The Viking Sword from Vik - A 1000 Year Old Heirloom?

This summer, I had the pleasure of staying in a 18th century farmhouse, high in the slopes overlooking the historic valley of Gudbrandsdalen, Norway. There was much to be loved about it: Fragrant mountain air, smelly local pultost cheese, juniper ale, the screaming ghosts of Scottish mercenaries, and my favorite person at my side. Simple amenities only added to the charm.

Our hosts were a family of sheep farmers, though the old man who originally bought the farm back in the 1960's had since retired. Now spending his days weeding the carrot patch, and taking ritual weekend baths in his outfarm sauna. To call him a hippie would be too easy, though one might say he had a few of the associated qualities. He seemed like a character who sees the world around him with a grounded, but keen eye, laughing lots, always reading the landscape. He was courteous enough to show us around a bit, wording his concerns about climate change and how it had visibly affected the valley over the past few decades, pointing out ridges where old footpaths and shortcuts were slowly being erased by overgrowth.

The enthusiastic storyteller served up various tidbits of local history, which was highly welcome in our company. After all, visiting historical sites was half the motivation for our trip, and many gems are all too easily overlooked in a landscape as rich as Central Norway's. The candid perspectives of a local guide can't be beaten.

Surveying the landscape from the steep hillside, he pointed to a bend in the bottom of the valley where the Lågen river snakes Southwards. It was the farm Vik - apparently the birthplace of Saint Olaf, according to local legend. While it's hardly the first place to make the claim, I was unaware of this one. First and foremost, I knew the area as an important pagan cult center, associated with the Thor-worshiping chieftain Dale-Gubrand and his estate, Hundorp, further south.

Vik, 1907. Photo: Hans H. Lie / Maihaugen

I would later realize that I did know about this farm, Vik, after all. It was memorable for an entirely different reason, one that the old man had left out:The Vik sword, which is one of the most peculiar stray finds of Norwegian archaeology, though the term "find" is hardly a fitting description for an item that was never actually lost to begin with.

The Vik sword, an ancient heirloom?

In 1872, the Trondheim Museum of Science came in possession of a very special sword. It was of a kind that would later be dubbed a Petersen type Q sword of continental production, imported to Norway some time in the 10th century. That in itself does not particularly set it apart from other Viking Age swords, as most non-single-edged swords were imported. This one particular sword, however, is uniquely set apart by the fact that it shows no sign of ever having been in the ground. Presumably, it was passed down as an heirloom for just a hundred years shy of a millennium before it came into the hands of archaeologists, who described it with the following, brief words:

Sword of the typical Younger Iron Age shape, but peculiar in that it is entirely unscathed by rust, as it has not been in the ground. The blade is 31'' long, aprox. 2'' broad above. The fuller stops 2 1/4'' from the tip. The hilts are robust and slightly curved, 4'' and 2 1/4'' long. No upper pommel. 3 1/2'' between upper and lower guard. Been kept at Vik in Gudbrandsdalen in the old cottage that the legend calls St. Olaf's.

(Link to the catalog entry here)

Let's stop again for a moment and consider how baffling this is: First of all, most Viking Age swords are found in mortuary contexts. Those that are not, are often stray, accidental finds made in association with agricultural activity and construction. Most of these these, too, were likely put in graves that have since been erased. 

Though the majority of viking swords were in fact produced on the continent, in the Frankish Empire or elsewhere, they are exceedingly rare to find outside of Scandinavia, or wherever Norsemen settled. This is almost entirely thanks to Viking Age mortuary practices, where swords were taken permanently out of circulation by being put in the ground, allowing archaeologists to find them later on. Wherever else, their metal was eventually re-purposed. Statistically, the odds of a sword changing hands continuously for a thousand years in a small, rural community is nothing short of a miracle.

The Vik sword (T921). Photo: NTNU

Recently, another miracle discovery was made in the highlands by Lesja, not far from the area in question, where a Viking Age sword of amazing condition had spent over a thousand years in a glacier, owing its condition to a combination of sub-zero temperatures, and a sheltered, well ventilated spot between the rocks. Despite this, it's got nothing on the from Vik in terms of conservation.

Though they might exist, I am not aware of any examples quite like it. There are however other artifacts which have been ascribed a similar provenance. One famous case being the so-called King Olaf's Helmet, a relic taken from Trondheim to Sweden in 1564, during the Northern Seven Years' War. In reality, it never belonged to the martyred king, and neither is it viking helmet, but a 15th century sallet, forged some 450 years after king Olaf's death. 

In the humorous 19th century travelogue Three in Norway (by two of them), one of the two English narrators mention a visit to the farm Bjølstad in Heidal, which is right up the road from Vik. There their host Ivar Tofte (amiably nicknamed Bluebeard) presented them with a similar curiosity during a tour of the estate:

Bluebeard first took us through the state apartments, which contained many curious and interesting things of all ages, from an axe nearly a thousand years old, to a Birmingham plated teapot won at the Christiania horse show in 1860.

Of course, we don't know whether or not "Bluebeard" was correct: Knowledge about viking weapon typology was still crude in the 1880's, nearly 40 years before Jan Peteren published his dissertation on the chronology of Norwegian viking swords. As the story of the helmet of Saint Olaf proves; people without the help of modern archaeology couldn't be trusted to identify an object less than a hundred years old, let alone a thousand.

It's doubtful that a farmer would have been able to determine the age of a viking axe without consulting a specialist, which could also have been the case. Ivar Tofte seems to have been well connected, and was apparently somewhat of a local bigman. However, he could also have relied on local legend and hearsay when he claimed it was "almost a thousand years old". The authors go on to mention that he claimed descendance from Harold Fairhair, another important king, and ancestor of Saint Olaf.

It's speculative, but it makes me wonder if the more well-off farmers around the Gudbrandsdalen valley kept such artifacts to give credence to their claims of legendary ancestry. Demonstrating ties to the Norse past was very fashionable at the time, after all, with Norwegian identity going through a veritable renaissance. This was a time where formerly obscure pieces of Norse literature now being translated and widely distributed. Whatever the fate of the axe: No such artifact from Bjølstad is mentioned in the public record. 

Bjølstad in 1926. Riksantikvaren.

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Barbarian Beverages: The Noble Savage - a simple cocktail with an archaeological twist

While recording the latest, third, episode of the Brute Norse Podcast, me and my guest Aksel Klausen strayed into a long digression about one of our favorite subjects: Drinking culture in the past. The act of drinking is, as I've mentioned elsewhere, a deeply symbolic act. What, where, and how we drink unveils our identities, and often our taboos. Drinking correctly can earn you social prestige, but drinking inappropriately has a wider range of possible outcomes, from the carnivalesque to the abhorrent. Next time you go to a party, bring wine and drink it out of a ceramic mug, or a jar. It will raise questions.

Drinking is socially stratified: For example drinking beer was considered somewhat antithetical to drinking wine, historically. I am thinking of my own, native Norwegian society, but it could apply to many other places too. Beer was unpretentious, but also not "cultured". Today, it does not always make sense to talk about beer in broad terms: It's been accepted as the rich culinary expression it is.

With this came an admittance that beer is also culture - obviously, there was never a point where it wasn't. Even the archetype of the village drunk is a saturated cultural expression. What we're really talking about, is shifting perceptions of what constitutes high and low culture.

Anyway, the dichotomy of beer against wine has ancient roots: Wine drinking cultures, such as ancient Rome and Greece, have tended to perceive beer drinking as barbarian, or at the very least vulgar. Bavarians obviously see no stigma in the consumption of beer, while prohibition era Iceland eventually made exceptions for wine and hard liquor (you might say that Nordic drinking culture was spiritual, wink wink), but they made no exception for beer which , unbelievable as it may sound, was illegal until 1989. It was branded a gateway drug, which can be compared to legalizing cocaine, but not cannabis. A poignant metaphor given Rekjavík's past (?) reputation as a safe harbor for yuppies, who were all drinking prosecco anyway.

Beer drinking cultures have tended to be less judgmental, though there are certainly examples where proponents of beer culture have accused wine of promoting decadence and snobbery, both today and in the ancient past. In Norse and Germanic society, there seems to have been a social hierarchy of beverages: Beer is good, and mead is excellent, but wine is the stuff of legend. Heroic poems like Atlakvi­ða passionately refer to the glory of the feasting hall, where champions take deep sips from "wine-heavy ale bowls". Talk about hedonism. 

at juellinge in denmark, this roman era woman was laid to rest with roman drinking vessels and a strange concoction.

Under the Roman Influence

A proverbial dip into some of the archaeological evidence for Bronze and Iron Age Nordic beverages, primarily in the form of residue on the inside of drinking vessels and containers, suggest that these Nordic cultures were far from purists when it came to what they drank. The residue bears witness to the spectral presence of berries, malt from beer, and pollen and wax from honey mead. There are also occasional traces of wine, and pitch that could either be used to flavor the beverages, but probably as a sealant for the vessels. Wine, of course, being telltale of contact with the mediterranean.

While it is impossible to tell whether or not all of this was contained in the vessels at once, there are enough of these examples to suggest that people living in prehistoric, Bronze Age, and Iron and Dark Age Northern Europe, consumed mixed beverages, often referred to as Nordic grog by the venerable professor Patrick McGovern, who refers to them in such classics as Ancient Wine, Uncorking the Past, and lastly, Ancient Brews - the most recent addition to his bibliography.

I've not read that last one, but you should definitely read the former if you're interested in history, fermented beverages, the history of fermented beverages, or the fermented beverages of history. Let me rephrase that: If you are culturally conscious person person who eats and drinks, then you should read at least one of these books, or die. If you are a scholar, you should buy Uncorking the Past, sit down with a typewriter, and retype every word of it. You will have grown as an educator by the end of it.

There are a lot of opinions about what constitutes a so-called serious academic. I believe it is one who takes his or her material so seriously, that they cannot help but reach out to the public. Who are unafraid of breaking the mold. McGovern is just that, as his impassioned, amiable writing style demonstrates. His books achieve to be both pioneering academic text books, and page turners.

Anyway, my friend and I were chatting. We were already somewhat tipsy on his homemade Roman inspired mulled wine. An earthy, spicy beverage he had fashioned from amphora-fermented Sicilian nectar. As it ran out we decided to return to our barbarian roots and recreate a drink we'd enjoyed many times before, usually by an open fire under the blushing sky of long Norwegian summer nights. This simple, contemporary interpretation of Nordic grog requires only two ingredients: Red wine and lager beer. 

Our choice of ingredients was unpretentious, in true barbarian fashion. The wine came from a Shetland duty free, apparently branded by the store itself. If I recall, I found it somewhat dry and earthy, yet not too heavy on the tannins. Online reviews absolutely slaughter it. We topped it off with Faxe Premium. This Danish pilsner was a no brainer given the horned viking adorning the can.

The result was, according to the words of my companion, the best of both worlds: A drink that achieves to be both diluted wine, and fortified beer, satisfying Roman, as well as barbarian thirsts in equal measure! Like a patrician in the gutter in the final days of Rome. Mind you, the wine provides a better complement to the beer than the beer does to the wine, leaving a wine-heavy product laced with the light head and tapered fizz of the danish pilsner. While both ingredients matter as they need to balance each other, don't go overboard with the choice of wine. Save your wallet. Even then it feels significantly fancier to drink than the beer would have felt on its own, as it proved to be quite silky and easy on the tongue. 

Recipe: The noble Savage

1 parts dry, young red wine

1 parts pilsner or similar lager beer

Preparation:

1. Chill the ingredients slightly

2. Pour stoically into a glass drinking bowl,

(Alternately: a highball glass)

3. Mix carefully, don't spill a drop!

4. Sip medio-slowly

Suggested pairings:

Cured ham, gift exchange and blood oaths.

If you would like to hear Aksel's favorite recipe for Roman spiced wine, pledge your support over at the Brute Norse Patreon page.

No Better Than The Gods: Divine Incompetence in Norse Mythology and the Shortcomings of Humanity

The gods have made terrible mistakes, it's nothing short of a divine tragedy. We came late in the movie, but the story goes, that by the time man entered the world scene, whether it was as a corrective measure, a supplement to the divine plan, or an act of cosmic love, the world had already started its downward tumble. You see, Norse cosmology describes a world plunged into a dramatic, continuous crisis that will outlast the universe.

As the senile resembles a newborn child, the end must necessarily reflect the beginning. Before the world that you and I live in, there was something else – a non-ambitious chaotic expanse where the giant Ymir lived. But he had to die to accommodate creation. And though the gods were happy for a while, it could not last. The golden age came and went. A world must end for things to return to what they were. A process nobody would survive. The gods of Norse mythology are flawed, like us. And like us they struggle to come to terms with things beyond their control. Incompetent beyond their talents, predestined to fail, doomed to drop cosmic turds where they eat.

It's frequently said that the gods of polytheistic ethnic religions have human qualities. But within the internal logic of these belief systems, it's really the other way around. It's mankind that resembles the gods. What does that imply about us in the context of Norse cosmology, where the gods are aware of future outcomes, yet try and fail to change them? I believe there are indeed a few profound philosophical takeaways.

It seems a certain wistfulness and ambiguity permeated the latter stages of the pre-Christian worldview. It could also be that these sources were curated by medieval Christian scholars who took the introspective, self-critical implications of pagan cosmology as a sign of weakness. We don't know why some eddic poems survived, and others did not, but in many of them the ghost of future doom looms, while ironic tragedy sits at the root of all. Then again, I am prone to sentimental gloom. I have my biases.

The Norse physical cosmos was imperfect, but unlike transcendent religions such as Christianity, there was no heaven, no immaculate and immaterial plane of existence beyond. Instead, the layer cake model of Norse cosmology worked in accordance with the axiom that whatever goes up must also come down. The afterlife, if anything, is like a waiting room for the cosmic reset.

These imperfections were not quite the result of any original sin. It makes more sense to think of them as engineering errors in the supporting structure of reality. The sandy soil that swallows the cathedral. Throughout the sources, the gods appear to make regular mistakes, and it probably goes back to the fact that they lacked the skills or means to make a singular, self-supporting cosmos. Certain things are always out of reach, even to gods.

Ymir is killed by Odin and his brothers

Ár var alda

In the beginning there was the death blow. In Norse mythology, the killing of the cosmic giant Ymir marks the first act of creation. Ymir becomes the first victim, the first product, and the first artifice. The dismemberment of the victim was equal to the parting of earth and sky. The body parts and fluids of the cosmic being were the raw materials of all creation, laid out across the periodic table of the elements. The act of killing as primary creative act, though mythological, is probably telling for how Norse polytheists perceived ontological reality, and I think the metaphor works still: No pain, no gain.

Take a step back and cast one glance at the greater picture, or reach for your nearest physics book. You'll see that perpetuity and permanence are not of this world. Nothing lasts forever. The gods gave their permanence for The World, which is defined by agency and eternal conflict between biological, chemical and geological processes. The world is entirely reliant on competitive balance and antagonism. The gods created the world not as an act of love, but to express their ambition, to spite nature and chaos, represented by the jǫtnar – the giants.

How can there be reconciliation. Gods and giants keep each other in check, like yin and yang. One cannot, should not, defeat the other. The cosmos would not survive as we know it. The world must seem bittersweet to the gods, who are doomed to maintain their creation – yet, the biggest threat is the very ground their creation rests on, as the sinkhole grows ever wider. In the tragic irony of it all, they themselves threaten creation. The world is a twofold and ambivalent place, without the luxury of a clear distinction between good and evil: The gods themselves carry double-edged swords.

Conway's game of life. The fate of each cell is determined by the number of adjacent cells.

The age of man

The most common cosmic denominator in Old Norse is heimr, meaning «home, where something belongs». The universe of Norse mythology is full of such homeworlds. But there is also verǫld – which is a cognate of English world. The etymology concerns us here because it literally means «age of man». Perhaps it is a vestige of a prehistoric, non-linear view of history, where time was cyclical. The latter phase of Norse paganism as we see through our sources, is uncharacteristically eschatological for a polytheistic ethnic religion. It gives the impression that the Vikings were obsessed with the end of the world. They did not believe the world would go on forever, but come to a halt soon enough.

But whether or not this was an indigenous feature of pagan Scandinavia, or a sneaking realization that came to them like a thief in the night, it must refelct how many pagans felt at the threshold of conversion, when the temples were razed, and the idols smashed. The world we see, the Age of Man, is an intermediate phase. It's not the first nor the last. If the mythical poem Vǫluspá, The Prophecy of the Seeress, in its most popular redaction is representative of a pre-Christian timeline of mythical and cosmic events, then man did not even exist during the Golden Age. Mankind is a later invention, perhaps even a trick of the gods, who struggled to maintain their work. As someone to stirr the pot as they tended to business. Whatever their reasoning, the gods were invested in man:

Vǫluspá says the gods were loving – ástgir – when they gave us life. It is noteworthy that this is the only instance in the eddic literature where the gods express love towards mankind. According to mythic time, man has experienced only a glimpse, a mere few frames of the grand cosmic display. Yet if man wasn't present when the world was young, the myths state he will live to see Ragnarǫk. He will witness the end of creation, and the end of the gods. Ragnarǫk comes from regin «the gods», literally «those who keep council» and rǫk, which can mean «something that belongs», or «development, destiny, verdict». This divine verdict is the natural result of the carefully balanced, yet delicate cosmic order. 

Acting against the inevitable

Thor's greatest enemy is Jǫrmungandr, the Midgard Serpent. It's imperative that he fights against it, even though it's coiled around the world, and keeps it from falling apart. Pre-Christian skaldic poets associate the creature with much dread, but Thor is locked in an impossible situation: He has the task of carrying out preemptive strikes against monsters and giants, but this protective function is itself a great threat to cosmic stability. When Odin seeks wisdom and advantage, he does so through self-mutilation and vulnerability. He gives up an eye, commits suicide, starves, and lets himself be taken captive.

Freyr gives up his sword out of love-sickness towards the giantess Gerdr. A compromise that later proves deadly when the giants carry it to the final battle against the gods. The gods sacrifice power, body parts, and technology for the vain hope of an upper hand against the giants. The protector destroys! The god of sexual fertility and social status makes himself and impotent! They are merely stalling. Ironically, it may even seem that all their efforts only serve to enable the coming disaster.

The wisdom they accumulate doesn't help them in the long run. The formula doesn't add up, the norns are drunk behind the spinning wheel. Any Norse and Germanic hero knows that is useless to fight one's forlǫg – the predetermined premise of every life: fate! Surely Odin, who sees everything, must understand that his battle can't be won. He sees everything, yet he is blind to the vanity of effort. He is doomed, yet he tries. How telling, how inspirational. This is wisdom we may draw from the poems Hymiskviða, Vǫluspá, and Skírnismál: All that exists does so at the expense of something else, and must be absorbed by something else once it ceases to be. The world clock ticks ever on towards the hour of entropy. The existence of the subject affects the existence of the object. There is no such thing as free lunch – everything has its price.

Thermodynamics and mythical reality

The root of this sad state runs deep. It goes all the way back to the Bronze Age, when Proto-Indo-European pastoral nomads scattered across Eurasia on horseback. Not wholly unlike the gods, these riders were armed not only with superior technology, but with martial ideologies and a will to power unlike anything else. A culture that realized that nothing comes from nothing, that nothing is forever, and that destruction is a sibling of creation. Though harsh as it first may seem, the thought is actually a beautiful one. An undivided theory of nature, a holistic space of equal parts joy and sorrow. Birth, death, and rebirth were allies then. Subjectively speaking, and this is a subjective essay, I believe there are truths in these ideas. Some less comfortable than others. To live includes the anguish of choice. And it is a recognizable feature to many Western cultures still. In many Western democracies, not voting is presented as an immoral lack of action. It is an expression of this line of reasining, that you should prefer the terror of choice over the comfort of inaction. Norse religious practice itself was not overtly speculative, but based around cult, ritual and sacrifice. Do ut des, something for something. I give so you may give in return.

The above view of reality, which I associate with a certain existential wistfulness, is not dreadful but conductive of a certain drive of longing. Action is a consequence of the natural order of things, and the view seems supported not by the Eddas, but also in the concept of prakṛti in Hindu philosophy. Prakṛti means «nature», and states that all things stand in relation to creation, preservation, and destruction. By analogy my mind drifts to the Norse concept of eðli, which may be translated as any living creature's innate nature, essential traits and tendencies, individually and categorically. The word is related to the contemporary Scandinavian word 'edel' (Old Norse aðal) meaning «noble, pure». It is the eagle's eðli that it flies higher than many other birds, to take a real example of its use in the sources. It would also apply to the fact that humans dream, create artifacts, and speak.

When the gods bound the Fenris wolf, they first needed to exhaust something – his fetters were fashioned from the breath of fish, women's beards and the roots of the mountains. These things are depleted, they no longer exist. But even this was ultimately not enough to contain the beast. There is still no such thing as a free lunch.

Gotlandic picture stone, c. 6th century

Ragnarok as inner struggle

As I've already gone into, man appears as a theomorphic being. That is to say, we resemble the gods, with all their faults and humiliations. We cannot naturally exceed our blueprints, or their faults and merits. We have our own demons to battle, and World Serpents to lift. We suffer in the crossfire of a deadly battlefield, wedged between the un-nature of lofty, self-righteous gods on the one hand, and the non-culture of cruel, venomous giants. This is the field of reality. If there feral meadowlands were kept in check, they would strangle the cultivated field. But a field unchained, which is a notion belonging in myths of bygone golden ages, where wheat fields sowed themselves (not unlike wild flora), would do equal harm to nature. In this day and age, the question is not whether or not such a field can exist, but how to keep GMOs from destroying ecosystems. This is far from a golden age.

If man derives from the gods, then we should recall that the gods themselves have giant ancestry. Reptile brains that betray the so-called better angels of our nature, grappling with the selfish gene of civilization. It's revealing that when Thor first raised his hammer to crush the serpent's head, their eyes met in symmetrical opposition – like mirror images of each other. The gazer into the abyss and the abyss that gazes back. Thor would finally kill the serpent at Ragnarǫk. In Vǫluspá it is in fact the very last thing that happens before the sun extinguishes, and the earth sinks into the ocean. Stars drop from the collapsing, flaming heavens.

The final blow that ends the universe as we know it, was dealt by its alleged protector. On a microcosmic level, Cultured Man raises the hammer against his own head. He hopes to smash the reptile brain contained within himself, where his urges and most primal, savage, troll instincts dwell. Seeking to beat the life out of the giant of Natural Man, the pre-human hominid, or troll man, in the heat of the moment unable to realize that he would only be killing himself. Man is himself ambiguous. He always struggles with the real and ideal, against the healthy and the unhealthy.

He struggles to balance the beautiful, true, and good, against that equal portion of his self that pertains to the ugly, false, and bad. That which unites beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false, the good and the bad, that is truly sacred.

The Faustian eddas

A common feature of many old cultures is that the world was perceived through the lens of biological processes. The German philosopher and speculative historian Oswald Spengler was inspired by this sort of thought when he published his magnum opus, The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), in 1918. He suggested that human society mirrored the cycle of life and death, very much like we may perceive it in nature. Like a flower, cultures grow, bloom, then ultimately; they die.

Spengler considered civilization to be the final stage before a culture dies. Western civilization would be no different, though it might be too vain to realize it. In the eyes of Spengler, cultural decline is like a body that withers in old age. The ruins of the modern West will sooner or later adorn the museums alongside Assyrian bas-reliefs. A melancholy, but beautiful idea in its own way.

Spengler asserts that the tragic soul of each culture is embedded its archetypes, in their folk heroes and the beings they communicate with in their popular narratives. In his gallery of civilizational archetypes, the spirit of the West belongs to the archetype of doctor Faustus, the misguided alchemist who met his demise in accordance with the same methods through which he tried to achieve greatness. To Spenglers credit, it would seem that the Western world does tend adopt a can-do sentiment where whatever problem and obstacle is simply a symptom of transition, a childhood illness, that everything will work out if we just keep on trucking. Thereby not realizing that the transition is not temporary, all is flowing, all the time.

Thor's Fight with the Giants (Detail), Mårten Eskil Winge.

Like the audience of a play, we observe that Odin and the good doctor Faustus should know better, yet the ironic fruit of their actions is lost on them. But we might realize that we are not so different. That the story is really our own. Laugh or cry, the means by which we survive in our day-to-day lives, and as a society, triangulate our ultimate ends.

Perhaps subconciously planned obsolecence is part of the eðli, the essence, of sentience. Are we alone in the universe? Drake's equation states that space – according to statistics – should be teeming with life, so where is everybody? The Fermi paradox tries to address this one fundamental problem since, considering the age of the universe, it should be expected that several civilizations possess sufficient technology for interstellar travel. Yet such civilizations are nowhere to be seen. It could simply be that no such life-form has yet survived itself. That they failed some ultimate test, whether they depleted their resources, died in a nuclear holocaust, or otherwise went the way of the dodo.

If so, what are the chances of mankind surviving its own obsolescence? Is life itself Faustian? We may write empassioned transhumanist manifestos, and ceaselessly launch rocket phalluses towards the star-spangled womb of space, but perhaps we cannot escape the ambivalent seed within ourselves.

The gods themselves are not eternal, and man is not destined for immortality. The amoral hero of the epics and heroic lays becomes a hero the moment he goes full circle in realizing his own vanity.  Only in death may he be elevated into godhood, to sit in the high seat and drink with the gods, as the poems describe. And so the tragic hero often bends his head, allowing the blow to occur. If mankind's genealogy is divine, we are no better than the gods.

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Seaweed: An Authentic Viking Age Beer Snack

Few things are as telling about a culture as what, how, and where we eat. The seemingly mundane rituals of our daily meals, whether we skip breakfast, eat out, or prepare decadent dinners in our own homes, each meal is a piece in a cultural puzzle that reveals aspects we might not communicate or consider much in our daily lives.

Food fascinates me, and it's only natural that this fascination extends to my love of the past. For all intents and purposes, the fates wanted it so that culinary history became one of my prime research interests, and particularly the cultural history of drinking. The act of drinking goes far beyond the menial task of consuming liquids. At its best, drinking is the celebration of life and happiness. At worst, it's damnation. This dualism is worthy of investigation!

Whether it is tea or tequila, performative drinking offers a framework for social, political and religious rituals. In the case of alcoholic beverages, it contains an alibi for bonding, even courtship (and seduction), under the assumption that intoxication will undress our true motives and reveal who we really are.

Drinks and delicacies

Drinking fits well in the company of light meals. Bitter coffee or wine is frequently accompanied by chocolate, beer is suitedable for savory snacks, like nuts or chips. This was a truism even in Norse culture, where drinks were accompanied by krásir, a term best translated as "delicacies". It's not entirely clear what these delicacies consisted of, though the 13th century Trójumanna saga names the extravagant luxury of pairing wine with "peppered deliacies" of hens and peacocks.

There's no need to go overboard, though. I've found that beer and red dulse seaweed (Palmaria palmata), or sǫl in Old Norse, make for an excellent duo. Incidently, the combination of dulse and drink (though non-alcoholic in this specific case) saved the life of the infamous 10th century viking and poet Egill Skallagrímsson.

. 

Egill thirsts for life

Throughout his days Egill was haunted by traumatic events and near-death experiences. When his much beloved son Bodvar died driving a load of timber that Egill had purchased, it finally drove him off the bend. He fell into psychosis and holed up in his bedchamber in an attempt to starve himself. However, his daughter Þorgerðr devised a cunning plan: She convinced him she was suicidal too, and sat down by his side, chewing salty dulse seaweed, which she claimed speed up the process. This puzzled her father, who asked for a taste. In fact, it did anything but kill him: Þorgerðr eventually called for a drink of water, which proved too tempting for Egill to resist (the saga paints a picture of a very thirsty man), though he was angry to find he'd been tricked into drinking nutritious milk. Once that was done, the girl compelled him to compose a funerary poem to honor their loss, an elegy, insisting they could well die later if they wished. Yet when the poem was finished, Egill no longer felt like dying. His thirst evoked his poetic passion, and his his passion for skaldic poetry whetted his appetite for life.

Palmaria palmata in the wild. Photo: Secretlondon/Wikimedia Commons.

The new and archaic Nordic kitchens

Despite its millennia old roots in the Nordic diet, dulse sank into obscurity in modern times. For long, the only means of acquiring it was by going to shore at low tide and foraging it yourself. This can be a quite charming activity if you live in a relatively unpolluted coastal area. Seaweed has since resurfaced in the commercial niche of the new Nordic kitchen, and today it is globally available through select online vendors and Nordic specialist markets. 

If for whatever reason dulse is not available where you live, there are many other options. Japanese and asian markets usually offer some variety of kombu or nori marketed for this exact purpose, and high end American supermarkets like Whole Foods may stock a small variety of kelp and seaweeds as well. Ultimately, there is no feeling that can replace the joy of a free, self-harvested batch dried on your kitchen counter. But whether you are foraging for yourself, or opting for a store bought variety, mind your teeth! You'll be wise to search them for small rocks or grains of sand that may be embedded in the surface (this is not a problem with processed nori). Most edible seaweeds make great snacks if you can stomach the ocean-y taste, and sure as hell makes for a healthier snack alternative than most!

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The Brute Norse Podcast ep. 2: What the Romans Did for Us

It's been an indecent while since the last episode of the Brute Norse podcast hit the web. Now that autumn is in the air and I awake from the slothful haze of summer it's time to pick up the speed, and thus I bring you this hour long retreat into the Germanic tribal hinterlands.

The Germanic tribes are often credited with the destruction of the Western Roman Empire. There are no Roman roads in Scandinavia, still the empire resonated in the cultural memory of the Vikings. From Teutoburger Wald to the Taliban, Brute Norse joins forces with Krister Vasshus, PhD student in onomastic sciences at the University of Bergen, to discuss just how far the Roman shadow fell beyond its Northern border.

The episode is now available on Soundcloud and all podcast apps worth their salt. Image courtesy the University of Bergen.

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Archaeologists Enable The Black Market By Destroying Historical Artifacts

These are sad days for Scandinavian museum objects. Last week, 1some 400 objects were viciously burgled from the University Museum in Bergen, in all likelihood bound for the black market. Now, words of lament are howling from across the Swedish border as archaeologists have been forced to destroy artifacts recovered from digs, and objects such as scales, coins, knives, decorated foils, pre-Christian cult objects etc. are sent for scrap metal right on the site, if they are not considered unique enough to warrant conservation. Apparently too precious to own, but not to precious to be thrown.

This has already been discussed elsewhere on English language sites that are, diplomatically speaking, more tendentious in disposition, and where it plays right into the hands of a narrative where Sweden is on a masochistic binge to erase its own cultural memory to better accommodate swarthy hordes from across the sandy dunes. This will not be yet another article about that, but you cannot help but think that with this legislated destruction of their own cultural heritage, Sweden is not doing a very good job at combating the stereotypes pinned against them.

Let's add some much needed nuance: To my understanding, the destruction is for the most part carried out by private companies sourced to conduct routine and emergency digs on behalf of state archaeologists. Additionally, the items bound for the grinder are usually of negotiable historical value. These are digs that are often done in association with construction work, which none the less make up the bulk of Scandinavian digs, to the point where contemporary Nordic archaeology is more or less synonymous with highway projects and the like. Sweden, however, is unique in its employment of private archaeological companies for such tasks.

The fun thing about archaeology is that you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes you get little, sometimes you get a lot. This rings particularly true when it comes to emergency digs, in which the lack of time necessitates many tough choices. I'm sure more than a few artifacts and their contexts have met an untimely demise at the hands of such gambles, but it's debatable whether or not this is problematic if they would have been obliterated by machinery anyway.

Blasting the past

It's not unheard of to find examples of house remains, burials, or even cult sites where archaeologists can do little but step back and let the bulldozers in. In my hometown, there is the particularly grim example of the destruction of the Bronze Age burial mound at Tjernagel. A site unique not only for its impressive size, but for the fact that it's referenced in a skaldic poem from the beginning of the 11th century. The 3000 year old mound was destroyed in 1983 to make room for a since decommissioned radio transmitter. As baffling as this might seem, such practices have generally been accepted sacrifices on the altar of societal infrastructure.

However, extending this logic to artifacts is a new turn, or should I rather say; shockingly old. Especially considering that contemporary archaeology explicitly distances itself from its antiquarian roots in the 19th century, where conservation was entirely up to the excavators  who could more or less scrap whatever they saw fit. Deliberate destruction was not entirely unheard of, either, as the fate of the 8th century Storhaug ship shows. Buried in a massive mound on a particularly fertile stretch of farmland on my own native island of Karmøy, it was Excavated in 1886 by Anders Lorange. The Storhaug ship is estimated to have been at least 27 meters long. Three meters longer, and a century older, than the Gokstad ship. Lorange had no idea what to do with such a find, so he rounded up the artifacts and let the local peasants tear the ship apart for firewood. 

A child of his time, for sure. I have not met a sane archaeologist that didn't roll their eyes at Lorange's choice of action, so it's shocking to me that any Scandinavian archaeologist would return to the antiquated practice of scrapping artifacts they don't consider beautiful or important enough to save. You know, I really don't want to be one of those argument-by-current-year sort of people, I really do. But that sort of practice would hardly be tolerated in 1917 archaeology, let alone 2017.

The reasoning behind the choice to destroy these artifacts lies with the fact that museum stores are filled with metal objects of negotiable public interest. Okay, they better be filled to the brink, to the edge of absolute collapse, because the case applies to all the other Nordic countries, or Western Europe for that matter, but so far I've yet to see anybody else making screws and bottle openers out of Viking Age iron. The world may be headed off the deep end, we don't need to enforce such dystopian levels of recycling just yet.

It's been pointed out that most of the recycled material is more recent, modern trash that archaeologists are under no obligation to conserve. But there is an obvious paradox in the fact that, in theory, pocketing a rusty nail is a criminal offense but throwing it in the trash is not.

Absurdly, Sweden is the only Scandinavian country that allows private archaeological companies to perform such excavations, but it's significantly harder to acquire a private permit to use metal detectors there than it is in Norway or Denmark. Sweden banned unlicensed use of metal detectors in 1991 (Swedish archaeologist Martin Rundkvist gives an outline of their legality on his blog). Consequently, Sweden reports the fewest number finds from private detectorists, while the opposite is true for Denmark, which appears to be winning the karmic game as far as conservation goes. Whether or not metal detectors should be subject to draconian restriction is debatable, and is only relevant to this discussion as far as it relates to the black market. It's possible to argue that Sweden's restrictive legislation in itself serves as an enabler to so-called nighthawks. That is antiquarian slang for illicit detectorists. 

The economy of destruction

Like the destruction of ivory, there is every reason to believe that destroying archaeological artifacts increases their perceived market value, even though they have never been legally obtainable to the public in the first place. With news spreading like wildfire about archaeologists destroying their own finds, the topsy-turvy world of Swedish archaeology finds itself in the situation where nighthawks may choose to claim a moral high ground. It is ironic and utterly inexcusable that artifacts have a better chance of surviving in the illicit market, than in the hands of archaeologists. If given the choice between seeing such items destroyed by the excavation teams, or sold privately, I would see them used as paperweights or mantle pieces in a private home any day. If museums can't even find a shoe box to keep them in, they might as well hand out licenses and auction them off legally. Any fate is preferable to legislated vandalism. If this is how the laws simply are, then one could argue that the laws regulating Swedish conservationism are long overdue for reconsideration. If the core of the matter lies with the fact that Swedish museums are criminally underfunded, then all the more reason to raise concerns.

It is particularly idiotic and counter-productive because archaeologists have been struggling to make themselves understood by the public for well over a hundred years. Archaeologists across Scandinavia struggle enough to communicate with landowners as it is, and this will only perpetuate the vilification of archaeology that is still prevalent in Scandinavian agricultural communities. The message these actions are sending out, is one where not only will archaeologists rip up your yard, but they might destroy whatever they find too. By standardizing last resort actions, they have created means for the black market justify itself, and where illegal possession of historical artifacts becomes preferable to their destruction.

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Raping The Muses: Burglars In The Bergen University Museum

The other day I was met with a lunchtime read of the dreariest kind: Museum break-in, objects of great historical value stolen, said the headline in my news feed. Consider the picture below if you've never been to Bergen. It is the facade of the Bergen University Museum, specifically the Cultural History Collections, or The Historical Museum as they call themselves these days. Knowing the museum world, cold sweat struck me as I realized the gravity of the situation. After all, I live in Bergen and work for another museum group in the same town. I send tourists their way with warm endorsements, knowing they will have a great experience.

I'm sure we all hoped for minimum losses. That we were up against a clumsily executed crime by some aimless small-timer on an amphetamine bender. That security arrived swiftly, sending the burglar - or burglars - running. If not exactly leaving a trail of coins and flint fragments to follow, then at least some solid footage to identify perpetrators by.

The scene of the crime. Courtesy Bergen University Museum

It was too much to hope for. Assuming there was more than one, the thieves had climbed a scaffold outside the museum (discernible in the picture above) and smashed a window on the seventh floor which, by Odin's knackers, is part of the magazines. I've been up there myself during my brief stint as an archaeology student.

There is some seriously impressive stuff up there, and the timing could not have been worse: The permanent viking exhibit was down and due for reopening later this year. This may mean that many of the artifacts usually displayed downstairs might have been boxed up in the aforementioned storage. In other words, the thieves may have gotten away with a sizeable chunk of some of the museums most recognized treasures.

The dust settles I'm writing this less than a week after the incident, and many questions are still unanswered. Local newspaper Bergens Tidende quoted the museum director, the venerable Henrik von Achen, as saying that the stores dedicated to the safe keeping of Iron Age objects had had been plundered, among them several artifacts from the Migration and Viking Eras. After some initial confusion as to the extent of the raid the museum now reports 2̶4̶5̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶i̶r̶m̶e̶d̶ ̶l̶o̶s̶s̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶w̶r̶i̶t̶i̶n̶g̶. They expect the numbers to rise significantly as the tally continues. [Update 18/08/17: The museum has adjusted the number of losses to 400]

Thankfully, the museum maintains an extensive photo documentation program. Images of confirmed missing artifacts are uploaded to a dedicated Facebook group run by the staff, hoping to ease recovery by raising awareness and reaching out to the public eye. Though English information is somewhat lacking, these pictures say all you need to know: Dozens of tortoise brooches, bracelets, torques, keys, pennanular brooches, horse tacks, insular fittings, vessels, trefoil brooches, hack silver, coins, and amulets are confirmed so far. Who knows what else. Join the group it and see for yourself.

Just two of the many stolen tortoise brooches. Courtesy Bergen University Museum

The questions we need to ask

There are a few serious question to be begged about how this was allowed to happen. Bergen has been plagued by professional art theft in the past, and the sad story of the presumably contracted raid on the Historical Museum in Lund also comes to mind, where precious objects from Uppåkra were lost in 2013. That incident bore all the markings of a professional, well planned burglary. It's less clear cut in the case of Bergen, because the items were practically handed to the burglars on a silver platter - and I'll tell you why.

First of all, the break-in is believed to have taken place some time on Saturday night, which is interesting insofar that it was only discovered about 8am Monday morning. Pardon my Ostrogothic, but if this is true, how the blazing hell does that happen? At first it was claimed that the burglars had executed the break-in without setting off alarms, but it was later admitted that the alarm went off twice. Are the Bergen Museum's security systems so dated that they do not point to a specific floor? How did the security guard fail to notice the broken window? If the burglar consciously set the alarm off twice to simulate false alarm, hiding in the meantime, then security must have fallen victim to the oldest trick in the book. One they should have anticipated. It would be an absolute humiliation to the integrity of the company, for such false positives should have no consequence to security routines - especially at an object of that importance. If this is the case, the guard is obviously not fit for such duties.

How could the construction company be so daft as to not secure the site better? I would presume that security concerns would be part of the work routine, but really, the accountability lies with the museum trusted to keep these artifacts safe. Here's the museological bottom line: The security company screwed up, the construction company screwed up, and they should answer for it, but these were red flags that should have been recognized by the museum itself.

Contrary to the picture, Henrik von Achen isn't pointing any fingers. Courtesy Mette Anthun/NRK.

On that note I must add that the museum handled the situation as honorably as they possibly could. As the director Mr. Achen expressed, no museum suffering a break-in can honestly say that their security measures were good enough, so his integrity can't be questioned in that department. They have taken full responsibility for their own, painful losses. If thieves could be accurately anticipated, these things would obviously never happen, yet it goes to show that an up-to-date, thorough security regime is an undeniable and absolute necessity, because this is the alternative is the exact situation they are up against: There is no security footage, there are no suspects. These fragile artifacts may never be recovered, and some have most certainly sustained some kind of permanent damage. They could be sitting in the back of truck bound for the black market in Eastern Europe, or corroding in a puddle of bong water across town, but really they could be anywhere. Your guess is as good as mine. [Update 18/08/17: Media report evidence pointing in the direction that this was indeed a planned, professional strike. This is congruent with the types of artifacts that were stolen.]

Bergen University Museum is pointing no fingers. I suppose they can't, but as an independent voice, I can. I've worked in museums my whole adult life. I know the meager budget sob story all too well. Bad funding affects the security of artifacts, buildings and, last but not least, the museum work force itself. To update their security - as mentioned, an absolute necessity - I fear many museums will have to make cuts that do damage to other departments. We need artifact security, but job security too. To achieve this, many museums will require better funding, one way or another.

The first, cheapest, and easiest line of security belongs to the attentive museum worker, but while museums and their employees hold the task of protecting our cultural heritage, their ability to do this is remarkably dependent on politicians, and the biggest finger of them all, I shall point at them. Blessed is the museum that runs on ticket sales alone. I've certainly never worked at one. In fact, most museums are at the mercy of either private or government funding. Theft is not the only threat here. It's no secret that many museum magazines simply aren't up to scratch in terms of climatization. Finally I shall also break the taboo of criticizing the public, though I usually try to take their side in heritage matters.

Many Norwegians, spoiled by the nanny state as we tend to be, have entirely unrealistic expectations in terms of the duties and services of museums. As citizens of a heavily taxed social democracy claiming to care about public enlightenment, they expect museums to offer their services cheaply, or even for free. Even though entry fees are comparably cheap here, some will not pay the equivalent of two bus rides, or about 70% the price of a movie ticket to see a national treasure. Simultaneously, governments both past and present relieve themselves of their duties by cutting as much cultural funding as their conscience allows them, preferring to build anew rather than maintaining what they started. Meanwhile, museums who have been asking for decades, don't receive the funds to modernize. Still they are expected to fight off mold and vandals alike, even when they barely have enough to pay their workers in the first place. Relying to a great extent on intermediate positions taken as works of passion, with little to no hope of career development.

Replicas of the lost horns of Gallehus. The National Museum in Copenhagen.

The museum is a sacred space

I extend my condolences not only to the Bergen University Museum, but to the Norwegian public whose cultural memory has been severely pillaged through this deplorable crime. Norway is a small country built on trust, and the benefit of the doubt. These are core ideals, and relevant to the ongoing domestic debate about so-called Norwegian values.

If, by any chance, the guilty party reads this essay, I want to tell you this, cocksucker, that I hope you realize the symbolic gravity of your deed. You stand shoulder to shoulder with the Taliban, who as a gesture of defiance against world heritage, reduced to rubble the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Your are hardly different from the black market speculation and outright destruction carried out by the zealots of the Islamic State. You are a 1:1 scale copy of the crooked goldsmith Niels Heidenreich who stole and destroyed the Golden Horns of Gallehus for the sake of nothing more sacred than his own greed.

Bamiyan. Picture courtesy of the Taliban.

This is what's at stake. Museums are sacred institutions, and I mean this quite literally, not as a trite, literary embellishment. The very term comes from the Greek mouseion (Μουσεῖον), which originally denoted a shrine or temple dedicated to the muses, minor deities of art and inspiration. Museums are temples to the memory of mankind. They are shrines in which we may converse with the past, which grounds us and gives our time and lives context. Offering new and old perspectives alike. Where culture is produced, examined, interpreted, and enjoyed. I'd even wager that beyond visiting the graves of loved ones, and family rites of remembrance, it is the closest thing the Western world has to ancestor worship. While all artifacts have indiscriminate value to the museum, the fact that these items were from Iron Age and Viking Era makes it all the more painful, as these periods have a firm grip on the Norwegian consciousness. The Viking Era being is our founding myth, the Norwegian ethnogenesis, the womb of the nation.

This is not lost on thieves. For artifacts to be recognized in terms of market value, all of the above must be taken into account. But this is nothing compared to the cultural worth of these artifacts. Like a temple, artifacts are deposited and sacrificed. Though they may move from museum to museum, from temple to temple, they must never be fully removed. Art theft is sacrilege. The burglar rapes the muses.

How can you help? By raising awareness, joining the Facebook group, sharing this article, and by keeping an eye open for any suspicious artifacts on the online market. I'm aware several auction houses have been notified. Let's not make it any easier for the criminals.

The Word Cat Didn't Always Mean Cat

“What sort of philosophers are we who know absolutely nothing about the origin and destiny of cats?”

— Henry David Thoreau

When we use the word cat, we tend to think that the word cat is synonymous with felines such as house cats, lions, and tigers. But it wasn't always so. Nobody knows for sure where word cat comes from, but one thing is certain: The word cat does not actually mean cat. This is evident from various compound words in which cat occurs in the Germanic languages. Modern English may tend to be more discriminate about the term, and truly most of us think of the pet variety when we use it in common speech. But there are some revealing exceptions: Pussycat, meerkat, and polecat are all distinctly different animals. Quite a few examples surivive in the Scandinavian languages, and their origins harken back to the Old Norse tongue. The Norwegian røyskatt (stoat), from Old Norse hreysikǫttr (literally "cairn cat") is one example, another is apekatt, which means monkey (literally "ape cat"). Swedish retains the ancient Nordic word for hedgehog, igelkott.

So what is the rationale behind all these unrelated critters being called cats? The only logical explanation is that cat means "small mammal", and furry animals in particular.

Stoat (mustela erminea). Creative Commons

The European wildcat died out in Scandinavia at some point during Nordic Bronze Age (between 1800 and 500 BCE). But domestic cats were present as far North as Poland by the Pre-Roman Iron Age (500 BCE until the start of the Common Era). They reached Scandinavia not long after. It's presumed that the word cat, in its then Proto-Germanic form *kattuz tagged along with the domestic cat from the Roman, Latin speaking south where it was called cattus/catta. The problem is that the select few Latin sources we have for this word are all from the 5th and 6th centuries CE, hundreds of years after cats made it to Scandinavia.

Judging by its form, the word must have come to the Nordic before the i-umlaut raged through the language, which changed the vowel i place names like Kettinge in Denmark. Likewise, it's not entirely clear whether the Latin sources exclusively refer to the house pet that meows and catches rodents, or if they also applied it to other small animals. At any rate, the similarity between the Latin and Proto-Germanic forms cattus and *kattuz is great enough to assume it is a loanword, despite the late attestation.

Carved panel depicting feline creatures on the 9th century Oseberg Wagon. Photo: KHM, UiO

Many things indicate that the word had been on a long journey before it arrived in Scadinavia. Nubian 'kadis' and Berber 'kadiska', words both meaning cat, hint to a possible Afro-Asiatic origin. This makes sense, because the cat was most likely first domesticated in Africa or the Middle East, and was originally unfamiliar to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Perhaps the Romans also changed the name of the animal from felis to cattus/catta when they were introduced to the domestic cat. 

When the cat came to Scandinavia we had other words for felines as well. In Norwegian these survive as lo and gaupe - the lynx. We will never know why didn't they use these words to describe the new, tame, miniature version, but it's doubtful that many purists will lose much sleep over it. The new animal brought economical and hygienic benefits, for example to farmers suffering from mice-infested granaries.

But what about all the other Scandinavian animals that have -katt as a suffix? Norwegian røyskatt, Swedish lekatt, and Danish lækattall denote the same animal; the stoat. Then there is the aforementioned igulkǫttr, which lives on as the Swedish word for hedgehog - igelkott. Ígull is an old Germanic name for the hedgehog, and le-/læ- may be an ancient word for stoat, while Norwegian røys-, meaning cairn, points to where the animal prefers to live. Some have also speculated that Freyja's cats in reality may have been stoats or weasels. European monkeys are comparably small, and as we know from before, monkeys are called "ape-cats" in Norwegian. Today we distinguish between apes, which are big, and monkeys which are small. What all of these animals have in common is the fact that they are small in size, and that they are mammals. Accordingly, we must assume that cat originally meant "a small mammal". Perhaps the reason why only the purring newcomer got the honor of being named cat without a prefix or suffix, is because they didn't know it by any previous name.

Image courtesy Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

This article was originally contributed by Krister SK Vasshus, who is currently a PhD student at the University of Bergen, Norway. It was originally published on Tulen - Brute Norse's Norwegian language predecessor. Translated and re-adapted for Brute Norse by Eirik Storesund.

Further reading:

• Wahlberg, Mats. (2012) Kattens betydelse för våra ortnamn. I: Leibring, Katharina et al. red. Namn på stort och smått. Uppsala, Institutet för språk och folkminnen, Namnarkivet i Uppsala, s. 301-315.

How many dead warriors can you fit in Valhalla? Notes on Viking and Hindu numerology

This is not a clown car joke. Neither is it a rhetorical question. This very subject is actually addressed in a particular stanza of the eddic lay Grímnismál, wedged in between other nuggets of cosmic knowledge. Never heard of it? Let me give you a quick run down.

Grímnismál - The Sayings of the Concealed One

Our story begins when Odin and his wife, the all wise goddess Frigg, were sitting in the high seat Hlíðskjálf, from whence they could observe the entire world. They noticed the brothers Agnar and Geirrǫd, whom they had kept in foster care when they were children. Look, says Odin; Agnar hasn't amounted to anything at all - he spends all his days boning an ogress! Sad. But look at my boy Geirrǫd here! He's a king, he's got his own country and everything! Now Frigg cast eyes on her husband, and told him that hardly had there ever lived a king more cruel: Geirrǫd is the worst host, she said, and he tortures his guests if he thinks the hall is too crowded. That's a damnable lie, Odin snapped back, rolling his eye, but Frigg insisted it was true. Then husband and wife decided to settle it with a wager to put Geirrǫd's hospitality to the test. Odin went to chieftain's hall disguised as a drifter and called himself Grímnir - the concealed one. But Frigg had sent her servant ahead to rig the game against him, and told the king to be weary of the incoming stranger.

As you can imagine, this only served to whet Geirrǫd's curiosity about the old hobo, but Grímnir revealed nothing but his name when asked. Soon enough the host's patience was exhausted. No more mister nice guy, he might have said, as he made a shibari display of Grímnir between two great fires. For eight full nights he was roasted, but still he revealed nothing. Then Geirrǫd's son, called Agnar after his uncle, thought it was too terrible to see an old man tormented like this. He filled a horn with drink and offered it to Grímnir, whose cape was now beginning to catch fire. The captive chugged down the horn's contents, and immediately started spilling some cosmic beans.

This is where the prologue ends and the actual poem Grímnismál starts, with Odin thanking the boy and giving a lengthy description of the structure of the universe, as well as various past and future events. He talks about the various estates of gods and superhuman entities, of divine animals, and how the various sectors of the cosmos connect through a system of rivers emanating from the cosmic spring Hvergelmir. He ends with a list of his miscellaneous identities, revealing himself as none other than the god Odin. Oh shi- Geirrǫd exclaimed as he got up from his chair, leaping to free the prisoner, but instead he tripped and fell on his sword - killing himself. It is said that Agnar lived a long and prosperous life.

The magic of numbers

But long before this, in stanza 23, Odin-Grímnir touches upon the spaciousness of Valhalla, which contains "five hundred and forty doors", and through each there are "eight hundred champions [Einherjar]" who shall pass through them when Ragnarǫk finally comes:

Fimm hundruð dura
ok umb fjórum tǫgum,
svá hygg ek á Valhǫllu vera;
átta hundruð Einherja
ganga senn ór einum durum,
þá er þeir fara við vitni at vega.

Five hundred doors
and then forty more
I think there are in Valhalla;
eight hundred champions
shall walk through each
when they go to battle the wolf.

I love how even Odin struggles to remember what his own house looks like. But what do these numbers really mean, and how many warriors can we actually fit in Valhalla according to this passage? There are two possible answers to this. First of all, the word hundred didn't always stand equal to the number 100 as it does today. In the viking age, as with the middle ages, the Norse number system conventionally thought of a hundred (hundruð) as the sum of twelve times ten. I.e. 120.

This is usually called a long hundred in current English, or alternately a great hundred (Norwegian: storhundre). I first stumbled across this discussion in Andreas Nordberg's influential PhD dissertation called Krigarna i Odins Sal ["The Warriors in Odin's Hall"], where he seems to mention it mostly as a curiosity. A minor detour to his academic road trip of discourse on the aristocratic warrior cult of Odin.

But as I was saying. If the composer of Grímnismál, when saying hundred, actually meant one hundred and twenty in accordance with the oldest convention, then the equation should go like this:

640×960 = 614,400

In other words, Valhalla should be able to fit just about half a million people. That's guests, mind you. I've not taken the waiting and kitchen staff into account, neither have I considered janitors or cleaning ladies. Odin leaves all of that to our imaginations. Never the less it beats the crap out of the Jehovah's Witnesses' measly claim to a full capacity of 144,000 souls in Paradise. However, if for some reason we assume that the author of Grímnismál had our current concept of hundred in mind, that is to say, that one hundred equals 100, then we get a different equation and a far more interesting sum:

540×800 = 432,000

There are a number of reasons why this number is interesting, so keep on reading. First of all we have a similar account of a troop tally in the first lay of Helgi Hundingsbana ("Helgi Hunding's Bane"), in which the hero states there are "twelve hundred trusty men, though in Hátúna ["The High Estate"] twice as many" (stanza 25). Let us do this calculation twice, like we did above, but this time we shall start with the numbers at face value, disregarding our expectation that the author understood "hundred" as the number 120, rather than 100:
 

1200 + 1200×2 = 3600

A very unassuming number indeed. But let's see what happens when we do it again with the archaic long hundred:

1440 + 1440×2 = 4320

That amounts to exactly 1/100 of the number of champions in Valhalla according to Grímnismál, which we saw could fit as many as 432,000 people! But as we recall, this was only when we used the opposite counting system, disregarding the long hundred altogether. So what does this mean? It could be that both poets intended to reach these numbers, but used differing numerical systems to reach them. But why?

432000, multiplications of three, and the Indo-European connection

If you thought this was trippy, you've got another thing coming. The number 432,000 occurs in another, more famous context, namely Hindu texts: 432,000 is the exact number of solar years in the Kali Yuga, which is the final epoch of the Hindu cosmic cycle before the world destroys itself and a new cycle and golde era begins. The entire cycle, by the way, lasts 4,320,000 years according to the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, which it equates to 12,000 "divine years" (120×100). Puranic literature alleges that the Kali Yuga began roughly 5000 years ago, in the year 3102 BC (corresponding roughly with the aegan bronze age), when the god Krishna left his earthly body, having been shot dead by a stray arrow in a hunting accident. Similarly, the Norse god Baldr was shot dead by the blind god Hǫðr, and this too may be considered a point of no return in Norse mythology, opening the path to Ragnarǫk itself.

Nordberg mentions (on page 230) that scholars have been hard pressed to find a plausible connection between these numerical phenomena. There is no evidence for any continuity between these beliefs back to a common Proto-Indo-European origin, apart from the fact that both may draw from a common Indo-European counting system. As for numbers in Indo-European cultures, that's a fascinating subject in itself.

Any fool that ever cast a quick glance at Norse mythology will be struck by the emphasis put on the number three, as well as its multiplications. Particularly the numbers nine and twelve. Gods and other divine beings often operate in units of three, and mythical events are frequently divided into three phases. The same applies to the number nine, like the cosmological concept of níu heimar – the nine worlds – cryptically alluded to in eddic poetry. In the legendary sagas, berserkers frequently appear in groups of twelve, a peculiar principle they share with outlaws and bandits in later Norwegian ballads and folk tales. It's probably no accident that our poem deals with Grímnir being tortured for eight whole nights: Necessarily, he finds respite on the beginning of the ninth day.

As we've already seen, these numbers may be a feature inherited from a common Indo-European source. The study of numbers in comparative mythology recalls the work of the mythographical scholar Georges Dumézil, who alleged that tripartite socio-religious patterns were characteristic of all Indo-European religions, and consequently the Proto-Indo-European culture itself. This formed the basis for social stratification in Indo-European ideology, with a societal hierarchy of priest-rulers, warriors, and producers. To Dumézil, the trinity of Odin, Thor, and Freyr described by Adam of Bremen at the Temple of Uppsala, generally reflect the same ideas and origins as the Hindu caste system, for example.

While Dumézil might be on to something, his model works best if we choose to cherry pick and simplify our body of evidence. For example, the Hindu caste system operates with four rather than three distinct classes. Any overly rigid application of tripartite theory seems bound to fall apart when faced with the inconsistencies and variations of our evidence. Units of three seem universal, but the contents of these units are unstable. But that is a subject for another time.

Wild men and bearded women of the medieval North

Struggling to keep up with the ethnographic trends of the time, medieval Norsemen were also familiar with such creatures. Icelandic and Norwegian scholars demonstrated their access to continental thought by writing books such as Konungs skuggsjá, or "The King's Mirror" if you prefer it by its English title. Which is a 13th century Norwegian handbook in courtly customs (smile a lot, don't pull a knife on the king), street-smartness (don't get drunk, don't be a horndog, rise early), and natural wonders (there's a hot spring in Iceland that tastes like beer). Needless to say it is one of my favorite works of medieval literature.

Among those aforementioned wonders, we find a number of curiosities and facts both true and false from all around the North Atlantic. In a chapter dedicated to the peculiarities of Ireland, the author relates an anecdote from the apprehension of a wild man:

It once happened in that country (and this seems indeed strange) that a living creature was caught in the forest as to which no one could say definitely whether it was a man or some other animal; for no one could get a word from it or be sure that it understood human speech. It had the human shape, however, in every detail, both as to hands and face and feet; but the entire body was covered with hair as the beasts are, and down the back it had a long coarse mane like that of a horse, which fell to both sides and trailed along the ground when the creature stooped in walking. (1917: 110)

One should say that woolly halfwits hardly make the weirdest entry in a book that eagerly encourages its readers to rub whale sperm in their eyes, but don't mind me: Such wild men occur in various cultures across Europe under various names, such as the Old High German schrato and English "woodwose", which likely originated from Old English *wudu-wāsa, or "wood-being". This might recall the Old Norse vættir "nature spirits, trolls", as both share a common Proto-Germanic etymology: *wihtiz meaning "thing, object, essence, creature". Perhaps a euphemism, a taboo name used to avoid naming the creatures directly, as was originally the case with the huldufólk ("hidden people") and hittfolk ("those people") of Nordic folklore.

Stained glass wild man. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Private photo.

Here as always, the world of monsters mirrors the world of men. While the author of Konungs skuggsjá did not doubt that wild men lived in the outskirts of other realms, I can't help but wonder whether he thought it possible that such a creature could be found in his own native Norway. The German medieval chronicler Adam of Bremen offers answers. Adam, whose main claim to fame is his descriptions of the pagan temple at Uppsala in Sweden, also penned some fetching descriptions of the rest of the Nordic area in his Deeds of the Bishops of Hamburg. There he gave the following and rather unflattering account of the Northern Norwegian population in the 1070's:

I have heard, in the rugged mountains that exist up there, that there are women with beards, while the men live in the forests and rarely show themselves. They use the skins of wild beasts for clothing and when they speak, it supposedly resembles snarling rather than speech, so that they are hardly intelligible even to their closest neighbors. (1968: 282 [My own translation])

Interestingly, he goes on to describe the Sami next, or Stride-Finns as he calls them, who are easily the prime victims of literary dehumanization in the Nordic middle ages. Specifically he notes their inability to exist without snow - on which they rely to get around, and which also allows them to traverse the landscape "faster than the wild beasts" (read: skiing). Adam also refers to Scandinavian speech as snarling elsewhere. This could imply that he thought these bearded women belonged to Germanic Scandinavian stock, or at the very least were of some other ethnicity than the Sami, which is interesting insofar that Norse literature often refers to trolls and Sami as if they were entirely interchangeable.

Wild man on a church panel in Sogn Folk Museum, Norway. Private photo.

Pardoning their overall gullibility and hyper-violent tendencies, Adam claims Norwegians make model Christians. None the less he describes a general problem of rampant witchcraft and heathendom across Scandinavia. No wonder: Adam refers to Norway as "the remotest country on Earth" (1968: 279). He considers Scandinavians half-civilized at best, and utter barbarians at worst. They are contested only by the barely human hybrids living further North and East of the Baltic Sea, or "Barbarian Sea" as Adam likes to call it. In line with his extravagant use of the word "barbarian", which he fits wherever he can.

Finland, he asserts, is populated exclusively by amazons who mate either with passing merchants or wild beasts, and isn't too shy to provide a theory of his own either: First of all it's extremely unlikely that any sailor would have sex with strange, allegedly gorgeous women. Besides, any male specimen of the amazonian race is born with the head of a beast, while the women are all bombshells. Whether or not you accept Adam's reasoning he makes a distinction between amazons, who sire offspring through bestiality, and the hound-faced people of Russia whom he implicitly equates to the Huns, based on the rock solid science of folk-etymology (Hun and hound sound similar, ergo there must be a connection).

Wild men are to a point what most people are not. They are uncanny, and their ambiguity is often underlined in the fact that some authors cannot decide whether or not they qualify as human. Which is to ask what a human is. Surely with no lack of poetic doubt and self-questioning, an existential level to the wild men which seems strengthened by the fact that the stories about them are shrouded in hearsay, as if the possibility of their existence is compelling, yet dreaded for its implications. They are recognized partly as kin, partly as a natural counterpart to man. Something that links him to savage and untamed nature on one side, and that which is unspoiled, raw and potent on the other. In case you couldn't tell, Adam was taking any argument he could to further his claim that Scandinavia needed some more of that Christian religion. Make of that what you will, but if you come to Norway looking for our bearded women I'm afraid you'll be severely disappointed.

Sources

• Adam Bremensis. 1968. De hamburgske ærkebispers historie og nordens beskrivelse. Translated by Carsten L. Henrichsen. Rosenkilde og Bagger: Copenhagen.
• Larson, Laurence Marcellus (tr.). 1917. The King’s Mirror[Speculum regale - Konungs skuggsjá]. Scandinavian Monographs 3. The American-Scandinavian Foundation: New York. 

Fimbulwinter 536 AD: Ragnarok, demographic collapse, and the end of Proto-Norse language

The gods have abandoned you. The sun's rays are fainter than they used to be. Dim and barely discernible behind a misty veil that stretches across the sky in all directions, reaching far beyond the horizon. You are weak and sickly, your stomach grumbles but there is nothing eat. The pantry is empty and the crops won't grow. It should have been summer by now in this year of constant twilight, but the soil is still frozen. The year is 536, and in Byzantium the chronicler Procopius writes:

It came about during this year that a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed. And from the time when this thing happened men were free neither from war nor pestilence nor any other thing leading to death. And it was the time when Justinian was in the tenth year of his reign.

Crisis on a cosmic scale

Irish annals attest to famine, of crop failures and shortages of bread. A dense expanse of fog is described in both Europe and the Middle East. Summer snow is reported as far away as China, where witnesses claim to have heard a powerful boom emanating from the South the year before. In Scandinavia, researchers will later find evidence of severe retardation in tree growth at this point in time owing it to climactic instability, with tree rings bearing tell-tale signs of frost damage in the summer of 536. In the district of Jæren, South-West Norway – a comparatively fertile area by Norwegian standards, archaeologists see indications of agricultural collapse. There must have been famine, pestilence, social and political turmoil. Generations of accumulated power must have poured like sand between the fingers of ancient dynasties and prestigious families. Winter followed winter, without the pleasant respite of summer. Beneath the seemingly dying sun a wolf and axe age erupted. Brothers clashed against their brethren, spawning a militant reorganization of society.

From Louis Moe's "Ragnarok, en billeddigtning", 1929

We are not entirely sure what caused these terrible and cataclysmic events, or where it all started. Most scholars argue in favor of a super-volcanic eruption. Others suggest it could have been caused by a bombardment of meteorites, which would have flung dust high into the atmosphere, causing a global cooling event. There is also some evidence to suggest an unlucky combination of both. The eighteen kilometer wide Grendel crater, which lies at the bottom of the sea in Skagerrak, betwixt Norway, Sweden and Denmark, may have been created at this time. A meteorite this size would certainly have unleashed a massive tsunami as well, eradicating nearby coastal settlements. Whatever the origin, we may all agree on one single thing: This must have been a terrible time to be European.

But it didn't end there. Just when the North was getting back on its feet, Mother Nature threw another punch: Only five years later, between 541 and 542, the Justinian plague spreads across Europe, «by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated» Procopius states. Historians speculate it might have killed off just about 50% of the European population at the time. The bacterium in question was the dreaded Yersinia pestis, a pathogen of the same breed as the Black Death that swept across the world in the mid-1300's.

J.C. Dahl, Eruption of the Volcano Vesuvius, 1821

From the ashes came a new language

As grim as it must have been to live through these decades, it's an exciting period from the viewpoint of historical linguistics. We may identify and reconstruct ancient linguistic shifts, but we are often clueless about their exact causes. But the extreme conditions following the 536 crisis lead to one of the most prominent linguistic transitions in Scandinavian history, comparable only to the changes caused by the black death some 800 years later. The 6th century climate crisis coincides with the demise of the Proto-Norse language, which in turn gave rise to an early form of Old Norse.

Proto-Norse, originally a dialect of North Germanic, is the language of the oldest runic inscriptions, and you could say that Proto-Norse is the grandfather of all the North Germanic languages. This metaphor is striking for a somewhat bleak reason: Judging from runic inscriptions, the language developed so rapidly that the younger generation must have spoken a distinctly different language from their grandparents. But not due to an external linguistic influence. It's indicative of a demographic crisis: Vast portions of the population were dying, and they must have died young.

I'll use my name as an example: Had I been born around the middle of the 6th century, my Proto-Norse speaking parents would have known me as *Ainaríkiaʀ, or “Single Ruler” in modern English. Had I, on the other hand, been born in the second half of the 7th century, my name would have been something akin to *Ęinríkʀ, and Eiríkr not long after that. Easily recognizable in the modern variants Eirik, Erik, Eric, and so on. If I was proficient in runes, I mightstill discern the phonological content of centuries old inscriptions carved in the elder fuþark script, but their linguistic contents would have seemed as alien as any foreign language.

From Louis Moe's "Ragnarok, en billeddigtning", 1929

Ragnarok as collective trauma

1500 years later, historians would start using words like the late Antique little ice age and the crisis of the sixth century to describe these events. In Scandinavia a handful of researchers, notably the Swedish archaeologist Bo Gräslund, would begin to see these events in light of the Eddic poems and Norse mythology. Suddenly, the words Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok are featured in conference presentations about frost damaged growth rings, an increase in votive sacrifices in the late migration era, and extraterrestrial particles in Greenlandic ice cores.

It's been speculated that Ragnarok, the mythological end of the world, is a cultural recollection of the 6th century crisis. Sources forebode it by social conflict and ecological disaster, including three winters with no summer between them, stars falling from the heavens, societal collapse and extinction. The fact that Norse religion had such a prominent eschatological myth sets it apart from most other ethnic and polytheistic religions. Perhaps the story of Ragnarok was really a fossilized, metaphorical account of the traumatic experiences of their migration era ancestors.

I suppose we are all children of our time in one way or another, and this is mirrored in our interpretations of the sources. Many German philologists of the 1930's were obsessed with secret ocieties of ecstatic warrior-initiates, and cultic male bonding. The 1970's gave rise to eroticized readings of the myths, as well as feminist revisions that that say more about the effects of the sexual revolution, than they do about Norse religion. The study of Indo-European mythologies itself became a decidedly unsexy topic for decades in the post-war era. From this it should be clear that we always ought to stop and question the scope and agenda of current antiquarian sciences. Popular research topics may reveal as much about our own age as they may about the past. Ecology and pluralism are both strong features of public discussion today, and is inevitably reflected in archaeology and historiography. Climate change as a doomsday scenario affects our view of the world, therefore it provides a reasonable trigger of application to the soft sciences. Critics of this theory may think it a little far out, and I agree that the 536-event can't account for the entirety of Norse eschatology. Regardless, the disastrous events have left a significant mark on Scandinavian Iron Age society.

I wonder which myths will come of us.

The "Valknútr" Does Not Exist

It's bogus, it's a sham. The valknut, a staple not only of the study of Norse religion, but of modern heathenry and neopaganism as well, is actually an entirely spurious term: There is no evidence for a “knot of the slain” in any Norse source whatsoever. It's never mentioned even once. More importantly: No evidence connects the name to the symbol pictured above.

This may be a shocking and provocative statement to make in the face of the thousands of people who have the so-called valknut symbol tattooed, even branded, or carved into their skin. Who sold t-shirts, and those who bought them. The uncountable masses who wear it as a pin on their jacket. This demographic makes for a significant chunk of my reader base, and if you are one of these people, then please bear with me. You may find some solace from my iconoclastic rampage in the fact that I am one of you.

At the age of 18 I found myself in the blissful and rare situation of having few financial commitments, yet an abundance of spare cash. This younger, less discriminating version of myself went down to my local tattoo parlor, and asked for a dotwork valknut on my forearm, which I got. In retrospect, I suppose my perception was pretty standard. My teenage self would say the valknut was an odinic symbol of sacrifice and fate. By permanently fixing it to my skin, it showed my appreciation for the things in life, both good and bad, that are beyond our personal agency and control. While I no longer accept this as the be all and end all interpretation of the symbol, it still retains a personal significance to me.

Regardless of source-critical status, it worked as the personal reminder I intended it to be. If anything, the connotations have developed and matured with me. I don't believe academic nuance has damaged my relationship with the symbol. Actually it's quite the opposite! I believe source criticism matters: It is not the enemy of fanciful speculation. Rather I find that it informs it. Obviously, I cannot argue with personal ideas and connotations, and I didn't write this article to burst any bubbles. Rather, I hope I am adding something to public discourse that should have been said a long time ago.

I will still make the case that the valknut is a great example of spiritual idiosyncrasy drawn from faulty reasoning, which consequently brings more darkness than light to our understanding of pre-Christian religion.

Possible lid or cutting board from Oseberg. Oslo University Museum

*Valknútr and Valknute, same but different

Credit goes out to the research of Tom Hellers who wrote an entire book on this. His “Valknútr”: das Dreiecksymbol der Wikingerzeit [“The triangular symbol of the viking era”], is a solid piece of work that would have been earth-shaking, had it only been written in English instead of German. My arguments lean heavily on his groundwork. 

As mentioned, I assert that there is no sound evidence to support claims that the valknut was primarily a symbol of fate, sacrifice, death and binding. While iconography is sometimes cited, the interpretation is mainly based on the etymology, which assumes that it comes from an Old Norse term meaning "knot of the slain". However, the elephant in the room is that the word *valknútr does not exist in the Norse language at all. The term was arbitrarily applied to the symbol in modern scholarship, but the historical precedence is non-existent.

This this not to say that the valknut isn't a real term. However, the name was taken from Norwegian valknute, which specifically refers to an entirely different range of symbols and ornaments that appears in textile- and woodworking. First and foremost, many Norwegians know it already as a square, looped knot (⌘) used to designate points of interest on maps and road signs. It's also identical to the command key on Apple keyboards.

Norwegian tapestry with valknute ornaments (detail). Norwegian Museum of Cultural history.

Hrungnir's heart?

I can only speculate why such an arbitrary term was picked in the first place, but it has spawned decades of circular and anachronistic reasoning, based on the etymology of the symbol's recently applied name. What was it originally called? Nobody is alive to tell us, but the Icelandic chronicler Snorri Sturlusson mentions in Skáldskaparmál, that the giant Hrungnir had a "famous heart": It was jagged, with three edges or protrusions, and Snorri mentions that it looks like a carved symbol (ristubragð) called hrungnishjarta derived from the myth. If this is true, the connection to Odin and sacrifice is severely shaky, seeing that Hrungnir was an adversary of Thor.

The traditional ornamental valknute (also known as "sankthanskors", St. John's cross), has no clear association with death as far as I know. The etymology is uncertain, but it's no given that the prefix val- is the same word as Old Norse valr, meaning slain, war-dead, though this is commonly assumed. There are other, equally plausible explanations for the prefix val-, cf. Old Norse valhnott - "french nut". You'd be hard pressed to find a connection to the triangular symbol either way.

They don't have many stylistic traits in common either. In terms of design, the Viking Era symbol and its derivatives are triangular, effectively trefoil in shape, usually consisting of interlocking, yet separate elements, while the traditional valknute is square and singular: The square valknute is easily drawn in a single line, and most versions of the nameless, triangular viking symbol are not.

Hellers' fivefold typology of the symbol (2012: 74)

As there is neither a typological, nor any linguistic basis to connect the two, their association remains problematic and speculative. Hellers makes the effort of discussing whether or not it even was a symbol, or merely an ornament, but concludes that the former is most likely. I find it hard to disagree: Often, it seems deliberately placed and meticulously carved. The carver had some kind of intent, but the question of significance remains.

A multivalent symbol

While it is popularly called a symbol of death and binding, few people stop to ask what the evidence is. It is true that the symbol occurs in funerary contexts, but so do most viking era artifacts: Boats, shoes, crockery, swords, coins, seeds, food and drink, combs, animals, and grinding stones, are all found in graves, but are not items we automatically consider symbols of death.

It's not wholly impossible that there was a connection to death still. There are some iconographic sources that are strongly suggestive of death and sacrifice, and a connection to the god Odin as well. The strongest case in favor of the death-fate-binding-sacrifice-hypothesis famously comes from a panel on a Gotlandic picture stone, Stora Hammars I, depicted at the top of this article. The symbol hovers above a man forcefully bent over what might be an altar, as if he is being executed – perhaps sacrificed. The character forcing him down carries a spear – an attribute of Odin, also used in human sacrifices and what we may deem “odinic killings” in the sagas. To the left, a warrior hangs from the limb of a tree (Odin is famously the god of the hanged). To the right, another man offers a bird, maybe a falcon or a raven, and an eagle flies above the symbol. All of this is heavily suggestive of the cult of Odin.

The Nene River ring. British Museum

However, there are contexts where this association seems unlikely. If the symbol was associated with the aforementioned hrungnishjarta, and the myth of Thor's battle against Hrungir, then such a connection does not seem likely at all. Additionally, the symbol frequently occurs in  other contexts where an interpretation favoring death and sacrifice is very far-fetched. The depiction on Stora Hammars I appears to be the exception rather than the rule. 

For example, it the symbol frequently occurs with horses on other Gotlandic picture stones - maybe suggestive of a horse cult? While pagan Scandinavians believed they could reach the world of the dead by horseback, it's not obvious that the riders in these depictions are anything but alive and well, if we rid ourselves of the preconceived notion that the so-called *valknútr was a symbol of death. It also occurs on jewelry, coins, knife-handles, and other more or less mundane objects. The magnificent Oseberg ship burial contained two examples. Firstly a flat wooden object, possibly a lid or a cutting board, and secondly it was carved into a bedpost. There is no reason to assume that it was carved in conjunction with the burial. It might well have been present when the bed was still in nightly use. 

The truth behind the symbol eludes popular interpretations. It's difficult to connect all the varied contexts of occurrence. There is a Facebook page solely dedicated to documenting and uncovering more examples of the symbol, run by the Czech living history group Marobud. If you're interested in the subject, I highly recommend you check it out. Like Hellers, they include the triquetra in their study. It's up for debate whether triquetras constitute “true” examples of the symbol, but the similarity is definitely greater than the case is with the Norwegian valknut-ornaments. They could, for all we know, simply be variants of the one and same symbol. 

Conclusion

From a source-critical viewpoint there can be no doubt that the term *valknútr/valknutis dubious and unhelpful. Evidence suggests that the symbol's original contents go far beyond the common themes of interpretation, which are none the less fossilized in both scholarly and neopagan discussion. There seems to be more to the symbol than death and sacrifice.

I can't offer a good alternative name. Gungnishjarta is too tentative, but maybe I am overplaying the harm a misnomer can do. Nevertheless, I think that the terminology has done more to cloud the symbol, rather than clearing it up. This should concern anybody invested in shedding light on pre-Christian Scandinavia.

Now, if you find yourself stirred because you, like me, have a tattoo, or maybe you have benefited from the symbol in some other idiosyncratic way; don't cry. This revelation should not take any pleasure away. Let it instead be a vessel for deeper appreciation to whatever attracted you to it in the first place, and let yourself be enchanted by its mystique. We will probably never know.

Addendum : Converning the etymology of “Valknute” (10.25.2018):

Since the original publication of this article, I realized that I had overlooked a more convincing etymology to the prefix val- that we see in the term ‘valknute’. It is probably neither valr “corpse” nor valir “French, Breton, foreigners”, but “something rounded”. This etymology seems to be taken as a given among folk art experts and I believe it stands up to scrutiny. Compare for example with Norwegian ‘valk’ “roll, flab of skin” or English ‘wallow’ “to roll about”. Hence the term valknute appears to refer to the shape of the symbol: ⌘. Plain and simple.

This "looped square" ornament or symbol predates its triangular impostor by centuries and should therefore, if anything, be reserved for that specific shape. I have also come to partially accept the terminology proposed by David Stříbrný et. al. (of Marobud fame), that the term “triquetra” is preferable in many, if not all situations. While triquetra is more commonly used about trefoil symbols and ornaments, it really only means "three-cornered" and is thus a more neutral term than the heavily loaded "valknut". At least from a semantic viewpoint, which is all I care about in this question. There is ample evidence to suggest that the two symbols are interconnected, even overlapping in the early Norse world.

ᛉ

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Brute Norse Podcast Ep.1: The Archaeology of Emotion with Leszek Gardeła

It is my supreme pleasure to reveal the next chapter in the Brute Norse saga, namely the spanking new Brute Norse Podcast. Keeping up with the public can be a difficult task. I guess it's all about meeting your audience where they are at. While articles have their charm, they lack the versatility and perks of the podcast format. My readers have been suggesting I try it out for some time, and I admit that I've shied away from certain topics in the past, thinking they deserved something more sparkly than my usual article format. With the recent revamp of the blog I think the time is ripe to try something fresh and new.

A podcast allows me to let someone else do the talking for a change, and lets me invite people with talents and knowledge I may not possess. This episode was a treat to produce for that exact reason. I the had pleasure of meeting up with Leszek Gardeła, who is an assistant professor of archaeology at the University of Rzeszów, Poland. A rising star of viking scholarship, his vast body of work includes magical staffs, ritual specialists, the viking diaspora in Poland, and the spooky world of "atypical burials". We sat down for a discussion about the ambiguity of magic, morbid viking burials, and the ethics of studying the dead. He recently published his doctoral thesis about magic staffs in the viking era. I've featured his work previously in my article on the magical practice of seiðr.

Leszek frequently works with the Polish artist and illustrator Mirosław Kuźma to reconstruct the various graves he studies, adding imagination and color to the dark past. I highly recommend you check out his work.

As for the podcast itself: It is now available through Soundcloud, iTunes, and any podcast app worth it's salt, so be sure to subscribe!

Trekroner-Gryderhöj A 505, by Mirosław Kuźma

Baywatch Nights - "Frozen out of time" (Review)

Baywatch Nights, as you probably assumed, was a hilariously bum-steered attempt at squeezing a few extra bucks out of the Baywatch franchise. Originally, this obscure gem didn't seem too far apart from any other weekday crime series set in lotion-infused California. But things got really trippy in the second (read: last) season, when the production company decided to face failing ratings by charging head on into X-Files territory. This creative equivalent of siphoning gasoline from your neighbor's truck resulted in some properly awkward TV-moments, and a few of them are contained in the thirteenth episode of the season; "Frozen out of time.

It's justifiable to ask why I begin my series of viking film reviews with such a dreadfully silly piece. The answer is simple: There are only so many good viking movies, maybe three or four, in the entire history of cinema. I want something to look forward to, and now things can only get better. Or so I hope. Pedantic readers may point out that weeknight TV does not technically qualify as cinema. This is true, but I don't think anybody really cares about the distinction at this level. We take what we get in the grim sausage world of brain dead entertainment.

The episode opens with stock footage of glacial floods and volcanic smoke rising from a dramatic, frozen landscape. The expositional radio dialogue between a recon pilot and someone on ground helps illuminate the scene. It's "another massive eruption" and "really something", the pilot says before describing "widespread disruption", which is also "really something", apparently. He seems either really bored or baffled by this, it's hard to tell. Text on the screen tells us we're seeing the Vatnajökull glacier on Iceland, and the date is May 8th 1996. I lean forward in my seat. I look down at my cat, my cat looks up at me, and I check the current date; today is May 8th 2017. I would never think that a mystery series called Baywatch Nights would actually spook me, and we're only 30 seconds into the episode.

I'm impressed: There actually was a glacial outburst at Vatnajökull in 1996 with a peak flow of whooping 50,000 m3/s! This is more accuracy than I believed I could expect from a show called Baywatch Nights, for which I'll give it a slight authenticity bonus. Things get mysterious when a new voice appears. A stern, masculine voice, like a middle-aged authority figure, someone up the chain of command. "This is... not a secure line" he hesitates. It's Diamont Teague, one of the show's recurring characters, apparently. Despite the apparent security breach they freely discuss the true nature of their mission: A certain "it", something "unbelievable" found buried under 2000 feet of glacial ice. What it could be, aliens? Decent dialogue? A pitch for a better series?

"You know how I feel about boogedy boogedy"

No answers yet, fool! We suddenly find ourselves on the docks of San Pedro, California, on June 2nd to be precise. A ship arrives carrying a mysterious cargo. Then, without warning, we find ourselves on June 8th, still in San Pedro, were the big secret is finally revealed: Two frozen vikings are about to be revived in a misty (and probably highly illegal) chryogenics lab. Things go awry when one wakes up prematurely: The viking, played by Sven-Ole Thorsen - a Danish bodybuilder famous for his role as Thulsa Doom's retainer in Conan The Barbarian - tears through his restraints and beats the living shit out of the laboratory staff. For some reason all his weapons are laid out on a table in the same room (they should be in a museum and handled by a qualified conservationist). The rabid Norseman then tries to kill the other, who still lays frozen with a huge knife lodged in his chest, presumably because they had been caught in the ice mid-battle. Luckily, Mitch Buchannon (David Hasselhoff) turns up just in time, along with his sidekick Ryan McBride, a connoisseur of paranormal phenomena, who is actually a woman, not a grog-blossomed Irishman as the name might have you believe.

Note the knife in his chest.

Sadly, they fail to subdue the primeval savage, who grabs his helmet by the horns (!) and takes to the streets where he proceeds to flail his sword at passing cars, steal fish, and throw puzzled glances at industrial machinery.

"Give him space!"

Meanwhile, back in the lab, Mitch and his sidekick Ryan are provided with some archaeological context after getting talked out of calling the police, which confirms more than a few suspicions regarding the legality of the whole operation. They hatch a plan to catch the viking alive with a net gun, and Mitch uses anthropology to pin point the stray Norseman's whereabouts, asserting that a viking in distress would always seek out the ocean. Following the principle of Chekhov's gun, which states that every element featured in a story must serve to resolve the plot, we all know that the second viking is bound to wake up as well. What follows is a wildly anachronistic sword fight in a dingy cyberpunk laboratory, where Hasselhoff's character fights his enemy off with a broom. The vikings die and Mitch gives the both of them, and I quote, "a proper viking burial" by putting them in a fiberglass boat, which he torches by means of a flaming arrow before the credits start to roll, accompanying a funky saxophone soundtrack.

I don't know if "Frozen out of time" is worthy of any deeper analysis, but I guess I could spare a few thoughts: Throughout the episode, Hasselhoff's character keeps expressing empathy towards the antagonists, even romanticizing and lamenting their lost way of life. His admiration, he admits, belongs to a yearning for another place and time where he might have been one of them. This is despite the fact that both vikings display few humanizing traits. Actually, they behave more like animals, concerned only with satisfying immediate urges such as lust and hunger: The first eats a raw fish, and the other makes sexually threatening advances towards the supporting character Ryan. Is this a commentary on a modern tendency to defend or explain viking raids, or is it an appreciation of the many facets of human experience regardless of ethics? Is David Hasselhoff an anti-modernist lamenting the vaginalization of Western masculinity? I really don't know. But in any case, I guess his constant expositions about viking warrior culture and seafaring serves some minor educational purpose, at least if the audience is otherwise oblivious about this aspect of European history. The show appears somewhat self-aware that it is completely ridiculous, and that's one redeeming feature. I might even check out some more episodes, because it really did make me laugh. In conclusion this is an authentic example of 90's spin-off television at its most melodramatic and quirky, but by no means does it offer a nuanced representation of Norse culture.

Verdict:

One cleft skull

Sex, drugs, and drop-spindles: What is Seiðr? (Norse metaphysics pt. 2)

In this second part of my series on Norse metaphysics, we're going to look at one of the most important, fascinating, and complicated terms in Norse magic: Seiðr (anglicized seid), a specific magical practice, closely associated with spinning and textile work, sexual taboos, and possibly trance and ritual ecstasy. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most misattributed terms in the study of pre-Christian magic. No wonder, though; the sources leave a lot to the imagination.

Magical misunderstandings 

We're dealing with two main misconceptions. Firstly, seiðr is often confused with siðr – mostly among non-scholars. Though similar in spelling, the two terms have widely different content and etymologies: Seiðr is restricted to a specific magical practice, while siðr refers to abstract notions of “tradition, paradigm, custom”. In short, siðr is the closest thing the Old Norse tongue had to a word for religion, before Christianity appeared with the concept of trú (faith). This goes back to the fact that Norse pagans did not see religion as something distinctly separate from society. The separation of religion and cultural custom was originally inconceivable, as it was an ethnic religion. In such a system one is born and raised according to a certain set of customs and beliefs particular to your family or ethnolinguistic group, but I digress.

The second misconception relates specifically to the contents of seiðr in magical terminology. Namely the idea that seiðr originally referred to Norse magic in the broadest sense – that seiðr is any given kind magic in the Norse world – which is inaccurate, though some sources make such generalizations. For example, medieval translators may reach for seiðr when they need a convenient native word for magic when working with continental sources. It's a mistake commonly found in academic works, perhaps written by scholars who may not be specifically interested in the technical peculiarities of the history of magic. For example, Rudolf Simek – otherwise a true pillar of the academic community – writes in his highly influential Dictionary of Northern Mythology that galdr (“chant, incantation, spell”) is: “an element of the Old Scandinavian magical practices (seiðr)” (Simek 2007: 97). However the sources do not correlate these terms: Seiðr doesn't pretend to be “magic in general”. Moreover, there is no evidence or reason to consider galdr a practice tangibly subordinate to seiðr, though galdr occurs alongside seiðr in certain sources.

Swooping around secondary literature (or online), one may also encounter off-hand comparisons between seiðr and shamanism. I've even seen seiðr referred to as a kind of “Norse shamanism”. I think one should avoid applying this term to the Norse tradition, and please excuse my pedantry. The comparison itself is not helpful without further elaboration, given the large variety of ideas behind such a casually thrown about word. However, it is true that there are qualities to seiðr that are also found in certain traditions, that are conventionally referred to as “shamanistic”. Such as otherworldly visions and what we will call “spirit emissaries”.

Reconstructing seiðr from vocabulary and etymology

So far, we've focused on the things that seiðr is not. To recap, seiðr appears to have been a specific practice, and not all viking age magicians did it. From now on we'll be addressing method and its practitioners, starting with a tentative analysis of vocabulary. For example, one verb associated with performing seiðr is efla - “to prepare, perform, arrange”. In the context of ritual, this same verb is also associated with performing blót, or “sacrificial ceremony/feast”, which was the main expression of public religion in the viking era. From this we may assume that seiðr fell into the category of ceremony, consisting of a series of rituals and rites. In the study of religions, rites are the building blocks of ritual. A rite is any individual gesture, movement or action (for example: a prayer), which may join in a sequence to form a ritual. For example, a prayer may be followed by an offering of food or drink. When several rituals come together they form a ceremony. One may have a procession, followed by a petitioning of the gods, followed by sacrifice, followed by a feast – all with their individual minor rites. If this assumption is correct, it would seem that that the performance of seiðr took the shape of a prepared, sequential event. This also how it is described in Eiríks saga rauða, which gives an elaborate description of such a séance involving a vast number of items and gestures. It also suggests that the seeress was a respected specialists that traveled to offer her services. By the way: A supplement containing a translation of this passage is available to my patrons.

Practitioners and titles

Magic itself is commonly referred to as fjölkynngi which means something akin to “manifold wisdom”. Linguistically, it is associated with the folkloric concept of cunning folk, broadly an umbrella term for European folk magicians of all kinds. Those who possess fjölkynngi are sometimes described as versed in seiðr. There are also specific titles such as seiðkona (“seid-woman”) and seiðmaðr (“seid-man”). The late 12th century king's saga Ágrip recounts that king Harold Fairhair's 20th (!) son, Rögnvald, was a “seid-man, that is to say a seer” (seiðmaðr, þat er spámaðr). The female counterpart is commonly referred to as a spákona, and adds to the general impression that divination (spá) was one essential quality of seiðr. Ágrip also refers to Rögnvald as a skratti, a sorcerer/warlock, which is a common derogatory title for male practitioners, apparently related to Old English scritta “hermaphrodite” (see below for seiðr and sexual taboos).

The practice is further associated with a particular female ritual specialist called a völva (plural völur), conventionally translated as “seeress, oracle”, and is used interchangeably with spákona. The title seems to derive from völr, meaning “stick, staff, wand”. Staffs are also associated with the völur in described in Eiríks saga rauða and Laxdæla saga. With the former described as decorated with gems and brass fittings, and the latter referred to simply as a seiðstafr – “seid staff” (Heide 2006a: 251).

Seiðr staffs? Photo: National Museum of Denmark

Incidentally, this may be tied to ornamented iron staffs found in several viking era female burials, which bear a striking resemblance to some varieties of traditional distaffs. Scholars generally agree that these may indeed have been magical wands associated with the völur and used for seiðr. This is a theory commonly associated with the work of Neil Price and Leszek Gardeła, with the latter having recently published an entire book on to this subject. These distaff-like staffs lead us to our next point, namely the practice of seiðr and its relationship to spinning and textile work.

Seiðr as magical textile work

Literally, seiðr appears to mean “thread, cord, snare, halter”, according to Eldar Heide. His 2006 doctoral thesis “Gand, seid og åndevind” [Gand, seid, and spirit-wind] is by far the most comprehensive linguistic and philological study on the subject of seiðr. His work is noteworthy not only for the heavy and technical use of etymology, and the pre-Christian traditions of the neighboring Sami people. He also uses later folklore to point out interesting analogies.

Photo: Norwegian Museum of Cultural History

One of Heide's key points is that magicians were believed to send their mind forth in spirit form to do tasks outside of the body. In this he points to an apparent continuity of motifs from later folklore to pre-Christian times, which also includes a parallel notion of magic manifesting as wind – which associates the spirit with breath – which we shall get into later on. Both the will of the magician, and magical winds, could be visualized as something spun, such as a thread or a ball of yarn. For example: Witches in later times were believed to be able to steal milk from other peoples' cows by milking a rope (Heide 2006b: 165). It is significant to Heide's interpretation that the tugging motion involved in milking resembles the pulling of a rope or cord, since seiðr – as we shall see – seems primarily concerned with attracting or pulling things.

Moreover, Heide leans on the consensus that seiðr was a practice in which the magician used spinning to conjure spirits, for example to help her see geographically or temporally distant events. However, his main emphasis lies in the deployment of the magician's mind, or rather what he calls a “mind-in-shape emissary”, a spirit visualized as a cord or line, which may be sent forth to perform various tasks. It has been suggested, based on the meaning “snare”, that seiðr related to binding spells common throughout western magical traditions, but Heide considers this explanation too simple: “Binding is not very characteristic of seiðr. However, with a cord, one can not only bind, but also attract things, and this is characteristic of seiðr” (Heide 2006b:164). Heide seems to keeps a relatively strict emphasis on how words are contextualized in the primary sources. Based on this he asserts that: “Seiðr (initially) seems to be all about the spinning, and sending of, and attraction with, and manipulation by, a spirit-cord” (Heide 2006a: 237).

It should then make sense to us why the völva would carry a staff as an attribute, and why such wands take the shape of distaffs. Notably, this magic could be done on a dedicated platform, a seiðhjallr (hjallr means “platform, scaffold, loft”). Heide remarks: “When one is spinning, one would want to sit high above ground. Because this allows one to spin longer before one has to stop and wind the thread around the spindle” (Heide 2006a: 254).

Wikimedia Commons

The aforementioned mind-in-shape emissary, or “magic projectile”, is sometimes called gandr (anglicized gand). This is an extremely conflated term that literally means “staff, stick, wand”, but takes a wide array of forms and connotations in viking era, medieval, and also later sources. They may come in the form of not only a cord, but an animal such as a fly, a clawed beast, or even a “spirit-penis”, which may irritate or hook into the skin, or force its way through respiratory passages and bodily orifices. The emissary may also serve as a “supernatural spy drone” or manipulate objects. I must however be noted that such spirit emissaries, even when they attract and manipulate, needn't always be associated with seiðr or gandr. Rather, they may be features of the magical worldview of the pre-enlightenment Nordic area.

All in all, Heide points out two main properties of seiðr according to the primary sources:

1. A spirit emissary that attracts resources or individuals, like a cord.

2. Divination, which makes sense if fate was visualized linearly as a thread, which could be manipulated.

At first this may seem constricted, but seen collectively seiðr comes across as very versatile. It is ascribed to the conjuring of storms, making people vulnerable (or invincible), invisibility, killing, and even driving whole groups of people to suicide.

The gender norms and sexual taboos of Seiðr

In its apparent relation to spinning and textile work, it came to be associated mainly with women, as this was their domain within the Norse household. Textile work also had strong connotations to the concept of fate. As such, women are often ascribed strong intuition – and in the sagas it's not unusual for weaving to be associated with fateful events, and handling textiles sometimes foreshadows a character's death. This form of magic was not merely femininely charged; male practitioners were outright stigmatized, which has led to a lot of scholarly speculation regarding the apparent sexual and gendered content of the magical method.

Seiðr has an element of sexual magic, and it would seem; even gender bending. I've already mentioned the connection between Old Norse skratti “warlock”, scritta meaning “hermaphrodite”, suggestive of gender transgression. However, our main source comes from the mythological poem Loksasenna. When Odin accuses Loki of unmanliness (he had spent eight years as a woman in the underworld, milking cows and making babies), Loki retorts by revealing that Odin himself practiced seiðr: “You struck charms as a seeress [völva], in the likeness of a sorceress [vitka] you traveled above mankind. I consider that the pervert's essence.”(st.24) The accusation here is one of ergi, which is yet another hard to translate term meaning “perversion, fornication, indecency, unmanliness”.

One might justifiably think that it is strange to portray the gods in such a demeaning and compromising way, referring to them as witches, perverts, and throwing accusations that could easily get one killed according to Norse legal conventions. But Norse mythology rarely ascribes moral superiority to the gods. Perhaps their divine nature allows them a double standard that humans may not indulge in. It may also underline the fact that the Odin is an ambivalent, and often untrustworthy god, who repeatedly uses subversive methods to further his gains. 

 

The seiðmaðr as “unmanly man”

The concept of ergi also comes in the form of an adjective, argr, which means “unmanly, dishonest, slothful, soft, cowardly”, and less obvious; “recipient of homosexual penetration”. That is to say, all the things a man was not supposed to be, according to Norse notions of gender. Surprisingly the feminine form örg, does not mean “lesbian”, but “nymphomaniac”. When women are accused of ergi, it is because of lacking sexual self-control or loyalty, not any apparent magical association – as the case is with men. It seems that argr/örg could be interpreted as along the lines of “a socially disruptive compulsion to be sexually penetrated”, due to a quirk in Norse gender norms. Obviously, this definition would at first seem to elude the non-sexual, antisocial aspects of the term. Then again, Norse people were essentialists who tended to work with broad, metaphorical generalizations.

Snarky, ludicrous accusations of sexual deviancy were a common means of defamation in viking society, even tough false allegations of unmanliness could legally get the accuser killed. Sometimes, such accusations are supernatural to underline the stigma. While Norse magic is loaded with the same rigid gender expectations as the rest of society, seiðr was considered explicitly unmanly. Male seiðr-practitioners were worthy of suspicion and contempt, and they tend to be presented as antagonists in the sagas, as if their competency in magic underlined their apparent wickedness, and they are often made examples of by means of humiliating and torturous execution. The culture, as we've already seen, applied different standards to male and female gender roles, and while literary sources tend to consider paganism and magic as generally misguided, female practitioners tend to be portrayed as less disruptive to the social order.

A handful of runic curses also attest to the taboo of male practice. Prominently the runestone DR83 from Sønder Vinge, Denmark, which threatens that whoever disturbs the monument shall be considered “a sodomite and a seiðr-warlock” (serði ok seiðhretti). Something like an occult gay bomb by the look of it, it is clearly meant to deter people from breaking the monument. If the prospect of magic sounds tempting to the modern reader, the inscription implies that male practitioners had an abhorrent status viking age Denmark. Similar curses of magicianship and perversion are attested on the Saleby-stone (VG67) in Sweden, and the Danish Glavendrup-stone (DR20). Suggesting that the power to perform certain forms of witchcraft and magic came at an unacceptable cost in the eyes of common society, or that their very presence was considered destructive. I'm reluctant to use the word superstition, but perhaps we can compare the seiðmaðr to the witches of Africa today, who appear to be more abundant in popular imagination than objective, physical reality, but none the less real to those who believe in them.

Then we are forced to ask why the male practitioner held such a strong position in the Norse imagination, or why there was such a strong element of taboo in seiðr. I recall discussing this with Eldar Heide back when I did my BA, and we came to an interesting analogy to human sexuality – which is full of taboos. That that which is forbidden or suppressed, often becomes an object of fetishization – its allure and power may be proportional to the negative pressure it receives in society. It's not a paradox. For example: Japanese society is famously very formal, and infamous for its double standard in terms of sexuality. A strong emphasis on shame appears to conjure a counterpart: That which has no shame is both powerful and terrifying. Obviously, this is not a complete theory of human sexuality or magic, but it might serve to explain why the seiðmaðr was such a vivid character in a society where the concept of homosexuality, to the extent that such a concept even existed, was very negatively charged.

Seiðr, trance and ecstasy

What is less clear is how (and if) seiðr involved trance-like states, though it is very tempting to think so, as this pertains to certain other forms of Norse magic, which we will return to in a future article about spirits and gandr. If the theory holds true that seiðr was connected to spinning, then we may consider that the act of spinning involves rotation, and is suggestive of movements which could well induce a trance. Spinning around, and walking backwards in circles around a fixed axis, are two attested methods of inducing trance – even shape-shifting – in later Nordic tradition (Heide 2006a: 250). We may indulge in this speculation, though it says nothing conclusive about viking era practices.

Seeresses in the sagas make the claim that they see things other people can not, thought it's not clear how this manifests. In Eiríks saga rauða, spirits appear before the seeress (völva) when a particular poem (kvæði) named Varðlokkur is sung. A trance is not suggested, as she seems mentally present during the entire séance. However, there seems to have been a general notion that spirits come and go through respiratory passages, carrying desired information. Trance could have been associated with the magician's own spirit or free-soul (sometimes referred as hugr, vörðr, or fylgja) leaving the body. In Hrólfs saga kráka, a seiðkona repeatedly yawns as she provides information to her client about the whereabouts of certain people, but the sequence suggests that spirits are are arriving through her respiratory passages through magical attraction, feeding her visions, rather than her personal spirit being engaged in extra-corporeal travel (Heide 2006a: 182). This is in line with the idea that seiðr functioned like an invisible snare or line. None the less, controlled breathing remains perhaps the simplest and most common means of provoking trance-like states all over the world.

Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Seiðr and narcotic drugs

Finally there is the possibility of drug-induced ecstasy, which by the way is never suggested in any primary source. Its plausibility rests mainly on archaeological finds. Famously, a minute amount of cannabis seeds (less than a single dose, according to a friend) was recovered from the 9th century Oseberg burial, and apparently associated with the older of the two inhumated women who may or may not have been a seeress. Another exciting example comes from Denmark, specifically the Fyrkat grave IV, where a woman was buried with a number of peculiar items: An upcycled box brooch, serving as a container for toxic white lead which may have been used as face paint. Fragments of a decorated iron staff, possibly a wand – a seiðstafr. Pellets of rolled hair, fat and ashes – originally thought to be owl pellets. And finally: A small pouch of poisonous henbane seeds, which may be used both as an anesthetic and narcotic drug that produces “visual hallucinations and a sensation of flight” according to a friend by the name of Wikipedia. The peculiar assembly of items, particularly the fragmented staff, is suggestive of a ritual specialist at the very least.

Fyrkat IV, as envisioned by Þórhallur Þráinsson (from Price 2002)

A translation of the seiðr séance from Eiríks saga rauða is available as a supplement on my Patreon. Become a patron to access it.

Also in this series:

In Defense of Magic (Norse Metaphysics pt.1)
Spirits, Premonitions, and Psychic Emanations in the Viking World (Norse Metaphysics pt. 3)
 

Sources and suggested reading:

• Heide, Eldar. 2006a: Gand, seid og åndevind. PhD dissertation. The University of Bergen.

• Heide, Eldar. 2006b: “Spinning seiðr”. In Anders Andrén et. al. (eds.): Old Norse religion in long-term perspectives. Origins, changes, and interactions. An international conference in Lund, Sweden, June 3-7, 2004. Vägar till Midgård 8. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. 164-70.

• Heide, Eldar. 2006c. Manuscript: Seid-seansen i Eiriksoga / Eiríks saga rauða.

• Gardeła, Leszek. 2016. (Magic) Staffs in the Viking Age. Studia Medievalia Septentrionalia, Band 27: Wien.

• Gardeła, Leszek. 2009: A Biography of the Seiðr-Staffs. Towards an Archaeology of Emotions. In L. P. Słupecki, J. Morawiec (eds.), Between Paganism and Christianity in the North, Rzeszów: Rzeszów University, 190-219.

• Price, Neil S. 2002: The Viking Way. Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. The Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. Uppsala University.

• Simek, Rudolf. 2007: Dictionary of Northern Mythology. D.S. Brewer: Cambridge.

In Defense of Magic (Norse metaphysics pt.1)

Hey kid, wanna hear about magic in Viking and medieval Scandinavia? This is the first article in what will eventually be a whole series on magic and metaphysics in the Viking and Norse world. In it, I'll offer explanations and explorations on key subjects and terms, such as galdr (chants and incantations), seiðr (let's just call it “textile-magic” for now) and gandr (spirit emissaries). There will be magical projectiles, incantations, sigils and symbols, voodoo doll-like effigies and fetishes, divination, supernatural sodomy, and the massive can of worms that is runic magic. Dear lord, I will most definitely step on a few toes, but hopefully I will give more than I take away.

The viking and medieval world was full of magic, for protection, harm, to predict future events and communicate with forces and spirits. Naturally, all was integrated into how they made sense of the world around them, which was full of unseen entities. A lot of the terms we'll get into have some level of overlap, and grants us a glimpse of the taboos, beliefs and symbols that shaped their day to day experiences.

I presently aim to cover the most important bits of Viking and medieval magic over a span of several months, but I won't shy away from covering the zany world of contemporary spirituality and new religious movements either. Will there be Nazi occultism? Minoan runic sex cults?? Ancient aliens??? Who knows! It all depends on how far down the rabbit hole I decide to go.

The magic of magic

Now, magic is an extremely fascinating subject, but it is sadly misrepresented (and -understood) in public discourse. This warrants an introductory rant to kick us off, which will also serve to clarify my academic and philosophical stances and biases on the subject.

Firstly, I do not consider the notion of magic to be primitive in itself, but rather a feature of human psychology that may manifest itself in various forms of belief and behavior. The Vikings like any other pre-modern society, was not populated solely by superstitious twits who naively wasted their time and resources on self-deceptive practices that never actually worked. They wholeheartedly did believe in its existence, and they certainly felt that it granted them some benefit. Yet, perhaps not in the way people tend to think. Conversely, absence of witch trials is by no means evidence of a lack of magical thought in modern Western society. There's no need to turn to the occult: As an anthropologist might tell you, you'll find endless examples of pseudo-magical thoughts and practices by throwing a brief glance at the world of business and advertisement.

Fantastic and vivid descriptions of magical wonders, as well as their strange and wacky physical effects, are as old as the hills, and I'm sure that snake oil salesmen and quacks of all sizes have always thrived withi.n our ranks. This doesn't take away from the fact that magic has always encompassed a wide range of functions, ideas, and practices beyond whatever hocus pocus our minds might usually consider magic in a strictest sense. A magician may offer counseling and meditation therapy, strengthen social bonds, give pep-talks, and so on. Besides this, there may be many other culture-specific functions of magic that are difficult to pin down and properly discern. Even in the twilight realm of magic and medicine we find, at the very least, the time-tested and scientifically proven placebo effect. 

If we are to talk about naive magical notions, then basing one's entire perception of magic on, say, Lord of the Rings says more about the modern reader, than it tells us about the witch doctor.

Believers in magic: village idiots of popular histor

Magic is commonly used as a cheap trick to demonstrate a supposed lack of sense and logical thought, particularly in past societies. Contemporary cultures with strong magical traditions, especially the non-industrialized, are thought of as intellectually or philosophically deficient. There's no room for such nonsense, or so we're told, in the world of scientific materialism and Cartesian rationalism. 

Subjectively, I simply don't think this true. Rather, it shows the arrogance of Whig history at its very basest. That is to say: The idea that history is something akin to a bumpy train ride, ever rolling towards inevitable moral truths and intellectual progress. Every year is de facto better than the last, as we await a coming state of societal perfection. I'm no historian of ideas, but people guilty of such thoughts do tend to pity those poor souls unfortunate enough to be born in the horrid, dark chapter of human history colloquially known as the past. 

Such an attitude neither helps us understand how past man thought, nor does it bring us any closer to understanding ourselves (except, perhaps, for shedding light on intellectual snobbery). I am not about to unleash a crackpot narrative of a past paradise, but I will scoff and pass judgment on those who squarely pass water in the faces of the giants whose shoulders they stand on.

In my unrewarding struggle to defend past man against slander, the supposed mental simplicity of medieval and ancient people is probably what I hear the most, whether we are debating art, ethics, or religion. Mind you, this does not correlate with low education: There are many academically trained, talented individuals who treat anybody born before the 18th century as downright dumbasses. So it's not characteristic of lacking intelligence or education, by any means – but I do believe it is a distinguishing mark of someone lacking historical literacy, and perhaps a basic grasp of human psychology.

I hope I'm not too crass. It's obviously no crime to disagree with (or not care about) the beliefs of people who died ten centuries ago. But it is important to realize, despite any chronologically imbued misanthropy that, anatomically, their brains were no different than ours. It's unlikely that a random person born in the 10th century was any dumber than you, unless you are some kind of genius. Either way, the psychology of magic is probably as old as mankind itself. Irrational as it may seem, there are probably rationally justifiable, Darwinian reasons for its presence in the human brain. It won't ever disappear, but if it should I highly doubt its loss would be an enhancement to human life.

The academic study of the history of magic, it should be noted, is a fairly young and marginal discipline. Traditionally, Old Norse scholarship seemed more interested in how and when to distinguish magic from religion. When reading older works in particular, they often have an ethnographic tinge, and scholars seldom demonstrate any particular interest or competency in the history of magic proper. Luckily, a lot of great research has been published in recent years, which we shall dive into in future parts of this series!

The Norse saga of Gautama Buddha

Some time around the year 1250 AD, the Norwegian king Hákon Hákonsson laid eyes on one of his court scribes' latest work: It was a brand new saga – or more accurately: an Old Norse retelling of a Latin story, handed down from Greek sources, describing events that happened in the distant land of India a long time ago. They named it Barlaams saga ok Jósafats.

The saga of Barlaam and Jósafat

The story begins with a conservative Indian king who fears that a hip, new spiritual trend will overthrow his authority. His paranoia grows even greater once he hears word of a prophecy foreshadowing the religious conversion of his one and only son. Hoping to secure his legacy, the king puts the young prince in a secluded fortress, hoping he will grow up totally ignorant of outside life. Meanwhile, the king does all he can to pursue hermits, holy men and other spiritual freaks in a futile attempt to drive them out of his realm. One day a hermit named Barlaam approaches the adolescent prince, whose name is Jósafat, and opens his eyes to the compassionate, anti-materialist teachings of Christianity. The prince is baptized in secret, and Barlaam returns to the desert from whence he came. The now infuriated king desperately tries to revert his heir back to the religion of their ancestors, but to no avail. Western spirituality is there to stay. Instead, Jósafat converts the king, accepting Christ on his deathbed. Finally inheriting the kingdom, Jósafat abdicates. He leaves not only his crown but his entire country behind. Preferring the simple life of an ascetic to the luxuries of a king. He wanders the desert to live with his old master Barlaam.

St. Buddha

If the story sounds familiar, it's probably because you've heard parts of it many times before, as the Buddhist story about the life of Siddhārtha Gautama, whom most Westerners know simply as «The Buddha». To its Norse audience, the Saga of Barlaam and Jósafat served as a moral commentary on the vanity of material life, with the protagonist turning his back on his earthly kingdom to partake in the Kingdom of Heaven. Actually, the name Jósafat is a severe bastardization of bodhisattva – a title denoting a person who has experienced the enlightenment of Buddhahood, but has sworn to stay behind in the world in order to work for the salvation of all living things.

Nobody knows what medieval Norwegians might have thought about the saga's Buddhist roots. Their only knowledge of India came from fantastic medieval romances, where it was described as a magical place inhabited by monsters and elves. As for Buddhism, they were blissfully unaware of its existence. However, far Eastern Christianity was a staple of medieval folklore: From the Nestorian church in Asia to the legends of Prester John. It was a widely believed that the apostle Thomas had brought Christianity to India after Christ's death, which gave credence to the idea that isolated pockets of early Christians persisting throughout the uncharted East.

The Helgö Buddha. Photo: Historiska Museet

From Bengal to Björgvin

Before becoming available to Norwegian audiences in the 13th century, the story had already undertaken an impressive journey: It was brought into Catholic circulation via Greece, who got it through Georgia where it was first adapted to Christianity from an Arabic version in the 10th century. This version had in turn come from Persia. The legend provides an amazing example of how stories can acquire new meanings outside their original contexts as they move across cultures.

The story is not the first Buddhist creation to reach Scandinavia though. In 1956 a small bronze statuette of the Buddha was found in a viking era settlement on the isle of Helgö in Sweden. Produced in North-East India, the figurine depicts him peacefully meditating on a lotus blossom. How did it get there? As far as the vikings are purported to have traveled, it's very unlikely they had any significant contact with Buddhists, if at all. The explanation is probably more mundane, but interesting none the less: Typologically the statue is dated to the 6th century AD, a time when Scandinavians by all accounts lacked sailing technology. Their rowing capabilities allowed them to trade across the North and Baltic seas, but direct contact with the middle east is pretty much out of the question. Of course, I cannot leave this without addressing the unfortunately named «Buddha bucket» of the Oseberg burial, as well as similar examples from various viking era burials. Don't let anybody fool you: they are Irish, not Indian in origin. The Helgö Buddha is a genuine example though, but it was likely a centuries old antique by the time it reached Sweden, having made its way North on a slow journey that took it generations to complete. Which is pretty impressive in itself. I wonder what they must have thought of it! 

Despite any similarities with oriental art, the so-called buddha bucket of Oseberg is Irish in origin.

Ninjas of the North: Royal assassins in medieval Norway

On the fifth day of Christmas in the year 1181, an angry, drunken mob took to arms and stormed the palace of king Magnús Erlingsson in Bergen, Norway. The assailants were called guests, but they were not visitors. The title of guest was actually a rank within the royal guard. And they served a function comparable to that of secret police or special forces units. As one source puts it, they lent their name from the fact that they “pay visits to the homes of many men, though it is not always friendly.” In short, the guests often served as spies and assassins doing the king's dirty work.

Now they were rebelling, killing servants and vandalizing royal property, breaking their way into the hall, door by door, and catching the king's retainers unarmed and off-guard, who relied on a few armed guardsmen and hot stones from the fire to keep their assailants at bay. Before long the town guard rushed to their aid and the attack was finally suppressed. The king seized the conspirators in the ensuing aftermath, executing the worst aggressors and made examples of the rest by amputating feet and hands. The reason for the uprising? The king had merely served them beer and confined them to drink in a separate building, reserving mead and the best quarters for the higher ranks of his bodyguard. But who were these “guests”, exactly?

Knock knock, who's there?

The key to understanding their title lies in the society they belonged to. As mentioned in the King's Mirror – a 13th century book of noble customs, the guests were named because of their habit of stalking the king's enemies. It is easy forgotten in the relative peace of the 21th century that visitors aren't always wanted, and medieval Scandinavia could certainly be a volatile and dangerous place. The warrior ethos of the Viking era was still alive and well, and strangers should well be treated with equal measures of hospitality and caution.

The guests were oath-sworn members of the king's retinue, or hirð in Old Norse. But unlike his other retainers, who were nobles, the guests were low-born. They earned only half a hirdman's pay, and though they were considered second in rank to them, they were formally above some of the lesser ranks of the retinue. However, noble birth meant that these could hope to rise in status, something that the low-born guests could not. They were held separate and, apart from Christmas day and Easter day, were not allowed to eat and drink at the king's table like the noble retainers.

The hirðskrá – literally the Book of the Retinue – was a law code compiled in the 1270's regulating the Norwegian royal guard. It states a great deal about the guests, who seemed to serve as the king's eyes and ears around the country. Often they were sent to complete specific clandestine tasks. In practice this could be anything from assasinating opponents to delivering letters. It is stated that the king should refrain from sending the guests out on impossible missions, as well as those that would «displease God». Meaning there must have been some ethical concern associated with their function, at least officially, which would serve to explain why the guests could not be nobles. This might also imply that the guests had been involved in past atrocities, and that kings might have been too unscrupulous in their deployment, perhaps even sending them on outright suicide missions. The law code also encouraged the guests to understand, and carefully consider their contracts, as to make sure there were no misunderstandings. They were allowed to question their missions to some degree. Still, the task of the guest was to do the king's bidding, even when the task was grim.

Hrafninn Flýgur (1984), Dir: Hrafn Gunnlaugsson.

For king and country

Judging from the sources, their assignments were as varied as they were dangerous. Ranging from downright political assassination to sabotage, the confiscation of property, kidnapping and espionage. The sagas paint a picture of gritty shock troops with license to kill, going behind enemy lines to exterminate strategic targets, even in the midst of an army, which must have required tremendous military skill. They existed all over the realm, and were required to be on the lookout for any military or political threats to the king. Wherever such enemies were spied, they ought to try and kill them, or so the King's Mirror says. 

The Book of the Retinue, however, gives the impression of a more organized force, and being the younger of the two texts, it might point towards a formal development to regulate the guests' behavior more strictly. For example, instead of outright executions, guests should ideally abduct their targets and bring them before a priest to perform their last rites, before ultimately taking them to an executioner. Several accounts reveal that this wasn't always carried out, and many a man's political ambitions must have ended with their guts spilling across the business end of a guest's blade, or dangling from a tree in the forest, as is purported to have been the fate of one particular band of Swedish interlopers.

The guests enjoyed many perks otherwise out of reach to people of low birth. As the king's men they qualified for tax exemption, and crimes against them punished more harshly. They were probably rewarded with properties and special services exclusive to veterans in the king's service. This, along with the brotherly security that came with being part of Norway's elite licensed killers, must have earned them some notoriety.

Loot to kill

Despite being representatives of the king, these professional party crashers didn't always have the best intentions. The aforementioned law code expressly states that the guests couldn't confiscate anything that wasn't directly relevant to their mission. It seems likely that this amendment was a reaction to the guests being a bit too eager to loot and kill. Some thirty years earlier, the King's Mirror claimed that the guests were allowed to keep all the loot they could carry from assassinations (apart from gold, which was forfeited to the king). Such abuse of their position was evidently not acceptable from the 1270's on. Thus we might speculate that guests were using their license to kill to line their pockets.

Like other agents of some majesty's secret service, ill treatment of women is also an issue here. The law code takes special concern for guests on the subject of robberies and women's safety, suggesting a history of sexual assault and larceny within their ranks. All in all, the guests had a reputation for being rowdy and dangerous.

This leads us to the other ethical conundrums of being a contract killer in Norse culture: The guests could only do as they did because they acted on behalf of the highest authority in the country, namely the king. Otherwise, Norse culture frowned upon clandestine activities of any kind, and the deeds of the guests could easily have been condemned as cowardly and unmanly, had they been performed by any other member of society. The mere act of accusing someone of being unmanly was a defamation that could legally get you killed, so this was no small matter. Norwegian society in the 13th century was a transparent one, centered around family ties and a strict code of honor/shame ethics. Between the viking era and the better part of the high middle ages, killing someone was somewhat excusable as long as you openly admitted to it and accepted penalty. Covert killing was, at least in most cases, considered dishonorable, and would qualify a person to outlawry by default. This was effectively a death sentence back then. The fact that guests sometimes had to resort to such methods may explain why this position was reserved for low-born people, as it seems out of step with the chivalric ideals of 13th century nobility. Despite all this, the guests seem to have been highly respected and trusted confidants of the king.

As a guest you might be torching a political opponents house one day and delivering mail the next, with all the immunity of a government agent. Not much has changed in 800 years, has it? 

Literature

• Flugeim, Morgan. 2006. Gjestene i kongens hird. Ein samla gjennomgang av deira virke. The Faculty of Humanities: The University of Bergen
• Imsen, Steinar. 2000. Hirdloven til Norges konge og hans håndgangne menn. Riksarkivet: Oslo
• Kongsspegelen. 1976. Translated by Alf Hellevik. Norrøne bokverk. Samlaget: Oslo

Checklist: Are You Living in a Norse Heroic Legend?

Have you ever died so hard you laughed? In the legends of proud old Skaðinawjō, gruesome death was the privilege of the stupidly heroic. But c'mon, it's the current year: Why should divine genealogies, class, and the gap between myth and ontological reality keep you from dying like a semi-divine king?

Hold your horses, some heavily earned credit is due before we go on: I would probably never have written this article [originally in Norwegian] had it not been for me Stumbling across Samantha Finley's eminent guide How to Tell if You are in an Old English Poem, which inspired me to make one of my own, though from a Norse perspective. For the sake of cultivating my readers, I chose the Old Norse heroic lays as my springboard, because not every day can be Hávamál day. However, I won't rule out the possibility of abusing other genres or poetry or prose for similar purposes at some later point in time. There's no room for democracy on this blog, unless you're part of the priviledged caste of Brute Norse patrons, but I cordially invite you to throw me a comment or ninety-three.

The heroic lays are a somewhat overlooked genre of Norse literature. One gross oversimplification could be that that they comprise, basically, of those eddic poems that don't have gods as their main characters, but rather mortal men and women of legendary, semi-mythical stature (though the gods are certainly guilty in some of the tomfoolery going on in the background). On a more general level, Norse heroic poetry is part of a pan-Germanic cycle of legends, dealing with a magical and distant past of champions and supernatural intrigue. Interestingly, this age of legends does (to some degree) overlap with the historical era known as the migration period. Because of this, they often contain a zany conglomerate of historical and mythical characters, which is enough to drive a rabid barbarophile like myself utterly mad.

I'll avoid the complicated issue of determining the age of these poems, but it's abundantly clear that they were composed in a society dedicated to a radically different ethos from what most of us are accustomed to. The heroes are generally not what common folk would consider "good people". These dudes and dudettes are entirely beyond good and evil, and largely exhibit übermensch levels of amorality and vitalistic disregard for the health and safety of pretty much anybody. This, and certain other things, add up to a series of features that distinguish them from normal people, and are invariably woven from of a certain hardened fiber, that je ne sais pas (that is French for "I don't know what") that makes a true hero. Heroes like Starkad, Helgi, Gunnar, and last by not least: Sigmund, everybody's pan-Germanic bad boy!

Not this Sigmund.

None the less, superhuman strength and talent is worth nothing in the world of Germanic poetry, if the hero doesn't fulfill the one true criteria, the sine qua non (that is Latin for "without which there is nothing") of the amoral Germanic hero. Namely that he (or she) must die an impressive, spectacular, and oftentimes utterly needless death. The leaps of logic required to make this final condition come true are less important. What matters is the fact that these Norse kamikaze-by-epic-convention simply need to die, no matter how seemingly banal, brutal or ludicrous a reason it takes. The more inhumane the better, giving up the ghost with a heroic shrug.

Now that the lecture is over, I want to ask: Have you ever wondered if you are yourself the stuff of legends? Do you, or maybe your friends, or spouse, have what it takes to be part of an Old Norse heroic lay? Below I've compiled an inexhaustive checklist for you to print and put in your wallet, put on your fridge door, or hang by the toilet. Underline whichever statement fits your fate or lifestyle, and assess the results accordingly.

The result is not for you to judge, though; the gods shall have the final say:

1. Your step-dad is a dwarf.
2. Attila the Hun is your brother in law (or, alternately, the father of your children).
3. You have some junk laying around that once belonged to Caesar.
4. You're attending a party. All other guests are Huns.
5. You're a Goth, but you don't know what a mall or eyeliner is.
6. Your ale bowl is full of wine. An unseen narrator proclaims that is, in fact, a wine-heavy ale bowl. An unfathomable luxury.
7. You are shocked to find that this very beer bowl is the skull of your own child.
8. Somebody had to point this out to you, and it implies terrible things about your taste in tableware. Not to mention your parenting.
9. You keep bumping into people from vastly different historical eras than your own.
10. You consider dying to be the most reasonable #lifegoal.
11. Someone is being kind to you. So kind, in fact, that you have reason to believe that they might be plotting to kill you.
12. You confirm that there is indeed a plot to kill you. It's the opportunity of a lifetime!
13. You consciously create a situation that increases their chance of success. 
14. You either intend to acquire a hoard of gold, or you already possess one.
15. You dump it in a body of water simply because you can. Only death is real.
16. You would rather die than tell your abductors you dumped the treasure. You encourage them to torture you all they want.
17. They offer merciful alternative, you insist that they torture you instead.
18. You laugh as you die. Nobody can question it, because you loudly proclaim it in front of everyone within listening distance. Torturous death is but a game to you.
19. You are too weak to see or stand upright, but your famous last words consist of a dozen or so stanzas of poetic autobiography.
20. Your final words last longer than it took to torture you to death, but you still have a few stanzas to recite and laughing to do. Death must wait patiently.
21. Though you are dead, your lifestyle is pretty much the same as before. You still go to parties and sleep with your girlfriend. Your only regret is that you can't die twice.
22. When not searching for ways to die, your life/deathstyle consists of hoarding gold, impressing people with your high alcohol tolerance, and humiliating your enemies.
23. You leave the land of the dead. You encounter a couple of living folks who believe: A) that they be tripping B) that Ragnarok is upon them. But you're just out to stretch your legs.
24. If you're a man: You never shed as much as a single tear your entire life.
25. If you're a woman: Inanimate objects and wild animals alike sob uncontrollably in the presence of your sadness, expressing genuine sympathy for you. Unlike every person you've ever met.
26. Your boyfriend was a bit of a vegetable. In fact you like to compare him with some sort of allium, like a leek or onion. Those vegetables are amazing, they are to plants what gold is amongst the metals. Life without leek is tragic.
27. Tired of life, you toss yourself in the sea. But not even the ocean wants you, you bitch.
28. You could swear there were more warriors attending your feast yesterday, than there are ones attending your battle today.
29. You own an incredibly ancient and beautiful sword. Sadly, a curse requires that someone must die whenever it is drawn. So much for a conversation piece.
30. Luckily, your vanity is only contested by your pathological bloodthirstiness. If people want to see the sword, let them.
31. If you follow the trail of clues, you'll see that this entire mess is the fault of a few incompetent fools.
32. You know these fools simply as "the gods".
33. The only drinking game you know consists of alternating between verbally humiliating others, and bragging about your own greatness.
34. Uh-oh! The hostess is angry with her husband and is making a scene in front of the whole party! How embarrassing.
35. Atli, put down that spoon. This isn't pork!
36. That's your kids you're eating!
37. The birds follow your life like they were watching Game of Thrones.
38. Amazing! These birds actually talk!
39. It's either very wise or extremely foolish to follow their advice.
40. Follow their advice or do not follow their advice, you will regret it either way.
41. Divorce is settled with the sword, by means of Freudian assasinations in the marital bed.
42. Death does not hamper a healthy and active sex life. Your lover need only pass by your grave.
43. You're in a complicated relationship with a valkyrie.
44. She flew away, literally.
45. Your lover uses you as a guinea pig for worrisome potions.
46. The enemy says they've murdered your brother and tortured him in blood-curdling ways, but you don't buy what they are selling.
47. You demand they stop messing around and do it for real.
48. There can be no doubt that this is in fact your brother's heart, still beating as it was torn from his chest! Surely it must have trembled half as much when it lay inside him, greeting death!
49. Having confirmed (and possibly caused) your brother's death, it's time for you to follow. They may throw you in the snake-pit now.
50. You bring your musical instruments to play as you die the snake-venom death.
51. Your soothing and/or boring melodies put the snakes to sleep, just so you can suffer for longer.

So, if you find yourself a true amoral hero after having checked the list above, there's little else to do but face your inescapable demise. Better to embrace it than flee the fate the Norns intended for you. But if you have to die, die cackling!

So what the flip is Old Norse anyway? A guide for the perplexed

Most readers will have some preconceived notion about what the the terms Norse and Old Norse mean. Even if your understanding of the subject is vague, you probably know that Old Norse is famously the language of the so-called Vikings – a historically recent ethnic term that is often used interchangeably with Norse. In casual conversation this works fine, and you're not confusing anybody by using any of the two. Academically (of course) it's much more complicated. If you look in an English dictionary dating to, say, the early 1900's you are likely to see Norse defined simply as «Norwegian». Historically this is what the word meant, but the meaning has since shifted. Today it generally refers to the Germanic speaking Scandinavian population, as well as that of their overseas colonies during the Viking Era and Middle Ages. As for the term «Viking» denoting Norse peoples: This is somewhat misleading because a viking was actually a specific kind of person within Norse culture. A title, really. But owing to its prevalence, scholars frequently resort to it for convenience. For example, Norse overseas colonies in places like Ireland, Greenland, and Russia, is sometimes referred to as The Viking Diaspora. But that's a discussion for a later time. Let's stick with Norse for now.

The first Norsemen

Outside the scholarly world, the term Norse is most commonly applied to the Viking Era, which kicked off in the 8th century for reasons varied and unknown (innovations in sailing technology is commonly assumed to be one factor). The Old Norse language was more or less fully developed by the 700's, having sprung from the preceding Proto-Norse or Proto-Scandinavian tongue (pick whatever term suits you, there's no consensus!), which in turn developed from a Northern dialect of Proto-Germanic.

For Norway, Greenland, the Faeroe Islands, and Iceland, it makes sense to talk about common Old Norse all the way through the 14th century, when the Black Death unleashed a period of Mad Max-esque socioeconomic and demographic turmoil, forcing Norway into a linguistic revolution that gave birth to the Middle Norwegian language. This made mutual intelligibility with Iceland a thing of the past.

Middle Norwegian is basically the sort of grizzly post-apocalyptic linguistic change you can expect when something like three fifths of the entire population shuffles off their mortal coil, leaving their brats with nobody to correct their baby language and youthful slang. Up until then, the differences between Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic had been a matter of dialect. Specifically the Old West Norwegian dialects of the early settlers.

It wasn't a unified language

Anglophone scholars divide Old Norse language into West Norse, which I described above, and East Norse which encompasses Old Swedish, Danish, and Gutnish (spoken on Gotland). These are distinct enough to be considered languages of their own. Still, all these variants of Old Norse were mutually intelligible to the point where West Norse speakers accepted the term Danish Tongue (dǫnsk tunga) as a name for their own language. This likely originated among Anglo-Saxons to describe the language of Scandinavian settlers, traders and raiders, drawing a generalization from what seemed to them the dominant culture – namely the Danes. This isn't entirely dissimilar to how we generalize by calling them Vikings today. This common linguistic identity, and the fact that they adopted a foreign term as their own, seems to suggest a sense of cultural kinship among Viking Era Scandinavians. Swedes, Danes and Norwegians can still understand each other with relative ease, which is a fantastic linguistic privilege. And still, when reading Norwegian, Danish or Swedish runic inscriptions from the Viking Era, we may enjoy the distinct and recognizable traits of each.

The extent of Old Norse and closely related tongues in the 10th century. West Norse in red, East Norse in Orange. Gutnish in purple.

Terms, translations, and turmoil

Despite mutual intelligibility and common heritage, Nordic scholars are not on the same page as English ones when they discuss Old Norse in their native languages. Scandinavian scholars use the term «norrønt» which overlaps with Norse. But confusingly, it does not mean exactly the same. Firstly, the term excludes Swedes and Danes, and refers exclusively to the West Norse language(s) and populations of the Viking Era and High Middle Ages (8th through 14th centuries). One can easily write entire books about why this is, as people have, but bear with me.

One obvious reason is the historical and linguistic divide between Sweden and Denmark on one side, and the entire Western Nordic world on the other. Swedish and Danish language rapidly developed away from Old Norse in the High Middle Ages: 13th century Old Danish looks a lot more like modern Danish than 13th century Old Norwegian resembles modern Norwegian. In fact, most Scandinavians would have an easier time reading 13th century Danish, than they would trying to make sense of Old Norse. This means that Old Norse is a viable term for language in Norway and the Western Nordic from the 8th through 14th centuries, while 13th and 14thcentury Swedes and Danes spoke a different language entirely, though Norwegian would soon enough make a similar turn.

«Sven carved these runes after Uddulf» Coutersy of the Swedish National Heritage Board / Harald Faith-Ell.

The Swedish dialect of East Norse, so-called Runic Swedish, appears before 800 and is gone by 1225, superseded by Old Swedish until 1526. The heavy West Norse connotations of Old Norse and «norrønt» also rest on the fact that the vast majority of surviving Norse literature comes from the Western Nordic area: Iceland, and to a far lesser extent Norway. Norway tends to mooch off Iceland, because Icelandic identity was reflexive towards Norway. They wrote a ton of historical fiction placed in Norway, and composed some great propaganda pieces for the Norwegian crown. Besides, Icelanders pretty much considered Norway the womb of the Icelandic nation, and suffered immense Norwegian cultural and political pressure.

Very few vernacular manuscripts remain from the other Nordic countries, but the literature and implications of identity permeates all Nordic scholarship on the matter to some lesser or greater extent. I will not go into the long-term political history of Scandinavia and the Nordic, but they all have in common a heritage of Norse prehistory that functions as a serving bowl of national myths of origin, which is politicized accordingly.

Norse culture and contemporary identities

The reception of Old Norse, viking, and medieval history is treated variously between the Nordic countries. Denmark and Iceland, it seems to me, are the best when it comes to popular representation of the Viking Era in particular. Denmark is rich in physical remains but short on written sources, with Iceland it's by far the other way around. And each country infuses the era with their own particular brands of plushy patriotic sentiments. Warning – stereotypes ahead. In Norway, as well as in Norse texts, the term Norse (Norwegian: norrønt. Icelandic: norræn) have strong norwegiocentric connotations. I've told Icelandic barhoppers I do Old Norse and they've corrected me to Old Icelandic, while Swedes might have no idea what I'm talking about when presented with the term. 

Such identity markers are visible even in the world of Academia, down to the spelling you see in the critical editions of Norse texts at your university library. In Iceland, as with the majority of international scholarship, Old Norse is taught with modern Icelandic orthography and pronunciation. This is what you hear in virtually every bedroom video guide to Old Norse pronunciation, which are a dime a dozen on YouTube. Norway is the only country (as far as I'm aware) where reconstructed pronunciation is taught. Orthography follows a convention called «Classical Old Norse», which intends to portray a normalized version of 13th century Norse spelling. This is the tradition I was brought into, though it appears to be rapidly disappearing. To this day, years after my indoctrination graduation, I still get A Clockwork Orange-like fits of nausea every time I hear Old Norse pronounced as if it were modern Icelandic. I'm sure the feeling is mutual.