women; evidence that women have felt the need to abduct men is scanty at best.

Perhaps because of their traditional occupations—giving birth and feeding and clothing the next generation with the bounty of the earth-- women were thought to play a particularly large part in the natural cycle of life and in the connection of humankind with nature. In a situation where the natural world was little understood and felt to be capricious or frightening, this connection might be especially valuable. Indeed, in the historical Germanic and Norse world, this seems to have been the case.



Tacitus reminds us that among the continental Germans, women were particularly regarded as prophetesses and sages. In Snorri’s Heimskringla we continually meet with priestesses, prophetesses and wise women who move the action along with their premonitions and insightful words. In the Eirik the Red’s Saga, Thorkel, the head of a household in Greenland, wishes to know when his district will recover from a difficult season, so he engages a prophetess to provide answers. In the Voluspá the god Odin himself summons a dead prophetess from her grave to obtain information about the destiny of gods and men.

Of course, the natural cycle includes both life and death. The Fates not only spin the thread, but they also measure and cut it when life is through. So we would expect to see female figures involved in the bloody realities of both birth and death.

Norse mythology famously features valkyries, female agents of fate responsible for choosing those who will die in battle. In the Norse poem Darraðljóð, a group of twelve valkyries are depicted weaving a gruesome tapestry using warriors’ entrails as warp and weft to the refrain, “let us wind, let us wind, the web of war.” (One wonders if Dickens had this poem in mind when he created that infamous knitter of the French Revolution, Madame Defarge!) Jochens observes, “In effect, Darraðljóð pursues to a logical conclusion the image of the Norns, who were female figures in control of the thread of fate.”

Valkyries bring to mind the Greek goddess Athena, at once a goddess of war and of the “women’s arts” of spinning and weaving. She was also, incidentally, the goddess of wisdom. Athena figures into Homer’s depiction of Penelope, who uses her weaving and her wits to control her own fate. Penelope is the wife of Odysseus, delayed ten years in returning home after the Trojan War. She insists she will not remarry until she finishes her weaving. Every day she weaves, but at night she secretly unravels her work, thus keeping her many suitors at bay until she receives word of Odysseus’s return from (of course) Athena.

Textile-related stories abound in Greek mythology. Arachne was a woman who bragged that her weaving was better than Athena’s. As a punishment, the goddess turned her into a spider. Though women may not have engaged in sports or war, their competitive instinct could be strong and their anger potent! And speaking of potent anger, Medea, one of the most powerful sorceresses of Greek mythology, took revenge on her unfaithful husband and his new bride by giving the bride a beautiful, magic robe that burned her alive when she put it on. (I don’t know that Medea wove the robe herself, but she clearly masterminded and engineered its magic.)

These stories are interesting in part because they move beyond the supernatural, fleshing out real women’s activities, roles, and emotions. They attribute motives and generate narrative where there was only mute production (and reproduction). Textiles become not only a symbol but also an instrument of women’s creativity and fate. As women’s handiwork is transformed into works of mind, heart, and soul, we encounter a wonderful, telling paradox: the intangible attains immortality while the tangible is doomed to disintegrate.

References

Anonymous. “Eirik the Red’s Saga” (translated by Keneva Kunz) in The Sagas of Icelanders: A Selection. New York: Penguin Books, 2000.

Anonymous. “The First Lay of Helgi the Hunding-Slayer,” in The Poetic Edda. Translated by Lee M. Hollander. Second edition, revised. Tenth paperback printing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.

Anonymous. “Voluspá,” in The Poetic Edda. Translated by Lee M. Hollander. Second edition, revised. Tenth paperback printing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. New York: Modern Library, 1996.

Jochens, Jenny. Women in Old Norse Society. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995.

New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. Translated by Richard Aldington and Delano Ames and revised by a panel of editorial advisors from the Larousse Mythologie Générale edited by Felix Guirand and first published in France by Augé, Gillon, Hollier-Larousee, Moreau et Cie, the Librairie Larousse, Paris. New Edition 1968. Ninth Impression. U.S.A.: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited, 1974.

Schoeser, Mary. World Textiles: A Concise History. London: Thames & Hudson, 2003.

Tacitus’s Germania is cited in Jochens, Jenny. Old Norse Images of Women. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

On the mythical origins of drinking and toasting

There are many time-honored customs that rarely intrude upon our stripped-down, modern lives. But on certain occasions we turn to them routinely. Recently, at the Thanksgiving table, my father gave his usual toast. And when I say “usual,” I mean it. He says the same thing every year. But as I now appreciate, that isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s sort of the whole point.

First, he expresses thankfulness for our prosperity. Next, he appreciates the fact that we are together, wishes that absent loved ones were present, and hopes that they might be next year. If there has been an addition to the family, or some other important event, he includes it as well. My father is not a formal person, and yet he’s been doing this every year since I was a girl. I remember being gathered around the table with twenty or more relatives, two turkeys, stuffing and all the rest. All of us children would be eager to eat. My father would raise his glass, “I would like to propose a toast”—and one of my cousins, the same one every year—would give an exasperated sigh. If she failed to do so immediately, we would all look her way with expectation.

Recently I heard some intriguing comments about toasting and drinking habits in Germany and Scandinavia, where, apparently, mealtime drinking and toasting are still so important that occasionally the food may become quite cold before it can be attended to. One may not drink before the host has toasted. Gentlemen toast the lady seated next to them in a particular fashion. And, most interestingly to me, at the end of the meal, the gentleman seated next to the hostess is obliged to toast her and in so doing give a clever and perhaps even poetic summary of the evening—the meal, the conversation, and so forth. Such a performance would require not only considerable facility with words, but also an ability to retain the significant and dispense with the trivial—all at the close of a long evening of food and drink. Not exactly your fraternity brother’s drinking game!

Looking back a thousand or more years ago, things were not so different. In Odin’s hall, the mythic Valhalla of Nordic paganism, drinking was more than just a merry pastime. For Odin’s chosen warriors, daily turns at fierce, berserker-type bloodletting were punctuated by nightly rounds of the drinking horn, unending supplies of boar flesh, and lots of words. These included toasting, boasting, bragging, daring and threatening as well as the formal, intricate, measured verses of skaldic poetry. In earthly versions of Valhalla all over the Germanic world, drinking and its accompanying verbal activities were steeped in religious myth and ritual.

One of the central myths of the Germanic pagan religion is that of the Well and the Tree. The World Tree (Yggdrasil) stands with its roots in the Well, which is associated with three female goddesses called the Norns. One of them, Urd, waters the Tree with the Well’s contents. This fluid filters down through the Tree, effectively bypassing the unimportant while causing the most significant earthly events to accumulate in the Well below. Urd is also said to log leggja or, as the scholar Bauschatz translates, to “lay down that which has been laid down”: to proclaim that which has been accomplished. The Well thus becomes a repository of history, knowledge and wisdom, constantly renewed, augmented and documented, It is also constantly recycled to nurture the World Tree above. Odin himself sacrifices an eye for a drink from this sacred pool. A potent drink indeed!

Another mythical, potent fluid in the Nordic tradition is the mead of inspiration, said to impart the ability to compose poetry and speak wise words. This mead was created when the two groups of Nordic deities, the Aesir and the Vanir, sealed a truce by spitting into a cauldron. Their spittle combined to create a giant, Kvasir, who was very wise. The dwarfs killed him and brewed mead from his blood. Kvasir’s fellow giants then forced the dwarfs to give them the mead in compensation for the murder. Finally, through a combination of shape-shifting, trickery and seduction, Odin managed to steal the mead. For this reason, Odin is considered to be the god of poetry as well as war. Granting inspiration analogous to the mead itself, he is the patron of the skald—the court poet who relates a king’s exploits and its implications in verse—as well as the berserker, who rages, fearless, in a trancelike battle frenzy.

Magical or sacred fluids seem to be a recurring theme in Nordic mythology, and indeed, excavation of Germanic pagan graves reveals an inordinately large number of bowls and other containers, which may be assimilated to the Well itself. Reports of early Germanic sacrificial and divinatory practices relate that priestesses hung victims above large vessels so that their blood could run down and collect there. Odin himself hung, in an act of apparent self-sacrifice, from Yggdrasil, pierced by a spear--perhaps his blood flowed down into the Well itself. In any case, kings were required to drink sacrificial blood in the name of Odin and other gods. This was thought to secure the community’s connection with the divine and insure fertility and prosperity, victory in battle, good fortune in travel, and the like.

Thus the act of drinking becomes a ritual act by which one can connect with the important, the sacred, or, as Eliade would say, the “real” that lies beyond the mundane. When we raise our glasses for a toast, the words seem to have greater import than words spoken in an ordinary context. For guests at the German dinner party, the importance of the toasting is partly in the words uttered, but it is also in the enactment of the custom itself. Within the Nordic chieftain’s hall, an earthly reflection of Valhalla, drinking would have been the key to an alternate, heightened form of consciousness and discourse. The mead of inspiration is imbibed, the fluid filters down, and the drinkers’ tongues are freed to comment on the present, boast of the past, and take on obligations for the future. The skald eloquently and intricately relates, describes and contextualizes the proceedings even as the final toaster at a German dinner party. Even as Urd at the Well.

References:

Bauschatz, Paul. The Well and the Tree. Univeristy of Massachussetts Press, 1982.

Davidson, H.R.E. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Penguin Books, 1984. (Original copyright 1964.)

Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Harcourt, 1959.

Jochens, Jenny. Old Norse Images of Women. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

Sturlason, Snorri. Heimskringla, or Lives of the Norse Kings. Edited with notes by Erling Monsen, and translated into English from the Old Norse with the assistance of A.H. Smith. Dover, 1990. (This edition originally published by W. Heffer & Sons, 1932.)

Turville-Petre, E.O.G. Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964