The Real Valkyrie

by Nancy Marie Brown

  Sagas tell of warriors competing in wrestling, running, jumping, archery, spear throwing, lifting or tossing stones, walking on the oars of a moving ship, and swimming—which mostly meant who could last the longest underwater. Arrow-Odd brags,

  I never shot

  the shorter arrow,

  the linden shaft

  light in my hands.

  When we tried our skill

  at swimming,

  I left them blowing

  bloody snot.

  Apparently he held his opponents underwater so long the vessels in their nostrils burst.

  Two Vikings in the Saga of Egil One-Hand competed in sword fighting: “They went ashore and tested each other’s skill, and they were nearly an equal match”—despite one of the fighters having only one hand. “In the evening, they all sat down and drank together, before going to sleep for the night. In the morning, the two took up their weapons again and fought strongly, each of them destroying three shields. By then the sun was due south. Then Egil One-Hand said, ‘Do you want to play this game any longer?’” When neither won after a third round, they dropped their swords and wrestled, ending up fast friends.

  As the final step to becoming a Birka warrior, Hervor likely swore to a set of rules like that of the legendary Jomsvikings. Based at Jomsborg, a fortress town founded around 950 by the Danish king Harald Bluetooth, on the Baltic Sea in present-day Poland, the Jomsvikings were a professional fighting unit. Members had to be older than eighteen and younger than fifty. Each was individually tested: No one was admitted simply for being kin. In fact, kinship—the cause of so many feuds in the Icelandic sagas—was made meaningless. To be a Jomsviking meant casting aside the family honor. If a new member was later found to have killed the close relative of an existing Jomsviking, the saga says, the two warriors were forbidden to fight it out. Instead they must bring their disagreement to the war leader, whose judgment was final.

  Likewise, no Jomsviking was allowed to marry. Scholars of a Victorian mindset have long translated this law as “No man should have a woman in the town” and interpreted it to mean that women were barred from the premises. One calls the warband “a monastic-type existence.” But the words translated as “man” and “woman” can also mean “person” and “wife,” rendering the law “No one should keep a wife in the fortress.” The next law clarifies the situation: “No one should stay away longer than three nights,” making it impossible to carry on any kind of family life. The Jomsvikings may, in fact, have been an all-male warband during the time of the saga. But their law says nothing against warrior women. As elsewhere in the Viking world, members of the warband were drengir (“lads” who followed a leader) or shield-maids of unmarried status, with no conflicting loyalties.

  They were a team: They had one another’s backs. Each would avenge the others. None would run from an enemy of equal strength or weaponry. All loot they won in battle, big or small, they would bring to a central spot to be shared out by their leader. None would speak a word of fear or complaint, no matter how bleak things looked. None would stir up trouble. None would spread rumors but would take any news to the war leader at once.

  Because of their tight discipline, they were the fiercest Vikings of all.

  * * *

  As a Birka warrior, Hervor would have been assigned a weapons chest with a padlock and a key bearing the garrison’s symbol: a falcon. By the mid-tenth century, towns like Birka, based on trade and protected by hillforts, had sprouted from Sweden to the Silk Roads. They dotted the Baltic coastline and punctuated the Russian rivers. These eastern towns were founded, or at least frequented, by the Birka warriors, for all along the trade routes Birka’s falcon motif is found.

  Styled like a stooping raptor, the falcon symbol was forged into the keys’ shafts: Ten falcon keys were found near the padlocked weapons chests of Birka’s garrison; others were found in Finland and Gotland. The Birka falcon decorates brooches and equipment mounts and graces sword-chapes—the decorative metal tips of a weapon’s sheath. Three of Birka’s richest graves (though not Hervor’s) contained falcon sword-chapes. Matching copies have been found in graves of similarly rich armed merchants in nearly every fortified town between Birka and Kyiv.

  A mold for casting falcon sword-chapes was found in Birka’s town center, though they were made elsewhere as well, for sixty-seven falcon sword-chapes are known altogether, with some small variations in design. One was found in the west of France, a few were scattered in Norway and Denmark, but the vast majority come from Sweden, Finland, the Baltic States, Russia, and Ukraine. They are immediately recognizable. They proclaimed that the sword’s bearer belonged to an elite group of warriors. They may have proclaimed, too, an allegiance to Freyja, in her guise as goddess of war. As well as claiming half the slain, Freyja could take on the shape of a falcon.

  A key, sword-chape, and brooch displaying the falcon symbol, found in Birka, Sweden.

  To fill her weapons chest, if she did not already have everything she needed, Hervor would have been issued weapons. Those that archaeologists found buried in the remains of the Warriors’ Hall, which was burned down and abandoned sometime between 965 and 985, were “plain and functional, without ornament or inlays,” meant for battle, not display. There were at least five different kinds of axes, and every type of spearhead imaginable, some meant for javelins (throwing spears), others for the larger lances (thrusting spears).

  Hervor might have been issued a ring-woven shirt, or ringmail byrnie: A great variety of iron rings, in various shapes and sizes, were found in the burned-down hall. Or she might have been given lamellar armor, made of small, thin plates of iron stitched onto a leather backing. On the hall floor, archaeologists found hundreds of lamellae in eight different designs. These match no other armor designs known from the Viking Age. They may have come from Byzantium or from the steppes of Central Asia, whose nomads wore similar armor. Helmet fittings were also found, though no complete helmets. Viking helmets are surprisingly rare archaeological finds, with only two known worldwide. The Birka helmet fittings, of gilded bronze, are decorated with lines of birds flanking a tree. The pattern looks Byzantine, though it does not match any helmet mounts from the emperor’s own workshops.

  The type of scramasax found in Birka, a “rare and prestigious” single-edged knife about twenty inches long, was also of Eastern origin. It was quite showy, hanging horizontally, via metal rings, from an elaborate belt that was studded with bronze or silver mounts; the knife’s leather sheath was decorated with matching ornaments. The scramasax was likely not a weapon every Birka warrior was issued, but instead a status symbol to be won or earned.

  * * *

  The most important weapon of the Birka warrior, however—as well as the most unusual—was the bow. Birka’s defenses were designed for the bow. Archers on horseback policed the barricades blocking the water approaches to the island, sending intelligence back to the town. Archers on ships drove the enemy into the town’s harbor, from which stakes and pilings made it hard for them to flee. Archers on the wall walks could shoot facing both outside and inside the ramparts of town and fortress—turning both enclosures into death traps. Archers in every situation were trained to shoot continuous showers of deadly—sometimes flaming—arrows to make the enemy panic. Hervor was buried with twenty-five spike-headed, armor-piercing arrows. Quivers of the kind buried in other Birka warriors’ graves could hold sixty arrows. If each member of Birka’s garrison was an archer, and each archer had a quiver of sixty arrows, an attacker would face well over two thousand projectiles—and who’s to say each Birka warrior had only one quiver?

  An attacker might not expect the range, accuracy, or speed of Birka’s archers, for they were not using the plain wooden bows common in the North. At least 10 to 20 percent of the town’s garrison used Magyar bows, the signature weapon of the steppe nomads who populated lands from the Danube east to the Caucasus. These horn bows, or composite bows, have been called “the most effective weapon in existence
before the advent of the gun.” They are not the simple shaped sticks of a northern bow, a weapon anyone with a knife can make in a day and use, after the wood dries, in a week. A Magyar bow can take a full week to fashion and months to dry. It is a laminate of wood, bone, horn (preferably from a Hungarian gray cow, though goat or sheep will do), sinew (the shredded tendons of a horse or deer), glue (made from those same tendons, boiled, or from the gas bladders of fish), and leather or bark. It has a core of hard maple wood, steamed into shape; a grip and ear-tips of bone; plates of horn glued to its belly (the side nearest the archer) for stiffness and strength; and sinews glued to its back (the side facing the target) for elasticity. Leather or bark is used to waterproof critical parts. At least one of Birka’s artisans knew how to fashion a Magyar bow, for a replacement bone ear-tip was found when archaeologists excavated the town.

  A Magyar bow is a recurve bow. Looking at one at rest, unstrung, a neophyte might see a clumsy arc, like an ordinary bow made inexpertly, and try to string it backward—breaking it. Stringing it properly is tricky as well. “If a person who is unskillful or weak attempts to recurve and string one of these bows,” wrote an archer in 1831, “if he take not great heed, it will spring back, and regain its quiescent position; and, perhaps, break his arm.” According to a modern archer, to string one requires “arms and shoulders strong enough to do a one-arm pull-up.” But stringing the bow was not a daily task: A recurve bow is not weakened by storing it strung. The standard bow case was a stiff leather holster, letting a warrior on horseback keep a strung bow looped to her belt, ready for battle.

  Hervor, if she was already a fine archer before arriving at Birka, as I suspect, may have understood at a glance the mechanical advantage of the Magyar bow’s complex curves; if not, one demonstration by an Eastern-trained archer would be enough to convince her. A large Magyar bow, about four feet long, is two-thirds the size of an English longbow, considered the best of the Western wooden bows. Yet this Magyar bow can kill at 800 feet—twice the killing range of the longbow. An Eastern archer can hit a bull’s-eye, repeatedly, at 250 feet out, and can wield the bow from the back of a galloping horse or the rolling deck of a ship as easily as from a hillfort’s arrow loop.

  A skilled Western archer, like Hervor, could pick up and shoot a Magyar bow with no special training. She could even use her own arrows. But she wouldn’t match the Eastern archer’s accuracy, range, or firing rate unless she learned a new way to shoot. Releasing the bowstring with a thumb—protected by a ring of horn, bone, or bronze—instead of using two or three fingers, as Westerners do, makes the arrow fly faster, resulting in quicker and smoother firing. Thumb-ring archery lengthens the archer’s draw, giving the arrow more force and allowing it to fly farther or penetrate a close target more deeply.

  Then there was the Eastern archer’s closed quiver. A metal-reinforced box of stiffened leather, it hung by two straps from the archer’s belt, slanted forward, with the arrowheads—seeming so completely wrong to a Western archer—pointing up. It took practice to learn to grasp an arrow without jabbing your hand. But once you’d mastered the motion, you could much more quickly reload your bow. Expert archers could grab a handful of arrows at a time and feed them smoothly onto the bowstring.

  Some Birka warriors were buried with closed quivers—the metal loops used to fix these quivers to a belt were found. More such fittings were found, as well, in the burned-down Warriors’ Hall, along with a well-used copper-alloy thumb ring. The wear on the ring shows the archer was right-handed. Hervor’s grave shows no signs of either thumb ring or closed quiver. The bow Hervor was buried with could have been a Magyar bow. But, if so, she did not shoot it in full Eastern style. To switch from grasping arrows over the shoulder, feather end up, to at the hip, tip end up, required years of retraining—years Hervor apparently did not have.

  17

  THE KAFTAN

  From the back, it looks like wings. She can’t see it on herself, of course, but she’s seen it on enough others around town: broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, tight at the wrist. When she raises her arms the long sleeves burst from her back like the wings of a falcon. It is an elegant look—but also functional, allowing her upper body a complete range of motion, perfect for an archer.

  Wrap-style and double-breasted, her new riding coat, or kaftan, as they call it, is tailored with tiny stitches from twelve pieces of fine, bleached linen. The women who did the work, she notices, have hands differently shaped from her own, their small, slender fingers padded with needle calluses.

  Some kaftans have a row of bronze buttons down the front; Hervor chose a less-expensive fastening of twisted-fabric frogs. All are also meant to be belted: Stuffed humps or lumps are sewn in where the jacket meets the skirt, for her swordbelt to rest on.

  Some are completely lined with fur, but Hervor chose a lining of padded linen. She’d rather keep her woven wool cloak clasped at her shoulder for warmth.

  Some kaftans are high-necked, some have wide, folded lapels. Hers is the most distinctive, she thinks: asymmetrical, with one side standing high, the other folded down.

  Some kaftans have skirts that fall to midcalf; others graze the ankles. Hers barely reaches her knees and, like all the others, is slit to make mounting a horse easy.

  And, like all the other kaftans from this workshop, her coat’s every edge, inside and out, is adorned with two-inch-wide strips of glossy silk woven with silver threads in brilliant patterns. For added shine, the Birka tailors stitched on tiny sequins of mirrored glass to catch the light.

  * * *

  With a wool tunic or a loose linen shirt beneath it, slim or baggy trousers, and boots, the kaftan was the uniform of the Magyars and other horse archers from the Asian steppes. In its basic design, this nomadic style had remained unchanged for centuries: The kaftan’s long sleeves, wide at the shoulder, slim at the wrist, were set in with triangular side pieces that gave the garment its distinctive winged shape.

  Many Birka residents—not only the town’s Eastern archers—were buried in this style of dress. Of fifty male burials with costume remnants, only ten show no traces of Oriental style. Archaeologists uncovered rows of small bronze buttons. Elaborate silver- and gold-wire braids and twisted knots. Ornate belts festooned with bronze or silver ornaments—often one belt for a blade and another for bow and quiver. Fancy purses with distinctive bronze frames and closures.

  Sixty-three graves excavated in Birka contained fragments of silk, most of it datable to Hervor’s time. Despite the poor state of preservation of these scraps, the town is to Viking Age archaeologists “the queen of silk sites.” They can trace Birka’s silks to the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea, to the Eastern Islamic caliphate with its capital in Baghdad, to Byzantium, and even to China.

  Since cloth did not last well in Birka’s acidic soil, archaeologists look to the East to imagine how these silk garments were styled. They find matching buttons, braids, and belts in eighth- to tenth-century burials in the Caucasus Mountains, particularly at a high-altitude site known as Moshchevaja Balka, or Ravine of the Mummies, where textile preservation is spectacular. The riding coat worn by Hervor, as the bits of silk found in grave Bj581 suggest, may have looked like one found in this ravine and now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. This particular kaftan, with the asymmetrical neckline I’ve described in the scene above, was completely lined with squirrel fur, the silk strips edging its every seam in a mixture of patterns in brilliant reds and blues.

  The same sewing technique used in the Caucasus and in Birka was found in the Oseberg ship burial in Vestfold, Norway. Across the Viking world, silk fabric was cut into strips and stitched back together, like piecing a quilt, to make an explosion of color and contrasting designs—and a declaration of its wearer’s wealth and status. Silk strips were used for collars, cuffs, hems, ribbons, and trimmings: One linen sleeve found in Moshchevaja Balka is trimmed with horizontal stripes of contrasting silk bands from cuff to shoulder.

&
nbsp; In the town of Pskov, on the border of Estonia and Russia, a complete woman’s outfit in the traditional Viking style was found, rolled up around two oval tortoise brooches and stuffed into a birch-bark container. It consists of an underdress and an apron, both of blue linen, beautifully decorated with silk. When the archaeologists cleaned and laid out the silk strips, they were surprised to recognize the pattern: It was a popular design, a hunting scene said to represent Prince Bahram Gur, who ruled Persia in the fifth century. The same silk pattern is found on the throne of Saint Ambrose in Milan, in the tomb of Saint Kunibert in Cologne, in the binding of a gospel in Prague, and in the Viking Age graves in the Caucasus.

  The silk strips sewn on the Pskov costume contained two repetitions of Prince Bahram Gur’s hunt. The piece of cloth was originally about forty inches long and eighteen inches wide. The fabric was cut into strips a little under two inches wide and used to trim the hems and cuffs of the long-sleeved underdress. Clearly the tailor who made the outfit couldn’t care less about the prince or his story: Sometimes the scene was sewn on upside down. What was important were color and shine. Combined with two other types of silk, the prince’s pattern formed a brilliant panel along the apron top, with the shiny red-violet silk of the hunt scene flanked by bands of bright blue-green.

  * * *

  In the first book I wrote about Vikings, I described the queen buried in the Oseberg ship as dressed in “wool and silk and linen. Light, supple fabrics that clung to her form and draped elegantly.” A critic scoffed. “How would Vikings get silk?” And, indeed, colorful silk does not fit the image modern media give us of Viking couture. Nor does it fit the image given us by the Icelandic sagas.

  For two hundred years, from about 750 to 950, the trade routes from Birka down the Baltic Sea to Russia, then along the rivers and through the steppes to the Silk Roads, were well traveled. By the time the sagas were written, in the 1200s, they had been forgotten—as had the Vikings’ taste for gaudy silk fabrics in clashing colors. Only a few silk garments in the stories stand out. At a Yule feast in Norway in the mid-900s, Arinbjorn gave his friend Egil the Poet a long silk gown; it was called a “slider” because its hem touched the ground. It was a kingly gift: The equivalent gift Egil gave in return was a ship’s sail. “Arinbjorn had had this slider made to fit Egil’s size,” says the saga. It was “sewn all over with gold thread and had gold buttons all the way down the front.” We get a sense of just how much silk was involved later on, when Egil’s son borrowed the coat to make a grand entrance at the yearly assembly in Iceland. It was so long on him that “it dragged along the ground and got all covered with mud when he took part in the procession to the Law Rock.” When Egil saw the damage, he considered his slider ruined.