A randomly selected reader asks the following question:

Lars, given the sea-faring nature of the Vikings, what do you think (perhaps what did they think) of the words in Revelation about the new heaven and earth.  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.” Perhaps they never heard a sermon on that verse and didn’t have the Bible in their language to read themselves. So, what do you think?

 

Phil Wade

Dear Phil,

Thank you for your question. It is always good for young people to seek wisdom from their elders.

The passage to which you refer is Revelation 21:1. What did Viking converts think of this? I don’t think it’s a matter that came up much, and I know of no discussion of the matter in the sagas.

My first thought is that the Vikings might not have cared as much about this issue as we might expect. I’ve always loved the sea, but it was the idea of the sea I loved. I grew up hundreds of miles from the nearest shore, and the sea was a romantic image to me. For those who live close to it and deal with it every day, it’s not (I suspect) the same thing. Just as the American prairie has never held much magic for me.

My great-grandfather, I know, grew up working in the Norwegian herring and cod fishery, and once he was able to get a landlocked farm in Minnesota, he never looked back. He couldn’t see why anybody would want to go fishing, ever.

I might add that my own interpretation of that particular passage is not literal.

One thing I’ve learned in my Bible study is that the biblical Jews viewed the sea as almost entirely an evil thing. They identified it with the premordial abyss of Genesis 1:2: “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep…” The sea was the treacherous place where there was nowhere to stand, where a man was swallowed up and lost forever.

This, by the way, is important to remember when reading the New Testament stories about Jesus calming the storm and walking on water, etc. He was asserting His authority over hell itself, in the disciples’ eyes, when He did those things. It also explains the plea of the demons of the Gerasenes not to be cast into the abyss, when they in fact end up in the Sea of Galilee (Luke 8:31-33).

That’s why I read Revelation 21:1 symbolically (that’s hardly a liberal reading, as so much of Revelation is clearly symbolic). I think the passage means that the wanton chaos of our moral world will be gone forever. Life will be fair at last.

But if I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll learn to live with it.