Barbarians- Secrets of the Dark Ages
Page 26
On the day of the funeral the dead chieftain's boat that had been moored on the river was hauled up on to dry land. A wooden scaffold was then set up around it. Vikings began to walk around the structure, speaking words that Ibn Fadhlan could not understand. A bier was then carried to the site and put on the boat. There was a mistress of ceremonies, an old woman called by the Vikings the 'Angel Of Death'. Fadhlan describes her as 'a strapping woman, massively built and austere of countenance'. Byzantine carpets and silk cushions were brought in, and she arranged the cushions on top of the bier. The scene was now set for the corpse to be carried to the funeral site. The body was dug up and the wooden coffin removed. The corpse, which had turned black due to the freezing conditions, was then stripped of the clothes in which the chieftain had died. Both these clothes and the items that had been placed in this temporary resting place were discarded.
The corpse was then dressed in the newly made clothes – a sable fur cap, a tunic and cloak with gold buttons and other fancy trappings. Once he was fully dressed, he was carried over to where the boat lay and placed inside a tent on top of it. Fresh fruit and beer were placed around the body along with aromatic herbs, bread, meat and onions. The next stage in the proceedings consisted of a series of animal sacrifices. The first to be dispatched was a dog, which was cut in two and then cast into the boat. Two horses were slaughtered with swords after they had been ridden into a sweat, and then also cut up and placed in the ship. Two cows and a cock and a hen were similarly sacrificed and their carcasses thrown in.
While these sacrificial preparations were taking place, the female slave who was soon to the went into the tent of each and every Viking freeman to have sexual intercourse with them. Each of them would say to her: 'Tell your master that I do this thing for the love of him.' The girl was then taken to a wooden structure rather like a door frame, and was lifted up by the Viking men who were present so that her eye level was above the top of the frame. She said something that Ibn Fadhlan could not understand, then she was lifted up again twice more, each time speaking different words. She then cut the head off a hen and cast it into the boat. Ibn Fadhlan asked his interpreter what had been said, and was told that the first time she had cried out: 'Look. I see my father and mother.' The second time: 'Behold, I see my dead relatives seated around.' And finally: 'Behold! I see my master in Paradise, and Paradise is green and fair, and with him are men and young boys. He is calling me. Let me go to him!'
She was now prepared to die. She took off the two bracelets she was wearing and gave them to the Angel of Death whose task it was to kill her. She also removed her two finger rings and gave them to the daughters of her executioner. The girl was taken into the ship but was not yet allowed to enter the tent. She drank two cups of beer and sang her goodbyes. She tarried too long over her swan song and the Angel of Death had to hurry her along, firmly putting her in the tent and following her in. Then the gathered Viking men began to make a fearful noise by beating their shields with sticks. Ibn Fadhlan tells us that this was done to drown out the cries of the victim, in case her screams put off other girls from volunteering themselves as sacrifices in the future. Six men then entered the tent and had sexual intercourse with her. After this she was laid down by the side of her dead master. Two of the men held her hands, while another two held her feet and the others held the two ends of a rope that the Angel of Death had put round her neck. As the rope was tightened to strangulation point, the old woman stabbed the girl repeatedly in the chest.
After this human sacrifice had been made, the dead man's closest relative set fire to the pile of wood that had been placed under the ship. Others were then permitted to follow suit by casting their own firebrands on to the wood pile. The ship and all its contents, the sacrificial bodies of the animals and the girl along with the tent and the dead chieftain's richly garbed body, were all soon engulfed in flames and, according to Viking belief, the man and his slave were transported to the pagan paradise of Valhalla.
The kind of pagan Viking funerals that Ibn Fadhlan witnessed on the banks of the Volga were soon to be a thing of the past. Valhalla itself, the spiritual home of the Viking warrior, was soon to be demolished and the Christian heaven built there in its place. As the Vikings had themselves predicted, all the gods – including Odin, lord of the great hall of Valhalla – were to the at Ragnarok: the end of the world.
Vikings, Visigoths and Moors
Most of the Viking interactions with the Islamic world took place in the east. The Swedish Vikings travelled much further east than is generally realised. The Volga river down which they sailed their ships ran through the ancient market town of Bulgar (near to the modern city of Kazan). It was a trading centre controlled by Bulgar tribes, who have been described as the Huns under a new name. It was through Bulgar that much of the vast amount of Arabic silver eventually found its way to Gotland and other places.
Tribes lower down the Volga seem to have made trading agreements with the Abbasid caliphate shortly after it deposed the existing Umayyad dynasty (based in Damascus) in the middle of the eighth century. This change of power at the very heart of the Islamic world resulted in the exploitation of silver-rich mines in Central Asia, which had a knock-on effect for the Viking economy. In the east the Vikings generally travelled in small boats (like the Krampmacken replica from Gotland), and unlike their western counterparts they were not really in a position to launch massive assaults and raids.
The Umayyad dynasty that had lost its eastern power base to the Abbasids was able to establish itself in southern Spain (or al-Andalus as the Muslims called it) from the eighth century. By this time the inhabitants of Spain had ceased to be viewed as a mixture of Romans and Goths. The distinctive identity of the Romans had all but dissolved into the Visigoth kingdom that ruled Spain. But the vibrant and strident culture of a still young Islamic world was to prove a more powerful force than the desultory kingdom of the Visigoths.
The Arabs had completed their invasion of Roman North Africa in 698 and had set their sights on crossing the straits of Gibraltar. Their army was largely composed of Berbers – the name given by the early Arab geographers to the indigenous population of North Africa. The Arabic word barbara means 'to talk noisily or confusedly', and some believe it to derive from the Greek word for barbarian. The city of Toledo fell in 711 or 712 and within a decade the force of Arabs and Berbers (Moors as they came to be collectively known) had extended their rule beyond the Pyrenees as far as the city of Narbonne. The Visigoth kingdom was consigned to history.
The Moors' hold on the northern regions of Spain and parts of southern France was never very firm, and the centre of their thriving culture was to be in the south. There was an initial period of Arab rule in which governors subordinate to external authorities in both North Africa and Damascus administered al-Andalus. After the overthrow of their power base in Syria, the members of the Umayyad dynasty fled to Spain where they ruled first as amirs (kings) from 756 to 929 and then as caliphs from 929 until their demise in 1031.
Three Viking forces are on record for their attempts to raid this stronghold of Islam. The first took place in 844, when a number of towns were sacked and the city of Seville was temporarily overtaken by the northern barbarians. The second raid was part of probably the most audacious and epic voyage of piracy undertaken by any Viking force. It began in 859 on the Loire river, where two Viking leaders named Bjorn Ironside and Hastein decided to loot their way to Rome, taking in Spain, North Africa and the Balearic Islands along the way. This time Moorish Spain suffered more dramatically, many of its cities being sacked by the Scandinavian buccaneers. The Vikings reached Italy but not Rome itself; nevertheless they were so successful that, having made a round trip back from the Mediterranean to their stronghold on the Loire, they were now very rich men. In 866 a third raid on some of the northern towns of Moorish Spain was ineffectual and the Vikings were easily expelled. From this time on, the Vikings seem to have given up raiding Spain and left the Moors in peace.
Al-Andalus became a flourishing centre of civilisation and was in many ways far more advanced technologically and scientifically than the contemporary Christian world. A great mosque, the Mezquita, was built on the site of a church in Cordoba in the eighth century and expanded during the course of the next two centuries. After the end of Arab rule it was turned back into a Christian place of worship, although its patently Islamic architecture makes it difficult to perceive it as such. Today in Cordoba one can still hear the faint echoes of the golden era of Islamic dominance in the voice of the single muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from the sole surviving working mosque in the city. This small and modest building stands merely a stone's throw from the vast mosque of ancient Cordoba now transformed into the city's cathedral. When I visited the modern mosque at the time of the midday prayers, the congregation was made up of only four people, a poignant reminder of days long past.
Not only did al-Andalus have trading links with the Islamic world to the east; its scholars also carried out a great number of translations into Arabic of Greek writings which, in turn, did much to keep the learning of the classical world alive. Its Golden Age was under the reign of the caliph Abd al-Rahman III (912-61) and his son al-Hakem (961-76). The first of these two caliphs was responsible for building the huge palace complex of Madinat al-Zahra west of Cordoba. The site covers an area of 112 hectares and, despite having received the attention of archaeologists since 1911, only a tenth of it has been excavated so far. It is an extraordinary site and was once adorned with beautiful gardens and flowing fountains. Against such an idyllic backdrop the arts and sciences flourished, and paper – still unknown in the Christian world – was readily available. Medicine, mathematics and astronomy were among the subjects that were greatly advanced in the heyday of al-Andalus.
Cordoba was home to the man who has been described as the father of modern medicine: Abul Qasim al-Zahrawi (936-1013), or Albucasis as he was known in the Latin world. Julio Samso, a specialist on the history of science in al-Andalus, described him to me as probably the best surgeon of the Middle Ages. His massive treatise on surgery was to have an enormous impact on the subsequent development of western medicine. He illustrated his book with drawings of the medical instruments he used, along with details of their particular functions.
I was able to borrow some accurate replicas of some of the instruments Albucasis describes, and I took them to a surgeon at a local hospital to get his professional opinion on their practical value. He was greatly surprised at the similarity between these replicas and their modern-day counterparts – even my untrained eye could see clear correspondences in the size and shape of numerous different instruments: scalpels and other more specialist tools of the trade to remove blood clots, to operate on the nasal bone, for dentistry and for eye operations.
It was also in the allied fields of mathematics and astronomy that Islamic science in al-Andalus excelled. We have already seen in the Christian world, with the calculations of Bede concerning Easter and other matters, that religion was often the driving force for scientific investigations. Similarly, Islamic science was stimulated by the needs and requirements of religion. Muslims are required to pray in the direction of Mecca and this was simple enough when they were still in their Arabian homeland. But in places far away such as Spain it was not straightforward at all – complex calculations were involved.
A device known as an astrolabe was used; this allowed the position of both the sun and stars to be calculated, and also meant that the hours for the five daily prayers could be worked out. The astrolabe was not an Arabic invention but a Greek one that was later modified by Muslim scientists who adapted it for their religious requirements. The Christians had lost all contact with the astronomical science of the Greeks and only rediscovered it through Islamic middlemen in Spain.
Christianity and Islam were the superpowers of a rapidly changing world, but Spanish Christianity slowly and inexorably pushed the wave of Islamic expansionism back into North Africa. Europe became the uncontested spiritual empire of Christianity, and the Vikings were among the last barbarians on the continent to be brought under its sway. The pagan Ragnarok had come to pass.
Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Vikings is not their material goods that have been unearthed by archaeology, but their stories and their wisdom that are embodied in the words of the Voluspa, a poem written around the year 1000 when the old gods – the Aesir and the Vanir – were giving way to Christianity. It is a fitting epitaph for a pagan Norse world that ended but always believed its time would come again:
In later times
a wondrous treasure,
chessmen of gold,
will be found in the grass
where the Aesir had left them
ages ago…
Barren fields
will bear again,
woes will be cured…
There shall deserving
people dwell
to the end of time
and enjoy their happiness.
Afterword
The aim of this book has been to give, as far as possible, the barbarian side of the Dark Ages story. I have drawn on three main sources of information concerning the history and culture of these people: contemporary accounts by Roman or Christian writers; later accounts by the barbarians themselves once they have developed their own literary traditions (usually after they adopted Christianity); and archaeological data in the form of sites, artefacts and human remains. Each of these sources has its inherent shortcomings: Roman and Christian accounts are often biased and selective in what they tell us; the barbarians' own accounts are often infused with legend and propaganda; and the material evidence from the ground cannot always be taken at face value. Nevertheless, they are all essential and rich sources of information.
Moral issues play a big part in many early accounts of the barbarians. In some cases the barbarians are used as a moral example for the writer's own people to take to heart. Tacitus portrays the Germanic peoples as noble savages who still lived a life of honesty and integrity, unlike his own Roman readers who have sunk into moral decadence. Christian authors also used barbarians as moral exemplars. The fifth-century priest Silvian compares the Goths and Vandals favourably to the Romans – barbarians honour their own people while the Romans think only of their own personal gain. And the Goths are praised for migrating far in search of freedom, rather than enduring the state of 'slavery' imposed on the Roman Christian in a rapidly decaying empire.
On the other hand, Silvian expects the Hun to cheat, the Alan to be greedy and the Saxon to be cruel, because they are all either pagans or heretics (by which he means Arians). They are like this because they do not know any better, whereas the Christian has no excuse for harbouring such sinful intentions. There were many influential Christian writers who had very clear views about the role of the barbarians whose attacks they had to endure – numerous churchmen interpreted these attacks as divine punishment. It was not just Attila who was believed to be the Scourge of God. The Celtic Gildas and later the Anglo-Saxon Bede both see God's work behind the raids of Germanic tribes. Later still, Alcuin sees the Viking sack of Lindisfarne as just a punishment meted out to a sinful Anglo-Saxon people.
These kinds of record tell us next to nothing about tribal customs and beliefs in the Dark Ages, but much more about the imperial or Christian perspectives of their authors. For most of these ancient writers, barbarians could be a number of things – evil, ignorant or, less often, noble savages and moral exemplars – but they were never allowed to be themselves. In short, their value was deemed to lie merely in their role as the shadow of the Roman or Christian way of living, or as a mirror in which the civilised could contemplate themselves.
Our best contemporary sources are those authors who do not have an axe to grind but simply report what they see, hear and read in a reasonably unbiased way. Unlike many other ancient authors, Tacitus does much
more than moralise. In his Germania he provides a fascinating and informative account of the Germanic tribes of his time, details of which have been backed up by archaeological finds (such as the distinctive hairstyle known as the Suevian knot). He is not the only literary source to show a genuine interest in the habits and customs of barbarian society. Priscus provides a unique insight into life among the Huns in the time of Attila, and the Arab traveller Ibn Fadhlan's descriptive account of the Norsemen he encountered on the Volga sheds light on many otherwise unknown aspects of life and death among the Vikings. It is contemporary accounts such as these that are invaluable in trying to reconstruct something of the barbarian cultures of the Dark Ages.
The barbarian world was always one of shifting alliances, ethnic diversity and cultural complexity. We have seen that apparently simple questions like who were the Huns or who were the Goths are not as straightforward as they might first appear. This is not merely because the Roman and early Christian writers were too engrossed in their own societies to provide enough accurate ethnographic or historical information. It was also because the Huns and the Goths were not single, unified societies living in isolation – they were composite entities. For example, the Gothic migration from north-eastern Europe down to the Balkans was not the movement of a monolithic nation travelling from one place and arriving at another intact and unchanged. It was a society that was run by an elite who saw themselves as a Gothic dynasty, but many of the people who joined them along the way had other ethnic origins.