Tag Archives: Vikings

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Memoir of decline: My strenuous weekend

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Old Man In an Armchair, by Rembrandt, 1652.

I just received a postcard. It was mailed to me from Spring Grove, Minnesota (in the southeastern corner of the state) on May 17 last, and it arrived here in Robbinsdale today. That’s nearly three weeks to travel 161 miles. I could wax indignant about the way the mail service has deteriorated, harkening back to the gilded days of my youth when such a missive would have arrived the following day, or at most in two days.

But at this point, I just sympathize with the postal service. It must be feeling pretty much like I was feeling after this weekend.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a good weekend. Met a number of nice people, and sold a reasonable amount of my books.

But it was hard on me. This was one of those watershed moments in a man’s life (if it’s a man; sometimes it’s a woman but I know nothing about that. I only assume their experience is similar) when he’s forced to face the fact that he’s gotten bloody old. I drove home Sunday afternoon, left all my Viking junk in my car, and collapsed on the sofa. I spent Monday recovering; I accomplished nothing except for posting a book review. I had “run out of sand,” to employ a metaphor from my green years.

Having rested up now and thought it over, I realize the situation may not be as bad as I thought. This weekend was unusual in that it involved two consecutive Viking events on two consecutive days. That meant two setups and two teardowns, plus packing and unpacking my car. That’s a lot of barges toted and bales lifted. Thank God for the young people in our group – we’ve had a gratifying influx of promising youngsters recently, and they are generous in helping me lift and carry and strap things down. I couldn’t manage without them.

But I think I probably need to cut back a little. I’m considering selling my Viking tent. I can get by with a sun shade/awning, as I used to, which is a lot lighter. I said goodbye to steel combat a few years ago, and now I think I may need to say goodbye to the care and feeding of my tent. I stand before the crowd like Lou Gehrig in “Pride of the Yankees,” and say I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

Lugging my Viking chest in and out of my house (it involves steps) is the single hardest part of managing my reenactment impedimenta, though. I think I’m going to experiment with just leaving the blasted thing in my car all summer. Heat may be an issue in the sunshine, but the only thing I can think of inside the chest that’s likely to melt is a little lump of beeswax in my leather sewing kit. And that’s in a plastic container, so I think it’ll be all right.

I’ll be thinking more about efficiency and downsizing. That’s part of the aging process generally. I must resign myself, I think, to being prized for my wisdom rather than my strong back.

Come to think of it, I was never much prized for my strong back. If I was considered wiser than I was strong, that was mostly because I wasn’t very strong.

What, you ask, were these two exhausting events? Saturday was the annual Nordic Music Fest in Burnsville, Minnesota. It’s held at Buck Hill, a commercial ski hill that’s been around forever, right next to the highway. In the non-snow months, they host other events, of which this was one. The day started rainy (not predicted by the weather man), then turned sunny and humid. The featured music was an ABBA cover band, and our young Vikings did a couple combat shows. I had several interesting conversations with people who came by my sales table, and I sold a fair number of books. It was comparable to last year.

Sunday was Danish Day at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis, something our group participates in every year. The weather was nice, though it was starting to spit rain by the time we tore the camp down. Attendance was better than it’s been in a while – I had to wait in line a long time to buy my food. (I got aebelskivers – a spherical Danish pancake served with strawberry jam and powdered sugar, a Danish hot dog, and layer cake.) My book sales were small, but they always are at Danish Day – I sold three books, which is actually good for that event. I don’t know why the Danes seem to be less interested in books than Norwegians – possibly it has to do with the fact that my books are Norway-oriented.

One of our new members has a pair of Norwegian Elk Hounds, named Odin and Freya, which he brought. They are astonishingly mellow and easygoing – I joked with the owner that the dog treats he fed them must be CBD gummies. (This breed is not usually known for its placidity. They’re strong dogs, and generally they like to romp.)

It was a good weekend.

But it seemed to me it was no country for old men. Or so I felt Sunday evening.

I didn’t take any pictures. Sorry.

Authors, Uncategorized

Avalsdnes Viking Farm

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I was looking for another kind of video for tonight. Back when the Kristin Lavransdatter film was shot, I read somewhere that they were preserving the sets they used for Kristin’s father’s farm in the Gudbrandsdal, to have as a tourist attraction. But I can’t seem to find any mention of it, so it must have either never happened, or it failed to thrive.

Instead, I found this relatively new video, about the Viking farm at Avaldsnes. This is the place where I attended the Viking festival 2 years ago. It’s very familiar to me now, and brings back good memories.

Some of you might even be interested in visiting yourselves.

I’m still proud of making that walk twice a day, at my age. Not bad for a fat American. (Confession: I cheated and wore modern shoes.)

Authors, Bookselling, Writing

‘What About the Vikings?’

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Me playing Viking in Norway, at the Hafrsfjord Festival in 2022, with the president of the Karmoy Viking Club.

The thought has been nagging at me of late that my personal author’s page, www.larswalker.com, hasn’t been updated much over the years, except for announcements of new book releases.

I felt particularly guilty about my “Vikings” page, since it contains an essay on my historical views which – while I haven’t changed those views much – has not kept up with trends in scholarship and popular opinion. I don’t lose much sleep over it, as I’ve always found most trends and popular opinions laughable. Still, I’ve neglected my readers.

So I offer the following update, which I’ll ask my revered webmaster to add to the old one:

WHAT ABOUT VIKINGS?

I included a short essay on the Vikings in this space when this site was first established. But the world moves on, and I find that piece (you can find it below this one) no longer addresses the current situation. My views have changed very little, but I think I need to explain them in a new light.

When I wrote the original essay, back before the turn of the century, the prevailing scholarly view of the Vikings (a view considered “revisionist” at the time) was that the violence of Viking culture had been exaggerated by monkish scribes, “prejudiced” because Vikings kept burning down their homes and enslaving or killing them (which strikes me, personally, as a reasonable excuse for a prejudice). The prevailing view in the late 20th Century was that the Vikings (viewed as a culture, rather than as participants in an activity, which was the original sense of the word) were primarily involved in trade, and that their occasional ventures into raiding (mostly in response to the inflexible attitudes of the vile Christians) were relatively rare and reasonably justified.

I thought this view nonsense. I noted that the purveyors of this theory tended to gloss over the fact that the Vikings’ first and foremost item of trade, at least in the first centuries, was human slaves. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t consider the slave trade a peaceful occupation.

But the other day I watched, for the second time, Robert Eggers’ 2022 film, “The Northman.” I can only conclude, based on that movie, that I’ve won the “peaceful Vikings” argument completely. Perhaps I’ve won it too well. Eggers’ Viking culture is thoroughly violent and brutal. Force is all that matters there, and the individual must either possess power or submit to it.

This view strikes me as just as unbalanced as the old one. It overlooks (as Prof. Jackson Crawford has noted) the importance in Viking culture of being a “drengr,” a man of honor and character. In the movie, for instance, the ball game of “knattleikr” is played by thralls (slaves), and fatalities are considered trivial, since thralls are cheap (note: they were not cheap). In the Icelandic sagas, however, free men play knattleikr themselves, in order to showcase their courage and skill.

This narrow view also overlooks the Vikings’ democratic tradition (emphasized in Viking Legacy, the book by Torgrim Titlestad which I translated). The Vikings in fact mistrusted raw power, and mitigated it through limiting their kings under the law, subjecting royal decisions to the “Thing” assemblies of free men. Viking society was far from egalitarian, but they revered law, cherishing it as fundamental to a functional society. They cared, in their own way, about freedom – for themselves, anyway. (This is the human norm, by the way – the concept of the brotherhood of Man came to us from Christianity, and has been internalized slowly, even among Christians.)

Why this radical change in popular views of the Viking Age? I think it rises from the political climate. Scholarly opinion in our time is the obsequious servant of politics. (Perhaps it always has been. The current academic fascination with intersectional power may be plain projection.)

For most of my lifetime, the North Star, the guiding principle, of this Political/Scholarly-Industrial Complex has been contempt for Western Civilization. When Vikings were viewed as outsiders to that civilization, scholars had to regard them positively. Now that they have come to be viewed, sometimes, as insiders, the original Dead White Males, they can be despised – when convenient.

The truth of the Vikings is that they were like everyone else. They lived the best way they knew how, according to their lights. (Snorri Sturlusson understood this in the 13th Century. Moderns are often less sophisticated.)

In my view, one major point that’s generally overlooked in our discussions of the Vikings is that the Viking Age was the Scandinavian Age of Conversion. When the Vikings first hit Lindisfarne in 793 AD, they were mostly heathen (though missionary activity had probably begun even then). By the (generally accepted) end of the Viking Era – the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 – the Danes and Norwegians were solidly Christian and the Swedes not far behind. One of the chief reasons for the end of Viking activity was a nascent internalization by Scandinavians of the Christian ethic – an ethic they still haven’t entirely embraced – like everyone else.

There’s another point too. That point – a major one, though intellectually disreputable – is the element of fun. When I fell in love with the Vikings as a boy, it was the image of a dragon ship under sail, headed off to adventure, that gripped me. An idea formed in my mind of a bold hero at the prow of such a ship, a free man sailing out to test his courage and seize his fortune. That image – in time – coupled with the historical figure of Erling Skjalgsson and gave birth to my series of historical fantasy novels, The Year of the Warrior, West Oversea, Hailstone Mountain, The Elder King, King of Rogaland, and The Baldur Game.

Robert Eggers’ movie contains not one moment of that kind of fun. I hope my Erling books do a better job.

Non-fiction, Reviews

Reading report: ‘The Vikings in Britain,’ by Henry Loyn

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When commenting on a book not easily available to readers in this country (I ordered my copy from England), it’s probably appropriate to call my review a reading report. Posting this does you no particular good, but I’ve spent a couple days reading the book (which I wanted for research on my Work In Progress), and I’m gonna get a review out of it, by thunder.

The Vikings in Britain by Henry Loyn was published back in 1995, which is a while ago, I must admit, especially in a rapidly expanding field of knowledge. No doubt much of the research in the book has been superseded, but in aggregate it seems to give a pretty good overview.

In fact, what The Vikings in Britain appears to be is a textbook, designed as a broad introduction. Just the facts, so to speak (so far as they can be determined). The material is presented through a combination of chronological and geographic perspectives, which seemed to me a little confusing. The book is, apparently, part of a series entailing certain format constraints, including length, so the prose is pretty dense.

My sad final impression after reading is that it wasn’t much fun. That makes it ideal for the textbook market, I suppose, but in my opinion there’s no excuse for a book about Vikings being boring. (Look at Viking Legacy for a sterling example of engaging historiography and [cough] translation.) If you happen on a copy of The Vikings in Britain, and want to mainline a lot of information in a minimal number of reading hours, this book might be right for you.

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On to Brainerd

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I may or may not be posting here tomorrow night, contingent on circumstances. I’ll again be in beautiful, scenic Brainerd, Minnesota for the Crow Wing County Viking Festival. Last year’s local news report on the festival is posted about — though reluctantly, as their cameraman completely blew the opportunity to capture the excitement of my presence.

If you’re in the area, here’s the web site. The festival is held at the Crow Wing County fairgrounds and begins 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

Non-fiction, Poetry

‘The Tale of Arnor, Poet of Jarls’

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The Viking hall at Ravnsborg, Knox City, MO. Photo by me.

It’s been a little while since I reviewed another saga in The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. Tonight’s saga is not a saga at all, but a tale, just two pages long. It’s a sort of parenthetical incident found originally in the Icelandic Morkinskinna saga manuscript. I can’t find any cheap collection you can buy that contains it, so you’ll have to take my word about it. Its title is The Tale of Arnor, the Poet of Earls.

“Earl,” of course, is a translation of “jarl.”

Arnor Jarlaskald is a figure known from the saga histories, and considered one of the great skalds of the 11th Century. This story doesn’t explain his nickname (he deals only with kings here), but we’re told elsewhere that he got it because he spent a lot of time with the jarls of the Orkneys and composed often for them. Otherwise he was a merchant.

This story is set during the time when King Magnus the Good (St. Olaf’s son) ruled jointly with King Harald Hardrada. (Harald had come back from Constantinople dripping with money, intending to depose his nephew Magnus and take over Norway. Intermediaries convinced them to do a deal – half of Harald’s fortune in exchange for half of Magnus’ kingdom. Though their time together wasn’t without tensions, they managed to keep the peace, and when Magnus died, it’s remarkable to note that nobody seems to have suggested that Harald murdered him. That’s the sort of thing Harald easily might have done, after all).

In the tale, Arnor arrives in the town (doesn’t say what town here; no doubt it’s explained in the larger context. Could have been Nidaros (Trondheim), but it might have been Tunsberg), having composed poems in honor of both kings. But he seems to have been told to wait, so he started to work tarring his ship. Then messengers came to summon him to court. He went directly, not even stopping to wash the tar off his hands.

He then goes into the hall, where both kings wait in their high seats. They ask Arnor whose poem he means to recite first. Arnor says he’ll start with Magnus, because “it is said that young men are impatient.”

Arnor begins the poem, and Harald (himself a poet) can’t resist interrupting to complain that it’s mostly about Arnor’s own journeys and dealings with the jarls. Magnus wants to hear more, and then the saga writer gives us excerpts from the original poem. Harald continues butting in with objections, but in the end he appears jealous. After hearing his own poem, he says, “My poem will soon fade away and be forgotten, while the drapa composed about King Magnus will be recited as long as there are people in the North.”

Which is true, because we have Magnus’ poem preserved here, while Harald’s is not.

In the end, Arnor is rewarded by Harald with a gold-inlaid spear, while Magnus gives him a gold ring and, later, a merchant ship and cargo.

This is a snippet, an anecdote without much of a plot. Its significance would seem to be in the insight it gives us into the characters of two very different kings. And probably an old man’s proud reminiscence of the days when he met celebrities.

Irrelevant details like Arnor’s dirty hands give a strong impression of verisimilitude. This sounds very much like a genuine memory, passed down only a few generations before being preserved on parchment.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Nordic Midsummer Festival Saturday

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For those of you who live in the Twin Cities area — or are inclined to travel — I’ll be playing Viking and selling deathless literature at the Nordic Midsummer Fest in Burnsville, Minnesota tomorrow. You can read all about it at this address.

Ancient Twin Cities Scandinavians like me remember a celebration called Norway Day, which used to be held in June in Minnehaha Park. I attended once way back in 1980, and there were thousands of people there, with lots of vendors, speakers, and entertainment. Over the years it diminished, and it had died out even before the Covid lockdowns.

But some people are trying to resurrect it as a big all-Scandinavian festival. The venue has been changed to Buck Hill, which is a suburban ski hill in the winter but does other things in summer. I’ve never been there; interested to see it.

The big musical draw will be the Harp Twins, whose videos you’ve likely seen on YouTube. Turns out they’re Scandinavian. Go figure.

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The Lindisfarne Gospels

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It’s Friday, and I don’t have a book to review. What shall I do, what shall I do?

I note that yesterday was the anniversary of the Viking raid on Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumbria, in 793. It would have been more appropriate to mention it yesterday, I suppose. The day before would have been even better, so you’d have time to plan your Lindisfarne celebrations. On the other hand, the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582 threw all our calculations off by 10 days anyway, so when we cite ancient dates we’re always approximating.

There’s some controversy among Viking scholars about the Lindisfarne raid. We have a strong movement going to downgrade the importance of the 793 date as the “official” beginning of the Viking Age. The Portland raid in 789 is often advanced as the true beginning — though there are disagreements whether that one should be considered a proper raid at all. Could have been just a harbor-side brawl with an officious customs officer. Some historians have begun pointing to the discovery of a ship burial containing dozens of men’s bodies on an island in Estonia and dated sometime between 700 and 750.

Personally, I’m inclined to continue accepting Lindisfarne and 793. When we consider the Viking Age as a historical period, we’re talking primarily about its impact on Western Europe. 793 was a 9/11 moment in that region, the moment when a previously disregarded threat suddenly became real and serious. The Portland raid didn’t have that effect, but Lindisfarne hit like a bomb. It was the equivalent of a raid on Oxford or Harvard today. It sent a message.

Above, a very nice video, a few years old, describing an exhibition of the famous Lindisfarne Gospels (a treasure the Vikings never got their hands on) in England.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Anglo-Saxons at War 800-1066,’ by Paul Hill

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As early as the late seventh century King Ine of Wessex (688-726) was moved to categorize numbers of armed men: ‘We call up to seven men thieves; from seven to thirty-five a band; above that it is an army.’

Anyone interested in the Viking Age is perforce going to be interested in the people we call the Anglo-Saxons. I recall that they intrigued me strangely when I discovered them in an encyclopedia at a very young age, before (as far as I can remember) I even knew about Vikings. The two cultures are sisters after all; many of the Anglo-Saxon tribes were Scandinavian in origin and only a few generations and geographic relocation separated them.

Paul Hill, author of The Anglo-Saxons at War 800-1066, is an accomplished historian and historical popularizer. He has produced here an excellent work targeted at those of us (like historical reenactors) who are interested in looking past generalizations and common assumptions to discover what we are able to know for sure (or can surmise) about warfare in the period. The trick is to separate known fact from guesses, and it seemed to me this book did a pretty good job of that.

The book includes an Introduction (a Survey of the Evidence); and chapters on Warfare, Violence and Society; Military Organization; Strategy and Tactics; Fortifications and Earthworks; Campaigns, Battles and Sieges; and Weapons, Armour and Accessories.

Now and then there are statements that contradict things I’m in the habit of telling people at reenactment events – he isn’t sure that the saex knife was reserved for the use of free men (spears, on the other hand, were, he says). And he doesn’t think the “wings” on a “boar spear” are actually intended to prevent a body from slipping down the shaft. He thinks they’re for parrying, and he probably knows more about it than I do.

General readers looking for a history of warfare in the period should probably find a different book. Certain events and campaigns are described in considerable detail, but they’re examined out of historical sequence. This is a book for enthusiasts interested in the period. Historical reenactors in particular will appreciate it.

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My warrior days

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I suppose it’s a lack of imagination that drives me more and more to YouTube for videos these days. I could probably think of some contemporary issue to complain about, but… what’s the use? As far as I can tell, we’re dancing on the edge of the volcano. I have lots of opinions, but little cheerful to say.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve shared this old, old video before. Didn’t actually know it was out there. It’s a video produced by a brewing company (not sure what the connection is), offering footage of my Viking group’s combat activities in several locations on several occasions. This was back when I was new to “live steel” combat. Since then I’ve declined, retired, and sold my mail shirt (you can recognize it at the beginning and end of this video by the red material around the collar, where my padded gambeson protrudes) to a younger man.

Most of the guys in this video, to the best of my knowledge, have retired from the sport, like me. Some are old friends who are no longer friends. One that I know of is dead.

But on the bright side, I finished my translation job — for which I turned in a substantial invoice — and now they want a little more work, on some touching up they’re doing on the script. Happy to oblige, friends. Happy to oblige.