The Real Valkyrie

by Nancy Marie Brown

  The second poem reveals that her people did not follow her orders. “After Brynhild’s death,” says the introduction to the poem, “two pyres were built; the one for Sigurd burned first. Then Brynhild was burned on the other pyre, and she was in a wagon covered with beautiful cloth. So it is said that Brynhild drove her wagon along the Hel-Road,” Hel being both a place of the dead, like Valhalla, and the name of its queen. Stern and fierce and easily recognized, since one side of her face was light and the other dark, Hel had power over all the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology. Unlike in Greek myths, for example, the Norse underworld was not “a place in which women are silenced or pay brutal prices for the mistakes of men.” No, the Norse underland was a place of brutal women: All who died of sickness or old age resided in Hel’s cold, damp hall, eating off plates called “Hunger” and sleeping on cots called “Sickbed.” Her realm was guarded by a high wall and a river, whose only bridge was guarded by a warrior woman, a giantess named Modgud, or “Battle Weary.” When Brynhild took the road to Hel, Modgud barred her way: “You shall not pass by my rocky fortress,” she insisted. “You have washed your hands in human blood.” Brynhild answered, “Blame me not, lady of the rock, though I went on Viking raids.” She had come to find the Dragon-Slayer and take him to Valhalla to join Odin’s band of otherworldly warriors, for “we shall never be parted, Sigurd and I.”

  Once a funeral pyre burned out, Snorri continues in Heimskringla, the ashes were scattered at sea or covered with earth. Sometimes a memorial stone was erected. But after Yngvi-Freyr, the divine ancestor of the Yngling kings, “was laid in a mound at Uppsala, many chieftains chose to raise burial mounds as often as standing stones in remembrance of their kin.”

  Several rulers, according to Snorri, were buried at Borre in Vestfold, about six miles north of Oseberg. When he visited in 1217, there were nine large mounds up to 148 feet in diameter and twenty feet high; eight still exist, unexcavated. Most, like Oseberg, show signs that someone reopened the mound after the funeral, but how much later no one knows. Nor can anyone be sure of the grave robbers’ motives. Were they recovering heirlooms, like the warrior woman in Hervor’s Song? Were they collecting burned bones, or “bone coal,” used as a source of carbon in making steel, to burn an ancestor’s spirit into a sword? Were they testing their courage against zombies, as the sagas recount? The skeletons in the Oseberg mound (or what was left of them) were not found lying peacefully on their featherbeds when antiquarians opened the mound in 1904.

  If the robbers were Christians, were they retrieving their ancestors’ bones to rebury them in a Christian cemetery? Or were they destroying the graves’ sacred power? Grave mounds were the focal point for many pagan practices: Rulers were crowned on grave mounds, assemblies met there to make laws and settle disputes, and individuals often sat on the mounds seeking inspiration or advice from their ancestors. In another poem, for example, a couple could not decide on a name for their son. One day the nameless boy was sitting on a grave mound when nine women rode by; the most magnificent of them stopped to talk with him. “She was a valkyrie and rode on the wind and the sea,” says the poet. This line has usually been interpreted to mean she was a goddess—but it could just as well be a poetic description of a sailor. The poem continues, “She gave Helgi his name and shielded him often afterward in battle.”

  Or did the desecrators of Viking burial mounds have political, not religious, motives for opening the graves and ritually killing the dead? Some scholars think the Danish king Harald Bluetooth, who ruled during Hervor’s lifetime, desecrated the Oseberg grave as part of his campaign to bring Christian ideas of kingship to the North. And it is true that, after Bluetooth became king in 958, no more large burial mounds were built in Vestfold.

  * * *

  No one knows how many Viking grave mounds honor queens, as only a few of the mounds have been excavated and their skeletons sexed. The most famous mound after Oseberg is at Gokstad, where, just outside Kaupang about thirty years before Hervor was born, a man was buried with the same ceremony as the Oseberg queens.

  The size and construction of the Oseberg and Gokstad mounds are nearly identical. Both are positioned in the center of flat valleys facing the Oslo Fjord, interrupting a landscape of farms and fenced fields, sheep meadows, and well-traveled roads. In each case, the dead rulers were laid in a sumptuous burial chamber, with a kitchen and traveling gear, on a large, seagoing sailing ship. Instead of weaving tools and musical instruments, the Gokstad burial contained sixty-four iron-bossed shields, painted yellow and black, a gameboard and game pieces, and, in addition to twelve slaughtered horses—remarkably—two peacocks, announcing the chieftain’s trade links to the East.

  When the Gokstad mound was broken open in 1880, eight human bones were recovered. From those clues, an anatomist reconstructed a fifty- to seventy-year-old man of great height—over six foot two—who suffered from severe arthritis and might not have been able to walk or even to chew his food. In 1929 the bones were reburied, to be dug up again in 2007. A new analysis found the chieftain was not so old or so tall: only forty to fifty years old and five foot eleven. He was judged to be male, due to the bones’ “extremely thick and powerful appearance with large muscle attachments, even if no ‘sex specific’ parts—like, for example, the pelvic bones—were preserved,” the osteologist wrote. Calling this gender assignment into question, however, the same scientist read a deformity of the skull as sign of a growth hormone disease that would have given the chieftain “coarse features”—a big nose, protruding ears, fleshy lips, and huge hands and feet—as well as headaches, blurry vision, and “frequent muscular weakness.” The chieftain did not suffer from arthritis, according to this reanalysis, though he may have walked with a limp and needed a crutch. Instead, several years before his death he injured his left knee “by jumping or falling from a great height.” Nor was he bedridden and spoon-fed like a baby. He died, like a Viking, violently. “At least two persons with different weapons attacked the man and killed him,” says the 2009 report. A sword cut to the shin of his bad left leg—when he was on horseback or lying helpless on the ground—made it impossible for him to stand. His right thigh was stabbed by an arrow or a knife and his right foot cut off. None of these battle wounds were noticed in the 1880s or when the bones were reexamined in 1907 or 1928.

  * * *

  Like Oseberg, the Gokstad mound contained no weapons (except the shields) and no jewelry when it was opened by archaeologists. The boggy, acidic blue clay into which the ships were sunk and the nearly airtight seal of the turf blocks used to build both mounds, however, preserved items of wood and, in the case of Oseberg, cloth. These materials usually rot faster than bone; they are rarely recovered from Viking graves. Yet items of wood or cloth can be more revealing than long-lasting metal jewelry or weapons. Such items let us look beyond stereotypes of gender to discover what roles the ruler filled in Viking society and how he or she exerted power. With such excellent preservation of cloth and wood, archaeologists can see that the space inside the Oseberg and Gokstad mounds was laid out like a chieftain’s feast hall.

  The arrival of the Oseberg queens, in their splendidly carved ship, to a chieftain’s hall was always accompanied by the threat of violence. Power, for a Viking ruler, was a balance of give and take—and what was given to one person was often taken from another. The queens’ itinerary was an exercise in authority. A chieftain who proved unfriendly—who failed to provide an appropriate feast when the ruler came to visit—could find himself evicted, or worse, as happened to the saga-hero Thorolf in Egil’s Saga. His mistake was inviting five hundred of his neighbors to his feast for Harald Fairhair, when the king had only three hundred in his train. The king’s rage at this insult smoldered (and was stoked by slander) until one spring, as we have seen, he arrived at Thorolf’s hall unannounced, ringed it with warriors, and set it on fire. The hall was destroyed and Thorolf killed, though most of his people were spared, and the estate was given to another warrior who swore to be
King Harald’s friend.

  Setting the Gokstad and Oseberg burials into this context of give and take, of promise and threat, explains to me why they are so alike and yet so different. Each represents one face of the Viking ruler. In Gokstad, I see the threat: the war leader, with his horses and game pieces, the shields standing in for his army. In Oseberg, I see the promise: the ritual leader, with her musical instruments and magical rattles, wagons and sleighs. Both are buried in magnificent ships, surrounded by extravagant wealth and everything needed for a feast.

  Though Gokstad is the burial of a man and Oseberg of two women, I think it’s a mistake to divide these two functions of a Viking leader along gender lines. In Norse mythology, Odin, the one-eyed god of war and poetry, leads ritual sacrifices, raises the dead, reads the runes to learn the future, and can leave his body in a shamanistic trance. Freyja, the goddess of love—and the one who taught Odin this ritual magic—rides to war in a chariot pulled by lions, claims half the dead, and oversees an endless battle in which the wounded are healed overnight to resume their fight at dawn. The tapestries found in the Oseberg mound illustrate both aspects of leadership, the ritual procession and the battle scene, suggesting to me that both roles were required, regardless of the sex of the rulers.

  If so, when Hervor was growing up in southern Norway in the mid-tenth century, the twin roles of the Viking ruler were filled by Eirik Bloodaxe and Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings. Eirik was the war leader; he made the threats. Gunnhild was the ritual leader; she saw the future.

  6

  THE WINTER NIGHTS FEAST

  The way between worlds opens at the Winter Nights. The harvest is in, the beer is brewed, the farmers have assessed their hay stores and decided how many of their stock to keep over the winter. Each has offered a sacrifice: A horse of a special color. A boar to honor the goddess Freyja and her twin brother, Freyr. A bull, the bigger and straighter its horns, the better.

  In the old days, Hervor knows, the sacrifice chosen was sometimes human. Queen Gunnhild taught her the lines from the poem of the Yngling kings:

  Long ago

  they reddened the land,

  the sword-bearers

  bloodied their swords

  with kings’ blood,

  killing in hope

  of future harvests.

  When Domaldi was king at Uppsala, Hervor learned, famine struck year after year, until at one Winter Nights feast it was his royal blood that reddened the altars, a gift to the goddesses, lifting the curse.

  Generations later, the goddesses took King Adils, too, the poem said. As he rode around the ritual hall, his horse stumbled and he was thrown. He hit his head on a rock and died, his blood mixing into the earth: A fruitful summer followed that winter.

  Here on Atley Isle, the sacrifice is a magnificent bull. Hervor marches in the procession behind the great beast, her role a major one this year: She carries the blood bowl, while beside her young Ragnhild, Gunnhild’s daughter, bears the bundle of twigs used to sprinkle the holy blood. They stand tall, stepping slowly in their long, trailing robes, as they were taught. Behind them come ranks of women and men walking or riding horses, carrying torches and oil lamps on long poles, wearing masks and headdresses, brandishing weapons and staffs, blowing long horns, and shaking large metal rattles lashed to elaborately carved poles, their ends carved as cats’ heads in Freyja’s honor. Queen Gunnhild herself comes last, driving the elaborately carved horse cart on which the goddesses themselves—in wooden form—are carried to the holy place.

  Drugged and placid, the bull circles the barley fields, then is led back to the temple beside the feast hall. There, the idols are reverently unloaded and installed on their pedestals. With fire and sweet smoke, music and elaborate gestures, through the carving of runes and reciting of incantations, Gunnhild invites the goddesses to inspirit their wooden forms and receive the sacrifice.

  The final act, as Hervor knows from years past, is thrillingly bloody and dramatic. The bull is led to the temple door. The best two warriors, chosen through fierce competition, stand on either side. The one with the hammer swings a heavy blow between the beast’s eyes, stunning it or perhaps killing it outright—Hervor cannot tell which, for at the very same moment the second warrior swings a broad-bladed axe and cuts off the beast’s head. Its blood gouts out in a fountain as the beast falls, pumped by the still-beating heart. Holding the bowl Hervor handed her, Gunnhild’s arms are drenched with the sacred blood, her face and beautiful garments splashed.

  When the bowl is full, Gunnhild passes it back to Hervor—Don’t you dare spill it, the queen’s narrowed eyes warn—and they circle through the celebrants. The queen dips the bunch of twigs Ragnhild hands her into the blood and flings the sacred droplets over the crowd, the idols, the temple walls. Other people, meanwhile, collect the rest of the bull’s blood and paint the idols’ pedestals; others butcher the bull and set its meat to boiling in many cauldrons; still others bring around beakers and buckets of ale to toast the deities, the rulers, and the ancestors in hopes of prosperity and peace.

  Finally the time comes when Hervor can take off her long, blood-splattered robe and compete in the archery match—for the best parts of the Winter Nights for her, each year, are the contests and entertainments. The festivalgoers race horses and wrestle, bet on tests of strength like tug-of-war and weight lifting, and compete in several kinds of ball games, all of which are punctuated by heavy drinking and occasional injuries and deaths.

  As the day darkens and the games move inside, people pose riddles and cap verses, creating impromptu ditties to a specified rhyme scheme and rhythm. Masked and wearing costumes, they act out poems about deities and ancient heroes. A skáld recites long ballads, accompanied by a lyre. Musicians sing, some chanting deep in their throats. Others play fiddles strung with horsehair, bone or wooden flutes, recorders and trumpets made from goat or cow horns or birchbark or bronze, and various drums, their tunes and tempos rousing the feasters to an ecstatic, drunken dance.

  As the night wears on, the smoke from the fires and oil lamps collects, swirling like spirits in the high ceiling of the hall. The darkness deepens and becomes more beautiful, Hervor thinks—and also more terrifying. The guests press closer as Gunnhild again takes her place at the center of the ritual, on a platform surrounded by a chorus of singers. Her dress stiff with gleaming gold and silver embroidery and accented with glittering jewels and furs and feathers, bones and other fetishes, her staff of power in her hand, fortified by alcohol, cannabis, and other herbs she lets no one see her prepare, she sings the songs that unlock the doors to the spirit worlds.

  For Gunnhild is a witch. Her song is a whirlwind, spinning part of herself out into the room until she snares everyone’s attention and—this is what both thrills and terrifies Hervor—flings it out into the dark unknown. Over the drone of the long, trumpetlike lur, the dark knock of the drums, and the wild dance of the tongue horn, Gunnhild whispers, she keens, she chants, until Hervor rocks and sways to her rhythm; she breathes to it; her heart beats to Gunnhild’s time. She is fascinated—and afraid, as all Gunnhild’s listeners are, that the witch’s staff will suddenly single her out in the crowd, the witch eye will fix on her alone, and she will reveal Hervor’s fate.

  But the staff passes by, touching a boy instead: You won’t wrestle with old age: A horse’s skull will be your bane. It touches a young widow: From you will come a worthy family, for shining over your children I see bright rays of light.

  * * *

  Singing is magic. To hold a room in thrall, a singer outmatches her audience. She grows bigger than the crowd. She pulls the song from her enormous heart and aims it at each of their little hearts. She inhales all the air in the room and sings it out, altered. She plays with that air, breathing out fear, boredom, courage, lust. She sings so loudly the air in her throat turns turbulent: a living whirlwind. She sings herself, and her listeners, to the point of pain, to exhaustion, and, finally, into ecstasy. Modern singers know this. If you sing som
ething—if you say something—it becomes real. “That’s the power of poetry,” says one. “Your words are your will.” Witchcraft, seiðr in Old Norse, is a synonym for song.

  The mark of a witch, the sagas say, is her staff of power. It might be a twig or a reed or a sturdy stick, crooked or straight. It might be topped by a brass-bound knob studded with jewels or covered with cloth, feathers, and seeds. It might be carved with runes. It might be made of iron, like the rods archaeologists have found in Viking Age graves: Too fancy to be roasting spits, these rods were harder to make, and more valuable, than a sword. It might function as a metaphorical distaff, which held a spinner’s raw fibers: In this case, the threads spun are the invisible threads of spirits, “mind-threads.” It might function, at other times, as an actual measuring stick: The metal rods archaeologists have found are the length of an ell, about half a yard, the standard length by which cloth was sold. In later ages, such measuring rods were affixed to the door of the parish church, giving them the authority of the new Christian religion, as they once had borne that of the old pagan rites. The witch’s staff was like a king’s scepter of later ages—a mark of royal might and power. In some stories, that power becomes literal, as the staff transforms into a killing spear.

  Several women in the sagas and poems are called völva, or “staff bearer,” but there is no one single word in Old Norse for “witch.” What translators call “witchcraft” was a constellation of powers—powers Christian priests sought to appropriate or deny. Witches were wise. They preserved old lore and kept ancient ritual practices alive. They taught right from wrong, explaining humanity’s place in the Nine Worlds of Norse cosmography. They used second sight to foretell the future or find hidden things. With their voice of power, they could wound or bind with words. They could change shape (their own or someone else’s) and control the weather. They could turn the land topsy-turvy with a look.