Tag Archives: Vikings

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Embers of the Hands,’ by Eleanor Barraclough

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I like to think I keep relatively up to date on Viking studies, both for my writing and for my second life as a Viking reenactor. But as Dunning and Kruger have taught us, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know – and I think I’ve learned to settle for being better informed than most people, to keep up with the state of the art as stuff gets published for popular consumption.

So I bought Embers of the Hands by Eleanor Barraclough, which was recommended to me by a couple friends. And I have to say it’s an impressive book within the limits of its intended purpose.

Embers of the Hands pairs well with Kat Jarman’s River Kings, which I reviewed a while back. Like that book, it considers the Viking world through examination and analysis of archaeological artifacts. But Jarman’s book centered on one artifact (a bead), while Barraclough uses a number of artifacts to elucidate various aspects of the Viking world.

The emphasis here is on ordinary life – the way the people who weren’t famous lived. The clues given us by the things they used and left behind , that enable us – to some extent – to look at their world through their eyes. Author Barraclough possesses a happy gift for description and empathetic thought.

And that gift is needed, because I feel I must admit that I found the book rather dull in stretches. Most of us were lured into Viking studies by way of romantic dreams, of adventure and heroism. Embers of the Hands is pretty relentlessly unromantic. This approach is an excellent corrective for people like me – writers and reenactors. I think it will have more trouble holding the casual reader, who may be looking for bigger and more colorful stories.

Still, it’s a well-researched and well-written book, and ought to be read and pondered by its intended audience.

I might mention that the author seems not much interested in the contentious issue of shield maidens, and I was very grateful to her for that.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Personal appearance alert: The Great Northern Viking Festival

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I’ll be doing a Viking event this weekend, and this time I’m giving you a whole day’s notice to make your plans to attend!

Because I love you and want you to be happy.

The Great Northern Viking Festival will be held Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 19 and 20th, in Mankato, Minnesota. I plan to be there Saturday only, and only for the “family friendly” daytime hours. In the evening, I’m informed, they will let their hair down a little (those who haven’t inflicted History Channel haircuts on themselves). I myself am too old – and too conventional – for such shenanigans.

This is the first year this event has been held. I have no idea what to expect, really. Several Viking groups will be present, each doing its own peculiar thing.

For all I know, it will be a heathen thing, and I’ll have to flee like a monk at Lindisfarne, shaking the dust from my feet as I scamper. But we’ll see. I’ve loaded my car with a substantial supply of good and uplifting books, either written or translated by me, which ought to raise the tone in any case.

Come by if you’re in the area and feel like checking it out.

Religion

‘Video Vikings and Christian Conversion’

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I now have an article available for your perusal over at the Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty Online.

Religion, Uncategorized

In a Viking church

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A fragment of a wall painting from my ancestral church at Aakra, Norway.

Here’s something one of my Facebook friends brought to my attention. The Viking Museum at Ribe, Denmark, has unveiled its recreation of what they think a 9th Century Viking church in Denmark would have looked like. It is not – as you can see – exactly what you’d expect. And by you, of course, I mean me.

I’ve never bothered to describe Father Ailill’s church in detail in my Erling books. I assume it was built of wood, and I conceived of it of being similar to the average Viking house. In Hailstone Mountain, I describe it as having at least one tapestry hanging on the wall. It has an altar in front. Pews were not used in those days. I’ve kept it vague.

But here come these Danes now with their bright painted walls. I’m reminded of the church at Åkra, near Skånevik, Norway, an ancestral church of mine I visited two years ago. (Picture above.) It’s not as old as the Viking Age, but pretty old. There was one place where restorers discovered a bit of wall painting underneath a door frame, over the top of the sacristy door. They left that section of frame hinged, so you can lift the piece of wood and see the painting below. They believe it showed a scene of Samson killing the lion.

In any case, I do have quibbles. The brightness of the photos in the article should not be taken to indicate what churchgoers saw in the Viking Age. The building would have been illuminated mostly by lamps. There would have been a lot of shadows. The brightness of the images would have been necessary in part (I think) to make them visible at all in the general gloom.

Speaking of light, I’m curious about the windows in this reconstruction. My own understanding is that glass windows, in that period, were rare and extremely expensive. I expend quite a few words, in my work in progress, The Baldur Game, in having Father Ailill describe, on a visit to England, how amazed he is to see a modestly large glass window in the palace at Winchester. And Erling is quite proud of one small window in one of his halls. I imagined no windows at all in Ailill’s church.

However, the people at Ribe are experts. They undoubtedly know a lot more than I do. (Though I’m not sure Norwegian churches would necessarily have followed Carolingian fashion.)

In any case, those windows look pretty extravagant to me. I wonder what archaeological evidence there is for them.

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Call me ‘Lars the Disappointing’

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An awful image of Erik the Red, from the 1688 book, Gronlandia, by Arngrimur Jonsson. Good, free pictures of Erik are hard to find.

I’m not sure whether this is good news or bad news, but my productivity on this blog is likely to be reduced a little for the next five months. I’ve snagged a new translation job, one that promises to be a bit of a challenge.

I can’t tell you what the job is at this point, because it’s a private thing for a scholarly project, and nobody has given me permission to talk about it. If I find out differently, I’ll let you know.

But I will say I’m translating a very long biography from Norwegian to English. I’m not actually certain I can meet the hoped-for deadline. But I’m gonna try my best. That means less time reading for pleasure, and fewer reviews on this blog, I fear.

What I’ll post instead of reviews I have no idea.

But tonight I’m going to post about Viking names.

As you may have noticed if you’ve read about the subject, Vikings used what’s called the “patronymic” in naming. A patronymic is not a family name in the sense we undertand them, but simply an indicator. Thorvald’s son Erik is called Erik Thorvaldsson. Erik’s son Leif does not inherit the surname Thorvaldsson, but is rather called Leif Eriksson (you may have heard of him). The surname is just a pointer – I’m talking about this Leif here, not that other Leif over there.

But the Vikings also liked to add nicknames. This brought the identification to what we information professionals like to call “a further level of granularity.” Which means it involves more detail; it’s more specific. Erik Thorvaldsson was known as Erik the Red, which was likely to single him out even better than the patronymic did.

But an interesting thing sometimes happens with these nicknames (though not in Erik’s case). Sometimes they replaced, in practice, the person’s original name. Take for instance Thorleif Skjalg, the father of Erling Skjalgsson, hero of my Viking novels. (Skjalg probably means “squint-eyed.” I like to think of Charles Bronson.) Thorleif Skjalg was so identified with his nickname that his son ended up being known as Erling Skjalgsson rather than as Erling Thorleifsson. And Erling went ahead and named one of his own sons Skjalg. So the nickname became a proper name.

Another example is Snorri Goði, a historical personage who appeared as a character in my novel West Oversea. (Goði is Icelandic for Priest or Chieftain.) His original name, according to the sagas (he appears in several), was Thorgrim. But even as a child he proved so difficult to handle that he got the nickname Snorri, which means (I believe) tangled or complex (related, I further believe, to our English words snare and snarl). And the name Snorri went on to become a fairly common Norse name. (The first European child born in America, according to the sagas, was named Snorri Thorfinsson.)

Aren’t you glad I shared this?

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Most of what you know about Viking funerals is wrong

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It occurred to me this morning that (as far as I remember, in my increasing mental decrepitude), I’ve never yet inflicted on you my opinions on the subject of the Viking Funeral.

These opinions are strong.

The movie clip above, from the 1959 Kirk Douglas/Tony Curtis film, “The Vikings,” seems to have strongly influenced popular ideas about how the Vikings handled their dead. When I say, “Viking funeral,” that’s what people imagine. The corpse is placed on a pyre on the ship, the ship is launched out to sea, and the ship is set afire. The hero sails majestically off to Valhalla.

A few minutes’ critical thought will suggest to rational people that this is not a practical scheme.

First of all, you need a favorable wind. While you’re waiting for that (which could take a while) the corpse will be… ripening.

Secondly, the first thing to go up in flames would be the sail, which was generally made of wool impregnated with animal grease. That would go up like a match head. After which – oops! – the ship has no more wind power. Unless the wind is quite strong, the vessel will sit there burning down to the water line. What’s left will probably be left floating.

Or the wind may change and blow the whole thing back to shore and need to be dealt with all over again.

Finally, cremating a corpse is not as easy as most people think. You can’t just place a body on a pile of wood and expect it to be consumed. It takes very intense heat. Einar’s pyre in the movie doesn’t cut it.

In point of fact, we have no historical reports of such a funeral. There are legendary accounts – I know of two, one only similar. The first is in the myth of Baldur, where the god’s funeral ship is treated in just that way. The second is in the poem “Beowulf,” where the legendary Danish king Scyld Scefing is supposed to have been returned to the sea in a ship (he originally appears as a baby in a small boat, sort of like Moses). But that ship doesn’t burn. It just sails away into the other world. The idea is that Scyld came from the sea and is given back to it.

Both these accounts are legendary. The original listeners to the myth and the poem did not view them as how-to guides.

Archaeologists will tell you that there were two primary ways that high-status Vikings were sent off. The use of a ship or boat (or in some cases, an array of rocks placed in a ship shape) was common, and seems to suggest that the Norse believed that the afterlife involved some kind of voyage.

Depending on culture, historical period, and date, the bodies might be cremated before inhumation or not. Many believe that Christian influence was responsible for inhumation gaining popularity over time.

Grave goods were a necessity. The wealth of the family determined how much stuff would be buried with the dead – and there’s some evidence for a custom of ritually digging into graves and removing certain objects after a time.

Human sacrifice seems to have been common in elite funerals, and is attested by some excavated graves. There is no evidence whatever for the portrayal in the History Channel’s Vikings series showing sacrificial victims as free people who willingly volunteered for the job. The best account is the famous one from the Arab diplomat Ibn Fadlan (part of the basis for the movie, “The Thirteenth Warrior”), who described what seems to have been Vikings in Russia (though some historians dispute this identification). He describes the custom (in that particular setting) of a volunteer being called for (no doubt under considerable pressure) from among the slave girls, then being kept drunk (and likely drugged) through the days of the funeral feast, while being serially raped until she was finally stabbed and strangled. Horrific.

Call me narrow-minded, but I prefer the Christian way.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

The Viking road to Brainerd

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Tomorrow (Saturday, Aug. 10) I plan to be (God willing) among the Vikings at the Crow Wing Viking Festival in Brainerd, Minnesota. More information here.

I will have books to sell, and may be persuaded to sign them for you if you ask nicely.

Silver, livestock and thralls will be accepted in payment.

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The scourge of yet more ‘Vikings’

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“How long, O Lord?” said the prophet (Isaiah 6:11 is a prominent example of the theme, but several prophets asked the same question with – it seems to me – some justification). I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet (Amos 7:14), but the same question has occurred to me now and then too. Right now I’m wondering how long, O Lord, this “Vikings” series will plague me.

I’m happy to report that I have at last finished all 6 seasons of the History Channel “Vikings” travesty. The longer the thing went on, the more the writers seemed unconstrained by the petty straitjacket of actual facts. Occasionally a historical character shows up, less often a historical event. But they are portrayed in ways the writers must have thought clever (like hand-operated paddlewheel landing craft for an invasion). I have endured all these outrages with the patient endurance of a Christian. And now I find that lo, my travails are not ended. For I’m going to have to go on to watch the sequel, Netflix’s “Vikings: Valhalla” series.

The thing is, the topic I’ve been commissioned to write about is the conversion of the Vikings to Christianity. And it’s not that the original series didn’t deal with the issue – it’s just that they dealt with it in ways that don’t have much to do with my thesis. The Vikings in this series are treated as an ethnic group (which is not what “Viking” originally meant), and they’re all proudly and stubbornly heathen. Christianity has made almost no inroad among them (in this production) by the time of King Alfred the Great’s victory over their armies at Edington. This was not the case in real life. The conflict of faiths is treated here as almost a religious war, which (in my moderately educated opinion) it was not. The Vikings on the series are always talking about their gods as “the true gods.” They didn’t really think that way historically. They were actually more like Hindus, recognizing any god they happened to encounter. They’d be happy to acknowledge the Christian god too, except for His offensive insistence on monotheism.

What I want to write about is the progress of Christianity in Scandinavia itself. I’ve avoided reading much about this new Netflix sequel series, but I understand it involves Jarl Haakon (gender-switched, because of course he/she is), and Harald Hardrada. So they’ve got to touch on my topic.

Therefore, I must gird up my loins for the ordeal.

And I believe I can do this. A couple weeks ago it would have been harder. I’ve always had an irrational and extreme response to watching programs I considered stupid or offensive. Such experiences raised very painful feelings in me.

But in just the last couple weeks, I seem to have made a breakthrough. I’ve found what appears to be a “brain hack” that helps me regulate my emotions better than in the past. I’m not going to go into detail about it now – I want to see whether the effect lasts, and even if it does it may not be applicable to anyone else.

But, like Alfred the Great, I believe I now am equipped to go forth and face the “Vikings.”

Religion

‘The glory and honor of the nations’

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Photo credit: Sebastian Gabriel, sgabriel. Unsplash license.

And how was your Independence Day? I feel like I spent the whole long weekend watching that bloody Vikings series, and I sympathize with the Dark Age Christians who are supposed to have prayed (there’s some controversy about this) “A furore normannorum, libera nos Domine” (From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us, O Lord”).

I mean, will the cursed thing never end? I finally finished Season Four, which turned out to be a double season – twenty episodes. And Season Five apparently has the same number. I grow grateful that they compressed the timeline – an accurate chronology might kill me off. Yet another martyr of Viking atrocities.

The more I watch, the more I’m impressed that the writers and producers simply had no interest in real Vikings at all. They invented some fantasy barbarians, in fantasy outfits and haircuts, and injected them into a fast-forward early medieval chronology. Here and there they throw in an authentic (or semi-authentic) artifact to make it look good, but basically they’re just spitballing – probably under the influence of drugs.

Well, enough of my problems. Let’s turn to something inspirational. Here’s part of what I read in my devotions this morning, from Revelation 21:22-27:

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

This is part of the big triumph scene in Revelation. God’s enemies have been conquered and disposed of in the Lake of Fire along with the devil and his angels. God’s eternal Kingdom has been revealed – it’s a huge city, perfectly square in shape. (I take this as a contrast with the earlier statement that the sea will be no more. The sea in Scripture symbolizes chaos and disorder, the unruly things God bridled at Creation, and which have now been abolished forever. Instead we now have the City Foursquare, solid, flawless, unshakeable. All the wrong and injustice of the world is gone. No longer will anyone complain that life makes no sense. In the Kingdom, it does make sense. Life is fair at last.)

And I was struck by these verses: “The kings of the earth will bring their glory into it….They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”

What does that mean? I can’t make pronouncements, being neither a theologian nor a Greek scholar, but what struck me immediately was that the glory and honor of the nations had formerly been outside the Kingdom, and will now be brought into it.

To me that suggests cultural and intellectual glory and honor. The art and philosophy of Athens. The wisdom of China. The strength of Rome. The subtle delicacy of Japan. The courage and honor of Native Americans. The creativity of Africans. No beautiful thing will be lost – they’ll be taken as spoils by the true Kingdom and brought into the City, to the glory of God and for the delight of His elect.

It’s like a backwards missionary effort – even the old heathen things will be christened. As Chesterton wrote in “The Ballad of the White Horse”: “Because it is only Christian men, Guard even heathen things.”

I took that (perhaps in arrogance) as a possible benison on my Viking books.

Reviews, Writing

In which I plumb new depths of hypocrisy

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How desperate am I for work, you ask? How low would I stoop for money?

Would I sell a kidney? Flog condo time shares in Florida? Peddle my body on street corners?

Ha! Kids stuff.

I’ve been reduced to watching the History Channel Vikings series.

Yes, in spite of all my railings and denunciations against the thing, I’m watching the first season through now. I think I’ll need to watch more seasons, and I think the most economical way to do that will be to revive the Netflix subscription I dropped. As a business expense, though I don’t think I can deduct it.

Here’s how coming to this pass, uh… came to pass:

I have a friend who works with a web magazine that actually pays non-trivial money. I suggested to him an article I might write for it, one having to do with Vikings.

He countered that he’d like to see my topic related to the Vikings series.

I seem to recall I dickered my fee up a little at that point. Then I agreed to take the thing on. So I now have to watch enough of the series to enable me to speak with some authority.

I mentioned my plight on Facebook. Some friends suggested I might find I enjoy it.

This has not come to pass, so far.

What do I dislike about the Vikings series?

First of all – and I’ve written about this before – they get Norse society completely wrong. The Vikings in this production live in an autocracy, where the chieftain (the “earl”) calls the shots. He claims all the booty from raids. He kills people without consequence.

Sigh. Read Viking Legacy, for pete’s sake. The Norse had a grassroots democracy. Leaders were obligated to submit to election, and could be booted out if they got too big for said boots.

Armor and costumes – perhaps we reenactors overdid it, making “Vikings did not wear horns on their helmets!” our battle cry for so many years. The props people at the studio answered, “Got it! The Vikings didn’t wear any armor at all!” And that idea came to rule all their decisions, stuck fast in their consciousness like an axe in an unhelmeted skull.

There are plenty of fights here, and as far as I can see they’re entirely chaotic. Aside from the lack of armor, neither logistics, troop numbers, nor tactics matter at all. Victory is bestowed by the favor of the scriptwriting gods. Ragnar Lothbrok and his men (by the time of episode six, which is as far as I’ve gotten now) seem to be about to conquer the English kingdom of Northumbria with three ships’ crews).

I could go on and on. I’ll just mention one more thing. Clunkiness.

I’ve often said that one thing I’ve tried to avoid in my novels – and I hope I’ve avoided somewhat it through using Father Ailill as a bridge character – is clunkiness. Old time heroes, clunking around in funny costumes and heavy boots, ranting about honor and the old gods, in awkward sentence constructions. Making little psychological sense to modern readers/viewers.

I have an idea (bear in mind that I’m often mistaken) that Vikings will not age well. It seems clunky to me. When the haircuts stop looking cool, our grandchildren will laugh at it.

But I carry on with my “research.” If I’m going to sell my soul, I mean to give value for money.