Children of Ash and Elm

by Neil Price;

  All is not lost; to begin with, it should be acknowledged that while potential caveats should be kept in mind, the majority of these sex/gender/artefact correlations probably do reflect Viking-Age reality. There is no evidence that suggests otherwise. However, not all burials conform to such patterns, and an openness to the exceptions—which we know were there—is vital. Without this, one can never hope to do archaeological justice to the gender spectrum discernible in the medieval texts or compare this with Viking-Age empirical reality. More excitingly, the archaeology can turn up evidence for identities and genders that did not make it to the written sources.

  The starting point comes in graves with viable bone survival. In such cases, archaeologists occasionally find people buried with objects and clothing that would usually be associated with the opposite sex, following a binary perspective. These include male skeletons wearing what appear to be dresses of the kind more conventionally buried with women, or with the oval brooches that hold the apron together at the breast, and similar combinations. For burials with female bodies, an equivalent is the presence of weapons in numbers sufficient to plausibly suggest a warrior identity for the dead. At Vivallen in Swedish Härjedalen, there was even a male-bodied person buried according to Sámi rituals, in a Sámi settlement, but wearing conventional Sámi man’s equipment over a Nordic woman’s linen dress, complete with jewellery to match—a crossing of both gender and cultural norms.

  The dead proverbially do not bury themselves, and the objects laid in a grave do not necessarily reflect the possessions of the deceased in life. New post-mortem identities can be created through the association of artefacts and the corpse. How can one tell? Is it possible to read an individual’s life from the material repertoire of their funeral? Caution is vital; each case should be examined contextually and on equal terms, working towards a balance of probabilities. For a warrior identity, for example, there is the supporting evidence of poems that unequivocally describe real warriors being buried with their arms as a demonstration and affirmation of that role. It is always advisable to revisit the data and question it afresh.

  The most prominent example to date usefully combines almost all of Viking gender in a single burial, raising more questions than it answers. In a tenth-century chamber grave designated Bj.581 from an urban cemetery at Birka in Sweden, an expensively dressed corpse was buried seated and surrounded by a full weapon set (which is rare), with two riding horses. This truly spectacular burial was excavated in 1878 and has been held up ever since as a type example of a high-status warrior from the mid-900s, a kind of ‘ultimate Viking’ of the time. Bj.581 was published as such in generations of standard works. As part of this interpretative package, the deceased was always assumed to have been a man, because warriors were ‘obviously’ male (conflating sex and gender in the familiar way). In 2011, however, an osteological study suggested the buried person was actually female, and this was confirmed by genomic analysis in 2017—the deceased carried XX chromosomes. The ensuing debate on the apparent ‘female warrior’ of Birka went viral and now convulses Viking studies, in an at-times vituperative discussion that has little to do with women and war but more concerns underlying fault lines of gendered assumption in the discipline and beyond.

  In a sense it does not really matter whether the person in the Birka grave was a female-bodied warrior woman or not (though as one of the lead authors in the research team, I firmly believe she was all those things). This person may equally have been transgender, in our terms, or non-binary, or gender fluid. There are other possibilities, too, but the point is that they must all be recognised as possible Viking-Age identities while—crucially—not assuming this must be the case. Not least, in the interpretation of Bj.581, scholars should be careful not to deny the basic agency of women, and their potential to choose one way of life over others; this person does not have to be necessarily different. Furthermore, all these intersections of activity and identity were in themselves deeply gendered—from ‘warriorhood’ to everything else. Importantly, none of this needed to be fixed and permanent. In the later prose texts, difficult sources though they are, one encounters individuals who change names when they embark upon a new path in life—when certain women become warriors, for example. But only sometimes—there are no universals here, and as ever the medieval sources are problematic, late, ambiguous, and uncertain.

  Bodies can come in many forms, and there is a major area of Viking life about which relatively little is known: attitudes to (dis) ability. There are literary references to individuals with limited mobility and dexterity, either from natural causes or due to injury. The funerary record also contains several examples of people without limbs or with natural conditions that would have severely constrained their movements; there are also graves containing individuals of restricted growth. What all this clearly implies is that people could survive into adulthood, and be buried like the rest of the population, though they had lived with various forms of physical challenges. From time to time, they must have received care and assistance.

  One famous individual, Ívarr hinn beinlausi, Ivar the Boneless, was a ninth-century warrior commander who fought in the British Isles; some saga traditions have him as a son of Ragnar lothbrók. His nickname has been much discussed, and is in any case problematic as it is first attached to him in texts dating to long after his death. A twelfth-century source says, “He was said to lack bones”, although the word for ‘bones’ can also mean ‘legs’. If the name was real, and if it referred (as some believe) to a man who had for some reason lost the use of his legs, then it is intriguing that he was able to rise to such a position of respected command.

  Visual impairment, either complete or partial, occurs several times in the mythology—especially in connection with Odin, but also as a motif in the sagas. There are also many metalwork figures, in both two and three dimensions, with eyes that apparently differ from one another; by no means all of these can be readily interpreted as gods. It is hard to unravel the inner meanings of this, but it seems that Viking notions of body normativity were relatively inclusive.

  At this point it is also appropriate to remember the distinctly porous border between the nature of humans and the nature of animals, manifested in the potentially shifting qualities of the hamr, the ‘shape’. Today we recognise and support LGBTQI+ identities, and try to extend that sensitivity to the people of the past, but it is thrilling to consider that the Viking mind went even beyond the boundaries of the human in this respect.

  While some of their norms can appear rigid, the Scandinavians somehow applied them in ways that also allowed them to be questioned, undermined, and contradicted. In many ways and for many years, Viking scholars have been naive and simplistic about their acknowledgement and recognition of gender variation in the later Iron Age. Too often our studies have been restricted to admittedly deep explorations of the lives of women, thereby relegating half of humanity to a discrete, ghettoised entity set against a supposed masculine norm assumed by default. In addition to suppressing the obvious presence and agency of women, this also ignores the vast ocean of lives lived on different terms.

  Up to a point, one should also resist the urge to categorise: perhaps Viking-Age people chose and renegotiated their identities every day, much as many of us do. Their ideas about gender went far beyond the binaries of biological sex, as scholars are now beginning to understand. Sadly, there has been much less awareness of the privilege required to grant ourselves such innocence for so long.

  6

  THE PERFORMANCE OF POWER

  THE SLOW EMERGENCE OF NEW Scandinavian institutions from the chaos of the late Migration Period was very much a realignment of power and its intersections with wider society. From the Vendel Period and into the eighth century—the start of the Viking Age—this was the beginning of the long path to unified kingdoms, to a genuine sense of statehood, and ultimately to the Nordic nations that are still recognisable today. But beneath this inevitably irregular process lay something olde
r and more deeply rooted in the Scandinavian cultures—the notion of power as a public entity, something to be seen and debated, spoken and performed. As the political trajectories of the new elites gathered momentum during the eighth to eleventh centuries, their agendas were in constant tension with the remnants of this earlier order. What can in many ways be framed as a social conversation (or perhaps more properly, an argument) about ways to live and rule, forms another of the key motifs in the history of the Viking Age.

  The arenas of this conflict—or dialogue, if one prefers a gentler view—were the institutions of popular assembly and the laws that were enacted there, both of which were manifested and embodied in monuments in the landscape. A crucial component of this was communication, principally in oral form. The keeping of records was a matter of memory but also, up to a point, of notation in the form of runic script. Many thousands of runic inscriptions have survived, on wood, bone, and above all on stone, that testify to the importance they held in Viking lives—whether in the everyday round, in politics, or matters of spirituality.

  The twin social forces of law and literacy unite in the expression of power, but there was also a third force, one that has in a sense come to stand at the very heart of the popular image of the Vikings: mobility. The peoples of Viking-Age Scandinavia were often on the move, first as individuals and collectives, and ultimately as nations. They travelled over roads and rivers, and on the ice during winter months, but they especially journeyed by sea. The Viking ship, that most clichéd of images, really was one of the primary expressions of their power and the tool of its success.

  In exploring these disparate elements in the performance of power, we come closer to the Vikings and their society to understand where they came from, where they were going, and in particular, why and how.

  In the aftermath of crisis, and the years of the dust veil with its attendant traumas, the emergence and rapid rise of power structures based on militarised elites has been well established. This included the creation of ‘hall culture’ built up around rulers and their retinues, and the infrastructure that maintained them. In varying forms, this model of social hierarchy—essentially a pyramid of sorts—would continue into the Viking Age, although the size, shape, and territories of the polities would change.

  However, behind these warlords and their petty kingdoms, and the social ladder on which they tried to rise, were the continuities of political life that had been part of Scandinavian culture for centuries. This was the so-called thing (Old Norse þing), a regular gathering of elected representatives in whom was vested the practical exercise of power at a local level. With roots going back into the prehistoric past at least as early as the Roman Iron Age, the assemblies brought together free men of arms-bearing age to speak on behalf of their communities, resolve issues of mutual concern, and adjudicate in legal disputes. Although varying in precise form by region, the assemblies operated at multiple levels, addressing greater matters of business according to the social and geographical seniority of the thing.

  In Norway, where the phenomenon has been most closely investigated through archaeological and documentary survey, some thirty or so thing sites are known from the first millennium CE. Some are inland, but most cluster along the coast in the areas of densest settlement. Within these, there were apparently three levels of assemblies: the shire (fylki), half-shire, and quarter-shire. This tripartite division can also be traced in other parts of Scandinavia, even in quite different contexts; for example, the early third-century ‘Norwegian’ military force, whose weapons and equipment were sacrificed at Illerup Ådal in Denmark after a defeated invasion, appears to have been clearly divided into three levels of rank—perhaps corresponding with the same social division found in the thing sites.

  The Norwegian assembly sites resemble courtyards and were once given that name, consisting of a number of longhouse-like structures arranged in an open circle or horseshoe shape around a central space. The buildings were for the temporary housing of delegates, who would travel there for regular meetings held in the enclosed area. In each region, the Iron Age archaeological features correlate remarkably closely to the administrative units of land and populace recorded for the same areas in the law codes and surveys of the early Middle Ages, and even into the early modern period. At the Dysjane site in Tingshaug (literally ‘thing-mound’), Rogaland, for example, the thirty-two structures built around the characteristic courtyard area appear to match the thirty-two ship-districts later recorded for the Ryger region in which the assembly lies. In some cases, even the layout of the building complex actually reproduced the relative geography of the districts each structure apparently represented. The courtyard site thus formed a kind of physical map of the areas from which the delegates had come, so they could walk through the site as if through the administrative landscape that the assembly reflected. Depending on where they were housed (perhaps also combined with distinctive markers in dress or banners), it would have been instantly obvious who each man was and on whose behalf he was present.

  Within the bounds of the court, a strictly defined area that was probably guarded, matters were serious, and decisions were made on local disputes all the way to capital crimes. The higher the level of the assembly, the closer to ‘affairs of state’ and parliamentary functions (in these small worlds) it came. If a matter could not be resolved at one court, it would move up to the next level of assembly, sometimes with a gap of some months.

  Delegates would represent their districts, often with spokesmen who were especially gifted at public speaking or legal argument. The speeches were heard by the presiding official—the lawspeaker—who, as his name implies, was obligated with literally memorising and reciting the laws. Drawing on this resource, he was also the judge of the cases presented, although in contentious circumstances it was sometimes necessary to win over the opinion of the assembled delegates themselves. Factionalism was endemic, especially in the later experiments in republicanism as in Iceland, and one of the main duties of the assembly was to place a check on interpersonal or familial feuds before they got out of hand. Such vendettas could be lethal in small communities, and an honour system in which all slights must be either compensated or avenged required very tight controls; many of the Icelandic saga stories revolve around what can happen when feuding grows beyond the law’s capacities of restraint.

  The things were not strictly democratic but were nonetheless focussed on formal ideas of fair representation and an attempt to create neutral spaces where disputes could be heard. It is clear, certainly in Iceland, that the dominant families exercised disproportionate influence over the proceedings (or tried to), and the sagas routinely relate efforts to affect judgements in advance and obtain the most favourable opinion.

  Some of the Norwegian assembly sites have slightly different layouts of buildings, while others include enormous linear installations of cooking pits for hosting open-air feasts. In Sweden and Denmark, with milder climates and more hospitable terrain, there seems to have been less need for established sites with semi-permanent standing buildings, and instead there is a focus on open areas where people could conveniently assemble. Many thing-mounds (on which the speakers probably stood) still survive in the countryside today, sometimes set aside or as part of cemeteries, and occasionally bounded by water to form a ritual border of the law. A particularly elaborate complex can be found at Anundshög in Swedish Västmanland, where a massive burial mound was surrounded by a smaller cemetery, complex arrangements of stones in the shape of ships, a line of wooden staves, and a runestone. Further up the hierarchy of such sites were those associated with royalty, such as the thing-mound on the cemetery ridge at Gamla Uppsala, probably originally a burial but later levelled on top and used for the assembly. Built by the new elites to anchor their rule with the people, such places were established strategically in the midst of their self-affirming monumental landscapes.

  Depending on weather conditions, one can imagine small tent cities growing up around the sites, a
ccommodating large numbers of people for short periods. As with any folk gathering, activities were not restricted to the legal and administrative business of the day but would have extended into general socialising at the margins. The assemblies served not only as organs of communal government, but also as an opportunity for the exchange of goods and gossip in an atmosphere reminiscent of a county fair. They also formed an arena for the enactment of public religious rituals.

  In Norway, especially (where there is greater resolution of the data), but also in the rest of Scandinavia, the major question is what happened to this system of communal government at its points of contact with the rising power of kings. It is not coincidental that this political friction begins to be felt precisely in the eighth century, at the start of what we call the Viking Age. While their relationship to the lords of the hall and the new monarchies would change over time, the things would never entirely disappear. Even today, the Alþingi of Iceland, the allthing that was the highest level of assembly for the whole country in the Viking Age, still sits in Reykjavík as the oldest continuous parliament in the world; it shares this honour with the Tynwald of the Isle of Man, also a Norse construction.