The Vikings

by Robert Wernick

  In any event, Raven Flóki had the last word. Out of his anger, he gave to the island the name it still possesses: Iceland.

  Naddod the Norwegian, Gardar the Swede, and Raven Flóki were but the fore edge of the Norse wave that, within a flick of historic time, would break over Iceland. The Vikings sailed to Iceland not as conquerors but as settlers. They sought not booty but farmland and goods with which to trade. The land-hungry Norwegians, cramped in their little patches of real estate, the call of the new country, where vast stretches of land were open for the taking, must have seemed every bit as alluring as any treasure that might be snatched by force. As added inducement to emigration, Norway’s King Harald Fairhair was consolidating his power with a strong hand, and, in the words of an Icelandic saga, “He made everyone do one thing or the other: become retainers or quit the country.”

  Within a scant sixty years after the first voyages, Iceland drew its first settles most heavily from the long Norwegian littoral between Agdir and southern Halogaland, especially from the areas around Hordaland, Rogaland, and Sogn in the southwest. These were the places of greatest resistance to the all-grasping rule of King Harald Fairhair, and these were the places where his fist descended most heavily. In later years, even under benign rulers, Norwegians from throughout the land, goaded by the prospect of a brighter future, gathered their belongings and headed for Iceland.

  It was only natural that life in the new colony should find its genesis in the savage and senseless ways of the old lands. Among the first permanent settlers in the late 860s were two Norwegian foster brothers, Ingólf Arnarson and Hjörleif Hródmarsson, who might never have considered the place had they not engaged in a feud over a woman with the sons of the powerful Earl Atli the Slender of Gaular. When the fighting had ended, two of the noble’s sons were dead. Forced to forfeit most of their estates for blood money, Ingólf and Hjörleif judiciously decided to leave Norway. They used their remaining assets to outfit a ship and, according to the Landnamabok, the “Book of Settlements,” a twelfth century work that named the earliest settlers and gave details of their lives, “set off to find that land Raven Flóki had discovered - the one called Iceland.”

  Mixing caution with boldness in typical Viking fashion, the foster brothers made their voyage a reconnaissance. Arriving at Iceland’s East Horn, they swung down the southern coast and, in the close sailing the Vikings did best, threaded through sand reefs into the protected waters of the Altafjord, where they spent the winter scouting. Returning to Norway, Ingólf took charge of winding up their affairs while Hjörleif, to raise more capital, went a-Viking in Ireland. There, he took ten Irish warriors as slaves and seized enough loot to acquire a second ship and provision the two.

  Each at the helm of his own ship, Ingólf and Hjörleif once more cruised the southern coast of Iceland, where Ingólf, according ancient custom, threw into the sea the pillars, adorned by carvings and dedicated to Thor, of his high seat at home. Where Thor allowed the current to carry the pillars ashore, Ingólf vowed he would make his permanent home. The pillars drifted rapidly westward, and Ingólf, in full faith that he would find them in his own good time, went directly ashore. He probably wintered near Oraefi, where, in one of Iceland’s dramatic contrasts, long swatches of green land intrude between the outstretched fingers of the glacier.

  As for Hjörleif, either swept away by the same current that had taken Ingólf’s pillars or wishing to strike out on his own, he headed west and landed some seventy miles down the coast, where he built a house, the ruins of which still stand on the seaward edge of black volcanic sands. When spring arrived, he diligently set about clearing and planting his land, but he soon ran into a snag: He had only one ox to pull his plow. Striking upon a simple solution to the problem, he yoked his Irish slaves - those whom he had seized during his last expedition - along with the animal. The men took this indignity with ill grace, complaining bitterly and promising themselves revenge.

  When they were out of Hjörleif’s sight, they killed the ox and blamed the deed on a forest bear. Hjörleif was too new to the land to know that, except for an occasional polar bear brought down on an artic floe, there were no such beasts in Iceland. He and his followers went beating the birch woods in pursuit of the nonexistent attacker. The slaves, in turn, tracked the scattered trackers, fell on them separately, and murdered them all. Thereupon the Irishmen seized all the Viking women, collected all the goods they could carry, loaded everything into a skiff, and rowed for safety to some offshore islands - the same brooding islands that Gardar the Swede had noticed during his circumnavigation.

  Ingólf, meanwhile, had sent men down the coast to search for his pillars. In due course, they came upon the gruesome scene of the Hjörleif slaughter and raced frantically back to report to their leader. In a fury of vengeance, Ingólf descended on the place, soon found the Irish hideaway in the offshore isles, butchered some of the slaves, and drove the rest to a horrible death over the cliffs. The little island group has ever since been known as the Vestmannaeyjar, meaning West-Man Islands, because the Irish were called by the Norwegians the men of the West.

  Duty done, Ingólf spent his second winter at Hjörleif’s abandoned place, then continued west in quest of the pillars. At the Ölfusá River, dividing line between a pleasant grassland area and the hellish lava fields of the Reykjanes promontory, he halted, sending two thralls ahead to continue the search for the pillars. By some fantastic stroke of luck, the seat posts were actually found - in perhaps the least inviting place in all Iceland, a moonscape of volcanic dust and craters at the head of a fog-shrouded bay. “Great grief is ours,” moaned one of the men, “to have passed through such excellent country and now have to live on this Godforsaken cape.” But Ingólf was true to Thor - he built his house where the pillars were found. And Thor had evidently led him well: With its superb harbor, Reykjavik eventually became the capital of Iceland, the center of Icelandic commercial and cultural life.

  For his settlement, according to the Landnamabok, Ingólf claimed the territory “between the Ölfusá River and Hvalfjörour west of Brynjudalsa, and between there and Öxará, and the whole of the land projecting west.” Here, indeed, was a colossal holding - some 1,000 square miles. Ingólf remained there for the rest of his days, hunting, farming, and raising livestock with what must have been considerable success, for he fathered a large brood that became Iceland’s premier dynasties, active and powerful in every phase of life from religion to trade to politics.

  Both Icelandic literature and evidence from ancient Icelandic graves indicate something like 85 percent of the pioneer-settlers were Norwegians like Ingólf. Of the early names recorded in the Landnamabok, only a few were Swedish or Danish, probably because these Viking peoples did not suffer from the tyranny endured by the Norwegians. But the book contains large numbers of Celtic or Celticized names, presumably because of intermarriage between Norwegians and Irishmen and Scots. In addition, these settlers brought with them large numbers of Celtic slaves, by whom they often fathered children. And so there soon developed a strong strain of mixed Norse-Celtic blood in the veins of the early inhabitants of Iceland.

  Wherever these first settlers came from, they all endured discomfort and danger during the journey to Iceland. Yet, seafaring was so much a part of everyday Viking life, storms were so commonplace in the North Atlantic, and death at sea so much to be taken for granted that the sagas treated the voyage as if it were no more than a matter of crossing a fjord. Thus, in its entirety, the Landnamabok account of what must have been a truly spectacular shipwreck reads simply: “On Good Friday itself a merchant ship was driven ashore under Eyjafjall, spun into the air, fifty-four-oared vessel as she was, and dashed down bottom up.”

  Still, archeological evidence and other scholarship have filled many of the gaps. Leaving behind their sleek and deadly longships, the Viking settlers traveled to Iceland in their ship-of-all-work, the knarr, which they fondly called the “goat of the sea” for her ability to bound over the waves. A
bsent from the prows were the monstrous figureheads whose main purpose was to instill dread. When the Icelanders got around to drawing up a legal code, one of the first laws adopted forbade approaching land “with gaping heads and yawning jaws, so that the spirits of the land grow frightened of them.”

  During a good twenty-four-hour day of fresh breezes, a smartly crewed knarr could cover upward of 150 miles, for an average of better than five knots. Thus, it was often possible to make the crossing from Norway in five or six days. One saga reported a crossing from More, Norway, to western Iceland, a distance of 730 nautical miles, in four days and four nights - which averages out to an impressive 7.5 knots. A voyage from the Faroes might take as little as two days and two nights.

  Nevertheless, the Vikings were braving some of the world’s most difficult waters, with only rudimentary navigational instructions. It was assumed that any Viking seafarer could reach the Faroes. With those islands as a landmark, it was simple enough - even with the primitive Norse devices for calculating direction - to steer northwest until Iceland hove into sight. But all of this was far more easily said than done. Fierce storms in the North Atlantic often blew the Iceland-bound emigrants far off course - or crushed their craft to splinters. Nor was the sight of Iceland any assurance of a safe landfall at journey’s end. Still more perils attended the Vikings as they felt their way through Iceland’s wicked reefs and shifting sandbars, and probed into rock fjords in their quest for the sight and sweet scent of grass on which to make their claims and husband their animals.

  Among the most renowned settlers was a great matriarch named Aud the Deep-Minded, whose tale in the Laxdaela Saga speaks for Viking character and fortitude and for the bountiful haven the Vikings found in Iceland. Aud was the daughter of Ketil Flatnose, a mighty Norwegian who had fled with his family from Harald Fairhair and had established dominance over the Hebrides. Her son, Thorstein the Red, ruled a vast domain in Scotland in alliance with a Viking earl named Sigurd, and Aud might not have considered Iceland had not a bizarre calamity struck.

  In the course of the incessant battles of the day, Sigurd challenged a Scottish earl, known to the Vikings as Melbrikta Tusk (because he had one huge protruding tooth), to combat with forty horses on each side. With typical Viking guile Sigurd put two men on each horse, overwhelmed the enemy, cut off Melbrikta’s head and hung it from his saddle bows. But then as he galloped on in the pride of victory, the dead man’s tooth pierced his calf. Before long, the wound festered and he died.

  Thorstein attempted to go it alone, and, for a time, he was victorious over the Scots, gaining a treaty of peace with his enemies. But the Scots did not honor the treaty for long. One day they descended on Thorstein at Caithness, and, there, catching him off guard, slew the Viking chieftain.

  Deprived of her protectors, Aud seemed at the mercy of her enemies. They encircled her late son’s Caithness domain and were already savoring the joys of dividing the treasure when she slipped through their fingers. She had hidden a ship in a forest by the sea. While her foes slumbered, she launched it on a dark night and loaded it with all her valuables and set sail with her grandchildren and an armed band of faithful followers. “It is generally thought,” says the Laxdaela Saga, “that it would be hard to find another example of a woman escaping from such hazards with so much wealth and such a large retinue. From this it can be seen what a paragon among women she was.”

  Aud sailed off to the northern seas. In the Orkneys, she married off one of her granddaughters to the earl who ruled the isles; in the Faroes, she married off another to a wealthy landowner. But she felt cramped in both places, and now she listened to news of empty lands in Iceland waiting for a bold hand to seize them. Two of her brothers had already gone there, and the indomitable matriarch now followed them, sailing another 240 miles across the storm-tossed ocean.

  It was a harrowing voyage and a still rougher arrival: Her ship struck a reef and sank. But she scrambled safely to shore with her remaining grandchildren, twenty retainers, and a number of slaves, and most of her precious (and now well-traveled) goods. She found her way to the farmhouse of one brother, Helgi, and he offered to put her up - but told her he could take only nine of her companions. She called him a mean-minded, misbegotten disgrace to the family, turned on her heel, and stalked out of the house. Then she went over the narrow rocky trials to her other brother, Bjorn, and he invited her to stay with all of her companions, “for,” says the Laxdaela Saga, “he knew his sister’s nature.” She remained with him for a while, then she went exploring the empty lands to the west, sailing from one headland to another, laying claim to every river valley that struck her fancy and lighting ritual bonfires to establish her ownership.

  The fertile territories she had surveyed and laid claim to were immense - a tract some 180 square miles. She parceled this land out on a lavish scale to her faithful companions and to her slaves, showing particular favor to a Scottish nobleman whom her son had captured years before and whom she now set free. When she married off one of her last granddaughters, she gave her a whole river valley as dowry.

  Upon the coming of age of her dear departed Thorstein’s youngest son, a boy named Olaf, she chose a wife for him and gave a great feast. Families of pioneers came from great distances at her invitation. She got up late that day, saw to it that prodigious quantities of ale were poured out to guests, then stomped off to bed, stout and stately. In the morning, her grandson found her sitting bolt upright in bed, quite dead, a matriarch to the last.

  In the days of the pioneers like Aud, land was free for the asking. As private practice or as public policy, this was profligate, and it only could lead to quarrels and killings. With the passage of time and the arrival of more and more Norsemen competing for space, strict limits had to be imposed. It was finally decreed that a man could claim only so much ground as he could travel on foot in a single day while carrying a lighted torch. The stipulations in the new rule for a woman provided that she could claim only such territory as she could cover in a day while leading a two-year-old cow.

  Still, those early Icelanders may perhaps be forgiven for thinking there was more than enough land for everyone. Iceland is a very large island: 325 miles at its longest point from east to west, 185 miles at its widest point from north to south - 39,758 square miles in land area. Yet, that mass was deceiving: Fully one-eighth of the land was overlaid by lava beds, another one eighth by glaciers, and much of the rest by volcanic mountains, lifeless sands, rock-littered moraines, and other topographic waste. Thus, of the entire area, less than 7,000 square miles was habitable, much less arable.

  But along the sea’s edge, on the flanks of the fjords thrusting deep into the interior, even on the lower slopes of the mountains, grew the precious grass that meant life for the Icelanders. Here, too, the settlers could cultivate grains. There was a rolling green-and-gold beauty to these lands that could swell the heart of even the most hardheaded and pragmatic of Icelanders. It was in expression of his love for his farmstead that Gunnar of Hlidarendi, hero of one of the most beautiful of all Icelandic literary works, Njáls Saga, chose death over life. Involved in one blood feud after another, Gunnar was finally condemned to exile for his slayings. As he rode away from his farms, his horse stumbled and turned, and Gunnar looked back at the grassy hills above his farm. “Fair is the slope,” he said, “and never has it seemed more fair to me, the cornfields pale and the meadows mowed. I shall ride back home and not leave it.” He returned in full knowledge that his enemies would soon kill him. And so they did in an overwhelming attack - but only after his wife, a mean, vengeful woman, had refused him a lock of her hair to twist into his broken bowstring. She had never forgiven the time he had slapped her in a fit of anger many years before.

  On the grass and grains, Icelandic livestock not only survived but evidently prospered. The sagas tell of a farmer who set about tallying his sheep, finally tired of counting and stopped at 2,400. Another, while exploring for a new homestead, “put a couple of pigs ashore,
a boar by the name of Solvi and a sow, and when they were found three years later in Solvadal” - Solvi’s Valley - “all told there were seventy of them.”

  The grass, roots and all, contributed the main building material, sod, for Icelandic homes. The forests of which the sagas sang were, in fact, coastal and streamside stands of puny, stunted, soft-wooded willow and birch. After a few years, the land was denuded even of these, and it was a miraculous event, worthy of recording in the Landnamabok, when a tree more than 100 feet long drifted ashore. In the whole of Iceland, there was not a single oak or elm that could be used to make the massive roof beams of a traditional Norse long house. Iceland’s ubiquitous rock, piles and piles of it in every field, was as useless for home building as its scrubby trees. It was volcanic in origin and thus soft and porous. But the Icelandic turf was quite another matter: It could be dug thick and solid with dirt or cut carpet thin and tough.

  The sod house developed by the Icelandic Vikings was generally convex, the slope of its sides gentle enough to deflect the wind and permit children and sheep to clamber to the rooftop to play or graze on the still-growing grass. It was anywhere between forty and 100 feet in length, with turf walls three to six feet thick. The only windows were in the ends, simple holes papered over with translucent membrane from the birth sack of a calf. In the middle of the floor was a hearth, around which the women squatted while the men sat on benches. This hearth, fueled by dried sheep dung, was for warmth and socializing. Meals were usually cooked - the Vikings preferred boiled to roasted meat - elsewhere, in pits at the ends of the long central room. The floor was set at a higher level along the sides than in the center and was divided by stone or wooden partitions into sleeping compartments. As society developed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, other rooms - lobbies, kitchens, sculleries, storerooms - were added to the main hall. Nevertheless, even the best accommodations could only have been low, dark, and smoky, and they must have contributed much to the Vikings natural ill temper.