Vikings

by Neil Oliver

  In 1104 the farm at Stöng was buried beneath several feet of tephra, some of the millions of tons of cinders and pumice spewed out by nearby Mount Hekla. The eruption was on such a scale it made Hekla famous all across Europe as the location of ‘the gates of hell’. Although there was no lava involved the tephra smothered half the island and forced the abandonment of vast areas. Since the 1104 event, Hekla has erupted around 20 times, most recently in 2000 — and it is in fact vulcanologists rather than archaeologists who have been able to put a precise date on the first Viking arrivals.

  Dig into the subsoil in parts of Iceland and you will eventually encounter a uniform layer of what looks, to the untrained eye, like the kind of dusty, grey aggregate used by road-builders. This is in fact the 1104 tephra layer, many inches thick and testament to the destructive power of nature. Dig down further, however, and there are yet more layers of grey, interspersed with organic browns and blacks. In any given section dug through Icelandic subsoil you might find evidence of three or four of Hekla’s eruptions, the thick bands of organic material sandwiched between them representing the centuries that separated the variously catastrophic events. (The whole effect is of a layer cake — chocolate sponge separated by thick grey icing.) Deepest of the tephra layers is one dated by vulcanologists to AD 874. No archaeological evidence of human habitation has been found beneath it, and therefore before that ancient eruption — meaning that Ingolfr and the rest of the first settlers must have arrived sometime after that date.

  The Norse society that evolved on Iceland was quite unlike anything that had existed before. It was a peculiarity of the Vikings — Norwegian, Danish and Swedish — that they seemed disinclined to foist much of their own native culture upon the peoples they encountered. Wherever they went they practised their pagan religion at first (though that was soon negotiable as well), but the imposition of much else seems to have been low on the list of Viking priorities. Business was business and if the wheels might be oiled by learning a new language or donning new garb, then so be it. Among the Franks, in what would become the Duchy of Normandy, they became French. By 1066 and the Norman invasion of England, they were hardly Vikings at all. In Russia they adopted the ways of the Slavs they lived with — and whom they rose, in time, to dominate. In England, Ireland and Scotland Vikings happily wed their ways to those of the various resident populations. It was the same almost everywhere they went.

  This ability to blend in was almost certainly a key to their success but it so happened that in Iceland there was no one to blend in with. Instead they had to make something of their own for once. It was a free-for-all to begin with, scattered families and communities existing in isolation, and without the need for much in the way of a formal structure. The earliest records suggest an initial population of just a few hundred people — perhaps the trusted emissaries of leaders who would follow later, once the houses were built and the first fields cleared. But from around AD 930 onwards, with the land fully occupied and boundary disputes and other clashes becoming increasingly commonplace, action was taken to establish order. The 36 leading landowners — known as gothar, or chieftains — came together to establish an assembly that might provide governance and guidance based on collective decision-making. This was the Althing and whether or not they realised it at the time, those 36 men laid the foundations for the oldest extant democracy in the world.

  The concept of the thing was already long established in Scandinavia and other parts of Germanic northern Europe. Free men had always gathered at appointed places and times to discuss disputes and make decisions affecting the wider community. Our modern word ‘thing’, referring to an object, has the same root. Local matters were discussed at local things, while those of greater import were dealt with at national things. What made the Icelandic Althing different was the absence of any king. Elsewhere a thing would, from time to time, elect a new monarch; in Iceland no one leader ever outranked any other.

  They say necessity is the mother of invention and it was the circumstances of the Vikings’ settlement of Iceland that led to such an innovation. Since no one individual gothar had the wealth or the following necessary to dominate all of his fellows, they made themselves subject instead to the rule of law. Historian Jesse Byock, a specialist in Viking Age Iceland, says the first colonists simply had to make the best of things and find new ways to get along with one another. The society they had left behind was one that had only recently learnt to accept a chief. Beneath and around that alpha-male, the apparatus of a fledgling centralised government was slowly growing. But in Iceland, where no man had the clout to make himself a king, there evolved what Byock has called ‘a headless polity: ‘As part of the colonisation process, the settlers experienced a de-evolutionary change: the immigrant society moved down a few rungs on the ladder of complexity. This diminished level of stratification, which emerged from the first phase of social and economic development, lent an appearance of egalitarianism — social stratification was restrained and political hierarchy limited.’

  The Iceland Althing met for 15 days every year, at the time of the summer solstice, and one of the most important tasks was the election of the logsogumadhr — the law speaker. For a society without a written language, memory was key, and the man who could recite the law acted with the authority of a judge. A written body of laws emerged in Iceland eventually — called, inexplicably, the Gregas or Grey Goose law — but at first the whole lot of it was learnt by heart and remembered by just one man at a time.

  Each party in a dispute would make his case, either personally or through a trusted representative, and all agreed to accept whatever judgment was handed down. As well as the wisdom of the law speaker, decisions depended upon the votes of all free men. In a system that was essentially one-man, one-vote, majority and consensus were all. By the time the German historian Adam of Bremen came to write about the ways of the Icelanders in the second half of the eleventh century, he was able to say: ‘They have no king, only the law.’

  Far enough away from Norway, Iceland retained a crucial degree of independence right up into the modern era. Without a master, the society there developed along unique lines until what crystallised in the end was something best described as a Free State, a proto-republic. Byock may have come closest to the truth of it all when he called Iceland’s self-governing community ‘a great village’.

  The place chosen for the Iceland Althing — the Thingvellir, or Thing Plain — is suitably unique, and spectacular. Iceland breaks its back across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge like a saucer cracked over a knife-edge. In the south-west of the island, near the Reykjanes peninsula, the faultline appears as a yawning fissure in the living rock, like the crack of doom. The world feels raw there, a work in progress, and in such a dynamic, changeable landscape it is easy to imagine people being inspired to think in new ways.

  Located just east of Reykjavik, the Thingvellir was always close to Iceland’s most heavily populated areas and no more than a fortnight’s travel from any of the gothar’s homesteads. Activity centred on a rocky outcrop called the Logberg, or Law Rock, and a temporary city of tents was erected all around it for the duration of the assembly. Since it was the only time of year when the whole community came together, the Althing was also a social event, like a summer festival. Modern Icelanders regard the Thingvellir and the Althing as nothing less than the foundation stones of their nation and there was an annual assembly there until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the business of state was finally moved to Reykjavik.

  Iceland is 800 miles and seven days’ sail from the west coast of Norway. While the settlers were able to remain in contact with the homeland, and with their colonies in Britain five days’ sail to the south, to all intents and purposes they were alone. Self-reliance and self-sufficiency were prerequisites from the start and the first Icelanders were not found wanting. As ever in the northern latitudes, the long dark months of winter posed the greatest challenge of all, and much ingenuity was required to ensure enough foo
dstuffs were laid up during the short summers. The cuisine of the Vikings was therefore a challenging prospect in itself, much of it demanding a strong stomach and a willingness to try new things … or should that be old things, months and months old.

  The most important part of the Viking approach to winter rations was always preservation. Much of whatever had been grown, caught or otherwise produced during spring, summer and autumn had to last the family through the barren months ahead — and it was no time for the choosy. Nowadays the traditional foods are consumed, at least by the hardy, during the midwinter festival of Thurseblot, and the sights and smells of the accompanying buffet Icelanders call Thorramatur are a multi-sensory insight into a lost world.

  Easiest for modern, western palates to cope with are the dairy products like skyr, which is a kind of yoghurt. There are various curd cheeses too and all of the flavours are familiar enough. It is in the approach to preserving meat and fish that Viking cuisine truly departs from the norm and I can honestly say that some sensory memory of the smells and tastes of certain delicacies will stay with me for ever. Lamb and mutton were popular — some of it, called hangikjöt, is dried or smoked much like prosciutto and as enjoyable. At the harder end of the spectrum, however, is lamb preserved in such a way that the aroma from it is what might politely be described as gamey or ‘high’, if not actually rotten. Longer-lasting than the taste, which lined the mouth with a suggestion of stale sweat, was the smell — like walking back into the kitchen after a summer holiday only to find someone had forgotten to put the bin out before departing all those weeks ago. It may have been an illusion, but I would have sworn the rancid reek of it was in my hair and on my clothes the day after I ate it.

  The tastes of the pickled fish were familiar enough, and excellent; and the dried cod, or klippfisk, went down like an unusually pungent, salty pub snack. Surströmming, however, is herring pickled in brine and sealed in tin cans, which often bulge from the pressure of the ongoing fermentation within. Even Icelanders prefer to open cans of surströmming outdoors, on account of the almost overwhelming odour that is released. The smell is so strong you would swear you could see it. Scientists in Japan — a country that is no stranger to the acquired taste — rated it the most putrid smell in the world. Several airlines will not allow cans of surströmming onboard for fear of explosions.

  Popular with Vikings, and with modern Icelanders of a certain age and inclination, is horsemeat stored in barrels of whey, the cloudy liquid that separates from the curds when milk sours. Also available for the bold in heart and stomach were hrutspungar, rams’ testicles cured in lactic acid; svith, boiled whole sheep’s heads complete with eyes and tongue and blothmor, or blood pudding.

  My most lasting memory, however, is of the fermented shark meat dish called hákarl, from the Icelandic word for the Greenland or basking shark. The flesh of the freshly caught animal is naturally toxic due to a high urea content, but, ever the innovators, Viking hunters of old persevered. Once caught and beheaded, the shark’s corpse was buried on the beach, preferably in coarse, gravelly sand. Heavy stones were then piled on top so that the natural fluids — and toxins — were pressed out of the flesh. The whole process might take as long as three months but by the end the putrid meat was ready to be sliced into strips and hung in the air to dry.

  If all of that suggests a product best avoided, I can only say the experience of popping a piece of hákarl into one’s mouth, and then biting down, is the very definition of unforgettable. Think, if you will, of the combined aroma and flavour of the runniest, bluest Stilton cheese you have ever tasted. At the same time recall, if you can, the eye-watering, breath-stealing hit of the ammonia in old-fashioned smelling salts. The overall impact of hákarl is what you might perhaps expect from eating rancid, fishy fat that has been marinated in carpet cleaner — except hákarl is stronger and the taste lasts longer. The first wave of flavour is simply that of rotten fish, delivered in a texture like semi-soft lard. What is life-changing is the explosion of ammonia that fills mouth, nose and throat when you begin to chew. To say it clears the tubes is the understatement of a lifetime. It is a French kiss with the living dead.

  Overwhelming and overpowering though some of the dishes certainly were, I have to say there was something I thoroughly enjoyed about it all, even as the fermented shark meat was making its defiant passage down my gullet. The past is elusive — out of reach. When you are in search of the Viking past it is all about the sagas, the historic sights and the hoards, skeletons and other artefacts on display in the museums or boxed in their storage rooms.

  But there are also priceless insights available from unexpected sources. The night I spent in the reconstructed Bronze Age house at Borum Eshøj, in Denmark, was one. The howling of the wind and the crackling of the logs settling on the fire conjured up an atmosphere from long ago. Also part of the sum total of my understanding of the Vikings is the taste of hakarl. This after all was part of the flavour and the smell of that lost world of theirs. A people who had learnt to tough it out and to survive, in any and all circumstances, also learnt to enjoy foods as far out on the edge of experience as the places in which they had to make their homes. The truth is that none of us can know what it felt like to be a Viking, far less to go a-viking — but at least I know now, as they did then, what it’s like to eat the three-month-old flesh of a buried basking shark.

  It is not just in barrels of whey and brine that the essence of the Viking world is preserved. A quite different sense of their time and place survives in the unique literature of their sagas and poetry; and, in stark contrast to their meat and fish, their store of words has remained fresh and full of life.

  Old Norse poetry is split into two categories, effectively two different books. All of it is known collectively by the Old Norse word for poetry — edda — but there is the Elder, or Poetic Edda, on the one hand and the Younger, or Prose Edda on the other. The Icelandic genius Snorri Sturluson wrote the Younger Edda sometime during the first two decades of the thirteenth century and, as well as his own creations, he included snippets of other, presumably older poems. It was only in the seventeenth century that a manuscript came to light containing copies of the works to which Snorri had referred. Since it was subsequently presented as a gift to the then King of Denmark, it has been known to scholars ever since as the Codex Regius.

  It is in those pages that we can read about the Old Norse gods — Odin, Thor and all the rest — making them an almost unique source of information about pre-Christian beliefs. Only the ancient Greeks made a similar effort to write about their religion and it is therefore courtesy of the Elder Edda — remembered by heart long before they were written down — that we know what the Vikings actually believed. It is within those pages, for instance, that we find all the familiar stories of Thor: ‘He is the strongest of all gods and men … He carries three precious objects. One is his hammer, Mjölnir, which the … giants of the mountains recognise when he takes to the air, which is not surprising: he has crushed the skulls of many of their fathers and kinsmen.’ It is also in the Elder Edda that we read about Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, when the old world ends and a new one begins.

  (Once more I should make it clear it was hardly in the pages of the Elder Edda that I first encountered Thor. As a boy my favourite comics concerned the adventures of the superheroes. Among the best of all were those featuring an Americanised version of Thor — so that even as a 12-year-old I could have told you his other ‘precious objects’ were a belt that doubled his strength and a pair of iron gloves. The same source had informed me mortals mistook the sparks from his hammer for bolts of lightning.)

  We learn of Odin’s primacy among the gods, that he commanded knowledge, war and, most importantly, victory, and that he travelled far and wide on an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir. Odin also kept the ravens — Huginn, ‘thought’ and Muninn, ‘memory’ — that he sent into the world every day so they might keep him informed of all that was unfolding.

  There
is also much about Odin that is mysterious, even troubling. Within the Elder Edda, the words of the poem Hávamál are attributed to Odin himself:

  I know that I hung

  On the tree lashed by winds

  Nine full nights,

  And gave myself to Odin,

  Myself to Myself;

  On that tree

  The depth of whose roots

  No one knows.

  No bread sustained me

  Nor goblet.

  I looked down,

  I gathered the runes,

  Screaming I gathered them;

  And from there I fell

  Again.

  From across the centuries, millennia even, the words of the eddaic poems present a haunting image of a world, and of the world-view to go with it. By the start of the Viking Age, the Christian religion was already a rising tide, lapping at the doorstep of the peoples of Scandinavia. But while the power of that new religion lay in its promise of a better life to come — after death — it was the dream of all good Vikings to make the most of the here and now.

  Hávamál means ‘the sayings of the high one’ and a reading of it makes plain that nothing mattered more to Odin than that a warrior should live a heroic life and die a hero’s death:

  A coward believes he will live for ever,

  If he holds back in the battle.

  But in old age he shall have no peace,

  Though spears have spared his limbs …

  Cattle die, kindred die,

  Every man is mortal

  But the good name never dies,

  Of one who has done well.

  Perhaps it was in hope of finally doing well, and ensuring the immortality of his name for the right reasons, that a murderous criminal named Eirikur Thorvaldsson chose to set sail from Iceland, into the west, around AD 982. He was leaving as he had arrived — as an outlaw. Born in Norway, he had committed murder and fled that country with his father. More violence followed in his adoptive home of Iceland, more killings, until finally he was forced to flee for his life once more. Outlaws like Eirikur were fair game — literally outside the law and therefore beyond its protection. Anyone who cared to — relative or friend of the victims — was free to hunt him down and kill him without fear of any legal consequences. Some men in the same position might have chosen to try their luck in the established Viking colonies — the Faroe Islands or perhaps Shetland, Orkney, even mainland Britain — but Eirikur fancied his chances elsewhere.