Children of Ash and Elm

by Neil Price;

  Some of the chambers are simply baffling. In a pair of examples excavated at Birka, the central chair contains two people on top of one another, in each case a woman sitting on a man’s lap, held in place by a chain round the bodies. Whatever this meant, like the rest it was not at all random.

  Sometimes there are lances thrust vertically down into the chamber floor, or heavily embedded in the horse-platform revetments where they must have been thrown with considerable force. Sometimes lanceheads are stuck into the walls, their shafts now decayed but originally extending into the middle of the chamber to form a kind of meshed lattice over the dead. In one burial, axes had been swung into the chamber sides with such effort that the blades were almost buried in the timber. In one or two Finnish Viking-Age graves, there are coffins nailed shut with spears. These weapon rituals tell their own story, mostly lost, although there are hints in the written sources. For example, there are two references to the act of casting a spear over people as a means of dedicating them to Odin.

  At Mammen in Denmark, one of the richest chamber graves of the whole Viking Age was made c. 970 for a man whose clothing has enabled us to reconstruct the dress of society’s highest echelons. The chamber itself resembled a hall and even had a pitched roof, all concealed under a great mound. The man was interred with a magnificent axe decorated in a fashion that has given a name to the Mammen style of Viking art. He was laid out in a coffin with a massive candle placed on the top, alight, that continued to burn in the dark until all the oxygen in the closed chamber had gone.

  In one of the Hedeby cemeteries, several warrior males were buried in the same chamber, although one of them was separated from the others by a low partition across the floor—one thinks of Angantyr and his berserker companions in the same grave. After all the animals, weapons, and other objects had been placed inside and the chamber sealed, an entire warship was laid across the top before being covered by a mound. Its mast stuck up through the surface, while the bow and stern would have protruded either side of the barrow, like upturned horns.

  This chapter began with the stereotypical ‘Viking funeral’, a grave form that comes up regularly in any discussion of the people and their time. The ship burial was arguably the most spectacular (and revealing) of all the Viking-Age varieties of mortuary behaviour. That so much is known about ship graves is due partly to the several elaborate examples that have been excavated, but in particular to the most extraordinary written source to have survived from the Viking Age: the mission report of Ah.mad ibn Fad.lān, which we have already seen several times.

  In 922, he was sent from Baghdad by the Abbasid caliph on a long and quite hazardous journey to the lands of the Bulghars, whose capital was at the bend of the Volga River. Ibn Fad.lān’s account, which exists in several fragmentary second-hand versions and one longer but still incomplete manuscript (none of them are in any sense the ‘original’), only covers the outward phase of his trip over hundreds of miles of hostile terrain and multicultural encounters. It also obliquely relates how the dangers of the trek caused so many defections from the diplomatic party that, by stages, ibn Fad.lān seems to have found himself promoted from his original role as essentially an educated bodyguard to become the secretary of the whole mission. He was thereby charged with delivering the caliph’s message to the Bulghar ruler, which combined Islamic missionising with a hoped-for trade agreement. The document we have is his report on the outcome, but also perhaps a kind of résumé portfolio for attracting future employment. Ibn Fad.lān was clearly a remarkable person, but unfortunately nothing is known of him beyond this one text—neither his birth nor death, nor even how his great journey ended (clearly he made it home). Although his report contains many passages of almost anthropological interest, and he was both curious and observant, its fame today rests on his descriptions of a people he encountered while at the Bulghar trading post that now lies somewhere near the Russian city of Kazan. He called them al-Rūsiyyah, anglicised as Rus’, and we know them as the predominantly Scandinavian merchants who plied the Eurasian river trade—in other words, the Vikings in their eastern manifestation.

  In addition to general descriptions of the Rus’ appearance, clothing, and personal habits, ibn Fad.lān’s greatest gift to posterity rests on his detailed observation of the rituals following the death of a Rus’ chieftain, culminating in his cremation in a ship. The account was already famous long before the first of the well-preserved Viking ship burials had been excavated. In 1883 ibn Fad.lān’s text had even been the inspiration for a dramatic canvas by Polish artist Henryk Siemiradzki that was much admired in the European salons. Combined with the stirring saga stories (then accepted more or less at face value), it was one of the foundations of the romanticising view of the Viking Age that dominated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The discovery of the ship graves at Gokstad and especially Oseberg changed all that—it was like seeing the Arabic text come to life: the chamber on deck, the animal sacrifices, even their positions and condition. When a much more complete manuscript of ibn Fad.lān’s report was found at Mashhad in Iran in 1923, it fed back into the loop between archaeology and text, supporting both. The parallels continued to appear over decades of new boat burial finds, excavations linking to his report with almost unsettling exactitude—from the expensive dress of the dead to the weapons and other costly possessions laid on board, the animal offerings, and the presence of a human sacrifice—in this case, a young female thrall. The result was that the essentially Scandinavian identity of ibn Fad.lān’s Rus’ came to be unchallenged, and it remains so today for all but the terminally sceptical.

  What the archaeology does not record are the events and emotions around the artefacts, but these are at the heart of ibn Fad.lān’s writing: the extraordinary unfolding narrative that was enacted in and around the vessel for more than a week prior to its burning, ceremonies of which he left the only eyewitness record. For many reasons his account is, therefore, one of the core texts of the whole Viking Age. The text is very long (thankfully for scholarship) but is well worth exploring in sequence.

  When ibn Fad.lān became aware that one of the Rus’ leaders had died, he made an effort to attend the funeral because, as he makes clear, he’d heard these things were a sight to see. He was right, although he may have regretted his decision.

  The first thing he noticed was that the funeral preparations were so elaborate as to require a full ten days following the man’s death. During that time his body was interred in a temporary grave—with temporary grave-goods, including food, drink, and a musical instrument; there is a strong suggestion that all this is intended for his entertainment pending the final funeral, and thus that the dead man is somehow aware. The same ten-day period sees continuous festivities in the Rus’ camp, involving music, sex, and heavy drinking; almost the entire band is perpetually drunk. Special burial clothes are also made for the dead chieftain, on which no less than a third of his wealth is spent (this has worrying implications for the archaeologist, in that these things are made for the grave). Another third of his wealth goes to the brewing of appropriate quantities of alcohol, while only the remaining third is inherited by his heirs.

  All these proceedings are presided over by a middle-aged woman, heavy set and angry, whose title (as ibn Fad.lān understood it through his interpreter) means the ‘Angel of Death’. This is interesting in that the term in the text is Malak al-Mawt, the Quranic angel whose purpose is to choose the dead and take them to their assigned places—it may not be coincidence that this is very close to what might be said or understood if someone was trying to translate ‘Valkyrie’ into Arabic. Around the ship, which has been propped up on shore using timbers carved like men, people go back and forth making music and chanting; ibn Fad.lān’s interpreter is unfortunately not there that day, so he does not understand what they are saying.

  Early on, the dead man’s slaves are gathered together and asked which of them will ‘volunteer’ to be killed; a girl steps forward, and th
e Arabic implies she is in her mid-teens. This female thrall is thereafter referred to as the dead man’s ‘bride’; she is dressed in fine clothes and jewellery, and assigned servants of her own (they are the daughters of the ‘Angel’). She spends the ten days prior to the burial drinking and feasting, and during this time has sex with many of the men in the camp, particularly the relatives of the deceased.

  On the tenth day, the ship is hauled onto the pyre, which is described as a box-like structure of wood (ibn Fad.lān thinks it looks almost like a building, so it must have been substantial). A wooden tent or cabin is set up on the deck, with a bed inside made up with Byzantine gold brocade. The dead man is exhumed—his body has turned black but does not smell—dressed in his mortuary clothes, and brought to the ship, where he is propped up with cushions in a sitting position on the bed. In several successive visits, his possessions (ibn Fad.lān is explicit that this is what they were) are brought on board, and a variety of food, drink, and herbs are laid out around the corpse.

  The rituals then intensify. The enslaved girl goes from tent to tent around the ship, having sex with each man, who shouts loudly that he has thereby done what his duty demands of him. A dog is then led to the ship and cut in two, and the halves of its corpse are slung on board. The man’s weapons are then placed in the cabin; why are they treated separately from his other possessions? Horses and cattle are then sacrificed—not cleanly slaughtered but instead hacked to pieces with swords. The horses are exercised first, so their bodies glisten with sweat. Some chickens are killed by tearing their heads off; the pieces are first thrown precisely to either side of the ship, and finally onto its deck.

  Before entering the ship, the enslaved girl is lifted up by men in order to look over an odd thing—a specially built free-standing door frame that has been set up in the open air. She describes three successive visions of the next world and its inhabitants: a ‘Paradise’ beautiful and green like a garden, where the girl’s dead family is already waiting, and where she sees her dead master calling to her. The daughters of the ‘Angel’ then remove her jewellery. The enslaved girl then ascends to the deck of the ship by walking on the raised palms of the men with whom she has earlier had sex.

  She sings a leave-taking of her fellow thralls, and is made to quickly drink two beakers of strong alcohol. She becomes confused, seems to be trying to lie down, and is reluctant to enter the cabin. When she is forced inside (the ‘Angel’ grabs her head), the girl begins to scream, but her cries are drowned out by men waiting on the deck, beating staves on shields “which they had brought for that purpose”. (These circumstantial details—the girl’s drunken distraction, the forethought of the men with their shields and staves—are among the disconcerting features that set ibn Fad.lān’s account apart, and why it rings so horribly true.)

  The girl is then held down on the bed beside the ten-day-old corpse of the chieftain, and raped by six of the dead man’s kinsmen. After this, while four of the men hold her arms and legs, the other two strangle her with a twisted veil. At the same time, the ‘Angel of Death’ stabs her repeatedly between the ribs “in place after place”.

  When the living have left the ship, the pyre is then lit by a naked man walking backwards around the vessel; he keeps his face averted and covers his anus with his fingers (all orifices of his body are thus either pointing away from the ship or protected). As the fire consumes the ship and its occupants, fanned by a rising wind, the Rus’ talk with approval of how the smoke is being carried high into the sky and that therefore their ‘Lord’ is pleased. When the ashes cool, a mound is erected over the remains of the pyre and a birch pole set up on top, on which is cut the dead man’s name and that of his king. After this, the Rus’ leave.

  To all this one must add the ‘audio-visual effects’, to use a callous phrase: the screaming of the animals; their entrails fouling the ship’s timbers; the expensive textiles covered in gore; the panic of the girl; the flies in the sticky pools of blood; the mingled scents of recent sex, old death, and violent killing. It is hard to believe anyone could remain entirely calm in the midst of such acts—ibn Fad.lān certainly does not; indeed, he is obliquely threatened by one of the bystanders (who claims that Arabs must be stupid to bury their dead rather than burning them). It must have been nerve-racking for him. As I have earlier stressed, ibn Fad.lān’s horrific narrative is an essential corrective for anyone who finds the Vikings admirable.

  What does archaeology add to this, or alter?

  The rite of boat burial precedes the Viking Age by several centuries and encompasses every type of water craft. People could be interred in little one-person rowboats, in graves cut to look like them, or even just with a plank or two of boat timbers that apparently sufficed to make the same connection with less outlay (it goes without saying that any kind of boat is a very expensive thing to give up to a grave). The great oceangoing ships that have become so famous are the very highest end of the scale, but even they exist in some numbers.

  Most of the boats for burial were dragged ashore and laid in shallow trenches, deep enough to keep them stable and upright but leaving substantial parts of the vessel above ground level. The bodies of one or more men and women were placed on board and laid out in various ways—lying amidships or resting in bed, sitting in chairs, or propped up on cushions, sometimes covered by shaggy bearskins. The dead are often deposited in a chamber, usually built amidships (yes, just like ibn Fad.lān says). The ships exhibit the full spectrum of ‘grave-goods’: weapons, jewellery, tools, household items including looms, agricultural equipment, and a massive range of home furnishings and textiles. Oseberg even had tapestries hanging from the nock of the chamber roof. Boxes, parcels, and bundles of clothing were placed all around. Again at Oseberg, pillows were stacked in a neat pile, a single seed of cannabis placed puzzlingly between each of them. Additional outdoor gear could also be present: tents, sledges, even an entire wagon, and ship’s boats for getting to shore. At Oseberg the stepped gangway had been thrown on board. Food and drink were liberally supplied.

  The dead were often accompanied by very large numbers of animal sacrifices—up to twenty decapitated horses, for example, were present in the Oseberg grave. Back to ibn Fad.lān: think of the noise and the blood, the ground turning red around the ship. Whole or partial bodies of domesticated livestock such as cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats, have been found. Hunting dogs are often present in the ships; at Kaupang in Norway, there is a boat grave with such a hound that appears to have been carved to pieces with blades, its severed head resting in a bowl on the lap of a seated woman. The blood rituals of the blót sacrifice appear to have continued with burials. Birds of prey, absurdly expensive creatures such as falcons and several species of hawk, are also found. Then there are the true exotica: owls, eagles, and cranes, for example. The Gokstad ship burial even contained a peacock.

  For ship cremations as opposed to true burials, much of this has to be inferred from sometimes very fragmentary remains. Even in interments, the ships have usually decayed and are visible only as lines of iron rivets that mark where the timbers once lay. Some of the cremations seem to have been the biggest of all: at Myklebost, in Norway, a massive warship was burnt that contained fifty-four shields, their bosses carefully gathered up afterwards from the ashes and deposited in buckets. This was a ‘Viking funeral’ incarnate.

  Beyond the Oseberg, Gokstad, and Tune boat graves, as we have seen, many more are now known in Scandinavia, although the Norwegian finds are by far the best preserved. Overseas, boat burials are found in the British Isles, especially in island communities on the Orkneys, where they are sometimes lined with stones in the prow and stern. On the Scottish mainland, the discovery of a weapon-filled boat grave at Ardnamurchan expands the Viking funerary map. The outlier boat burial on the Île de Groix off the south coast of Brittany was on a quite different scale, encircled by standing stones and with a line of stone uprights that appear to have formed a processional way leading up to it.

  T
he conclusion of the rituals also has something to tell us. Ibn Fad.lān describes a ten-day funeral at the end of which it all seems to hinge on a naked man, who is the only one to approach the pyre, taking precautions as he does so. He seems to expect something to be active in there; in protecting all the openings of his body, it seems that he believes it can move. The moment he lights the funeral fire, it is apparently safe, and everyone comes forward to add a burning torch to the conflagration.

  Oseberg has something reminiscent of this wariness, although the burial is an inhumation rather than a cremation. Most of the objects were deposited with great care and attention, but at the very end most of the larger wooden items—the wagon, sleds, and so on—were literally thrown onto the foredeck, beautiful things just heaved over the side from ground level and being damaged in the process. The accessible end of the burial chamber was then sealed shut by hammering planks across the open gable, but using any old piece of wood that seems to have been at hand. The planks were just laid across at random—anything to fill the opening into the chamber where the dead lay. The nails were hammered in so fast one can see where the workers missed, denting the wood and bending or breaking off the nail heads. Why the need for such haste? Were they afraid, like the kindler of the pyre in ibn Fad.lān?