by Neil Price;
PROLOGUE: DRIFTWOOD
I have chosen to begin this book with a brief retelling of the Norse creation story, but others have done so before me, and undoubtedly better. References to academic works on this theme can be found under chapter 1, following, but these same tales have also been recast in more literary form, to be enjoyed as such rather than as scholarly treatments. The best examples can be found in Kevin Crossley-Holland’s The Norse Myths: Gods of the Vikings (Deutsch, London, 1980) and Norse Myths: Tales of Odin, Thor and Loki (Walker Books, London, 2017); A. S. Byatt’s Ragnarok: The End of the Gods (Canongate, Edinburgh, 2011); and Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology (Bloomsbury, London, 2017). My description of the gods on the beach is faithful to the Old Norse texts but has conscious echoes of the Haida origin myth in the lovely version by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst, The Raven Steals the Light (Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, 1988), when Raven finds the First Men wriggling in a clam shell on the sands of Rose Spit and frees them to play in his “wonderful, shiny new world”.
There is an extensive literature on the Vikings’ long, difficult historiography of appropriation and distortion. See Else Roesdahl and Preben Meulengracht Sørensen (eds.), The Waking of Angantyr: The Scandinavian Past in European Culture (Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, 1996); Andrew Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Brewer, Cambridge, 2000); Catharina Raudvere, Anders Andrén, and Kristina Jennbert (eds.), Myter om det nordiska—mellan romantik och politik (Nordic Academic Press, Lund, 2001); Stefan Arvidsson, Draksjukan: mytiska fantasier hos Tolkien, Wagner och de Vries (Nordic Academic Press, Lund, 2007); Heather O’Donoghue, From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths (I. B. Tauris, London, 2010); and Jón Karl Helgason, Echoes of Valhalla: The Afterlife of the Eddas and Sagas (Reaktion, London, 2017), all with references for further reading. It is important to note—not least for professional students of the past—that in this the Vikings are far from alone. To take but one example, readings of the antique world have also been drawn into the same depressing narratives of prejudice and hate; see Mary Beard, Women and Power: A Manifesto (Profile, London, 2017) and Donna Zuckerberg, Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2018). For a recent overview of where we are, see Sarah Croix’s excellent essay, ‘The Vikings, victims of their own success? A selective view on Viking research and its dissemination’, Danish Journal of Archaeology 4:1 (2015): 82–96.
The Norwegian visitor to King Alfred’s court was named Ohthere (probably Óttar in his own tongue); a full text and discussion of his account can be found in Janet Bately and Anton Englert (eds.), Ohthere’s Voyages (Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, 2007).
INTRODUCTION: ANCESTORS AND INHERITORS
The runestone mentioning the ‘Viking watch’ is U 617 from Bro in Uppland. For a summary of alternative readings of víkingr, see Frands Herschend, ‘Wikinger’, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 34 (2006): 55–59.
The exasperated Cambridge scholar who despaired of loose Viking terminology was Ray Page, his comment coming from an even more exasperated review in Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research 21 (1985): 308–311. The historian who unfortunately settled on ‘Norsemen’ was the late Eric Christiansen in his interesting but eccentric book The Norsemen in the Viking Age (Blackwell, Oxford, 2002: 1–9). Scepticism as to the impact of the Vikings, and even their existence outside the saga imagination, came to the fore in Fredrik Svanberg’s Decolonising the Vikings (University of Lund, Lund, 2003) and in Richard Hodges’s provocative 2004 essay, ‘Goodbye to the Vikings?’ History Today 54:9. A couple of my comments here echo my article, ‘My Vikings and Real Vikings: Drama, documentary and historical consultancy’, in Tom Birkett and Roderick Dale (eds.), The Vikings Reimagined: Reception, Recovery, Engagement (De Gruyter, Berlin, 2020: 28–43).
Turning to methods and sources, the thinking on time periods as vantage points resonates with Tom McCarthy’s Satin Island (Knopf, London, 2015), an unnerving meditation on the impossibility of writing history. Readers interested in an overview of archaeological approaches can turn to Martin Carver, Archaeological Investigation (Routledge, London & New York, 2009). For the written sources, the main English and Continental texts are listed above; others are cited as necessary by chapter. There are several outstanding guides to the world of Old Norse sagas and poetry that include extensive discussion of genre, critical issues, and interpretation. I recommend Jónas Kristjánsson, Eddas and Sagas: Iceland’s Medieval Literature (Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag, Reykjavík, 1988); Heather O’Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (Blackwell, Oxford, 2004); Rory McTurk (ed.), A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture (Blackwell, Oxford, 2007); Margaret Clunies Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010); and Carolyne Larrington, Judy Quinn, and Brittany Schorn (eds.), A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2016).
The idea that the Codex Regius may have been the work of an amateur collector comes from conversation with Terry Gunnell. J. R. R. Tolkien’s pithy comments about early medieval texts can be found in The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays (Allen & Unwin, London, 1983). For a few words on the social context of the sagas, I have drawn on the translator Ben Waggoner’s perceptive remarks in his introduction to The Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok (Troth, New Haven, 2009). Useful meditations on the interactive experience of reading the Old Norse texts include M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij, The Saga Mind (Odense University Press, Odense, 1973) and Vésteinn Ólason, Dialogues with the Viking Age (Heimskringla, Reykjavík, 1998). The reading of Egil Skalla-Grímsson through a Christian lens is by Torfi Tulinius, The Enigma of Egill (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2015).
CHAPTER 1: THE HOME OF THEIR SHAPES
Beyond the Poetic Edda, anyone wanting to approach the world of Norse mythology, that reservoir of the Viking mind, should first turn to three fundamental source books that may be consulted for detail: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology (Brewer, Cambridge, 1993); Andy Orchard, Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend (Cassell, London, 1997); and John Lindow, Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001).
Detailed studies of the Norse conception of the worlds have been published by Anders Andrén, Tracing Old Norse Cosmology (Nordic Academic Press, Lund, 2014) and Christopher Abram, Evergreen Ash: Ecology and Catastrophe in Old Norse Myth and Literature (University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, 2019). Excellent works in Scandinavian languages include Henning Kure’s I begyndelsen var skriget: vikingetidens myter om skabelsen (Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 2010) and the collection by Anders Andrén et al. (eds.), Ordning mot kaos—studier av nordisk förkristen kosmologi (Nordic Academic Press, Lund, 2004). The speculations on Snorri’s motivations in recording pre-Christian lore and the idea of Yggdrasill as the Milky Way come from the work of Gísli Sigurðsson, research professor at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík; this book is the better in many ways for countless conversations with Gísli over the years. The quotation on the celestial bodies in the Seeress’s Prophecy is from Jesse Byock’s translation of the Poetic Edda referenced above.
A well-referenced overview of Norse mythology and cosmology can be found in Carolyne Larrington’s The Norse Myths (Thames & Hudson, London, 2017). This is one of the most intensively studied aspects of Viking culture, and the literature here is vast. Among the still-relevant highlights are two timeless classics published the same year: H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Penguin, London, 1964) and E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1964). Good collections of the latest thinking can be found in Margaret Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society (2 vols., Odense University Press, Odense, 1994
& 1998); Merrill Kaplan and Timothy R. Tangherlini (eds.), News from Other Worlds (North Pinehurst Press, Berkeley, 2012); Timothy R. Tangherlini (ed.), Nordic Mythologies: Interpretations, Intersections, and Institutions (North Pinehurst Press, Berkeley, 2014); and Pernille Hermann, Stephen A. Mitchell, Jens Peter Schjødt, and Amber Rose (eds.), Old Norse Mythology: Comparative Perspectives (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2017).
The gods are treated collectively in several of the above works, but see also Jean Renaud, Les dieux des Vikings (Ouest-France, Rennes, 1996). On Odin, see H. R. Ellis Davidson, The Battle God of the Vikings (University of York, York, 1972); Kris Kershaw, The One-Eyed God (Institute for the Study of Man, Washington, DC, 2000); and Annette Lassen, Odin på kristent pergament (Museum Tusculanum, Copenhagen, 2011). On Thor, see Richard Perkins, Thor the Wind-Raiser and the Eyrarland Image (Viking Society for Northern Research, London, 2001); Maths Bertell, Tor och den nordiska åskan (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2003); Lasse Christian Arboe Sonne, Thor-kult i vikingetiden (Museum Tusculanum, Copenhagen, 2013); and Declan Taggart, How Thor Lost His Thunder: The Changing Faces of an Old Norse God (Routledge, London, 2018). On Baldr, see John Lindow, Murder and Vengeance Among the Gods: Baldr in Scandinavian Mythology (Academia Scientarum Fennica, Helsinki, 1997). On Loki, see Folke Ström, Loki, ein mythologisches Problem (Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, 1956); Georges Dumézil, Loki (Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1959); Anna Birgitta Rooth, Loki in Scandinavian Mythology (Gleerup, Lund, 1961); and Yvonne S. Bonnetain, Der nordgermanische Gott Loki aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Perspektive (Kümmerle, Göppingen, 2006). On Freyja and the goddesses, see Britt-Mari Näsström, Freyja—The Great Goddess of the North (University of Lund, Lund, 1995) and Nordiska gudinnor: nytolkningar av den förkristna mytologin (Bonnier, Stockholm, 2009) and Ingunn Ásdísardóttir, Frigg og Freyja: Kvenleg goðmögn í heiðnum sið (Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, Reykjavík, 2007).
The possible precursors of Norse religion in other traditions have been extensively discussed. The Indo-European hypothesis was first developed extensively by Georges Dumézil, Mythes et dieux des Germains (Leroux, Paris, 1939) and most recently has been explored by Anders Kaliff in several important works, including Fire, Water, Heaven and Earth: Ritual Practice and Cosmology in Ancient Scandinavia: an Indo-European Perspective (Riksantikvarieämbetet, Stockholm, 2007) and Källan på botten av tidens brunn. Indoeuropeiska rötter till fornnordisk religion (Carlssons, Stockholm, 2018). Anders Hultgård has investigated possible Vedic parallels in a large number of publications, all referenced in his magisterial book Midgård brinner: Ragnarök i religionshistorisk belysning (Royal Gustav Adolf Academy, Uppsala, 2017). For more general observations on comparative religion, including these traditions, see Neil MacGregor, Living with the Gods: On Beliefs and Peoples (Penguin, London, 2018).
The observation that the Norse ‘pantheon’ is something of an illusion comes from Terry Gunnell, ‘Pantheon? What pantheon? Concepts of a family of gods in pre-Christian Scandinavian religions’, Scripta Islandica 66 (2015): 55–76. The rituals practised by the gods themselves are discussed by Kimberley C. Patton, Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009: ch. 7). For the relationship of gods and giants, see two works by Gro Steinsland, ‘Giants as recipients of cult in the Viking Age?’, in Gro Steinsland (ed.), Words and Objects: Towards a Dialogue Between Archaeology and History of Religion (Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning, Oslo, 1986: 212–222) and Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi (Solum Forlag, Oslo, 1991); also Tommy Kuusela, ‘Hallen var lyst i helig frid’. Krig och fred mellan gudar och jättar i en fornnordisk hallmiljö (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2017).
The meditations on fate closely follow the work of Karen Bek-Pedersen, the leading specialist in this field. References can be found in her book, The Norns in Old Norse Mythology (Dunedin, Edinburgh, 2011), which is also the best treatment of these beings.
The Valkyries are uniquely fascinating and have accordingly attracted an extensive literature. I have discussed them in my book The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Oxbow, Oxford, 2019: 274–288), where readers can also find an annotated list of their names. For further reading in depth, see Folke Ström, Diser, nornor, valkyrjor (Royal Academy of Letters, Stockholm, 1954); Judy Quinn, ‘“Hildr prepares a bed for most Helmet-Damagers”: Snorri’s treatment of a traditional poetic motif in his Edda’, in Pernille Hermann, Jens Peter Schjødt, and Rasmus Tranum Kristensen (eds.), Reflections on Old Norse Myths (Brepols, Turnhout, 2007: 95–118); Luke John Murphy, Herjans dísir: valkyrjur, Supernatural Femininities, and Elite Warrior Culture in the Late Pre-Christian Iron Age (unpublished MA thesis in Old Norse religion, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, 2013); Régis Boyer, Les Valkyries (Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 2014); and Karen M. Self, ‘The Valkyrie’s gender: Old Norse shield maidens and Valkyries as a third gender’, Feminist Formations 26:1 (2014): 143–172. The line about their lethally mesmerising appearance is from Jesse Byock’s translation of The Saga of the Völsungs (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1990). The ‘Web of Spears’ poem is preserved in the Saga of Burnt Njál and discussed at length by Russell Poole, Viking Poems on War and Peace (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1991).
For all the ‘invisible population’—spirits, dísir, and others—and Viking soul beliefs, see the individual entries in the three mythological dictionaries referenced above.
On the elves and dwarves, in particular, see two papers by Terry Gunnell, ‘Hof, halls, goðar and dwarves: An examination of the ritual space in the pagan Icelandic hall’, Cosmos 17 (2001): 3–36 and ‘How elvish were the álfar?’, in John McKinnell, David Ashurts, and Donata Kick (eds.), The Fantastic in Old Norse/Icelandic Literature (International Saga Conference, Durham and York, 2006: 321–328); also Rudolf Simek, ‘On elves’, in Stefan Brink and Lisa Collinson (eds.), Theorizing Old Norse Myth (Brepols, Turnhout, 2017: 195–223). Rudy has also written on the dísir: ‘Goddesses, mothers, dísir: Iconography and interpretation of the female deity in Scandinavia in the first millennium’, in Rudolf Simek and Wilhelm Heizmann (eds.), Mythological Women (Fassbaender, Vienna, 2002: 93–123). Anyone interested in trolls has two excellent books to choose from: John Lindow’s Trolls: An Unnatural History (Reaktion, London, 2014) and Rudolf Simek’s Trolle: Ihre Geschichte von der nordischen Mythologie bis zum Internet (Böhlau, Cologne, 2018). The Bornholm ‘trolls’ are reported in Danish by René Laursen and Margrethe Watt, ‘Guldhullet’, Skalk 2011/4: 3–9 and Flemming Kaul, ‘Folkminderne og arkæologien 2’, Skalk 2018/5: 20–27.
The ‘List of Spells’ is incorporated into the ‘Sayings of the High One’ in the Poetic Edda and can be found in the aforementioned editions.
CHAPTER 2: AGE OF WINDS, AGE OF WOLVES
The political problems of the Western Empire’s decline and the migrations have been explored from fundamentally different viewpoints by Guy Halsall in his Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007) and Peter Heather’s The Fall of the Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007) and Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe (Pan Macmillan, London, 2009). See also Julia Smith, Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History 500–1000 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005) and Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (Allen Lane, London, 2009). For an excellent comparative exercise, see Giusto Traina, 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009). For Roman relations with Scandinavia, see Kent Andersson, I skuggan av Rom: romersk kulturpåverken i Norden (Atlantis, Stockholm, 2013) and Sergio Gonzalez Sanchez and Alexandra Guglielmi (eds.), Romans and Barbarians Beyond the Frontiers: Archaeology, Ideology and Identities in the North (Oxbow, Oxford, 2017).
There are a number of good general overviews of Scandinavian later prehistory, including landscape perspectives. For Den
mark, see Jørgen Jensen, Danmarks Oldtid (4 vols., Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 2006); for Norway, see Bergljot Solberg, Jernalderen i Norge (Cappelen, Oslo, 2000); for Sweden, see Stig Welinder, Sveriges Historia 13000 fKr–600 eKr (Norstedts, Stockholm, 2009). For agrarian (pre)history, see Janken Myrdal and Mats Morell (eds.), The Agrarian History of Sweden: 4000 BC to AD 2000 (Nordic Academic Press, Lund, 2011); Per Ethelberg et al., Det sønderjyske landbrugs historie: jernalder, vikingetid og middelalder (2nd edn., Museum Sønderjylland, Haderslev, 2012); and Frode Iversen and Håkan Petersson (eds.), The Agrarian Life of the North 2000BC–AD1000 (Portal, Oslo, 2017). All this is usefully placed in the biggest of big pictures by Barry Cunliffe, Europe Between the Oceans, 9000 BC–AD 1000 (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008).
The Danish bog sacrifices are summarised in Jørgen Ilkjær, Illerup Ådal—et arkæologisk tryllespejl (Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab, Moesgård, 2000) and Lars Jørgensen, Birger Storgaard, and Lone Gebauer Thomsen (eds.), The Spoils of Victory: The North in the Shadow of the Roman Empire (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, 2003). The Hellvi mask is published by Neil Price and Per Widerström, ‘Bronsmasken från Hellvi’, in Paul Wallin and Helene Martinsson-Wallin (eds.), Arkeologi på Gotland 2 (Uppsala University, Uppsala, 2017: 199–208).
For social structures and rural settlement of the Roman Iron Age and Migration Period, see Peder Mortensen and Birgit Rasmussen (eds.), Fra stamme til stat i Danmark (2 vols., Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab, Moesgård, 1988 & 1991); Charlotte Fabech and Jytte Ringtved (eds.), Samfundsorganisation og regional variation: Norden i romersk jernalder og folkevandringstid (Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab, Moesgård, 1991); Lotte Hedeager, Iron Age Societies (Blackwell, Oxford, 1992); Ulf Näsman, ‘Från Attila till Karl den store: Skandinavien i Europa’, in Michael Olausson (ed.), Hem till Jarlabanke: jord, makt och evigt liv i östra Mälardalen under järnålder och medletid (Historiska Media, Lund, 2008: 19–47); and Frands Herschend, The Early Iron Age in South Scandinavia (Uppsala University, Uppsala, 2009). For the European context, see Hubert Fehr and Philipp von Rummel, Die Völkerwanderung (Theiss, Stuttgart, 2011). An excellent overview of Migration Period material culture can be found in Wolfgang Pülhorn (ed.), Germanen, Hunnen und Awaren: Schätzte der Völkerwanderungszeit (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 1987).
