Evening of Light » Articles

Article: Tale of Tales – The Graveyard (2008)

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:44:16 +0000

Early Concept Sketch for 'The Graveyard'

This article has been moved to Sub Specie, O.S.’s new blog, which features “ruminations on the interplay of science, culture, language, and artistic media”. You can read it here: http://www.eveningoflight.nl/subspecie/?p=30, along with other articles and thoughts on various subjects.

Article: Tale of Tales – The Endless Forest (2005 – present)

Oscar — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:55:57 +0000

This article has been moved to Sub Specie, O.S.’s new blog, which features “ruminations on the interplay of science, culture, language, and artistic media”. You can read it here: http://www.eveningoflight.nl/subspecie/?p=10, along with other articles and thoughts on various subjects.

Article: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Children of Húrin – Heroism and Tragedy

Oscar — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:00:51 +0000

July 27th 2007 – by O.S.

“A Túrin Turambar turún’ ambartanen: master of doom by doom mastered!”

'The Children of Húrin' first edition cover, illustration by Alan Lee

The annunciation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘latest’ might have evoked mixed feelings for some. I’m probably not the only one who, after living through the huge business that surrounded Peter Jackson’s movie depiction of The Lord of the Rings, wondered what this newest work, over 30 years after Tolkien’s death, would contain, and if it wouldn’t be the umpteenth trick up the sleeve of those who are earning money from the good man’s literary works. The entire series of The History of Middle-Earth, consisting of a very extensive inventory of Tolkien’s manuscripts and ideas, is finished, and what then is left, one might ask. The Children of Húrin accordingly, is not a work ‘hidden’ for years that will cast a whole new light on Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. Moreover, experienced Tolkien readers will have quickly caught on that the book is about the tales of Húrin and (in particular) his son Túrin, as told in The Silmarillion, and more extensively in Unfinished Tales. Those same readers, though, will also know that the version of the story in The Silmarillion is rather concise (about 30 pages) and the one in Unfinished Tales (about 100 pages) rather incomplete and adapted to the style of that book.

This is the reason why Christopher Tolkien, editor of most of his father’s posthumous work, has chosen this particular tale for an independent release. As he explains in the notes after The Children of Húrin:

It thus seems unquestionable, from my father’s own words, that if he could achieve final and finished narratives on the scale he desired, he saw the three ‘Great Tales’ of the Elder Days (Beren and Lúthien, the Children of Húrin, and the Fall of Gondolin) as works sufficiently complete in themselves as not to demand knowledge of the great body of legend known as The Silmarillion. (10) [1]

The goal has been to realise such a self-contained version, which has now been done. By comparing the different versions of the story to be found in J.R.R.’s legacy, Christopher has created a grand whole, which is mainly faithful to the version in Unfinished Tales, but with a consistency of style, pace, and content that an independent story demands. The result is a fine book of a little over 300 pages, with enough background information to be able to place the story in the frame of Tolkien’s mythology, without distracting from Túrin’s adventures. And this is the main forte of the book: for the first time this tragic hero (perhaps Tolkien’s most tragic) gets a whole book to himself, without being just another link in the chain of a long history. I will elaborate more on the nature of this epic in the second part of this little article, and that part will also spoil the larger part of the plot. Those who’d rather find out for themselves are therefore advised to skip that part until they’ve read The Children of Húrin themselves.

That the book is worth the purchase is beyond doubt for me. Because of the abovementioned nature of the story, this book is more like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and less of a background book for those who wish to delve deeply into Tolkien’s universe. While the style of the story is rather haughty (like all of Tolkien’s works), the story itself is extensively worked out, and therefore more accessible than The Silmarillion, which has always remained more for the real Tolkien fanatics. So, even those who’ve always just sticked to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings should give The Children of Húrin a try.

Besides, the story is so different in terms of content, because of its essentially tragic nature, that it definitely shows a new side of Tolkien’s work, a side particularly close to classical, Germanic and (as we’ll see) Finnish heroic narratives. At the same time, the tale is true to Tolkien’s own ceration: The Children of Húrin is firmly rooted in the fantastic but convincing Middle-Earth, and readers of The Lord of the Rings will recognise many elements in this book.

Finally, there are the illustrations. Alan Lee again has delivered a wonderful series of pictures, both colour plates and pencil drawings between blocks of text. For those who, like me, posess a copy of the illustrated edition of The Hobbit, this will be familiar. I think these illustrations add a lot to the atmosphere, and it’s a good move to equip even the standard first edition of the book with these. In short, this is a beautiful work which’ll look great in both the beginning and expert Tolkien library.

* What follows is a brief analysis of the story – including spoilers! *

Above I wrote that I consider The Children of Húrin one of the stories in which Tolkien comes closest to the heroic tradition of different European peoples. Even a novice reader of this book will recognise that there are many elements in the life of Túrin Turambar (Túrin, Master of Doom) that ‘we’ (as Westerners) associate with ‘heroism’; killing a dragon that threatens the land is probably the most obvious one. Tolkien is inspired by more than just familiar fairy tale motives, however. Woven into the story, that is set into the background of the long, often hopeless struggles between the Elves and the dark god Morgoth, we find elements from both the Germanic and Finnish heroic tradition.

But first, a brief summary of the plot. Húrin is the leader of a house of men, that fights alongside the elven people against the armies of the fallen vala Morgoth. Húrin is married to Morwen, and their son is called Túrin. During the Nirnaeth Arnoediad (‘Battle of Unnumbered Tears’) Húrin is captured and brought before Morgoth, who curses him and makes him watch from a high mountain how the dark armies spread across the world. After defeat in the battle, Morwen sends Túrin to the elven king Thingol, so that Túrin – now the heir of the house – can grow up in safety. Not long after, Túrin’s sister Niënor is born. Túrin is raised by Thingol, but quickly turns out to be born for trouble. All grown up, he causes the death of the elf Saeros after a fight, but he flees before he can be judged. He becomes an outlaw and the leader of a group of bandits. After a meeting with his elven friend Beleg, Túrin decides to only hunt Morgoth’s orcs from now on. Fate strikes again, though. After being captured by orcs, Túrin is freed by Beleg, but because he was confused from begin captured, he mistakes Beleg for an orc and slays him by accident. After more wanderings, Túrin ends up in Nargothrond, a fortress of the elves. There he becomes the counsellor of king Orodreth, and the blade of Beleg is reforged. Morgoth did not sit idly, however, and sends Glaurung, greatest of dragons, into the world. Glaurung lays waste to Nargothronf, but Túrin escapes and is again alone in the wilderness. There he meets his sister Niënor, who had earlier been bewitched by Glaurung, and had lost all of her memories. The two don’t recognise each other (he had never seen his sister before) and fall in love and marry. Glaurung is still scourging the land, however, and Túrin sets out to defeat him. He succeeds in slaying the dragon, but is smitten by the dragon’s poisonous blood, and falls in a death-like trance. Everyone thinks he has died, and Niënor is stricken with grief at the sight. At that moment, the dying Glaurung lifts the bewitchment. Niënor has regained all her memories, and she realises she has had an incestuous relationship. A broken woman, she casts herself off a cliff. When Túrin wakes up, he is told all that had come to pass, and he too, is broken. He takes his own life by throwing himself onto his sword.[2]

Besides writer, Tolkien was also a philologist, and as a scholar of Old English and other Old Germanic languages, hij was surely familiar with the tales surrounding the hero Sigurd (German: Siegfried). Sigurd was the slayer of the dragon Fafnir, as is told, among other places, in the Völsunga saga and the Poetic Edda. Like Túrin, Sigurd kills the dragon from below, but the similarities don’t stop there. Another motive, for example, is the magical power of the dragon’s blood. Glaurung’s blood is poisonous, while Fafnir’s grants impenetrable skin. But perhaps most important is the sword. Sigurd fights with the sword Gram, which he has inherited from his father Sigmund. Sigmund’s blade had broken at his death, but he was able to bequeath the two pieces to his wife Hjördis, to keep them safe for Sigurd. Later, the blade is reforged and it becomes a formidable weapon, capable of cleaving a flock of wool in two, or as it happens, a dragon’s belly. Túrin’s sword, Gurthang (‘Iron of Death’) has a different background, but a similar fate. Túrin’s friend Beleg Strongbow posessed a blade called Anglachel (‘Iron of the Flaming Star’), but when he freed Túrin, he accidentally pricked him with it. Túrin was still confused from being captured, and it was night, so he thought Beleg was an orc come to torture him. When he came loose, he grabbed Anglachel and slew his best friend. The blade he later had reforged to Gurthang. This is a very clear parallel, and one of the first in the book that places The Children of Húrin clearly in a historical literary tradition. But there is more in the Sigurd-cycle that is familiar. Sigurd’s father Sigmund has inadvertedly conceived a child (Sinfjötli) by his own sister Signy, who, magically disguised, shares the bed with him one night. [3]

Aleksi Gallen-Kallela's 'Kullervo Cursing' (1899)

We also find this incest motive in the Finnish songs on Kullervo [4], as collected in the Kalevala. Kullervo is Kalervo’s son, the latter of whom was caught in a feud with his brother Untamo. Kalervo’s family is exterminated, but Kullervo’s mother is captured by Untamo, in whose land she gives birth to Kullervo. Untamo tries to kill the boy, but fails, and sends him into slavery instead. Later, Kullervo finds his parents again, who turn out to be alive, even though his sister has gone missing. During one of his travels, he meets her, but they do not recognise each other. He seduces her, and they make love. Afterwards, they inquire after each other’s family, and they discover that they are siblings. She is beyond grief, and throws herself in the river ( like Niënor). Kullervo as well is broken, and after avenging his relatives on Untamo, he takes his own live by casting himself on his own sword. And here we can of course recognise Túrin’s final moments. After he discovers he married his own sister, he asks Gurthang if it is willing to take his life. The sword speaks::

“Yes, I will drink your blood, that I may forget the blood of Beleg my master, and the blood of Brandir slain unjustly. I will slay you swiftly.” (256)

These are telling similarities, which show that Tolkien often drew from different wells in the history of European literature, also in his other works. He did not keep it a secret, by the way, as he points out the link with Sigurd and Kullervo himself in his letters. [5] It’s clear that Tolkien considered himself part of rich tradition of storytelling. By taking motives from older epics and working them into his books, he emphasises that position, and anchors his stories in it. This tradition is not (only) about originality, but also about expressing culturally relevant concepts like heroism and fate. These two in particular are important in the story of Túrin. After many hardships and grief, he starts calling himself Turambar, Master of Doom. His Doom was still to come, however, and this typical act of hybris becomes his downfall. Whether it’s Morgoth’s curse on Húrin’s bloodline that catches up with Túrin or not isn’t clear, but the end of the book makes it painfully clear that even Túrin cannot escape his Doom. How true the words of Niënor, spoken when she last laid eyes on his body:

“Farewell, O twice beloved! A Túrin Turambar turún’ ambartanen: master of doom by doom mastered! O happy to be dead! “(243-244)

Notes:

[1] All quotes are from The Children of Húrin, see list of sources.
[2] See for a slightly more elaborate summary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%BArin.
[3] The Völsunga saga is readable online in English on http://omacl.org/Volsunga/.
[4] The story of Kullervo can be found in runo 31-36 of the Kalevala. For a further comparison of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work and that of Elias Lönnrot, the collector and editor of the Kalevala, see Petty (2004).
[5] See Carpenter & Tolkien, Letters, p. 150.

List of sources:

Carpenter, Humphrey & Tolkien, Christopher (eds.) (1981 [1995]). The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. London: HarperCollins.
Tolkien, J.R.R. (1980 [2000]). Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth. London: HarperCollins.
Tolkien, J.R.R. (1977 [1998]). The Silmarillion. London: HarperCollins.
Tolkien, J.R.R. (2007). The Children of Húrin. London: HarperCollins.

Kalevala. The Land of the Heroes. Translated by W.F. Kirby (1907 [1969]). London, New York: Everyman’s Library.
Petty, Anne C. (2004). “Identifying England’s Lönnrot”. In: Tolkien Studies 1. pp. 69-84.

Article: Historiography or Hearsay: Our view of the Vikings

admin — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 23:00:33 +0000

November 10th 2006 – by Quietus

“Behind the priest-slaying bogeyman lies a developed, civilised people who beg for proper, impartial study after these long years of pseudo-historical exile.”

“Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”

-Bishop Alcuin, Letter to Ethelred, King of Northumbria (extract)

It is a well known piece of history. On the 8th June, 793 CE [1], the first of a series of coastal raids from Scandinavia struck the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. The wild pagan raiders unleashed a previously unimaginable terror on the peaceful monks. Simeon of Durham writes in his Historia Regum Anglorum et Danicorum: “[The Vikings] came to the church of Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in fetters, many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea… It was 400 years until Lindisfarne regained its past glories, long after the end of what historians came to call ‘The Viking age’ (793 CE – 1066 CE). In that time, countless other attacks would shake the coasts of Britain and France. Viking raiders would penetrate even into the Mediterranean as they unleashed a reign of terror: raping, pillaging and slaughtering with uncaring abandon and an anathemic hatred of Christianity.

At least, this is what the chronicles tell us. Contemporary accounts are abuzz with the atrocities of the northmen. “Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et custodita, de gente fera Normannica nos libera, quae nostra vastat, Deus, regna” runs a religious litany of the period: “Our supreme and holy Grace, protecting us and ours, deliver us, God, from the savage Northman race which lays waste our realms”: one of many possible sources for the infamous, more succinct, but almost certainly apocryphal ‘Fury litany’, (“A furore Normannorum, libera nos Domine” – “From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, Deliver us!”) quoted so freely in many books and articles on the subject. Europe almost leaps from the Dark Ages of historical uncertainty with chronicles, accounts and letters detailing the depredation of the Vikings.

It is all so clearly laid down, that until the mid twentieth century it was mostly taken as fact: most of our history of the Vikings, and indeed the very concept of the Viking age, comes from these documents, and the works of mainly nineteenth century scholars. It is only comparatively recently that revisionist historians have stopped accepting these sources at face value, indeed, when one thinks for an instant, there are some things that do not add up. Alcuin’s letters, to the King of Northumbria and the Bishop of Lindisfarne, are the only contemporary sources for the raid. If the fact that, despite the raids severity, there still was a Bishop of Lindisfarne for Alcuin to write to does not make us ask ourselves some questions, then the place that Alcuin sent his letters from should. For the single contemporary account of the sacking of Lindisfarne was written by Alcuin whilst he was at the court of King Charlemagne in Aachen, over 500 miles away. It is, in fact, agreed by a growing number of revisionist historians to be little more than propaganda, an opinion which requires us to undo the major mistake of earlier historians in attempting to understand the history of Scandinavia and its place in Europe and the wider world at this time, which is to view it as somehow apart from the rest of Europe. For the location of Alcuin at the time he wrote his famous letters is significant for two reasons, and our erroneous view of the Vikings cannot be unbound from Alcuin’s perception of the Saxons.

In 775 CE Charlemagne had launched full-scale into a bloody war to conquer and, more importantly to our purposes, Christianise the Saxons. The brutality of this conflict cannot be underestimated. The Saxon nobility submitted to an alliance with Charlemagne and a series of mass baptisms culminating in 777 CE after a succession of successful campaigns by Charlemagne. However, the Saxons did not hold fast to their word, and not only continued worshipping their own gods, but executed a series of uprisings against Charlemagne throughout the rest of the eighth century (They would only be quelled in 804 CE). Charlemagne responded ruthlessly against such oath-breaking and apostasy with mass executions of prisoners and by laying waste to the Saxon’s sacred groves. The Saxons in turn began burning churches in retaliation. Aachen was Charlemagne’s base for waging this war, and the proximity of Alcuin to this conflict can be seen on the map below:

Why is this of importance? There are two reasons: first, Saxons being driven north by the conflict into Denmark and the Scandinavian peninsula may have been one of the instigators of the Viking age. But more importantly, historians such as Prof. Janet Nelson have highlighted the fact that the prejudices of contemporary chroniclers such as Alcuin in their view of ‘pagan races’ and ‘northmen’. If we consider matters for a moment, it is no wonder that Alcuin’s mind instantly jumped to images of church desecration and murder: he was tarring all pagans with the same brush. There is no archaeological evidence that the Vikings did anything more than steal Lindisfarne’s silver and gold (and why should they have any respect for Christian symbols, or even comprehend them, being at this time still Pagans?) There are no mass graves to suggest the wanton murder of holy men, and no evidence of burning. The main source is Alcuin, whose authority in the matter can be likened to that of a journalist reporting on casualties in the battle of Stalingrad from Berlin, with no other information but that ‘there is a battle happening in Stalingrad’. A staunch supporter of Charlemagne’s Christianising mission, it is highly likely that Alcuin embellished his report to a lesser or greater extent. And here I must state the conclusion I have come to personally in my research: the Vikings, such as they existed, were indeed coastal pirates and traders; indeed, the word ‘Viking’ came to English in the 18th century from a Scandinavian word meaning only those who engaged in such activities (In Medieval usage ‘Viking’ referred to a pirate, rather than to any culture; when the Vikings had left their boats behind, they were no longer called Vikings), pre-loaded with Romantic connotations. However, these Vikings have, along the way, been loaded with a reputation for extraordinary brutality that has no real basis in fact. Particularly from the traditional British standpoint, the Vikings have been in a curious position of being romanticised and demonised, whilst Scandinavian nations and later even Nazi Germany, would mix history, hearsay, folklore and mythology into the so-called ‘national romance’ movement, further muddying the waters. The basis for this vast historical misconception, it would seem, is the accepting at face value of not only contemporary chronicles, but many of the sagas and earlier historical studies of dubious provenance and purpose.

The Sagas are literary works written down mainly in Iceland between 1180 and 1400. They fall into five rough categories: Legendary Sagas (Fornaldarsögur), Icelandic Sagas or family sagas (Íslendingasögur), Kings Sagas (Konungasögur), Chivalric sagas (Riddarasögur) and Bishops sagas (Byskopasögur). Of these five, the Kings sagas, particularly Heimskringla (“The Orb of the World”) a collection of 16 sagas by Snorri Sturluson present us with the most accurate historical information about the period in question: Though the Heimskringla starts in legend, with the quasi-mythic Swedish House of Ynglings, it then goes on to detail the reigns of more historical Norse monarchs, chiefly Olaf Haraldson, and is well regarded as a historical source: even in this work, it is hard sometimes to tell what is fact and what is fable. Its historicity can be attributed in the main part to the recent nature of the events its later passages describe: other sagas, particularly the Íslendingasögur, are separated from the period which they narrate by some 200 years or so (they are concerned with the so-called saga age (sögu-öld), which took place from ca. 950-1050 CE and are written down some time between 1220 and 1400 CE): in these cases the accuracy of the retellings must be questioned, though in most cases these sagas only deal with events in Iceland itself, and are thus of little use when discussing wider history. Some of them are intrinsically more relevant than others. Egils saga, the story of the family of Egill Skallagrímsson and his descendents, is, for example, a bloody tale from whose pages are often plucked tales of Viking atrocity. Egill was a notorious rebel and pirate, said to have made his first murder at the age of seven, and who by his death had amassed a horde of dishonourably obtained silver. Similarly Jómsvíkinga saga deals with the exploits of the notorious Jomsvikings – famed for their heroism and bloodthirsty nature. The mistake in this instance is to read these sagas as a typical story of 10th century Viking life. It has instead been suggested that Egill’s story was recorded not because it was typical, but because it was unusual, and indeed sensational: it would be just as illogical to suppose that the story of Dr. Crippen would indicate a marked tendency toward murdering ones wife in Edwardian Britain. We have even have a possible explanation for Egill’s sociopathic behaviour: Jesse Byock has advanced the theory, based on a careful study of the saga, as well as later historical evidence, that Egill may have suffered from Paget’s Disease, a bone condition that would have caused him almost constant low-level pain. As for the Fornaldarsögur, it should be relatively clear the amount of historically accurate information they contain simply from their name: however, particularly during the time that National Romance was gaining popularity in the Scandinavian countries they were studied and accepted to a much greater level, and though they have nowadays, apart from the very last sections of the Hervarar saga, among others, been discredited as sources of historical information, and have also had interest directed away from them by the connotations of National Romanticism following the Third Reich, much of their base imagery has infiltrated into the popular canon of Viking history, further muddying the already murky waters of history. It is from this period that many of the most false and enduring pieces of Viking apocrypha come: The horned helmet, the skull cup, the rite of the blood eagle [2] and many individual tales.

Archaeology has told us a story of the Vikings somewhat different to that spun by the, as we have seen, unreliable documentary sources. Unfortunately, archaeological evidence for the Viking age is relatively scarce. Scandinavian architecture of this period made almost exclusive use of turf, wood and other natural materials, which have only survived in a very few instances and in limited ways. Most often, the Vikings of this period must be examined through their artefacts, which often give us a picture at odds with the normal historical picture. In York, for example, Pagan and Christian artifacts have been found alongside each other, preserved in anoxic wet clay, making the common held view of a deep hatred between the two faiths seem unlikely. Indeed, other archaeological finds have gone further, and we even see artifacts like the Wolf’s Cross (right), a synthesis between the Crucifix and Thor’s Hammer, which indicates a much easier level of cultural exchange than the simplistic picture of church burning and forced conversion, which we have already seen fits more with the Saxons than with any Scandinavian peoples. A further clue is the type of artifacts most commonly found: not swords, or axes, but combs, used by both men and women regularly at the time, a fact which rather contradicts the idea that Vikings were unusually dirty and unwashed. (This stereotype, by the way, is based to a good degree on a misreading of Ibn Fadlan’s account of his time amongst the Rus [3]. The references Fadlan constantly makes to ‘filth’ and ‘impurity’ are more to do with traditional Islamic concepts of cleanliness, such as the unclean left hand, rather than general uncleanliness. Indeed, it is somewhat remarkable for the time that the Rus washed every day, even if they did share the basin.) Many Viking archaeological sites contain no weapons at all, merely brooches, needles, coins and other examples of an every day existence. Other finds at York indicate that in the 10th Century the town was trading as far afield as the Byzantine Empire, a fact supported by massive finds of Arabic coins in Gotland. Trading, but not raiding.

But the real key to the misunderstanding of ‘Viking age’, as we have seen, is that it exists only as a descriptive term for a range of activities which has, then, become a general description of a group of individuals, rather than a race or nation. Whilst we can speak of ‘Anglo-Saxon Culture’ with reference to an integrated sense of national identity we cannot speak of ‘Viking’ culture, or ‘Viking’ art, in such a way. Viking was merely a lifestyle practiced by some Scandinavians. The term has further become complicated by being overlaid with interpretations from the 18th and 19th centuries which speak more about the cultural preconceptions of the peoples of those times than they do about medieval Scandinavia. The men who recorded the sagas were not fearsome warrior poets, but sedate Christian farmers, trying to get a touch on a more heroic age and answer important questions about their society. When we talk of ‘Viking history’ we really mean a little archaeology coloured by the desires of later generations to ‘remember’ their ancestors as hairy heroes in horned helmets.

We have seen then that our view of the Vikings is based on three distinct sorts of sources: historical texts, the historiographical interpretations of these texts, and the archaeological evidence. We also see that in our common understanding of the Vikings our view has been weighted far too readily towards the first two. We have approached the Vikings with a conception formed already in our heads by eighth and ninth century propaganda and the nationalistic and romantic ends of the eighteenth and nineteenth century ‘Norse Renaissance’ movement, which put little store in the dull but un-fanciful family sagas (once described by William Paton Ker as “among the dreariest things ever made by human fancy”) but instead constructed a false history based on the deeds and ideals of heroes who were, at the most semi-mythical, if not completely fictitious. When we peel away these layers of often wilful misinterpretation we see a time more complex, more enigmatic, and, maybe most importantly, a bit less exciting than the one we imagined. And this, surely, is the reason for the continuing power of these baseless myths and stereotypes: the horn helmeted warrior-poet is something exotic, something awesome in his berserk fury, whereas a trader or sheep farmer is just all too normal. Our own desire for romance, shaped by centuries and crystallised by Hollywood, has blinded us to the basic reality of history and obscured what may ultimately be a much more fascinating and nuanced picture of a people highly accomplished in art, craftsmanship, shipbuilding, navigation, literature and a host of other skills. As Else Roesdahl writes: “The picture of a barbaric North is no longer valid. It was created partly on the basis of written sources, and partly on the ideological grounds that European culture, classically inspired and Christian, was ‘superior’.” Behind the priest-slaying bogeyman lies a developed, civilised people who beg for proper, impartial study after these long years of pseudo-historical exile.

Notes:

[1] C.E. = Common Era; AD
[2] Ronald Hutton, in ‘The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy’ writes “the hitherto notorious rite of the ‘Blood Eagle,’ the killing of a defeated warrior by pulling up his ribs and lungs through his back, has been shown to be almost certainly a Christian myth resulting from the misunderstanding of some older verse.” (p. 282)
[3] Rus is a name for the (Swedish) Vikings who, during their explorations, sailed up the Dnjepr and other rivers, through Russia, to the South East. This is also where the name Russia comes from.