As you may recall, I am peripherally involved in the world of Viking scholarship – not as a real researcher, but as a lowly translator. I am also, of course, a creator of historical fantasy, which means I’ve had to learn a few things. Not as much as I think I’ve learned, of course, but a few things. And, of course, I have ideas.
Here’s one of them.
The scholarly controversy over how the Icelandic historical sagas should be understood, as I’ve often mentioned, is about how much we can believe of what the sagas tell us. Many historians won’t use the sagas at all, because they were written after a period of oral transmission. And a lot of historians are very suspicious of oral tradition.
For instance, I often come across a statement like this: “Historians disagree whether King Harald Fairhair of Norway ever actually existed.” They mention that there are no clear mentions of him anywhere except in the sagas.
For some historians, in fact, it seems that a mention in a saga is proof of non-existence.
Which makes no sense to me.
One comes across the same argument with figures like King Arthur and Robin Hood. “There are legends about these characters,” the historians say. “Therefore, we’re sure they never existed.”
“Why?” Walker screams.
Historians seem to think that legends spring out of the human mind, ex nihilo. As atheists think the universe was created – by nobody, out of nothing.
It makes more sense to me that legends probably come from something. Perhaps something trivial, perhaps they happened to a different historical character – but they came from something.
What historians don’t seem to remember is that in this real world they write about, actual things do happen. Sometimes they’re quite exciting things. People remember them, and repeat them to others.
At the Green Bay Viking festival, a friend told me a story about building a working guillotine on commission, and nearly chopping his hand off. I’ve been retelling that story ever since.
It happened. Interesting things do happen in real life.
Why should the default explanation for a good story be that somebody just made it up?