VIKING REVALUATIONSVIKING REVALUATIONSVIKING SOCIETY CENTENARY SYMPOSIUM
14–15 May 1992

Edited by
Anthony Faulkes and Richard Perkins

VIKING SOCIETY FOR NORTHERN RESEARCH
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

1993

© Viking Society for Northern Research 1993

Printed in the University of Birmingham
ISBN 978 0 903521 28 4

The Society acknowledges with gratitude the grants of the British Academy
towards the expenses of the symposium and of Se›labanki Íslands towards thecost of publication of this volume

The cover design is by Calum Campbell

CONTENTS

A letter from the President of Iceland .................................................... frontispiece
FOREWORD ......................................................................................................... vii
CENTENARY REVALUATIONSKNUT HELLE. Norway, 800–1200 ............................................................................ 1
GUNNAR KARLSSON. A century of research on early Icelandic society ............... 15
VÉSTEINN ÓLASON. The Sagas of Icelanders ......................................................... 26
DIANA WHALEY. The Kings’ Sagas ....................................................................... 43
MICHAEL BARNES. Norse in the British Isles ........................................................ 65
CHRISTINE FELL. Norse studies: then, now and hereafter .................................... 85
CURRENT PROBLEMS (1): PAGAN BELIEFS AND CHRISTIANIMPACT
BJARNE FIDJESTØL. The contribution of scaldic studies ..................................... 100
U RSULA D RONKE . The contribution of Eddic studies ...................................... 121
ELSE ROESDAHL. Pagan beliefs, Christian impact and archaeology—aDanish view .................................................................................................... 128
P ETER F OOTE . Historical studies: conversion moment and conversion
period .............................................................................................................. 137
CURRENT PROBLEMS (2): SCANDINAVIAN SOCIETY 800–1100
R. I. PAGE. Scandinavian society, 800–1100: the contribution of runicstudies ............................................................................................................. 145
JUDITH JESCH. Skaldic verse and Viking semantics ........................................... 160
P REBEN M EULENGRACHT S ØRENSEN . Historical reality and literary form ..... 172
BJØRN MYHRE. The beginning of the Viking Age—some current archaeological problems ........................................................................................... 182
Figures .................................................................................... after page 204

T

FOREWORDHE Viking Society for Northern Research celebrated its centenary by publishing a Centenary Saga-Book (XXIII 4, 1992) and by holding an international
symposium on 13–15 May 1992. This was arranged in collaboration with the
Department of Scandinavian Studies, University College London, and the meetings were held in Birkbeck College. Speakers were invited from Denmark, Iceland
and Norway, and from among members of the Society. The papers given, variously revised, make the contents of the present volume.
The Society gave a reception for foreign guests on the evening of Wednesday,
13 May. Members of the symposium were the guests of H.E. Helgi Ágústsson,
Icelandic Ambassador, and Mme Hervör Jónsdóttir, at their residence on theevening of Thursday, 14 May.
The principal blót, however, was the Centenary Dinner, held in University
College on the evening of Friday, 15 May, and well attended by symposium
participants and members of the Society at large. The principal guests were Dr
Sveinbjörn Björnsson, Rector of the University of Iceland, and his wife, Gu›laug
Einarsdóttir; H.E. Kjell Eliassen, Norwegian Ambassador, and Mme Eliassen;
H.E. Helgi Ágústsson, Icelandic Ambassador, and his wife, Hervör Jónsdóttir;
H.E. Ólafur Egilsson, and his wife, Ragna Ragnars; and Dr Jóhannes Nordal,
Chairman of the Central Bank of Iceland and of Hi› Íslenzka Fornritafélag, andhis wife, Dóra Gu›jónsdóttir.
In addition to the symposium speakers, Professor Bjarne Fidjestøl and Professor
Knut Helle, both of Bergen University, Professor Gunnar Karlsson and Professor
Vésteinn Ólason, both of the University of Iceland, Else Roesdahl and Preben
Meulengracht Sørensen, both of Århus University, and Professor Bjørn Myhre ofOslo University, a number of other scholars were especially invited to join theSociety in its celebrations. At the dinner they were welcomed because of their
distinction in fields of endeavour matching the aims and interests of the Society,and some of them in particular because they recalled its foundation as a ‘social andliterary’ branch of the Orkney and Shetland Society of London: Professor Bo
Almqvist (University College, Dublin), Professor Hans Bekker-Nielsen (Odense
University, and representing the Danish Ministry of Education), Dr Barbara
E. Crawford (St Andrews University, and sometime President of the Scottish
Society for Northern Studies), Professor Lennart Elmevik (Uppsala University,and representing Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien för Folklivsforskning), Dr
Thomas Fanning (University College, Galway), Professor Jan Ragnar Hagland(Trondheim University), Professor Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen (Oslo University),
Helgi ﬁorláksson (Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavík), Professor Finn Hødnebø(Oslo University), Professor Jónas Kristjánsson (University of Iceland), Professor
Bengt R. Jonsson (Svenskt Visarkiv, Stockholm), Professor Else Mundal (Osloviii

VIKING REVALUATIONSUniversity), Dr Lena Peterson (Uppsala University), Professor Bo Ralph (Gothenburg
University), Professor Hubert Seelow (Erlangen University), Brian Smith (Shetland Archivist, Lerwick), Stefán Karlsson (Stofnun Árna Magnússonar, Reykjavík),
William P. L. Thomson (Orkney), and Arne Thorsteinsson (State Antiquary,
Faroe Islands).
The President presided. He extended a warm welcome to all and warm thanks
to many: to the speakers, to H.E. Helgi Ágústsson for his reception and for hisnever-failing help in the course of the symposium preparations, to the officers of
the Society who had worked hard and willingly to make the occasion a success,and to the British Academy and the Central Bank of Iceland for their generous
subventions. Speeches of congratulation were made by Dr Sveinbjörn Björnssonand H.E. Kjell Eliassen. Toasts were frequently and enthusiastically drunk, to thehealth of heads of state, to the Society’s guests and to the Society’s future. H.E.
Helgi Ágústsson read a message from H.E. Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, President of
Iceland, and another from Daví› Oddsson, Iceland’s Prime Minister. On behalf of
the President of Iceland, Helgi took the opportunity to decorate three senior
members of the Society, Professor Michael Barnes, Dr (now Professor) Anthony
Faulkes and Professor emeritus Desmond Slay, with the knight’s cross of theOrder of the Falcon ‘for services to Icelandic scholarship’.
Other presentations were made: Professor Elmevik brought medals issued byKungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien and by Uppsala University as congratulatory
tokens of esteem; Professor Hans Bekker-Nielsen a gift of books for the Society’s
Library from the Danish Ministry of Education; Professor Finn Hødnebø facsimile
editions of early Norwegian texts and the volumes of Regesta Norvegica ; andsubsequently, through the good offices of Dr Sveinbjörn Björnsson, the Society
received from the University of Iceland a facsimile edition of the Konungsbók ofthe Eddaic poems ‘in gratitude for the excellent achievements of the Viking
Society in fostering íslensk fræ›i ’. Inadequate thanks were expressed on theSociety’s behalf at the time, later confirmed by letters of more eloquent gratitude.
The officers of the Society were content to think that their efforts, in straitened
circumstances, to make the centenary celebration a worthy commemoration had
not been unsuccessful, and they were deeply gratified by the ready goodwill they
met on every hand, both before and during the symposium, most especially fromthe friendly scholars who agreed to contribute the papers now found in thisvolume. I should like to thank them yet again and also acknowledge the debt I
personally owe, along with every member of the Society, to the editors, Anthony
Faulkes and Richard Perkins.
Peter Foote
President 1990–92

KNUT HELLEINORWAY, 800–1200

N 1891, the year before the Viking Club was founded, Ernst Sars published thefourth and last volume of his monumental Udsigt or ‘survey’ of Norwegianhistory (Sars, 1873–91). In Sars’s presentation, the nationally oriented Norwegianhistory writing of the nineteenth century reached its peak. This was a historiography
which consciously served the purpose of creating a national identity within theyoung Norwegian state that had emerged after the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1814 the long-lasting union with Denmark had been dissolved and Norway
had declared its independence, only to be forced into a new union with Sweden
which lasted until 1905. The first generation of Norwegian historians after 1814
set out to show that their people constituted an old and venerable nation, historically entitled to statehood. In pursuit of this goal they turned to the Middle Ages,
the only period when Norway had formed an independent state. Led by thefounding fathers of Norwegian historical research, Rudolf Keyser (1865–70;
1867; 1868) and Peter Andreas Munch (1852–63), they not only made extensive
and learned contributions to medieval studies by publishing collections of original
sources and producing detailed accounts of historical events and conditions, theyalso attached great importance to developing general interpretations of Norwegian
medieval society (Dahl 1959, 36–69).
The next generation of historians, to which Sars belonged, started to explore
also the following period of the Danish-Norwegian union. This they did without
any loss of interest in the Middle Ages. In keeping with contemporary evolutionist
ideas, they stressed the coherence and continuity of Norwegian history from theMiddle Ages through the union period down to the nineteenth century (Dahl
1959, 81–83).
Sars was the greatest evolutionist of them all (Dahl 1959, 157–61, 165–69). In
his four-volume survey he brought Norwegian history up to 1814 and suggested
some major themes of its further course. One of his main propositions was that
Norwegian society had already in the Middle Ages assumed the basic ‘democratic’ character which was to be its strength in the nineteenth century. A strong
aristocracy was lacking and the peasants enjoyed greater freedom and independence than in most other European societies (Sars 1911–12, I 594–95, II 284, 306,
III 153; cf. Seip 1940, 50–51). This was a view in accordance with a generalassumption shared by most nineteenth-century Norwegian historians, namely thatmedieval Norway was unique among the neighbouring Danish and Swedish
societies and the rest of Europe.
What Sars regarded as democratic conditions were in his view an outcome ofhistorical development within precisely the span of time which I have been asked

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to deal with in this paper, namely the period from the beginning of the Viking Ageand down to about 1200. For Sars, Norway was at the beginning of the historicalperiod the most aristocratic part of Scandinavia. Local affairs were determined byan old and hereditary tribal aristocracy of Germanic type that recruited the military, judicial and religious leaders of independent fylki or counties. They controlled a peasantry of which the majority were already by now tenant farmers. As aconsequence not least of the fragmented topography of Norway, the native tribal
aristocracy had kept its local power and independence better than in the neighbouring countries and it became the chief adversary of a monarchy which from theViking Age onwards strove to unite the whole of the country under its rule (Sars
1911–12, I 97–202, 595–96; cf. Dahl 1959, 169–75).
From these considerations Sars concluded that the main theme of Norwegianhistory between 800 and 1200 was the struggle between royal and aristocratic
power. This was a view which went back to Munch, whereas Keyser had thought
more in terms of a confrontation between royal and popular power, since heregarded the magnates of the period as patriarchal leaders of the people more thanas an aristocracy (Dahl 1959, 60–63). All three, however, agreed that the struggle
ended in victory for the monarchy. It made its first forward thrust to rule the wholeof the country in the days of Harald Finehair in the late ninth and early tenthcenturies, progressed further a hundred years later in the reign of Olaf Haraldsson,and gained its conclusive victory over the aristocracy or the local leaders of thepeople with King Sverre around 1200 (Sars 1911–12, I 132–59, 211–460). This
was the main course of events agreed upon by other nineteenth-century historians
as well. What there was of a service aristocracy in the thirteenth century was
generally considered to have been too weak to play an independent political roleand form the basis for a nobility which could in the late Middle Ages hold its own
in relation to the Danish and Swedish aristocracy (Sars 1911–12, 559–99; cf. Dahl
1959, 50–51, 63–64, 119–20, 175–77).
Nineteenth-century Norwegian historians were not, of course, uninterested innatural and socio-economic conditions, but their main interest was clearly political. In most cases it was also idealistic in the sense that historical explanations
were sought in ideas, human motives and mental attitudes more than in material
conditions. This applies particularly to Sars, whose writings avowedly abound insuch explanations. Natural environment and socio-economic realities could impede or facilitate historical development, but the real motive powers were to befound in the dominant intellectual and moral ideas and the mental attitudes of theperiod in question (Dahl 1959, 110–11, 115, 117, 157).
There was, however, one important exception to this way of thinking. Sars
encountered opposition from a group of contemporary and politically conservative
historians who considered themselves to be greater realists than him and also more
empirical. Led by T. H. Aschehoug, they explained the weakness of the medieval

NORWAY, 800–1200

3

Norwegian aristocracy by pointing to its relative poverty. This was, in turn, aconsequence of natural conditions, notably the scarcity of cultivable soil in Norway
as compared with Denmark and Sweden. Nor did they accept the idea of a generaltension between monarchy and aristocracy; rather they thought that a national
medieval kingdom had been built up in cooperation with the secular and clericalaristocracy of the land (Aschehoug 1966, 78–79, 119–24; cf. Dahl 1959, 115, 117,
119–20). In both these respects they were ahead of their times.
The dominant political outlook of nineteenth century medieval historians madethem to a large extent dependent on narrative sources, notably the sagas. In theiruse of sources such as these they were on a par with contemporary European
historical criticism. Starting with Keyser and more particularly with Munch, they
worked constantly to purge the saga tradition of unhistorical accretions andmisunderstandings (Dahl 1959, 65–69). But their criticism of the sagas was neverradical. Even Gustav Storm, who in 1869 decisively rejected the customary
conception of the sagas as direct representations of fixed and worked-up entities
of oral tradition, tended to rely on saga narratives, even those relating to a distantpast, unless there was specific reason to disbelieve them (Storm 1869, 5, 36; cf.
Dahl 1959, 90–91, 198–205).
Up to the very end of the nineteenth century, then, historians found it possible
to render, on the basis of what they considered to be ‘historical’ sagas, coherent
and detailed accounts of political events and conditions from the beginning of theViking Age onwards.
The dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905 led to a change in the politicaland ideological climate of Norway. The main democratic issues had mostly been
resolved in the preceding period and the national problems could largely beremoved from the political agenda. At the same time a rapid wave of industrialization made economic and social problems loom larger in political life than before.
The change of climate made itself felt within Norwegian historiography as
well. From the second decade of the new century historical research was comparatively strongly influenced by the Marxist approach to history and by materialist historical thinking in general. The foremost proponents of change were
Halvdan Koht and Edvard Bull, professors at the University of Oslo, who wereboth also prominent figures in the Norwegian labour movement of the interwar
period (Dahl 1959, 231–32).
As historians, Koht and Bull were far from dogmatic Marxists. But the influence of historical materialism on their thought is clear enough and can be seen in
their belief that economic conditions were decisive for the course of historicaldevelopment, in their use of the concepts of class and class-struggle and not leastin their adoption of the Marxist model of base and superstructure and the Marxist
view of the State as an instrument of class interests (Dahl 1952).

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Koht and Bull’s historical thinking is relevant to my theme because they mademedieval history the chief proving ground for their more general concepts. In theirview, Norwegian medieval society was basically shaped by the pattern of theownership of land, the most important means of production. Whereas most nineteenth-century historians had seen a general tension between the monarchy andwhat there was of an aristocracy, Koht and Bull undertook what may be described
as a materialist rewriting of one of the basic conceptions of Aschehoug and his
conservative colleagues: they assumed an essential solidarity between the crown,
the clergy and the magnates conditioned by the fact that they were all landowners.
The monarchy of the High Middle Ages was created by the landowning upperclass and served to enhance its domination over the peasants. One consequenceof this interpretation was that Norwegian medieval society was no longer considered unique; its development was conceived as more in line with that of theneighbouring Scandinavian societies and the rest of Europe (Seip 1940, 52–56;
Dahl 1959, 247–52).
The classical statement of the materialist interpretation was given by one of
Bull’s pupils, Andreas Holmsen, in his survey of Norwegian history before 1660
which appeared first in 1939 and subsequently in three new and only slightly
revised editions up to 1977 (Holmsen 1977). Other Norwegian medievalists haveoffered variations of the same interpretation (among them Lunden 1976; cf. Helle
1961, 349–52). But important aspects of it have also been challenged, first by theleading figure of Norwegian historical research in the second half of this century,
Jens Arup Seip (1940), and later by others, including myself (Helle 1960; 1972;1981). Nevertheless, we have all been influenced by this interpretation and haveadopted parts of it. In wider perspective historical materialism should be seen as
one of several influences which have, in the twentieth century, contributed to what
may be termed a general sociological approach to Norwegian medieval history.
Medieval society has increasingly been studied as a totality in which there is afunctional connection between all occurrences—including economic and social aswell as political and cultural phenomena. At the same time there has been amovement away from the study of political events to research into structural andinstitutional aspects of society.
In connection with these developments there have also been changes in theselection and treatment of historical evidence. The principles of nineteenthcentury historical criticism were radically sharpened by Koht and Bull, underconsiderable debate and in interaction with similar tendencies in Swedish andDanish historical research, above all represented by the Swedish historian Lauritz
Weibull (Dahl 1959, 236–42).
Koht’s main contribution was to apply more consistently the principle ofregarding the contents of historical narratives as coloured by the circumstances
under which they originated. Thus he thought it possible to group the sagas andNORWAY, 800–1200

5chronicles of Norwegian kings according to the influence of contemporary politics
on their presentations of past and contemporary history (Koht 1921, 76–91, 156–
81). His practical applications of this principle have met with opposition. But the
principle has in itself become an integral part of historical research, namely thatthe contents of sagas and other narratives should be critically interpreted in thelight of their genesis and that one should always be aware of contemporary
influences on presentations of the past. This is an approach which has also
contributed to a more conscious use of medieval literary works as sources for the
study of various aspects of the milieux which produced them.
Bull carried historical saga criticism to a more radical conclusion than Koht. In
1931 he commented upon the fact that Norwegian political history from the ninth
to the twelfth century had previously been presented coherently on the basis ofsagas written in the thirteenth century, above all Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla.
‘We now know,’ he continued, ‘that this is due to a failure to appreciate the true
character both of this literature in itself and of the tradition on which it builds . . .
We should therefore abandon any illusion that Snorri’s masterly historical narrative bears any deep resemblance to what actually happened in the period between
the Battle of Hafrsfjord and the Battle of Re’ (i. e. from about 900 to 1177) (Bull
1931, 9; my translation).
Bull’s statement has been rejected as too sweeping. For my own part, I would
hesitate to include most of the twelfth century in the period about which thirteenth-century Kings’ Sagas can provide no deeper knowledge. But it would be
hardly wise to deny the soundness of his implication that sagas of a more distantpast should not be taken at face value unless there are specific reasons for doing
so. In the twentieth century such reasons have increasingly, and more consistently
than before, been sought by confronting later saga narratives with information thatcan be derived from contemporary written evidence, fragmentary as it is, and fromarchaeological material.
The more radical historical criticism of the twentieth century and the parallel
movement away from the study of political events have made medieval historians
attach increasing importance to other types of historical evidence than the sagas.
For the period before 1200 place-names, law texts and archaeological material
have been used as well as skaldic and Eddic verse, annalistic notices, runic andother inscriptions. In their studies of presumably slowly changing or fairly constant features of social structure Norwegian historians have also made frequent
use of the so-called ‘regressive’ or ‘retrospective’ method, in the sense that they
have drawn inferences about both early and high medieval conditions from later
records, land-registers, tax-lists, public accounts etc.
One might think that the development of twentieth-century medieval research has
made the historiography of the preceding century obsolete; this, however, is not

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the case. There is still much to be learned from the detailed and penetrating
research of Munch and others into political events and biographical matters. And
today’s general sociological approach to medieval society is quite clearly indebted
to the general interpretations put forward by Sars and his predecessors; we still
identify many of the same problems and have also adopted, or at least adapted,
some of their solutions to them. Still, there is no doubt that any survey ofNorwegian medieval history would today be written in quite another fashion than
was the case a hundred years ago.
At this juncture I would like to illustrate the point by giving some samples of
my own presentation of the main historical developments and conditions in the
period 800–1200, as it was published last year in a volume of Norwegian history
from the Vikings to the present day (Helle 1991). I do not, of course, expect other
Norwegian medievalists to agree with me on everything; they will definitely not.
But I nevertheless think it is right to say that I have written a survey within themainstream of current research.
I begin my book with a brief presentation of the Norwegian natural environment
at the beginning of the Viking Age (Helle 1991, 13–19). What concern me are thenatural conditions for mixed farming and other means of subsistence, communications and social life in general. Like the conservative historians of the latenineteenth century I seek to stress the scarcity of cultivable soil in Norway, butalso to identify where such soil was to be found. Historical geography was a fieldof interest for nineteenth-century historians too. There can, however, be little
doubt that my environmental sketch, in which I try to conjure up a picture of
Norway’s geography at the beginning of the historical period by thinking away thechanges man has been responsible for since then, is typical of an ecologicalapproach belonging to the late twentieth century.
Demographic studies form an important part of current historical research in
Norway and have also given a new dimension to medieval history. Throughout thewhole of the Middle Ages, Norway was a predominantly agrarian society in whichtowns were few and small and in which the agricultural population was settled on
separate farms and not in villages as was the case in most of Denmark, the central
parts of Sweden and most of the rest of Europe. This pattern of settlement,
determined by the fragmented topography of the country, was an impediment to
the formation of large, compact estates in the hands of aristocratic landowners. It
also makes it possible to work out the volume of settlement in terms of the numberof farms with their own names at given times, as they are indicated by place-names
and other information in both contemporary and later sources. We cannot determine with any accuracy the extent to which the farms named in extant sourceswere divided into holdings, i. e. actual working units occupied by separate households, without names of their own having been recorded. Nor do we know theaverage number of people living on each holding. Still, the demographic research

NORWAY, 800–1200

7of the last three decades has laid the foundations for a rough estimate of the
population of medieval Norway at somewhere between 300,000 and 550,000
when it peaked around 1300 (Helle 1991, 35–37). This may have been about
double the early Viking-Age population. In the interval there had, therefore, beena very considerable growth of population and a corresponding expansion ofagrarian settlement.
We are ignorant of the causes of this growth. From what we know of thecontemporary European situation and conditions in Norway in the early modern
period, there can be little doubt that the average expectation of life at birth wasvery low. The examination of skeletal material from a number of medieval
Scandinavian graveyards suggests it lay well under 30 years. It was kept low
above all by high infant mortality and deaths amongst young people. When, in
spite of this, the population rose, it must have been because a high death rate wasmore than matched by an even higher birth rate. Women must, for the most part,
have begun to produce children on reaching child-bearing age. Early and frequent
child-bearing seems to have been the main cause of a lower expectation of life
amongst women than amongst men, at least in the High Middle Ages and possibly
earlier as well (Helle 1991, 41–42).
This, by the way, is one instance of the growing interest in the medieval historyof gender in recent years. In my survey I also touch upon the role of women in
agricultural and urban work, their social position and their economic rights according to medieval law texts (Helle 1991, 56–58).
In recent research the Norwegian expansion overseas in the Viking Age has
been explained as being a consequence of demographic conditions: the increaseof population and the resulting pressure on resources, particularly in western
Norway. Here, the reserves of cultivable land appear to have been modest alreadyin the Viking Age, and it was from here that the bulk of Viking expeditions set out.
This is an explanation that does not preclude other causes and motives having
contributed to Viking expansionism. We should not dismiss the possibility that it
was to some extent the result of political unrest at home, as was believed by
Icelandic historians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Vikings were also
undoubtedly driven by a spirit of adventure. They partly followed old trade routes,
lured by the riches they knew were to be found along them. Plunder was often the
motive, but also more peaceful trade. On the other hand, the Norse colonizationof the Atlantic islands can hardly be explained except within a context of lessfavourable economic conditions at home than in the areas which attracted thebroad mass of colonists (Helle 1991, 26–27, 39).
In modern Norwegian archaeological and historical research into the Viking
Age attention has generally been given more to conditions and developments athome than to Viking activity abroad. In my own survey, I stress the fact that it was
during the Viking Age that Norway was first opened to Europe on a significant

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scale. Christian influences began to trickle in and led eventually to what amounted
to a cultural revolution. It is also relevant that Norwegians abroad became awareof more sophisticated forms of political organization under princely power and in
co-operation with a Christian Church. Among other things they discovered too therole that urban centres could play in this context (Helle 1991, 27).
The study of the Conversion and of urbanization are both good examples of theshift of weight of historical research away from later saga evidence to other typesof source material, in these cases particularly archaeological material. In accordance with the saga tradition, nineteenth-century historians considered the conversion of Norway to be the work of the two missionary kings Olaf Tryggvason andOlaf Haraldsson in the last years of the tenth and the early decades of the eleventh
centuries. In modern research the change of burial customs and the existence ofearly stone crosses in western Norway have been used to support the view that
Christianity started to extend itself to the coastal districts of southern and western
Norway earlier in the Viking Age (Helle 1987, 89). In the same way the extensive
urban archaeological excavations of recent decades have in some cases made it
possible to uncover earlier stages of urbanization than the royal foundations
mentioned in later sagas and chronicles of towns from about AD 1000 onwards(Øye 1992).
As to the social structure of Viking-Age Norway, a crucial question is this: towhat extent were the broad mass of people, the peasants, already at that time
tenant farmers and so to what extent was there a basis for a Viking-Age aristocracyin the payments and services of such farmers? The tenancy system existed as far
back as it is possible to go with the help of written records, but it is not possible
to measure just how widespread it was, relative to the freeholder system, before
1300 or thereabouts, by which time the great majority of Norwegian farmers were
obviously renting their land, in whole or in part, from clerical or secular landowners.
There have been two main schools of thought on this issue. The older one,
represented by among others Munch and Sars, suggests that the tenancy system
was well developed and probably embraced the majority of the country’s farmers
well before the twelfth century. A more recent view, held by Bull and the younger
Holmsen, suggests that a shift from freeholder to tenant status only took place, forthe majority of farmers, in the last two or three centuries before 1300. According
to this view, which has one of its roots in the writings of Keyser, the starting-pointof Norwegian social history was a society of freeholding peasants all with holdings of more or less equal size. In the course of the High Middle Ages the majorityof these peasants were then reduced from freeholders to tenants. This development
created a clerical and lay aristocracy which separated itself from the broad mass ofthe population and ruled the people through the Church and State (Helle 1961, 350–53).
Neither of these hypotheses has much in the way of evidence to support it, andmy own suggestion is that the truth lies somewhere in between. The growth of

NORWAY, 800–1200

9population from the seventh century onwards, and for that matter even in earlier
periods, may have led to the creation of a number of subordinate and dependent
holdings; in other words to an early form of the tenancy system. There areindications, emphasized not least by the elder Holmsen, that from the Viking Age,at the latest, collections of dependant holdings were to be found at least in the
coastal districts of western Norway around seats of landed proprietors.
Later the system of tenant farmers spread more widely. The colonization of newland led to more and more tenants under public or private landowners. The larger
landowners could find it more profitable to rent out their lands than to farm themon their own account in a time of rising population and high land rents. This,
together with the clearing of land, could be the main reason why the unfree largely
disappeared in the course of the twelfth century; in economic terms it paid to put
freed slaves on rented land rather than to work that land with the help of slaves.
In accordance with recent research, I consider slavery to have been of some
economic significance in the Viking Age, although its importance cannot of
course be assessed exactly (Helle 1991, 51–54).
What, then, of the development of a Norwegian aristocracy? Today most
Norwegian historians would probably agree that Viking-Age society must to someextent have been an aristocratic society. The Viking expeditions abroad could
hardly have been feasible without the organising capacity of chiefs and leaders
over groups of men who stood in a dependent, patron–client relationship to themat home as well. Gradually as the Viking expeditions increased they produced
their own warrior chiefs. The foremost among them were able to found kingdoms
both at home and abroad. Viking wealth acquired by warfare and trade was aneffective means of winning support and building up power and prestige within thesocial system at home (Helle 1991, 26).
All in all, it is difficult today to maintain the view that the starting point of
Norwegian social history was a society of more or less equal freeholders. Thereis relatively sound evidence from the Viking Age and even earlier for a moredifferentiated social structure with a family aristocracy at the top led by regional
chieftains and slaves at the bottom. In between there was a peasantry of bothfreeholders and tenant farmers.
It should, however, be stressed that the tenants, as we meet them in the provincial law codes representative of the twelfth century, were legally free individuals
and in no way personally beholden to the landowners. They cultivated the soil theyleased independently on a contract basis. In other words, there was no serfdom orvillainage in medieval Norway. Moreover, what there were of economic andsocial differences among the peasantry of the time probably owed as much to thesize and qualities of the holdings as to whether one enjoyed the status of freeholder
or tenant. This would seem to support the time-honoured view that medieval
Norwegian peasant society was, after all, relatively egalitarian and not dominated

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by the native aristocracy to the degree that was usual in contemporary Europe.
And Sars was probably right in suggesting that this has affected the further
development of Norwegian society down towards our own times (Helle 1991,
50–51, 61).
In all probability there existed, at the beginning of the historical period, a numberof local and regional chieftainships in Norway. The inbuilt tendency for somechieftaincies to expand at the cost of their rivals increased in the Viking Age andwas the starting point for the development of more extensive political and social
units (Helle 1991, 24–26).
According to texts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Harald Finehair was
the first king to rule over the whole of Norway. And Snorri Sturluson in Heimskringla
is the first saga-writer to describe in detail, more than three centuries after the
events, Harald’s conquest of one fylki after another until his final victory in
Hafrsfjord in south-western Norway towards the end of the ninth century. Today,
Snorri’s presentation of Harald’s systematic unification of the realm must be
rejected as an unhistorical reconstruction. But it is still reasonable to regard
Harald as a ruler who took an important early step in the building up of a national
kingdom (Helle 1991, 28–29).
As I see it, the actual royal unification of Norwegian territory was a politicomilitary process that took more than three hundred years to complete. Roughly
speaking it fell into two main phases. The first phase began in earnest with Harald
Finehair and stretched down to the middle of the eleventh century. For this phase
I agree with Bull that we must abandon any illusion that the detailed accounts oflater sagas bear any close resemblance to the actual course of events. But there areindications that through most of the period a kingdom with roots in the west
Norwegian coastal districts sought to win control over other parts of the country
with varying but never permanent success. It may well be that Olaf Haraldsson
was the first Norwegian king to assert himself over most of the country at one andthe same time, in the second and third decades of the eleventh century. But wehave to admit, as Norwegian historians have been rather reluctant to do, that his
rule was merely an interval in a period extending from the beginning of the Viking
Age onwards when Danish kings were the strongest political factor in Scandinavia, frequently with authority over greater or lesser parts of Norway, especially
Viken (the Oslofjord area), which was closest to them.
It was not until the dissolution of the Danes’ North-Sea empire on the death ofKing Cnut in 1035 that it was possible for the Norwegian royal power to obtainpermanent control over the bulk of Norwegian territory. For a time in the eleventh
century, in the reigns of Magnus Olafsson and Harald Sigurdsson (‘Hardrada’),Norway was even on the offensive against its neighbours and Norwegian territory
was secured to the south along the present Swedish coast to the Göta älv. At the

NORWAY, 800–1200

11

same time the monarchy managed to take control of the whole kingdom including
the rich agricultural inland districts in eastern Norway and in Trøndelag to thenorth.
Earlier historiography tended to regard the political unification of Norway ascomplete by about the middle of the eleventh century. There then followed aperiod of relative political stability and peace. But there were times when two or
more kings, each with their power base in different parts of the country, ruled at
one and the same time, which, in my view, is clear evidence that political unity
was far from complete. This becomes even clearer from the 1130s onwards. A
series of disputes over the throne then began which were to occupy the next
hundred years and have subsequently been termed the ‘Civil Wars’.
The Civil Wars may be regarded as the second and final phase of the unification
struggle. They ended, in the first half of the thirteenth century, with victory andexclusive control over the whole country for the kingdom of the Sverre family (the‘Birchlegs’). I find it natural to enlarge on a point first made by Bull, namely that
it was not until well into the thirteenth century that there had finally been built up
a social and political organization, and, I would add, an associated ideology,
which could bind the kingdom permanently together (Helle 1991, 29–30).
An important aspect of the development of a national kingdom was the relationship between royal power and the secular aristocracy. Most nineteenth-century
historians stressed, as we have seen, what they considered to have been a continuing conflict between the two parties, which led eventually to a clear weakening (inSars’s view almost an elimination) of the aristocratic element of society. The
twentieth-century materialists were of the opposite opinion: the aristocracy, andindeed the clergy, were strengthened through the growth of the tenancy systemand contributed fundamentally to the development of a national kingdom whichcame to act as an instrument of their own interests.
Personally, I would tend to follow the materialists so far as to regard a
Norwegian aristocracy with local and regional influence as a necessary precondition for the unification of the kingdom. There were, no doubt, frequent conflicts
between kings and more independent chieftains and magnates, as is testified byskaldic verse and sagas. Even so, royal power could hardly be built up over a
major part of the country without some kind of organizational arrangement between the early kings and a local aristocracy which had a power base the kings
themselves still lacked outside their core territory. In the long run this wasachieved by incorporating the magnates of the country into the royal hir› or bodyof retainers.
The hir› originally served as the bodyguard and household of an itinerant kingand constituted the core of his military power. In the course of time, however, itcame to function as a corps of administrative personnel as well, comprising royal
officials and helpers in the local districts. The termination of the first phase of the12

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unification struggle in the eleventh century was connected with the downfall of thelast of the more independent local chieftains of the land and the subordination ofother magnates under the king as lendir menn or ‘landed men’, i.e. men who inreturn for fealty and service were provided with an income from royal land in
addition to their own. In the following period royal service in the hir› increasingly
attracted magnates and leading peasants from all over the country, so that alreadybefore Sverre’s reign hir› membership had come a long way towards becoming
the criterion of lay aristocratic status, thus transforming the earlier local family
aristocracy into a service aristocracy. During the civil wars this aristocracy was as
yet divided between rival kings and pretenders. The wars ended when it had been
united under one king, Haakon Haakonsson, in the 1220s (Helle 1991, 28–31).
It is my conclusion, then, that Aschehoug was right when, in the 1860s, hestressed that the increasing medieval royal power was built on cooperation witha lay aristocracy. Whether the transformation of a local family aristocracy into a
service aristocracy led to a strengthening or weakening of the aristocratic element of
Norwegian society is difficult to say. In my judgement, this was an element of greatinternal political importance throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, but perhaps never a particularly strong element socially compared with the contemporary
aristocracy of other European countries. At least from the twelfth century, when contemporary written evidence begins to shed more light upon them, Norwegian magnates appear to have been relatively few in number and largely without the private
economic resources that would have enabled them to play an independent politicalrole. The Viking-Age sources of wealth had largely dried up and the country lacked
the natural conditions for a strong and numerous landed aristocracy. This may
again explain the willingness of the existing aristocracy to serve the monarchy andthereby obtain a share of royal income and power (Helle 1991, 30–31, 58–61, 79).
Another condition necessary for the development of a national system of government was the collaboration of the Church and the clergy with the monarchy.
Since the impact of Christianity is given separate treatment elsewhere in thisvolume I shall not go into details on this matter here. I would only stress, as Sars
has already pointed out, that the introduction of Christianity and a national Churchorganization must have served the interests of the monarchy. It helped to break
down the old pagan organization of society, led by local chiefs and magnates,
wherever it opposed the king. Everywhere the conversion to Christianity could bemade a factor in the reorganization of local communities and their incorporation
into the kingdom. As the protector and head of the Church, the king acquired both
power and an exalted position in society. In a wider sense the clergy wereadvocates to the nation for the king’s cause and were instrumental in creatinga monarchical political ideology. Christian teaching allowed itself without difficulty to be enlisted in support of the more permanent secular arrangement ofsociety that the monarchy stood for (Helle 1991, 31–33).

NORWAY, 800–1200

13

Even if the hir› aristocracy and the clergy played key roles in the politicalunification of Norway, they were in themselves too slender a basis on which tobuild national royal power. Norway was and continued to be throughout the
Middle Ages predominantly a peasant society. No significant official authority
could be established and maintained without positive support from the agrarian
population. The peasantry’s need for a minimum level of peace and tranquillity,
for legal and political stability, was an essential feature of politico-administrative
development. As the process of unification progressed, this need came to be
regarded as best met by the king in his capacity of upholder of the law and militaryleader. In this way he took on social functions which produced the conditions
required for a more lasting support of the monarchy as an institution (Helle 1991,
71–72, 76–79). This functional relationship was first stressed by Jens Arup Seipin the first serious challenge made to the Marxist interpretation of Norwegian
medieval history (1940, 55–56, 97–110).
In my view, Seip’s idea of a functional relationship between the monarchy andthe peasantry is a necessary part of a fuller explanation of why the kingdom
succeeded in its endeavours for unification. It was this relationship that madepossible the establishment of the lei›angr or naval levy under royal command andof the regional representative assemblies called lo≈gﬂing, for a time the highest
judicial assemblies in the land and the only ones that could ratify laws. Throughthem the peasantry of larger parts of the country could be legally associated with
important royal initiatives, such as the establishment of the lei›angr and theadoption of Christianity and its Church organization. At the same time they
promoted the maintenance of law and order according to regulations which brought
the king income from legal fines and confiscations, created the conditions for thedevelopment of a royal judicial power apparatus and gave the king an enhanced
ideological position as the enforcer and also, as time went on, the source of justice(Helle 1991, 33–34).
The development of a national monarchy, then, rested on a broader power basethan the interests of the aristocracy and the clergy. The monarchy met serious
needs of a peasantry which had greater political influence and military importancethan that in almost any other contemporary European kingdom. This does notmean that the relationship between monarchy and peasantry was ever free fromtension. But it had a positively functional aspect which procured for the monarchya basic and necessary support. In this sense there may be a considerable elementof truth in Sars’s contention, which I mentioned at the start, namely that Norwegian society in the period 800–1200 assumed, or perhaps rather had, a basic‘democratic’ character. In my own words I would characterize it as a not particularly aristocratic society (Helle 1991, 61, 75–78).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aschehoug, Torkel Halvorsen. 1866. Statsforfatningen i Norge og Danmark indtil 1814.
Bull, Edvard. 1931. Fra omkring 1000 til 1280. Det norske folks liv og historie gjennem
tidene II.
Dahl, Ottar. 1952. Historisk materialisme: historieoppfatningen hos Edvard Bull og Halvdan
Koht.
Dahl, Ottar. 1959. Norsk historieforskning i 19. og 20. århundre.
Helle, Knut. 1961. ‘Tendenser i nyere norsk høymiddelalderforskning’, [Norwegian] Historisk
Tidsskrift XL, 337–70.
Helle, Knut. 1972. Konge og gode menn i norsk riksstyring ca. 1150–1319.
Helle, Knut. 1981. ‘Norway in the High Middle Ages: recent views on the structure ofsociety’, Scandinavian Journal of History VI, 161–89.
Helle, Knut. 1987. ‘Da Rogaland var Rygjafylke’, Fra Vistehola til Ekofisk: Rogalandgjennom tidene I, 72–138.
Helle, Knut. 1991. ‘Tiden fram til 1536’, in Rolf Danielsen et al., Grunntrekk i norsk
historie fra vikingtid til våre dager, 13–106.
Holmsen, Andreas. 1977. Norges historie. Fra de eldste tider til 1660.
Keyser, Rudolf. 1865–70. Norges Historie I–II.
Keyser, Rudolf. 1867. ‘Norges Stats- og Retsforfatning i Middelalderen’, Efterladte SkrifterI, 3–403.
Keyser, Rudolf. 1868. ‘Udsigt over den norske Samfundsordens Udvikling i Middelalderen’,Samlede Afhandlinger, 403–51.
Lunden, Kåre. 1976. Norge under Sverreætten. Norges historie III.
Munch, Peter Andreas. 1852–63. Det norske Folks Historie I–VI.
Sars, Johan Ernst. 1873–91. Udsigt over den norske Historie I–IV.
Sars, Johan Ernst. 1911–12. Samlede Værker I–IV.
Seip, Jens Arup. 1940. ‘Problemer og metode i norsk middelalderforskning’, [Norwegian]Historisk tidsskrift XXXII, 49–133.
Storm, Gustav. 1869. Om den gamle norrøne Literatur.
Øye, Ingvild (ed.). 1992. Våre eldste byer. Onsdagskvelder i Bryggens Museum VII.

GUNNAR KARLSSONIA CENTURY OF RESEARCH ON EARLY ICELANDIC
SOCIETY

T IS difficult to imagine a scholarly book which is, in a way, more thoroughly
outdated than Gullöld Íslendinga, ‘The Golden Age of Iceland’, a collection of
public lectures by Jón Jónsson A›ils, published for the first time in 1906. It is
totally uncritical in its use of the sagas as historical sources, and nationalistic ina way that now sounds naive and, after the age of Fascism, almost blasphemous.
Jón A›ils never doubted that a nationalistic sentiment was inherent in people. He
was absolutely convinced that Icelandic society had lived a real golden age in thetenth and eleventh centuries; and he probably never suspected, what has been
made clear by sociologists since his time (cf. Smith 1986, 191–200), that every
population which adopts the idea of nationhood and fights for political independence always discovers a golden age in its past, whether supported by genuine
historical evidence or not.
So, there can be no doubt that Gullöld Íslendinga is an outdated work. Nevertheless, if I were to write an essay on the social history of early Iceland, on daily
life and social relations, one of the very first books I would consult would be Jón
A›ils’s Gullöld Íslendinga. I might not use many of Jón’s interpretations, but his
narrative would give me a good survey of the written sources, reliable or not, andhis conclusions might make the best starting-point so far available for such a
study. The comprehensiveness of his work, his consistent point of view and his
optimism about what it is possible for us to know, make Jón A›ils still a goodcompanion for a scholar who sets out to study any field he has dealt with.
Jón A›ils was one of the two Icelanders who first specialized in history at the
University of Copenhagen. The other was Bogi Th. Melste›, and they were bothabout to start their careers as historians when the Viking Society was establishedhere in London (Ingi Sigur›sson 1986, 22). That of course was not the beginningof the study of early Icelandic society. It stretches back at least as far as toArngrímur Jónsson lær›i towards the end of the 16th century. In the 19th century,
before the beginning of the period which I hope to evaluate here, a relatively solid
basis had been laid for early Icelandic history with editions of texts and studies ofsource-material by Jón Sigur›sson, Konrad Maurer, Vilhjálmur Finsen and others.
It was a basis which owed much to the German critical school of history. Againstthat background the works of the first professional Icelandic historians, Jón A›ils
and Bogi Melste›, may look somewhat primitive. In a preface to the second
volume of his Íslendinga saga, published in 1910, Bogi Melste› made a laudatory
remark about the status of historical studies in Denmark where, he added, Profes-

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sor Kristian Erslev had now founded a critical school of history. But the rest ofBogi’s volume, some 570 pages, consists of little more than extracts from the
Icelandic sagas, and it is not at all critical either with regard to the trustworthinessof the material or to its historical importance. It seems as if this first generationof professionally educated Icelandic historians was too anxious to give the Icelandic people a national history to be able to observe the time-honoured principles ofsource-criticism. In a way, this makes their works look more archaic now thanthey would do otherwise. But sometimes their determination to squeeze as muchas possible out of any kind of early writing has enabled them to make contributions that are still of considerable value.
Fortunately, the first generation of Icelandic historians was not left isolated intheir study of early Icelandic society. The very strong interest in saga-literature inwestern and northern Europe in the first decades of the 20th century gave rise toa number of studies of relevance to Icelandic history. One need only recall theworks on legal history by Andreas Heusler or Hjalmar Falk’s research intomaterial culture.1 Admittedly most of these non-Icelandic works were relatively
limited in scope, and more often than not their ultimate aim was to improve theunderstanding of the sagas. Whereas Jón A›ils wanted to use the sagas to throw
light on early Icelandic society, these foreign authors wanted to establish aknowledge of the society to throw light on the sagas. Nevertheless, these men
wrote much valuable history. It is incredible how often, if one sets out to study an
aspect of early Icelandic society, even a seemingly novel one, sooner or later one
finds out that some German professor has written an article or a book about it morethan half a century ago. To mention only one example: in 1926, about four decades
before women’s history became a fashionable subject in European universities,
Professor Wolfgang Krause published a book in Göttingen which he called Die
Frau in der Sprache der altisländischen Familiengeschichten. Professor Krause
was a grammarian, and in the preface to his book he states that it ‘is written fromthe viewpoint of the linguist; it is not intended to be in itself a work of cultural
history, but to contribute with linguistic material to such a history’ (my translation). And of course by modern standards there is not much proper history in
Krause’s book. But it is an organized collection of saga-episodes where women
play a considerable role, and as such it could have become a valid contribution to
cultural history if some institution somewhere had existed to collect such individual pieces of research and make a whole out of them. The lack of such an
institution was extremely detrimental to the development of the study of Iceland’s
early history.
For all this work never developed into a coherent cultural history of Iceland.
After Bogi Melste›’s rather unsuccessful attempt to write a comprehensive workon early Icelandic history, which ended with the third volume of his Íslendinga
saga in 1930, no one else tried their hand at it until the 1950s. Then Björn

A CENTURY OF RESEACH ON EARLY ICELANDIC SOCIETY

17

ﬁorsteinsson and Jón Jóhannesson wrote their books on the Icelandic commonwealth, Björn Íslenzka ﬂjó›veldi› in 1953 and Jón the first volume of his Íslendinga
saga in 1956. When these books were written, the products of the three decades
from the 1890s to the 1920s were considered largely outdated, and it was very
evident that the three succeeding decades, from the 1920s to the 1950s, had
produced no satisfactory substitute for them. Constitutional and political history
was still largely based on the works of Konrad Maurer and Vilhjálmur Finsen,
agricultural history on L‡sing Íslands III–IV by ﬁorvaldur Thoroddsen (1919–22)
and the history of trade on the works of Bogi Melste›, all works written before or
around 1920. History of daily life had relied almost exclusively on Íslendingasögur
and was therefore considered out of date in the 1950s. The new books contained
no such history because the authors had no available knowledge to replace what
had become obsolete. And this was not the end of the period of stagnation. In 1972
I was persuaded to write a survey of the political and economic history of the 12thand 13th centuries for Saga Íslands. I was a young and inexperienced scholar, andcompletely unable to create a new account on the basis of original sources.
Consequently I found it very difficult to make my survey anything more than aretelling of Jón Jóhannesson’s Íslendinga saga, and probably did not succeed inthat aim at all. So little had happened in the field since he wrote his book almost
twenty years before.
I am of course exaggerating. In fact, the period from the 1920s to the 1970s
produced a number of important works. One can mention, for instance, theexcellent studies of Ólafur Lárusson, the reports of archaeological excavations in
Iceland in 1939 which appeared in Forntida gårdar i Island (1943), and thenumerous detailed studies contributed to Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk
middelalder by Magnús Már Lárusson, Jakob Benediktsson, Björn ﬁorsteinsson
and many others. But the scope of this paper does not allow me to go into detail,and I think that it is fair to say that the half-century from the 1920s to the 1970s
was a period of stagnation. From some points of view it might even be regarded
as a period of regress. What we thought we knew about early Icelandic society inthe 1970s was probably far less than Bogi Melste› and his contemporaries thought
they knew about the same subject in the 1920s.
What was the reason for this long period of stagnation? The most obvious
culprit is the book-prose theory in saga-studies. It forbade historians the use ofÍslendingasögur as sources in the way they had used them before, and thus
deprived them of their richest and most inspiring kind of evidence. Jón Jóhannesson
was probably the most consistent of the book-prose theorists in Icelandic
historiography, and therefore its consequences for the pursuit of history are very
evident in his works. They also offer a good example of the shortcomings of his
school of history, for there is no doubt that Jón was a first-class scholar, and noone could have done better within the limits set by the circumstances. First, he18

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relied heavily on the historical works of the 12th and 13th centuries, Íslendingabók
and Landnámabók. It is no coincidence that Jón wrote his doctoral dissertation on
the relationships of the redactions of Landnámabók to each other, and attempted
to get closer to the original 12th-century text. Second, constitutional history, basedon the law code Grágás, loomed rather large in his Íslendinga saga, whereconstitutional details are given considerable space. And third, political events of
the Sturlung Age were given great prominence, obviously because the book-prose
theorists did not classify Sturlunga saga as a piece of fiction. Those parts of theaccount which were derived from what were now regarded as reliable written
sources tended to swell, those that were based on evidence from Íslendingasögur,especially any aspect of social history, were reduced to little or nothing.
Thus historians lost interest in the sagas, and what was even more detrimental
to the study of history, saga-scholars lost interest in society. The sagas weremainly (although not exclusively) considered to be the achievements of individual
minds. They were no longer something that had happened in a society, beentransformed into a text by a society and been remembered and retold in a society.
Even the very few attempts that were made to explore the social background of
the sagas as book-prose seem to have appeared useless to historians. Einar Ólafur
Sveinsson, for instance, published in 1940 a slim volume called Sturlungaöld, toexplain the background of Njáls saga, but there is no reference to this book in Jón
Jóhannesson’s Íslendinga saga. There are a few more signs of influence from
Sigur›ur Nordal’s Íslenzk menning in Jón Jóhannesson’s book, but they are
entirely restricted to the field of constitutional history. The historians of the period
defined their subject in a peculiarly narrow way and left all history of ideas to thestudents of literature.
The book-prose theory can hardly be held totally responsible for this narrow
definition of history, and in other respects that theory is an unsatisfactory
explanation of the stagnation in Icelandic historiography. If historians had reallyfelt inhibited by a lack of sources after the sagas had been excluded, they could
have learned to utilize the immense potential hidden in Grágás and Sturlunga saga
as sources for social history. They could also have learned to use the Íslendingasögur
in a new way, as what is called Überreste in German and levninger in Danish. I
do not know whether there is a technical term for this in English—‘relics’
perhaps—but the meaning is simply that we can use the sagas as sources for theideas of their authors, not least about their own society, irrespective of whether the
events described in the sagas actually took place. This use of Íslendingasögur is,
if not completely absent, at least very rare in Icelandic historiography before the1970s. And finally, if historians had really felt inhibited by a lack of sources, they
could have done more to dig them up by promoting or conducting archaeologicalresearch.

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19

The reason why historians did not feel inhibited by a lack of sources was thelack of historians. There were simply too few people working in Icelandic history,
and there was no academic institution where the results of individual studies could
be discussed and gathered into coherent wholes. It would hardly be realistic to
expect to find such an institution anywhere outside Iceland, so we can say that the
principal reason for the lack of progress in this field was the miserable state of the
University of Iceland. For the first three decades of its existence, from 1911 to
1944, the University had only one chair of Icelandic history and none of foreign
history. At this time there had been little good investigation of the later periods ofIcelandic history (which is to a certain extent still the case), and the most prolificoccupants of the chair, such as Páll Eggert Ólason (1921 to 1929), found it more
important to study them than the early period which had previously got far more
attention. A mistake in appointment happens now and then at any university
without doing serious harm, but in such a small institution it can paralyse a branchof study for years. It is for instance rather obvious now that Árni Pálsson was theleast well qualified of the three applicants when he was appointed professor of
Icelandic history in 1931, and the story goes that the Faculty of Arts recommended
him in order to deprive the then Minister of Education, Jónas Jónsson, of an
opportunity to appoint a political follower, ﬁorkell Jóhannesson. However that
may be, the consequence was that practically no work was done in history in the
Faculty for a decade. From 1944 to the late 1960s there were two chairs of
Icelandic history at the University, and it was not until the appointment of Jón
Jóhannesson in 1943 that anything of importance was written there about theearly, pre-1264 history.
This wretched state of affairs in the Faculty of Arts did not mean a complete stop
to work on early history in Iceland because there were people active in the fieldoutside the small group of professional historians. The Faculty of Law, with men
like Ólafur Lárusson and Einar Arnórsson, contributed much more in this field
during this period than the Faculty of Arts. We also have in Iceland a tradition ofnatural scientists studying history, mainly specialists in different branches of theearth sciences. I have already mentioned ﬁorvaldur Thoroddsen, a geologist who
wrote what is still the most extensive history of Icelandic agriculture. This tradition was kept up during the period in question by people like Sigur›ur ﬁórarinsson
and Trausti Einarsson, to name but two, and I should add that it has been
maintained by younger scholars since: ﬁorleifur Einarsson, a geologist, Páll
Bergﬂórsson, a meteorologist, Stefán A›alsteinsson, a biologist, and many others
have made invaluable contributions to our history.
In the late 1960s the status of history was radically altered at the University. A
chair was established in foreign history, and history, foreign and Icelandic, wasmade into a separate discipline. For the first time we had a real forum for history
in Iceland. A little later, in the 1970s, a Faculty of Social Sciences was established

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at the University, and a few people interested in early Icelandic society haveworked, and still work, there. At about the same time we got a Faculty of Science,and there links between natural and human history are still maintained. Our
Department of History has also grown considerably; there are now around ten of
us working in it, so maybe we are now capable, for the first time, of constituting
the necessary central institution for the study of early Icelandic society, if weprove to be sufficiently interested in this earliest part of our history.
It might be tempting for me as an Icelander to attribute the revival of the studyof early Icelandic history and society since the 1970s to the growth of the
University of Iceland. But, alas, it would not be true. Although a considerable partof the production of knowledge is ours, the new impulses, the ways of writing a
new kind of history, have for the most part originated in other countries. This
novelty consists principally in a new attitude towards the sagas, particularly theÍslendingasögur, and a rehabilitation of the sagas as historical sources. My colleague, Helgi ﬁorláksson, described this new movement in the Icelandic periodicalN‡ saga four years ago (1987) and attributed the innovation to a linking oftraditional history and anthropology. Anthropological findings, which can bebased on evidence from any society anywhere in the world, are used to confirm
the evidence of the sagas. Because Helgi wrote this in an Icelandic periodical andcan hardly be suspected of wanting to flatter our present hosts, as I may be, I canquote him on the point that the first authors who suggested this method for the
study of early Icelandic society were two prominent English members of theViking Society, Peter Foote and David Wilson, in The Viking Achievement in
1970. But the first to use the Íslendingasögur and back up their evidence withanthropological material was, according to Helgi, the Norwegian archaeologist
and anthropologist Knut Odner. A year after The Viking Achievement appeared,in 1971, Odner published a study of economic structures in Western Norway in the
period from about AD 200 to 600, using evidence from Egils saga and Landnámabók
about the households of Skalla-Grímr and Geirmundr heljarskinn in the light oftheories elaborated by the American anthropologist Karl Polanyi.
I do not doubt Helgi’s statements about these early instances of an anthropological approach. But in general I prefer to see the new developments in early
Icelandic history as coming primarily from two disciplines, literary study of thesagas and anthropology, and principally from two countries, Denmark and theUnited States.
As Helgi ﬁorláksson mentions in his article, the rehabilitation of the sagas
within the domain of literary studies partly originated in the so-called new freeprose theory, whose proponents were more willing to see traditional material in
the sagas than the typical book-prose scholars had done. In 1976 Óskar Halldórsson
argued for the view that Hrafnkels saga Freysgo›a, the saga which had been
considered the purest fiction of all the sagas, was in fact based on oral tradition,

A CENTURY OF RESEACH ON EARLY ICELANDIC SOCIETY

21

and Óskar urged scholars to use the methods of folklore in studies of the sagas.
A part of Óskar’s argument was closely related to the anthropological approach.
The story of Hrafnkell’s attitude to his horse Freyfaxi reminds us strongly of what
we know about horse-worship among other Indo-European peoples. Therefore,Óskar maintained, the story must be based on tradition. Here, as in the anthropological approach, the historical reality is tested by sources which are useful
because they are about something other than, and remote from, Icelandic history.
Apart from such cases the new free-prose theory, as represented by Óskar Halldórsson,
does not seem to have much to offer historians. In principle the method is the sameas that recommended by the book-prose theorists, to study each saga and each
episode separately, and that has proved to lead to more uncertainties than we
historians like to live with. Nevertheless I think that one can discern a certain
influence from this new free-prose approach in the writings of some Icelandic
scholars. I refer for instance to the ethnologist Jón Hnefill A›alsteinsson who ismainly active in the study of heathen and folk religion.
Another movement has originated among scholars of Old Icelandic literature
who have shown more interest in the society behind the sagas than the first
generation of book-prose theorists did. A good example of this recent interest isPreben Meulengracht Sørensen’s book, Saga og samfund (1977), an introduction
to Old Icelandic literature based on an inspiring and original interpretation of thesociety that produced it. But such an interest of course does not in itself solve
problems of sources or form a school of study, although it may provide new
insights into neglected aspects of social history. And maybe if we examine thesestudies closely, it will emerge that the novel things in them owe their novelty towhat Helgi ﬁorláksson designated the anthropological approach, namely the methodof comparing with and confirming by something distant and unrelated.
My ponderings have thus led me to the conclusion that this general approach tothe subject is the novelty in the studies of early Icelandic society since the 1970s.
We could call it a structuralist approach, because it lies in discovering structures
rather than in explaining events, and the proof of the existence of these structureslies partly in seeing them as instances of still larger structures. Sometimes it is aquestion of structures which in certain circumstances can occur anywhere in theworld and can thus be called anthropological. It is not for that reason, though, that
I choose to describe this new movement as an anthropological one, but because thediscipline of social anthropology has contributed more to it than any other branchof learning, and this new school is, I suppose, part of a world-wide growth ofinterest in anthropology.
I have already said that the new movement originated in Denmark and America.
From Denmark we have the works of Kirsten Hastrup, her book, Culture andHistory in Medieval Iceland (1985), and a number of interesting articles. From
America we have the works of Jesse Byock, Carol Clover, William Ian Miller and22

GUNNAR KARLSSONPaul Durrenberger, of whom as far as I know only Durrenberger is educated as ananthropologist. Kirsten Hastrup has dealt with very general systems of thought inearly Iceland, systems of time and space, ethnicity and so on. She has not mademuch use of the sagas, so we cannot say that she has contributed to their reinstatement as historical sources. But she has made a very serious attempt to use thestructuralist approach of social anthropology to extract a new kind of knowledge
from the legislation and the learned, scientific literature of medieval Iceland. The
American scholars have thrown new light on subjects as varied as bloodfeud,
revenge, honour, exposure of babies, gift-exchange and means of keeping warfare
within tolerable limits. This is a major achievement which could form the basis ofa brand-new social history of early Iceland. On some of these subjects considerable knowledge can be found in sources which Jón Jóhannesson could have used,especially Grágás and Sturlunga saga. But the success of the American scholars
depends mainly on their use of the Íslendingasögur in a way that was unknown
until the 1970s.
Now I am not saying that anything new or successful is necessarily good orright. I do not mean to say that the scholars who have adopted an anthropologicalapproach have said the last word on the subjects they have dealt with. All theories
of systems of thought beg serious questions about the very existence of such
systems. For instance, when the early Icelanders built a wall, gar›r, around their
hay-making tún or ta›a, they certainly did it for practical purposes, to keep the
sheep and cattle out while the grass was growing and the hay was being made.
When they decided in their legislation that certain legal procedures should takeplace outside this wall, útangar›s, and at a minimum distance from it, they
probably did so to minimize the risk of violence. I find it difficult to accept that
this entirely practical distinction between what was útangar›s and innangar›s
could symbolize a general distinction between the world of human and the worldof non-human beings, as Kirsten Hastrup maintains in her book (1985, 140–43).
I cannot imagine that any early Icelander ever thought of his or her útangar›s area
as a ‘dangerous, unknown, and non-human wild space’ (after all it was a part of
the farm, often within a hundred yards of the house-door). And if no one everthought this thought, where did the system of thought exist until the anthropologist
discovered it?
As a further criticism I would note that anthropologists are often remarkablyvague in describing how they mean to use the sagas: whether they think of themas Traditionen or Überreste, in the German terminology, whether they think thatsagas describe the operations of structures as they actually existed in the tenth andeleventh centuries, or as the saga authors of the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries
believed or imagined them to have been. In many cases it perhaps makes no great
difference which of the two possibilities one has in mind, for we are dealing withlong-lived structures that were most likely active throughout both periods, if theyA CENTURY OF RESEACH ON EARLY ICELANDIC SOCIETY

23

were active at all. Nevertheless it must be considered a scholarly duty to makeclear in which sense the sources are taken to be valid, especially if these same
sources have been deemed unreliable by earlier scholars. Often the proponents ofanthropological methods seem to care rather little for the tradition of previous
research, especially the tradition of Icelandic historiography. Some of theseauthors make little use of or reference to earlier work in Icelandic at all. This may
be partly due to the scarcity of good Icelandic collections in foreign libraries, butpartly, one suspects, to an inadequate knowledge of the Icelandic language. I
stress, of course, that this is by no means true of all scholars in the field.2 All thesame, it is an important consideration. I was brought up to believe that learning
the language of the natives was a basic rule of social anthropology. I hope that rule
is not outmoded, and that the discipline will be more sternly maintained in future.
I was explicitly asked to give here a ‘sweepingly authoritative review’ of mysubject. Trying to meet that demand, I would like to say that foreign students ofearly Icelandic society tend to go about their work with a bold inventiveness
which we in Iceland deem somewhat irresponsible. Naturally, we feel more keenly
than foreigners do that we are not merely stating something about people who dieda thousand years ago and who will never find out—or care—what we say about
them. We have a strong feeling, when we make statements on our history, that weare coming to grips with the cultural heritage of a nation. To give just one
example: history education in schools requires a certain degree of consensus about
national history. I am not recommending that we should go on writing andteaching obsolete history to secure this consensus; I am only making an observation. Nor do I maintain that we have been completely without bold and inventive
ideas about our early history in Iceland. ﬁórhallur Vilmundarson’s theory about
Icelandic place-names could in its most drastic form invalidate all written sources
about the settlement and the early constitutional and political history of thecountry. But in a way ﬁórhallur’s theory is the exception that proves my rule,because it was received with quite remarkable hostility by many Icelanders. ‘Just
think what it leads to if it is true,’ is said to have been the first comment of oneof ﬁórhallur’s colleagues. This comment is, of course, undocumented, and thestory may be apocryphal. But if it is, it is a fiction of the kind that contains moretruth than many an authenticated statement.
For these reasons it is to be expected that new approaches, new ways of thinking
about Icelandic history, will generally originate outside Iceland, as long as we areso lucky that people outside the country find it worth while to think about ourhistory. On the other hand, the University of Iceland is the institution which is best
suited to collecting the information into a coherent whole and securing a necessary
continuity of research. Thus I anticipate a fruitful division of labour between
foreigners and Icelanders, which of course is not to be applied rigorously ordeliberately, but may be none the less successful for that.

24

GUNNAR KARLSSON

Finally, as a further hope I would like to remark that our sagas and our lawbooks
Grágás and Jónsbók are far from exhausted as sources for history. They haveimmense potential as material for the history of the daily life of ordinary people,
a potential which as yet has not been exploited to the full. I would prefer such ahistory to a new, hard critical school which could also emerge as a reaction to thepresent trend and more or less forbid the use of the sagas as historical sources
altogether. Nevertheless we must remain a little careful in our use of the sagas.
Sooner or later the anthropological history of Iceland will enter the international
body of anthropological knowledge. We shall not only have a sort of science
where knowledge about Indonesians is used to explain and confirm historical data
about Icelanders. Knowledge about Icelanders will also be used to explain andconfirm data about Indonesians. Thus, knowledge culled from Iceland will be—
or at least ought to be—subjected to international criticism. We must at least try
to ensure that it is as reliable as it claims.
NOTES

For examples of works on Icelandic history by authors mentioned in this paper, down
to 1980, see Gunnar Karlsson (1981).
2 For instance, Jesse Byock (1988) has over 90 secondary works in Modern Icelandic in
his bibliography. On the other hand William Ian Miller (1990) has only 23 and Kirsten
Hastrup (1985) only 14. All three bibliographies include some 250–70 works each in otherlanguages. Carol Clover (1988) wrote an article on ‘The Politics of Scarcity: Notes on the
Sex Ratio in early Scandinavia’—admittedly not in Iceland alone—with three references
to scholarly works in Icelandic but 75 to those in other languages. Durrenberger (1992) has
one work in Modern Icelandic in his bibliography.
1

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Björn ﬁorsteinsson. 1953. Íslenzka ﬂjó›veldi›.
Byock, Jesse L. 1988. Medieval Iceland. Society, Sagas, and Power.
Clover, Carol J. 1988. ‘The Politics of Scarcity: Notes on the Sex Ratio in Early Scandinavia’, Scandinavian Studies LX, 147–88.
Durrenberger, E. Paul. 1992. The Dynamics of Medieval Iceland. Political Economy &Literature.
Einar Ól. Sveinsson. 1940. Sturlungaöld. Drög um íslenzka menningu á ﬂrettándu öld.
Gu›ni Jónsson. 1961. Saga Háskóla Íslands. Yfirlit um hálfrar aldar starf.
Gunnar Karlsson. 1981. Hvarstæ›a. Lei›beiningar um bókanotkun í sagnfræ›i.
Hastrup, Kirsten. 1984. ‘Defining a Society: the Icelandic Free State Between two Worlds’,
Scandinavian Studies LVI, 235–55.
Hastrup, Kirsten. 1985. Culture and History in Medieval Iceland. An Anthropological
Analysis of Structure and Change.
Helgi ﬁorláksson. 1987. ‘A› vita sann á sögunum. Hva›a vitneskju geta Íslendingasögurnar
veitt um íslenskt ﬂjó›félag fyrir 1200?’ N‡ saga I, 87–96.
Ingi Sigur›sson. 1986. Íslenzk sagnfræ›i frá mi›ri 19. öld til mi›rar 20. aldar.

A CENTURY OF RESEACH ON EARLY ICELANDIC SOCIETY

25

Jón Hnefill A›alsteinsson. 1985. ‘Blót og ﬂing. Trúarlegt og félagslegt hlutverk go›a átíundu öld’, Skírnir CLIX, 123–42.
Jón Jónsson [A›ils]. 1906. Gullöld Íslendinga. Menning og lífshættir fe›ra vorra á söguöldinni.
Jón Jóhannesson. 1941. Ger›ir Landnámabókar.
Jón Jóhannesson. 1956. Íslendinga saga I. ﬁjó›veldisöld.
Krause, Wolfgang. 1926. Die Frau in der Sprache der altisländischen Familiengeschichten.
Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid I–XXII.
1956–78.
Melste›, Bogi Th. 1903–30. Íslendinga saga I–III.
Meulengracht Sørensen , Preben . 1 977 . Saga og samfund . En indføring i oldislandsk
litteratur .
Miller, William Ian. 1990. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking. Feud, Law, and Society in Saga
Iceland.
Nordal, Sigur›ur. 1942. Íslenzk menning.
Óskar Halldórsson. 1976. Uppruni og ﬂema Hrafnkels sögu.
Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations.
Stenberger, Mårten (ed.). 1943. Forntida gårdar i Island. Meddelanden från den nordiska
arkeologiska undersökningen i Island sommaren 1939.
Thoroddsen, ﬁorvaldur. 1919–22. Landbúna›ur á Íslandi. Sögulegt yfirlit I–II. [L‡singÍslands III–IV.]VÉSTEINN ÓLASONI

THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERSN DISCUSSIONS about the fate of the Sagas of Icelanders—or Íslendingasögur,as I shall call them here—no one seems to have wondered or worried about thefact that no Íslendingasögur have been written for ages. Much has been written
about things that have happened to Icelanders, and stories have been written about
the Middle Ages, even with characters that also appear in Íslendingasögur, but noone seriously considers these stories as genuine sagas, not even Halldór Laxness’s
Gerpla. It would be an interesting exercise for a student to prove that Gerpla is notan Íslendingasaga, but I dare not try the patience of my readers with such pedantry.
No one could be more aware than competent modern novelists, like, say, Laxness
or Sigrid Undset, that the writing of ‘sagas’ in our age is out of the question,
because their world is no more.
The narrative art of the sagas, however modern it may seem in some respects,
is part of a world of the past, a world we neither can nor will bring back to life,
except in our imagination, but the sagas are one of the roads that are open to us
if we want to travel in our minds to this world, either to study it for its own sakeor even to try to view the present in the light of the past. Such a venture is fraught
with dangers and difficulties, but during the last century a large number ofscholars have been occupied in the study of the Íslendingasögur. It is of course ahopeless task to try to summarize or describe their work in a few pages, even if
we have read it in its entirety, which I certainly have not. On the other hand, I thinkthat there are many interesting topics for consideration, and I shall proceed to
discuss some of them.
No small part of the debate about Íslendingasögur has revolved around one
issue: the question of Freiprosa or Buchprosa, to use Heusler’s well known terms(Heusler 1913, 53–55). The debate up to the 1960s has been conveniently summarized (Andersson 1964, Mundal 1977), and I shall try to avoid this issue here. I
tend to look at this question as finally unanswerable and hence not worth pursuing
at present at the expense of other issues, although our general ideas about theorigin of sagas inevitably influence our understanding of them.
However that may be, I intend to concentrate on two objectives of saga studies
which I choose to call ‘appreciation’ and ‘interpretation’. The first is basicallyaesthetic and involves an attempt to understand and define the narrative art of theÍslendingasögur as an aesthetic form. The second is basically philosophical or
moral, and involves an attempt to understand the message of the sagas, to reveal
the kind of truth they tell. The distinction is obviously theoretical, because in the
text the aesthetic and the moral, the form and the content, are unified. In considering these objectives I shall pay attention to another distinction, the one between

THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS

27

the individual voice and character of a saga and the more abstract ‘collective’
voice and character of the genre as a whole. This distinction bears some relation
to the Buchprosa /Freiprosa debate, but individual and collective voices are notmutually exclusive, though it may be difficult to listen carefully to both at thesame time.
I find it not only appropriate but inevitable to begin my survey with Epic andRomance, Ker’s classic study, which he seems to have begun exactly one hundredyears ago here in London. In the preface to the first edition of 1896 Ker writes:‘Some of these notes have been already used, in a course of three lectures at theRoyal Institution, in March 1892 . . . and in lectures given at University College
and elsewhere.’1 The inevitability of beginning with Epic and Romance does not
only stem from its proximity in time and place to the founding of the distinguishedsociety we are celebrating, but also from the conviction I assume I share withmany students of the sagas, that Ker is the finest literary critic who has written
about the Icelandic sagas, and that his insights and comments have retained theirvalue to this day. It is therefore natural to use his work as a yardstick against which
to measure other contributions.
Ker saw clearly what many later critics have dealt with, that the effect of thesagas arises in part from the conflict or contrast between sophisticated narrativeart and matter that seems intractable and often trivial:
It is no small part of the force of the Sagas, and at the same time a difficulty and an
embarrassment, that they have so much of reality behind them. The element of history
in them, and their close relation to the lives of those for whom they were made, havegiven them a substance and solidity beyond anything else in the imaginative stories ofthe Middle Ages (1957, 184).

The implications of this statement are spelt out in comments on individual sagas
which at the same time give a clear picture of Ker’s preferences: Njáls saga is ‘thegreatest of all the Sagas’, yet ‘carries an even greater burden of particulars’ (190)than other sagas. Víga-Glúms saga has ‘biographical unity’ and ‘interest of
character’, but does ‘not attain to tragedy’, and he places it ‘midway between thecloser knit texture of Gísla saga and the laxity of construction in the stories
without a hero, or with more than one’ (193–94). Gísla saga and Grettis saga
produce ‘one single impressive and tragical effect, leaving the mind with a senseof definite and necessary movement towards a tragic conclusion’ (195). But he has
no taste for ‘the imbecile continuation of the story after Grettir’s death and his
brother’s vengeance’ (195). Hrafnkels saga and Bandamanna saga ‘appear to havediscovered and fixed for themselves the canons of good imaginative narrative inshort compass, and to have freed themselves, in a more summary way than Njála,from the encumbrances of traditional history, and the distracting interests of theantiquarian and the genealogist’ (199).2

28

VÉSTEINN ÓLASON

In his chapter about matter and form Ker discusses a conflict between ‘thedifficulties of reluctant subject-matter’ and ‘that sense of form which was revealedin the older poetic designs’ (199). His aesthetics are those of the classicist andappear in his emphasis on ‘sense of form’, his preference for good taste andmoderation, and for a balanced composition. Although some readers may share his
aesthetic standards today, many of us no doubt disagree with him on the endingof Grettis saga, which is delightful reading and probably significant for the
structure and meaning of the saga (Hume 1974; Gu›mundur Andri Thorsson
1990). Ker’s emphasis on balanced composition may also have made it impossible
for him fully to appreciate what I experience as narrative excellence in Egils saga.
He praises the composition of the first part of the saga, and adds: ‘After thiscompact and splendid piece of work the adventures of Egil Skallagrimsson appear
rather ineffectual and erratic, in spite of some brilliant episodes’ (192–93). Later(220) he talks of ‘want of comprehensive imagination in the author’ (of Egils
saga). In a way he is right here as usual, but nevertheless I feel that he fails to do
justice to the sustained brilliance of the description of Egill in this saga, which has
been recognized by many of its readers. The reason for this difference of opinion
can hardly be that Egill is more appealing from a moral than from an aesthetic
point of view. It must stem from different aesthetic standards.
In his discussion of the heroic ideal of the sagas Ker again remarks on what hesees more of in the sagas than in any other heroic literature and calls ‘the meannessof reality’, but he adds:. . . no appreciation of this ‘common life’ in the Sagas can be just, if it ignores theessentially ‘heroic’ nature of the moral laws under which the Icelandic narratives are
conducted . . . there can be no doubt that the Sagas were composed under the directionof an heroic ideal, identical in most respects with that of the older heroic poetry (202).

At the same time he notes a phenomenon which is more easily explained by what
is now known of the sagas’ literary history than it was in his day: sometimes they
seem to move on the ‘brink of decay’, to be on the verge of formal heroics where
the emphasis is more on external signs of heroism as an abstract phenomenon thanon its integration of ideal and conduct. His example, which will spring to the mindof other saga readers too, is Kjartan Óláfsson in Laxdœla saga. In the treatmentof comedy it becomes clear, however, that Ker does not feel that the sagas havecrossed this boundary (no one would deny that some fourteenth-century sagas
have done so):The Sagas have comedy in them, comic incidents and characters, because they have no
notion of the dignity of abstract and limited heroics; because they cannot understand thelife of Iceland otherwise than in full, with all its elements together (229).

It would be easy to continue quoting Ker. There is practically no end to memorable
formulations in the chapters with the headings ‘Tragic Imagination’, ‘Comedy’,THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS

29

and ‘The Art of Narrative’, but I assume that many of them are either vividly
remembered by most of my readers or stored somewhere in the mind with thewisdom whose origin one has forgotten. I should like to add one more quotation
though, which I think states very succinctly Ker’s views on the developmentof the form:
The relation of the Sagas to the older poetry may be expressed in this way, perhaps, thatthey are the last stage in a progress from the earliest mythical imagination, and theearliest dirges and encomiums of the great men of a tribe, to a consistent and orderly
form of narrative literature, attained by the direction of a critical faculty which kept out
absurdities, without impairing the dramatic energy of the story (210).

Although Ker was more aware of the differences between individual sagas thanmany of his contemporaries and had a keen perception of their varying purity oftone, he was not primarily interested in the individuality of the voices of thesagamen, but rather in what might be called their collective voice. He had an
unusual knowledge of medieval literature—and not only medieval I am sure—and
his aim was to place the sagas as a specific type of narrative art. His success was
remarkable.
Ker’s cultural orientation was European in the best sense, as far as can be judged
from the periphery. He had great knowledge of the whole field of Germanic
literature in the Middle Ages, but his approach was not particularly Germanic. He
was not interested in the sagas as products of a Germanic spirit, but rather in theirown right as a form of narrative art.
Around the turn of the century German and Scandinavian scholars, at least, weregenerally more interested in literary works as expressions of a spirit, either of anindividual, of a nation or of a period, than in aesthetic form for its own sake. The
Íslendingasögur were considered prime examples of pre-Christian Germanic spirit
and eagerly studied as such. Rather than dwell on the excesses and distortions thisapproach could sometimes lead to, I should like to discuss two of its best representatives. The obvious choice is Andreas Heusler. A highly cultivated andsensitive man, he seems to have felt deeply that what he saw as Germanic values
and Germanic style needed to be defined and defended in opposition to culture of
Mediterranean origin, and in the Íslendingasögur, as well as in Germanic heroic
poetry, he found the purest examples of what he called Germanentum (1934).3
We may find this interest in Germanentum objectionable in the light of a history
we see from a point of view that was not his, but we must not let that blind us to
Heusler’s great learning and his feeling for the qualities of Germanic literatureincluding the sagas. His contribution to the description and analysis of Iceland’s
legal system and the system of feud according to the sagas has lasting value asinterpretation and as social history, although he draws conclusions from it about
Germanic society in general which are probably too far-reaching (Heusler 1911
and 1912). His description of the sagas in Altgermanische Dichtung (1941) is

30

VÉSTEINN ÓLASON

brilliant and more systematic than Ker’s description in Epic and Romance. Alongwith the above mentioned studies it shows that Heusler’s greatest strength may,after all, have been in his appreciation of aesthetic as well as social forms rather
than in the interpretation of Germanic spirit. Although he had a firm belief in oralsagas, he had a nuanced attitude to the preserved texts, and he was open to
consideration of some influence of the time of writing. We may feel that his
interest in the sagas was somewhat biased and that he underestimated their debt
to Mediterranean culture, but he had a sharp eye for many of their most interesting
features, and it is always worth while to see what he has to say on a particularsubject.
While Heusler is well known and frequently quoted in saga scholarship, thesame can hardly be said of another scholar who studied the world view or cultureof the Germanic peoples in pre-Christian times, although he probably did notvalue it any higher than other cultures. I am referring to the Danish linguist andhistorian of religion Vilhelm Grønbech.
Grønbech did not study the sagas for their own sake. In his great work, Vorfolkeæt i oldtiden, which first appeared in four volumes in the years 1909–12,
he sought to describe the native pre-Christian culture of the Germanic peoples.4 The Íslendingasögur were among his most important sources, and therefore
his interpretation of Germanic or Teutonic culture is to a considerable degree aninterpretation of the sagas. This applies particularly to the first volume, Lykkemandog niding, from 1909. I dare not say how accurate Grønbech’s description of theworld and world view of the Teutons is, but he is always specific about his
sources, and his interpretation of the sagas retains its value independently of thevalidity of his more general statements.
Grønbech’s interest was historical and philosophical. He wanted to reveal thetruth the sagas had to tell about our forefathers and consequently about humanity
and culture in general. He may have had a stronger belief in the historicity of thesagas than is now current, but this is mostly irrelevant because he is not interested
in isolated facts but in a world view, in the ideas and feelings governing the actsof men. He understood that one does not find new truths in the texts by using themas a mirror, looking for the familiar, but rather by concentrating on the strange andunfamiliar. He puts it this way:
Sagen er den at Nordboernes særhed, snæverhed, ensidighed, det inhumane ved dem er
begrundet i selve deres kulturs væsen. De er karakterer, men på et grundlag som slet
ikke kunne bære et menneskeliv nu. Deres liv er i kultur, men denne kultur har et helt
andet centrum end vor. Deres harmoni er grundforskellig fra alt hvad vi besidder ellerstræber efter. Deres kultur har sin skønhed, og den havde i sin glanstid livets ubestridelige
berettigelse; men den var bunden til en form for selvhævdelse og selvvurdering som,indsat i vor verden, vilde få plads blandt de nedbrydende magter.
Man kan ikke gå fra dem til os, eller omvendt, uden at afklæde sig sin menneskelighedog iføre sig en anden (1909, 18–19).

THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS

31However people read the Íslendingasögur, it can hardly escape notice that at thecore of their world view lie ideas and feelings about the individual’s relationshipto his family or kin, about the honour of individual and kin, about the necessityand moral value of revenge for harm done to the kin, and about good fortune andbad. These concepts form the moral norm against which men’s lives are judged.
The semantics and coherence of these concepts are analysed by Grønbech in
Lykkemand og niding under the chapter headings ‘Fred’ (Peace), ‘Ære’ (Honour),and ‘Lykke’ (Good Fortune). These are positive values and followed or conditioned by their opposites. No one has to my knowledge analysed this world viewas thoroughly as Grønbech, and demonstrated how the key concepts come together
in a unified moral code where the taking of life for revenge can be a holy duty,
a categorical imperative.
Grønbech speaks without reservation about the importance of honour for theindividual in this culture, and we recognize his individual from our reading of theÍslendingasögur :Han har kun eet syn på mennesket: mennesket som hævdende sig selv, hævdende sinære, som han kalder det. Alt hvad der rører sig i manden, det må snos om, til det bliveren egenskab ved æren, førend han kan få fat på det, og al hans lidenskab gennes inde,
til den finder ud til den bestemte side. Det punkt der samler alle linjer i sig er hævnen.
Fordi hans hævn ikke er en tom, retlinet gentagelse af gjort uret, men en personlig
genoprejsning, en åndelig selvhævdelse, betoning af kraft, værdi, ide: ære, derfor bliver
hans hævndigtning aldrig gold, altid menneskelig; men ensidigheden viser sig deri, at
kun det der gør manden til hævner og hjælper med til hævnens fuldbringelse, kun det
der driver, inspirerer manden til selvhævdelse, kun det får udtryk; alt andet falder helt
i skygge (1909, 15).

Grønbech continues by emphasizing that the world he is describing is a man’sworld where women play a limited role; although—I should like to add—the sagas
often make women the most eloquent spokesmen for exactly this ideology. At thebasis of this ideology lies the importance of kin, the peaceful love which is
supposed to dominate the relationship of kinsmen. From the mutual obligations ofkinsmen follows the idea of honour and the need for revenge as a bond of
insurance; finally, the success of the kin in guarding their honour and keeping
their peace is linked to their fortune. He compares this situation to modern culture:
we need to be human beings to function as frændr, ‘relatives’; they had to befrændr, ‘kinsmen’, to be human beings (1909, 208).
Grønbech’s reader must realize that he is not describing reality as lived, noteven as it is described in the sagas, but an ideology or system of norms by which
reality is interpreted in life and in books and which modern readers must understand to be able to interpret these books correctly. He never claims that his
description fits all life in the sagas. He says about Bolli and Kjartan in Laxdæla
saga: ‘Når først frændeuenigheden bevidst udnyttes som digterisk sujet, som i
Laxdølas skildring af de to fætre der hidses op imod hinanden for en kvindes

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VÉSTEINN ÓLASON

skyld, da befinder vi os i en ny verden’ (59). About Njáls saga he says: ‘densentimentalt overarbejdede Njals saga lader jeg ude af betragtning; som helhed
tilhører den en anden verden’ (120).
These comments show that Grønbech was aware that individual sagas did notnecessarily reflect the ideology he describes in a mechanical way, but he probably
saw the conflicting elements as superficial. When he makes this comment on Njáls
saga, he has already demonstrated how deeply rooted the morality of revenge isin this saga.
We shall probably never know to what extent the free farmers of Scandinavia
in the Viking Age and their colleagues among other Germanic peoples conducted
their lives in accordance with the moral code Grønbech describes, but no readerof the Íslendingasögur can deny that it seems real enough in the society they
depict. And indeed his conclusions seem to be confirmed by many other sources.
This moral code could hardly have been constructed by Christian authors inthirteenth-century Iceland.
Having perused the central works of these three scholars from the first decadesof the century (although Heusler’s summing up in the second edition of Altgermanische
Dichtung only appeared in 1941), one can begin to wonder how much we haveachieved in the way of appreciation and interpretation since their time. There isno denying, however, that our understanding of the Íslendingasögur has beenradically changed by the discussion about their origins and nature, a discussion
which has affected every aspect of research in this field.
When Heusler published the second edition of Altgermanische Dichtung, someof the most influential studies of the so-called ‘Icelandic School’ had alreadyappeared or were about to appear: Einar Ólafur Sveinsson’s Um Njálu (1933), thefirst volumes in the Íslenzk fornrit series, as well as a few slim volumes of Studia
Islandica, both series edited by Sigur›ur Nordal. Heusler did not like the tendencyof this school, and the disagreement was mainly about the existence and nature of‘oral sagas’ as opposed to the role of a creative author. The Icelandic school wasvery influential for a while and has now suffered the fate of most conquerors inscholarly debates: new generations revolt against them and accuse them of simplifying the issues; and now their ideas are being simplified and even distorted.5
The traditional attitude to the Íslendingasögur in Iceland is in many ways quite
opposite to the one current among non-Icelanders. The reader who comes to thesagas from the outside, as it were, immediately feels how different they are frommost other literature, and the need to explain to oneself how one can enjoy stories
about such wild and strange people has no doubt been the beginning of many alove affair with the sagas. Initially, such a reader will experience one saga as very
similar to all the others, and only gradually begin to discern their individual
voices. For generations of Icelanders, on the other hand, who were brought up
reading or hearing the sagas, they were the narrative norm; people felt that theTHE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS

33

world of the sagas was their own; the geography was the same, the heroes wereancestors and models. There was great knowledge of the detail in the sagas, theacts and words of people were admired or criticized in the same way as those ofpoliticians, film stars or athletes in our time. This naïve attitude was common
when the Icelandic school started its work, and there still survive some remnantsof it, although everyone knows by now that men of learning do not agree.
The Icelandic School was fighting on two fronts: against Icelandic naïveté, andagainst the belief in the sagas as vessels for a common Germanic or Nordic spirit.
In place of these ideas they wanted to posit a model in which the Íslendingasögur
were seen as thirteenth-century creations from material drawn from books and oral
tradition, and even in some cases as fictional. The model in itself was not new. It
had been adumbrated by Konrad Maurer and extended by Björn M. Ólsen andothers. What was new was rather that a group of scholars were working along thesame lines in the same place and publishing their work with the Icelandic public
as their primary target. Moreover, the consequences of the new model for theappreciation and interpretation of the sagas began to appear more clearly. The
nationalistic and ideological background for this work has been pointed out, andsometimes simplified; it is certainly important, although time does not allow me
to enter into that debate.6 It would also be tempting to discuss the introductions
and commentaries of Íslenzk fornrit. Their paradox is that from the point of viewof the new model they are burdened with many remains from the past; in the wordsof Ker one could say that they are ‘immersed in matter’, matter which from thepoint of view of literary criticism is often irrelevant; but that is another story.
The work of Sigur›ur Nordal, after his edition of Orkneyinga saga (1913–16)
and his dissertation on the Olaf sagas (1914), has a strong anti-positivistic trend:
he was an adherent of an aesthetics of expression in a romanticist vein, that is, he
saw great works of art primarily as the expression of individual poetic genius, andthe role of the critic was, with the help of intuition and learning, to recreate theoriginal poetic vision and the personality of the poet or author. He did not,however, see the individual poet as above time and surroundings; on the contrary,he emphasized the relationship between genius and its age. This approach isnowhere more clearly to be seen than in his work on Völuspá (1923), but it is also
manifest in his book on Snorri Sturluson (1920) and in several essays on modern
Icelandic literature.
In view of this attitude of his to literature it may seem strange that Nordal neverattempted the spiritual reconstruction of a saga author. His attempt to prove that
Snorri is the author of Egils saga may be seen as part of such a project, since hehad already written a book about Snorri, and his conclusion was, among other things,
based on the personality of Snorri he had already constructed. The eagerness of his
pupils to find authors for other Íslendingasögur can be explained by the need of thebiographical school of criticism for an author as creator (Vésteinn Ólason 1984).

34

VÉSTEINN ÓLASON

Nordal admitted his debt to both Ker and Heusler, but he did not have theirinterest in or keen eye for form. He could write a competent literary analysis if heneeded to, as is shown by 25 pages of his Hrafnkatla essay (1940), but his basic
interest was cultural interpretation, Geistesgeschichte if you like, and in this he isclosely related to Grønbech. His most important contribution to the interpretationof Íslendingasögur may be his Íslenzk menning (1942), although he never wrote
the volume containing an interpretation of the Íslendingasögur themselves. I haveoften wondered if the giving up of that project as well as the rather disappointing
essay on saga literature in Nordisk kultur (1953), may not be explained by the factthat the Íslendingasögur are basically resistant to his analytical method: theauthors were able to hide between the lines. Through essays and personal influence Sigur›ur Nordal made a significant contribution to the new understanding ofÍslendingasögur, but his contribution to the appreciation and interpretation of thegenre is mainly indirect.
Although Einar Ólafur Sveinsson worked in close cooperation with Sigur›ur
Nordal when he was launching Íslenzk fornrit and Studia Islandica, they werequite different as scholars. Einar Ólafur was more of a literary critic in the usual
sense. The literary critic appears in the introductions to his volumes in Íslenzk
fornrit, where he differs from all the other editors to this day in the depth and scopeof his comments on style, characterization, and in general on the specific literary
qualities of each saga. His greatest achievement is his Njála research, summed up
in the introduction to his edition (1954). From our present point of view he may
sometimes go too far—especially in Á Njálsbú› (1943)—in treating the Njála
characters as living personalities and furnishing them with modern psychology.7
This tendency is less discernible in the introduction to the Íslenzk fornrit editionof Njála, where he skilfully combines appreciation and interpretation; I feel that
it is a major contribution to saga studies. Needless to say, faults can be found, andlater critics have explained several aspects better than he did,8 but together with
Ker and Heusler he stands, I think, as one of the literary critics of Íslendingasögur
that scholars neglect at their own cost. He does not see the sagas from the samehigh perspective as Ker and Heusler do, but his great knowledge, and his closeness, enable him to appreciate the individual voice of sagas like Njáls saga orLaxdœla saga with a deeper and more nuanced perception and understanding.
The scholars forming the Icelandic school were not interested in theory, andwe can blame them for not stating explicitly some of the basic assumptions they
were making, but that was indeed a characteristic of scholarship in their time. It
seems obvious to me, however, that the anti-theoretical bias, as well as the factthat these scholars were born and bred with the traditional Icelandic closeness tothe sagas, made it difficult for them to keep the sagas and the saga world at anecessary distance, and consequently they tend to project their modern attitudes
on to that world.

THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS

35The Icelandic school became known for its disbelief in oral sagas, and for its
source analysis and acceptance of fiction as one possible element in the creationof Íslendingasögur. Such ideas had appeared earlier, as already noted, and were
evident also in the work of many non-Icelanders. But the change in attitudes
affected all aspects of saga studies. An interesting attempt to revive the idea of
unconscious art in the sagas was made in 1971 by Steblin-Kamenskij in his Saga
Mind, which is the title of his book in the English translation (1973). Although I
suspect that he is wrong on many of his main points, I consider his book healthy
and entertaining reading for all saga scholars. Above all it highlights the vital
importance of what his countryman A. J. Gurevitch (1985) calls ‘categories ofmedieval culture’ for the analysis of the products of that culture.
Studies in Íslendingasögur up to the 1950s, including the work of the Icelandic
school, were dominated by an interest in origins and background. I have mentioned two notable exceptions: Ker’s and Heusler’s descriptions of the sagas as aform of narrative art. In literary studies in general the focus of interest had by the
1950s for some time been moving from origins to texts, and the movement
continued from texts to audience, or to the whole literary process from origin to
reception. In the last forty years we have seen an increasing flow of books andarticles about the Íslendingasögur with literary analysis and interpretation as theirmain topic. It is impossible to do justice to this activity here, although there aremany studies worthy of note that fall within the boundaries I have drawn for mydiscussion.9
The growth and diversity of theoretical debate in humanistic studies has necessarily influenced saga studies. New Criticism, Formalism, Structuralism, Narratology,
Hermeneutics, Reader–Response Criticism, Feminist Criticism, Poststructuralism—
the influence of all these schools or approaches can be detected in articles on thesagas. I have not yet seen a deconstruction of a saga, however, and one can always
hope to be spared that experience. Instead of classifying saga criticism under suchheadings, I would like to use the rest of my space to point out three tendencies insaga criticism that have been influential and have yielded interesting results. I callthem the European approach, the formalist approach, and the sociological approach. Many of the finest pieces of criticism and scholarship are not easilyclassified and are not caught by this net of mine.
The first school are the Europeans or Latinists. In revolt against the old Germanic preoccupation and an Icelandic nationalist bias, these scholars try to clarify
the debt of the Íslendingasögur to religious literature and the European tradition.
This is partly done by pointing out specific instances of loans and influences,
partly through new interpretations of saga texts, which are supposed to exemplify
Christian teaching and other ideas current in medieval Europe or to carry a hidden
message in the allegorical tradition of the Middle Ages. Earlier generations ofscholars had, of course, seen many instances of direct and indirect influence from36

VÉSTEINN ÓLASON

religious literature in the Íslendingasögur. The Germanic school, and early bookprosaists such as Finnur Jónsson, had considered such elements as superficial andsecondary, having been smuggled into the sagas by clerical scribes. The Icelandic
school was in principle more open-minded towards seeing Christian ideas andliterary influence as part of a saga from its creation, but interpreted the sagas ingeneral as secular and dominated by heroic and political themes. Many of thescholars who have contributed significantly to clarifying the relationship of Old
Icelandic literature and European learning, such as G. Turville-Petre and Peter
Foote and many of their students, have done so without rejecting the insights of
the Icelandic school.10 Others, like Hermann Pálsson and Lars Lönnroth, havetaken a step further in the direction of criticizing the basic assumptions of the
Icelandic school about the indigenous culture of Iceland and see the sagas aspermeated with Christian ideas and attitudes.11
In my opinion the European approach has yielded many interesting results
which must be taken into account in the interpretation of individual sagas and inany attempt to define the dialectical relationship between indigenous Icelandic
culture with Nordic and Germanic roots and the southern culture of mixed
Christian/Jewish and Classical origin brought to the North with Christianity.
Increased knowledge of medieval culture in general has opened new possibilities
of interpreting the background of the sagas as well as their meaning. These possibilities are being used by many scholars and will undoubtedly bring important new
results. But it must certainly be a case of ‘both . . . and’ rather than ‘either . . . or’.
Allegorical interpretation of the Íslendingasögur has in my opinion not beensuccessful. The heroic and social interest is undeniably of overriding importance inthe sagas, even the ones most clearly influenced by Christian morality like Njáls saga.
The Romanticists of the early 19th century saw the Eddas and sagas as
Volksdichtung, and what I have called the Germanic school is a continuation ofthat attitude in a modified form. There are many links: the anonymity or absenceof authors to mention only one. Many of the scholars writing about Íslendingasögur
have been folklorists as well as philologists. Knut Liestøl is an outstanding
example, and in his study of the origins of the Íslendingasögur (1929) he compares
several features of narrative technique in sagas and folktales. Throughout thiscentury the simple forms of folk narrative have been eagerly studied, narrative
structure as well as textual patterns. Scholars have developed methods and terminology for the systematic study of narrative which have had some influence onsaga studies. Partly it has been a question of applying to the study of sagas
methods which in principle should apply to all narrative, such as ways of appreciating the function of time (e.g. van den Toorn 1961, Röhn 1976). Such methods
are useful for exact description although they do not necessarily reveal features
specific to sagas.

THE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS

37

In the sagas action dominates other aspects. The action revolves around conflict
acted out as feud which follows certain rules as in a game. This makes the actionof the sagas a challenge for narratology, and during the last quarter of a century
several attempts have been made to formalize description of saga action throughstructural analysis. When Theodore Andersson introduced his ‘feud pattern’ in1967 many of us received it with optimism. For one thing, it seemed an efficient
tool for formal analysis which revealed a fixed pattern of composition in theÍslendingasögur ; secondly, it seemed to strengthen the case for fully formed sagas
in oral tradition, because it could be found in the oldest sagas. But it very soon
appeared that the optimism was unfounded. On the one hand, this pattern was arather crude tool and lacked the flexibility of the structural models that have beenused with most success in the analysis of simpler forms of narrative.12 Anderson’smodel does not function properly unless one can determine one or possibly twocentral climaxes around which the saga can be arranged in a nice pyramid. In
many instances this can only be done by force and then the result conflicts with
the impression given by the text. On the other hand, it is highly doubtful whether
such a pattern, even if it were real, has any value as an argument for oral origin.
In a widely read book on Orality and Literacy, Walter J. Ong argues that a pyramid
form, such as the one Anderson finds, is characteristic of literary as opposed tooral composition (1982, 141–47).
Andersson’s method was improved by Lars Lönnroth in his study of Njáls saga
(1976), and similar methods have been applied by Joseph Harris in a study ofÍslendingaﬂættir (1972). It is my belief that formal analysis of this sort can bringinteresting results and will be continued, although some people may find suchwork tedious reading; it does have obvious limitations. Having read a structural
analysis one is often tempted to ask: So what? What is the use of models anddiagrams if and when they function? The answer is, in my opinion, that they are
not an end in themselves but tools that ought to enable us to answer more exactly
several kinds of questions. On the one hand, it is important to be able to discuss
the form of Íslendingasögur in terms which make them easily comparable to othernarrative forms. On the other hand, structural analysis of the action can help us toreveal important structures in the content, and thus lead us forward in the projectof interpreting the sagas and their world. Attempts have been made, by Jesse
Byock (1982), for instance, to combine the formal analysis of the action of feudwith the underlying social realities. Although his model is very simple, too simple
perhaps, it does not do violence to the narrative, and it focuses the attention on
essential aspects of the conflicts.
This brings me to the third and last of the tendencies I want to mention.
Grønbech and Heusler, Sigur›ur Nordal and Einar Ólafur Sveinsson were all, fordifferent reasons and in different ways, interested in the social and intellectual38

VÉSTEINN ÓLASON

world of the sagas. Such interest has greatly increased in recent years, mainly asa result of changes of emphasis in the study of medieval history. Anthropologists
and historians have realized that although the sagas may be untrustworthy on
particular facts, they are a mine of information about social mechanisms andmentality. In contrast to earlier generations of scholars, people now realize that theuse of sagas as a source of information demands awareness of their literary formand sophisticated methods of analysis.13 This has called for cooperation between
literary scholarship and neighbouring disciplines, a cooperation that has only justbegun but which may hold great promise. In addition to Jesse Byock (1982 and1988) I should like to mention here the work of William Ian Miller (Andersson andMiller 1989 and Miller 1990), an American legal historian. It is, for instance, quite
interesting to compare his analysis of the function of honour in saga society with
Grønbech’s. Although Grønbech was well aware of the economical and social
conditions of the acquisition and maintenance of honour, his analysis is conducted
in idealistic terms, making honour an existential question for individual and kin.
Miller deals with honour in materialistic and political terms from the point of viewof the community, seeing honour as a limited resource fought over by membersof the ruling class (1990, 29–34). Miller’s approach does not bring us nearer to thetruth than Grønbech’s, it tells a different truth. It is an interesting confirmation of
his quantitative theory of honour, although he does not mention in it, as far as I
have noticed, that it explains the need of young heroes to go abroad to renew andincrease the supply of honour which is a recurrent theme in Íslendingasögur andÍslendingaﬂættir.
An important aspect of the modern social approach to the sagas is that it does
not limit its interest to the question of origins, but is equally or even moreinterested in the audience.14 The ideas presented in the sagas must have hadresonance in the minds of the audiences for which they were originally intended,and their study must take into consideration a long process, comprising (1) theforming of tradition in the centuries prior to saga writing and its nature in thatearly society, (2) the development of a literary tradition from the introduction of
Christianity onwards, (3) the rise and development of the writing of Íslendingasögur
in the 13th century, and (4) the conditions of reception at the time of writing.
I have now entered the field of current problems, and it is high time to end thisvery selective survey. I hope I have been able to remind you that already in thefirst decades of the century we are commemorating, brilliant scholars and men of
great learning had acquired a deep understanding of the art of the sagas and theworld they describe. Nevertheless, I feel that a century of research has brought a
considerable harvest, and that we now understand and appreciate many things
better than people did one hundred years ago, and I have no doubt that theÍslendingasögur are going to interest scholars as well as the general reading publicTHE SAGAS OF ICELANDERS

39

for many years to come. An attempt at a survey of research, imperfect though it
may be, will at least reinforce one’s strong feeling of how dependent scholarshipis on time and circumstance. Historical and literary research has become moreinternational in the years since the war, and this trend will continue. It would
certainly be an anachronism now to name schools of research in national terms:
a German school, a British school, or an American school are terms that no longer
make sense, any more than a Scandinavian or an Icelandic school does. There aregood grounds for welcoming this diversity. Whatever theories are current, there
is only good scholarship or bad. In our field it can never be too forcefullyemphasized that research should be based on sound knowledge and good understanding of the primary sources. Let me therefore end with the words of Brother
Eysteinn in Lilja:
Var›ar mest til allra or›aundirsta›an sé réttlig fundin.
NOTES

The page references are to the 1957 Dover edition which is a reprint of the second
edition of 1908.
2 It is interesting to note this characterization of two sagas which at the time wereconsidered historically very reliable but have later been shown to be fictional with more
solid arguments than most other sagas (Nordal 1940; Magerøy 1957 and 1981).
3 He chose this word as the title of a series of lectures printed in 1934. Heusler gives aninteresting description of himself and his attitude to his work in a brief autobiographicalessay written in his old age (1943–69, II 3–13).
4 English translation: The Culture of the Teutons, London 1931.
5 In her very informative survey of research (Clover and Lindow 1985), Carol Cloversays: ‘Nordalian doctrine holds that the sagas are in effect historical novels . . .’ (272). In
the introduction to Lindow, Lönnroth and Weber 1986 the editors speak of ‘the so-called
Icelandic School’s predilection for the realistic modern novel, to which it would compare
and by whose standards it would generically categorize the Icelandic family sagas. Thisentailed the distressing consequence of belittling sagas such as Hei›arvíga saga because of
their seemingly primitive style and clumsy mode of narrative and plot’ (8). Both thesestatements are misleading. Nordal was anything but doctrinaire, and it would never haveoccurred to him, or to Einar Ólafur Sveinsson, to equate sagas with modern novels,
although they like many other scholars were aware of certain parallells. Anyone who hasread Nordal’s introduction to Hei›arvíga saga in Íslenzk fornrit will know how far he wasfrom ‘belittling’ this saga in any way; on the contrary, he has many words of praise for it.
It seems to me obvious that such criticism of Hei›arvíga saga as there is to be found in
Sigur›ur Nordal’s introduction to the Fornrit edition, or in his ‘Sagalitteraturen’ in Nordisk
kultur VIII:B, is based on the standard set by the sagas themselves rather than by modern
novels. True, Nordal speaks of Hrafnkels saga as a ‘short novel’ (my translation) in his
Hrafnkatla essay, but it seems to me that all he is saying there is that it is a piece of shortfictional narrative. It is of course important to realize that Sigur›ur Nordal never claimed
that Hrafnkels saga was a paradigmatic case. Many other sagas had much ‘history’ in them
1

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VÉSTEINN ÓLASON

in his view, and I see it as misleading when Andersson and Miller talk about a reaction
against ‘the Icelandic school’s idea of free fiction’ (1989, xii). I also find it strange when
they say about the same school: ‘Unfortunately, the scholars who established this view had
rather narrow conceptions of what history was. To them it was mainly political, biographical, or constitutional history’ (x). Modern historians may have their disagreements with
Nordal’s Íslenzk menning and Einar Ólafur Sveinsson’s Sturlungaöld because of whatmany of them see as their romanticized picture of Icelandic culture, but these works remainamong the most interesting attempts to deal with the history of Icelandic mentality in the
Commonwealth. Sigur›ur Nordal, as a matter of fact, was frequently ironic about thenarrow positivistic concept of history about which Andersson and Miller are complaining.
His irony may sometimes have passed unnoticed by readers not too familiar with his work,
as certainly is the case with Jesse Byock, who quotes a description of the attitude of modern
historians from The Historical Element in the Icelandic Family Saga (Sigur›ur Nordal
1957) and takes it as Nordal’s description of what ought to be the interest of historians(1988, 40). The fact is that Nordal is describing a historical method which he despised forits pedantry and lack of esprit, and several of his statements, as well as his own practice,show that he himself had very different aims and principles as a historian.
6 The ideological importance attributed in Iceland to the Íslendingasögur as the cream of
the national heritage from the early 19th century to the present day is indisputable and has
been of benefit to the funding of scholarship in the field. Scholars like Lönnroth and someothers sometimes seem to think that this ideological importance was greatly enhanced by
the theories of the Icelandic school. It was not understood to that effect by the common
Icelandic public at the time. I suspect that any people would prefer to have as monumentsof its history named and known real persons of excellence with regard to beauty, bravery
and wisdom than a handful of outstanding but nameless writers. There is no doubt thatscholars of the Icelandic school were nationalists, as most Icelanders are to this day, andthey were proud of the sagas. But I cannot see that their basic conclusions about the originof the sagas would have been different had they been less nationalistic. These conclusions
are an inevitable outcome of general trends in scholarship and would have been reachedsooner or later anyway. It should also be kept in mind that a scrutiny of the specificIcelandic background of the sagas was a healthy reaction to the equally ideologically biased
and more simplistic views of the ‘Germanic’ or ‘Nordic’ school.
7 It is probably this part of his criticism which has brought on him the blame for treating
the sagas as modern novels. I see it rather as general influence from a certain type of
psychological criticism much practised in the first half of the century. Á Njálsbú› frequently reminds the reader of the Shakespeare criticism of A. C. Bradley.
8 An early and convincing example is Maxwell 1957–61.
9 A selection of titles would be incomplete and arbitrary, and I must refer my readers tobibliographies and bibliographical studies, especially Jóhann S. Hannesson 1957 andClover and Lindow 1985.
10 See, e.g., Turville-Petre 1953, 213–53, and Foote 1984, passim.
11 See, e.g., Hermann Pálsson 1971 and Lönnroth 1965 and 1976.
12 Propp 1968, Greimas 1966 and 1970, have probably been most influential, althougha great number of other contributions deserve to be mentioned.
13 A few years ago I attempted a summary of recent saga scholarship of relevance to theuse of the sagas as sources for writers of history (Vésteinn Ólason 1987).
14 A good example of general attention to this aspect is Foote 1974 (reprinted 1984); an
interesting application of reader-response criticism in the reading of a particular saga is
Cook 1982–85.

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41

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andersson, Theodore M. 1964. The Problem of Icelandic Saga Origins. A Historical
Survey.
Andersson, Theodore M. 1967. The Icelandic Family Saga. An Analytic Reading.
Andersson, Theodore M. and Miller, William Ian. 1989. Law and Literature in Medieval
Iceland. Ljósvetninga saga and Valla-Ljóts saga.
Byock, Jesse L. 1982. Feud in the Icelandic Saga.
Byock, Jesse L. 1988. Medieval Iceland. Society, Sagas, and Power.
Clover, Carol J. and Lindow, John (eds.). 1985. Old Norse–Icelandic Literature. A Critical
Guide. Islandica XLV.
Cook, Robert. 1982–85. ‘The Reader in Grettis Saga’, Saga-Book XXI, 133–54.
Einar Ól. Sveinsson. 1933. Um Njálu I.
Einar Ól. Sveinsson. 1940. Sturlungaöld. Drög um íslenzka menningu á ﬂrettándu öld.
Einar Ól. Sveinsson. 1943. Á Njálsbú›. Bók um miki› listaverk.
Einar Ól. Sveinsson (ed.). 1954. Brennu-Njáls saga. Íslenzk fornrit XII.
Foote, Peter. 1974. ‘The audience and vogue of the Sagas of Icelanders—some talking
points’, Studies in Honour of Ian Maxwell, 17–25.
Foote, Peter. 1984. Aurvandilstá. Norse Studies.
Greimas, A. J. 1966. Sémantique structurale. Recherche de méthode.
Greimas, A. J. 1970. Du Sens. Essais sémiotique.
Grønbech 1909–12. Vor folkeæt i oldtiden I–IV.
Gu›mundur Andri Thorsson 1990. ‘Grettla’, Skáldskaparmál I, 100–17.
Gurevich, A. J. 1985. Categories of Medieval Culture. [1st Russian ed. 1972]
Harris, Joseph. 1972. ‘Genre and Narrative Structure in Some Íslendinga ﬂættir’, Scandinavian
Studies 44, 1–27.
Hermann Pálsson. 1971. Art and Ethics in Hrafnkel’s saga.
Heusler, Andreas. 1911. Das Strafrecht der Isländersagas.
Heusler, Andreas. 1912. Zum isländischen Fehdewesen in der Sturlungenzeit.
Heusler, Andreas. 1913. Die Anfänge der isländischen Saga.
Heusler, Andreas. 1934. Germanentum. Vom Lebens- und Formgefühl der alten Germanen.
Heusler, Andreas. 1941. Die altgermanische Dichtung. Zweite Auflage der neubearbeiteten
und vermehrten Ausgabe. [1st ed. 1923]
Heusler, Andreas. 1943–69. Kleine Schriften I–II.
Hume, Kathryn. 1974. ‘The Thematic Design of Grettis saga’, Journal of English andGermanic Philology 73, 469–86.
Jóhann S. Hannesson. 1957. The Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendinga sögur ). Islandica XXXVIII.
Ker, W. P. 1957. Epic and Romance. Essays on Medieval Literature. [1st ed. 1896, 2ndedition 1908]
Liestøl, Knut. 1929. Upphavet til den islendske ættesaga.
Lindow, John, Lönnroth, Lars and Weber, Gerd Wolfgang (eds.). 1986. Structure andMeaning in Old Norse Literature. New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary
Criticism.
Lönnroth, Lars. 1965. European Sources of Icelandic Saga-Writing. An Essay Based on
Previous Studies.
Lönnroth, Lars.1976. Njáls Saga. A Critical Introduction.
Magerøy, Hallvard. 1957. Studiar i Bandamanna saga. Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana XVIII.
Magerøy, Hallvard (ed.). 1981. Bandamanna saga.
Maxwell, I. R. 1957–61. ‘Pattern in Njáls saga’, Saga-Book XV, 17–47.

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Miller, William Ian. 1990. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking. Feud, Law, and Society in Saga
Iceland.
Mundal, Else. 1977. Sagadebatt.
Nordal, Sigur›ur (ed.). 1913–16. Orkneyinga saga.
Nordal, Sigur›ur. 1914. Om Olaf den helliges saga. En kritisk undersøgelse.
Nordal, Sigur›ur. 1920. Snorri Sturluson.
Nordal, Sigur›ur (ed.). 1923. Völuspá.
Nordal, Sigur›ur. 1940. Hrafnkatla. Studia Islandica 7.
Nordal, Sigur›ur. 1942. Íslenzk menning I.
Nordal, Sigur›ur. 1953. ‘Sagalitteraturen’. Litteraturhistorie B. Norge og Island [Nordisk
kultur VIII:B], 180–273.
Nordal, Sigur›ur. 1957. The Historical Element in the Icelandic Family Sagas. W. P. Ker
Memorial Lecture 15.
Ong, Walter J. 1982. Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word.
Propp, Vladimir. 1968. Morphology of the Folktale. [1st Russian ed. 1928, 1st English
translation 1958]
Röhn, Harmut. 1976. Untersuchungen zur Zeitgestaltung und Komposition der Íslendingasögur.
Analysen Ausgewählter Texte.
Steblin-Kamenskij, M. I. 1973. The Saga Mind. [1st Russian ed. 1971]
van den Toorn , M . 1 96 1. ‘ Zeit und Tempus in der Saga ’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi
76 , 1 34 – 52 .
Turville-Petre, G. 1953. Origins of Icelandic Literature.
Vésteinn Ólason. 1984. ‘Bókmenntar‡ni Sigur›ar Nordals’, Tímarit Máls og Menningar
45, 5–18.
Vésteinn Ólason. 1987. ‘Norrøn litteratur som historisk kildemateriale’. Kilderne til den
tidlige middelalders historie. Rapporter til den XX Nordiske Historikerkongres, Reykjavík
1987, 30–47.

DIANA WHALEY

THE KINGS’ SAGAS

Introduction
ROWSING through the first volume of the Saga-Book of the Viking Club(1895–97), one is struck not only by the ingenuity and variety of the articles,
which range from ‘Whale-Hunting in the Shetlands’ to ‘The Boar’s Head Dinner
at Oxford and a Teutonic Sun-God’, but also by their enthusiasm—their relish forstory, their delight in Northernness and in the remains of Nordic culture in the
British Isles. In those days purely philological papers were the exception rather
than the rule. Dr Phené, Vice-President of the British Archaeological Society, forinstance, gave an account of a horseback ‘Ramble in Iceland’, in the course ofwhich he visited Reykholt, finding it ‘a place savouring . . . of the presence of
tourists, for remembrance of the great Saga writer, Snórri [sic] Sturluson’ (p. 207);
but his own preference was for diving into grassy mounds in the hopes of
uncovering a pagan temple. The same volume contains a couple of mentions ofHeimskringla (pp. 121 and 163), and a copy of Ágrip is listed among gifts to thelibrary (p. 4), but otherwise there is little to suggest a vibrant interest in the Kings’
Sagas; and indeed the first half-century of Saga-Book yields only a handful ofarticles directly within this area, although there are several passing references.
If, despite the best efforts of Lars Lönnroth (1964, 9–32 and 1975) to counsel
us out of it, we persist in the habit of treating the sagas in the now-traditionalgroups labelled Íslendingasögur, konungasögur, fornaldarsögur and so on, we are
inevitably led to treat the Sagas of Kings collectively as a close relation of theÍslendingasögur, and, almost as inevitably, to treat them as the poor relation—not
so much a Cinderella as an ugly sister, old, unshapely and badly made up. As
history, the Kings’ Sagas have fallen from glory; they are no longer trusted assources, and historians nowadays tend to prefer social structures and economic
trends to lives of kings. As literature, only Heimskringla consistently stands
comparison with the classic Íslendingasögur. But the Kings’ Sagas have their
moments, such moments as enthralled that intrepid Victorian, Lord Dufferin.
This is the prelude to the Battle of Svo≈l› in his words, which give a reasonably
faithful summary of Snorri Sturluson’s account, which in turn depends on Oddr
Snorrason’s (Heimskringla 1941–51, I 353–54; Oddr Snorrason 1932, 198–205).
Óláfr Tryggvason and his fleet of seventy ships are approaching the islands behind
which their enemies lie in wait:

B

Nothing can be more dramatic than the description of the sailing of this gallant fleet—(piloted by the treacherous Earl Sigwald)—within sight of the ambushed Danes andSwedes, who watch from their hiding-place the beautiful procession of hostile vessels,

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DIANA WHALEY
mistaking each in turn for the ‘Long Serpent ’, and as often undeceived by a new andyet more stately apparition. She appears at length,—her dragon prow glittering in thesunshine,—all canvas spread—her sides bristling with armed men; ‘and when they saw
her, none spoke,—all knew it to be indeed the “Serpent,”—and they went to their ships
to arm for the fight.’ (1857, 356)

I will be returning to the aesthetic qualities of the Kings’ Sagas, and to Lord
Dufferin, towards the end of this paper.
The Kings’ Sagas have not exactly been neglected, but they have had lessattention than the Íslendingasögur. Many of them have been very well edited,
often with excellent introductions, but there have been few book-length studies,and those there are have rarely reached a wide audience. Hence, in the invaluable
Old Norse–Icelandic Literature : A Critical Guide edited by Clover and Lindow in
1985, Theodore Andersson’s article on the Kings’ Sagas occupies forty-one
pages, including some ten and a half pages of bibliography, but Carol Clover’s
treatment of the Íslendingasögur is nearly twice as long, and because of the hugevolume of critical material, her survey is mainly limited to the last twenty years.
Andersson, moreover, having surveyed his field, concludes: ‘The charm of kings’
saga study is decidedly remote’ (1985, 198).

Defining the Kings’ Sagas
On the face of it the Kings’ Sagas would seem an easy group to define.1 Sagas areeither mainly about kings or not, and we can readily include any sustained prose
narratives about individual Norwegian or Danish kings, such as the various sagas
about the two king Óláfrs, and any of the multi-reign surveys such as Fagrskinna
or Kn‡tlinga saga. But some are about jarls not kings (Hákonar saga Ívarssonar
and the lost Hla›ajarla saga), so perhaps Orkneyinga saga belongs here too; andwhat of Jómsvíkinga saga, in which Danish monarchs feature largely but not quite
centrally, or Færeyinga saga, which is often included in the group by the curious
logic that it seems really to be an Íslendingasaga, except that it is not about
Icelanders?
Then we have to consider whether a saga can be in Latin. The first known
history of Norwegian kings, the lost work by Sæmundr Sigfússon, seems to havebeen in Latin. So too were the originals of Oddr Snorrason and Gunnlaugr
Leifsson’s sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason, although these are lost and beyond direct
consideration. But the early Norwegian synoptic histories are difficult. We presumably want to include the vernacular Ágrip among the Kings’ Sagas, but what
about Theodoricus’s Historia de antiquitate regum Norvagiensium and the anonymous Historia Norvegiæ ? Although written in Latin, these works are comparable
in scope and to some extent in spirit to Ágrip, and they cannot be detached fromthe history of the Kings’ Sagas.

THE KINGS’ SAGAS

45

Perhaps we should insist on saga-like qualities in our konungasögur. Anne
Holtsmark limited her treatment of the Kings’ Sagas in Kulturhistorisk leksikonquite strictly, seeing a purpose to entertain by means of literary artistry as adefining feature which distinguishes Icelandic Sagas of Kings from non-Icelandic
chronicles of kings (1964, esp. 42). Others, while acknowledging this distinction,
have found it more useful to consider the two groups together.2 I do not thinkanyone would claim that there is any self-evidently right way of delimiting theKings’ Sagas, and indeed it is their variety that is one of their greatest strengths.
One aspect of that variety is the way in which, uniquely among the genres ofsagas, the konungasögur range over all periods of the past. The fornaldarsögur andthe samtí›arsögur are defined chiefly by means of their distance from the events
narrated, but in the konungasögur, collectively and also within some individual
works, all periods are embraced: the remote legendary past, the middle ground of
the ninth to earlier twelfth centuries, and the recent or so-called ‘contemporary’
period, which latter is the subject of the earliest Kings’ Saga, Hryggjarstykki, andthe latest, the now vestigial Magnúss saga lagabœtis. These disparities in the
distance between the time of events narrated and the time of composition areaccompanied by a great diversity of material and handling of material, and thisgives the Kings’ Sagas a heterogeneity which may make them less neat andcomfortable to approach than other branches of saga-literature but which in termsof literary history is a source of interest and strength. The primal soup of tradition—early oral materials inherited from fró›ir menn, skaldic verse, folk-tale,chronicle, genealogy, hagiography, well-formed ﬂættir of skalds at court, and theminute reportage of recent events—not only gives rise to Heimskringla, but also
profoundly influences the Íslendingasögur, not least via the skáldasögur.

Heimskringla ’s place among the Kings ’ Sagas
Among the Sagas of Kings, Heimskringla has always reigned supreme, bothbecause of the political and literary distinction of its author and because it issimply the best. One cannot imagine a crown prince and a prime minister coming
together with fifteen thousand others to salute the author of Ágrip or the Legendary saga as they did to salute Snorri Sturluson and unveil his statue at Reykholt
in 1947 (see Snorrahátí› 1950). We have the luxury of two standard editions ofHeimskringla to work from, as well as another newly published, in modernised
orthography, and there is the excellent 1941 edition of the Separate or Great sagaof Óláfr helgi. There are four complete English translations of Heimskringla aswell as several into other languages, and at least half a dozen critical books orcollections of essays. Snorri has had his critics. Gu›brandur Vigfússon foundSnorri’s rendering of the life of Óláfr Tryggvason a ‘dull skeleton-like abridgment’ (1878, I lxxxiii), and W. P. Ker followed suit, complaining among other46

DIANA WHALEY

things of Snorri’s want of consistency in leaving out the moving deaths of Óláfr’sdog Vígi and of his queen (which are covered by Adam of Bremen, Oddr Snorrason
and the author of Historia Norvegiæ), but accepting the story of the sorcerer sent
to Iceland by King Haraldr Gormsson in the shape of a whale. About the first
episode, Ker asks, ‘Was it strict historical judgment, or mere dulness, that left thisout’ (1908–09, 248), while of the second he says, ‘He [Snorri] cannot give himself
out, or be accepted as a true, sound rationalist historian. Why did he swallow thewhale?’ (1908–09, 256). But critical voices are very much in the minority, drowned
by a great chorus of acclaim.
As a source of historical information, Snorri’s Sagas of Kings have probably
been overvalued, as when his Óláfs saga helga was labelled the ‘Historical saga’.
Historians have tended to resort to Heimskringla more than to others of the
konungasögur, seduced by its apparent plausibility into forgetting that so much of
Snorri’s writing derives directly and probably without any extra information fromless reasonable-seeming sources, many of which are still extant.
Snorri probably does deserve his reputation as ‘king of saga-writers’ (Einar Ól.
Sveinsson 1937–38, 73–74). But it cannot be stated too often that Heimskringla
is a very patchy work, that many of the best moments in it are only slightly
improved versions of already powerful scenes in their sources, and that Snorri
acquired much of his literary technique from his predecessors. His magisterial
control of suspense and viewpoint is learned from Oddr Snorrason and the authorof Færeyinga saga; the royal speechifying is in imitation of Sverris saga, andSnorri’s justly famous capacity for presenting more than one view of a charactermay owe something to the same model. The talent for setting characters indramatic opposition is shared with the author of Morkinskinna, and the distaste forthe supernatural and trivial accords with Fagrskinna; and so on. So, as W. P. Ker
put it, Snorri ‘took what he wanted and left them without their due praise’(1908–09, 250).
The only sensible response to all this is not to start denigrating Heimskringla onprinciple, but to continue to recognise that it is not in every respect superior to its
peers, and while admiring it, to guard against exaggerating the personal contribution of Snorri Sturluson, great though that is. The corollory is that more attention
could be given to the other Kings’ Sagas. Many have been well re-edited in thelast decade or so: Ágrip and Fagrskinna, Bog≈ lunga saga, Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar,
the Legendary saga and Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar in mesta. Hulda is in progress.
There has been important work on the genesis of works such as Fagrskinna (e.g.
Jakobsen 1970), the Hulda–Hrokkinskinna compilation (Louis-Jensen 1977), Sverrissaga (e.g. Blöndal 1982), Skjo≈ldunga saga and Hryggjarstykki (Bjarni Gu›nason
1963 and 1978).
But on the whole, critical works on Kings’ Sagas other than Heimskringla arescarce, and certainly fuller scrutinies of works such as Oddr Snorrason’s saga,THE KINGS’ SAGAS

47

Morkinskinna and Fagrskinna would be enjoyable and revealing; possibly also theSagas of Kings in Flateyjarbók and other late compilations, however derivative
they may be. Accordingly, the remainder of this paper represents an attempt toaddress some issues within the Kings’ Sagas without giving Heimskringla morethan its fair share of attention.
Five issues
The highlights of the Kings’ Sagas are mainly battles—so much so that one ofthem, Fagrskinna, has been dubbed a ‘battle saga’, orustusaga (Bjarni A›albjarnarson,ed., Heimskringla 1941–51, I xviii). But these sagas have themselves also beensomething of a battle-ground, or at least the scene of lively debate. In what follows
I will be separating out five aspects of the Kings’ Sagas, which, although notunique to this genre, are importantly characteristic of it, and which have been theobject of scholarly striving, and sometimes of scholarly strife. Although, inreality, there is a great deal of overlap between the five issues, they will provide
a convenient framework for reviewing developments in scholarship over the past
century. They are: (i) Earliness; (ii) Norwegian connections; (iii) Clerical influences; (iv) Literary affiliations; (v) Historical basis.
(i) Earliness. If the Kings’ Sagas begin with Sæmundr’s history, or with Ari’s
Konunga ævi, both now lost, we are in the first quarter of the twelfth century. Ifthey begin with Hryggjarstykki, we are in the middle of the twelfth century. Even
if we exclude these works on the grounds that they are not now directly extant, we
can trace the composition of the Kings’ Sagas back into the twelfth century, with
the Norwegian synoptics and Oddr Snorrason’s Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar.
There has been significant new thought on the dating of the so-called Oldest
saga of Óláfr helgi, which I will return to later in a wider context. In another major
development, Bjarni Gu›nason’s work on Hryggjarstykki suggests a date somewhat earlier than it had customarily been assigned to, around 1150, so earning it
the proud title ‘Fyrsta sagan ’ (1978).3
On the whole, though, the Kings’ Sagas are quite accurately datable and therefore not subject to scholarly fashion on this point, so that we can still reckon, asa hundred years ago, that the main period of activity was c.1160–c.1230, especially the second half of this period. What has changed, however, is the place ofthe group in the general chronology of saga-writing. Now that no one believes, asGu›brandur Vigfússon (1878, I lxviii) and Finnur Jónsson (1920–24, esp. II 266–
67) did, that the golden age of the Íslendingasögur fell in the late twelfth century
and very beginning of the thirteenth, the dating of the best Kings’ Sagas and thebest Íslendingasögur have now reversed positions; and it is now clear that the
konungasögur, in terms of fresh compositions, were virtually played out by thetime Laxdœla saga and Njáls saga were written. The positive side of this, as far

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DIANA WHALEY

as the Kings’ Sagas are concerned, is that they can be seen as having had afundamental and formative role in the development of saga-writing generally.
Heusler, for instance (1914, 66), suggested that the writing down of the Kings’
Sagas opened the way for the Íslendingasögur and fornaldarsögur to be committed
to vellum. Nordal saw the history of saga-writing as progressing in a great archfrom dry scholarship to wild fantasy, with the classic equipoise of the Íslendingasögur
at the zenith and the konungasögur on the ascendant path, and with Egils saga as
the essential link between the two groups (e.g. 1920, 128–30; 1953, 251). Thisview may now appear too elegant to be real, and it has been disturbed at least by
the re-dating of some of the Íslendingasögur, including Jónas Kristjánsson’s
proposal that Egils saga may be later than formerly thought (1977, 470–71); but
there is still room for seeing certain of the kongungasögur among the influenceson the Íslendingasögur, especially on those with a shared interest in tales of
Icelandic skalds at the Norwegian court—Egils saga, Hallfre›ar saga and Fóstbrœ›rasaga (see e.g. Olsen 1965, 70; Jónas Kristjánsson 1972, 164–65).
(ii) The Norwegian connection .4 Within the running Nordic debate over the true
homelands of certain poetic and prose texts and their manuscripts (usefully reviewed in Magerøy 1965), the problem of weighing up the possible Norwegian
contribution to the development of the Kings’ Sagas is an interesting challenge.
Nearly all the main characters in nearly all the Kings’ Sagas are Norwegian—afact so obvious that it is seldom mentioned. Is it possible that some of the grandgestures of word and deed in the sagas were actually performed by the men towhom they are attributed? Unlikely, I admit, but perhaps worth leaving open as
a possibility. Similarly, even if we do not nowadays believe that the sagas arefaithful records of detailed oral narratives which sprang up soon after the events,and hence really Norwegian sagas,5 Norwegians must surely have handed theirtraditions to Icelanders in at least a semi-coherent narrative form. And even in thethirteenth century there may have been a residue of local material from Scandinavia still available for use by Icelandic authors. This is extremely difficult to
identify and quantify, but good arguments have been advanced for Snorri Sturluson’s
use of traditions gathered in Trøndelag and the surrounding regions, and from
Tønsberg and Västergötland.6
Moving rapidly on to slightly more secure ground, most of the skalds before AD
1000 were Norwegian, and they bring us closer to the events than anything elsein the sagas. And when we reach the literary stage, there is substantial Norwegian
involvement, by authors, scribes and patrons, in the development of the Kings’
Saga, sufficient perhaps to invite the question whether sagas have to be Icelandic.
Among the earliest of the surveys of kings, at least three were produced in
Norway, and probably by Norwegians: the vernacular Ágrip,7 and two Latin
works, Theodoricus’s Historia de Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium and theTHE KINGS’ SAGAS

49

Historia Norwegiæ. (Theodoricus also mentions a now lost, but probably Norwegian, Catalogus Regum Norwagiensium.) The interrelations of these three texts
and the degree to which they are indebted to Icelandic oral or written tradition(other than the ‘ancient poems’ of Icelanders acknowledged by Theodoricus in his
prologue) have been debated in great detail, but inconclusively.8 More certain is
the case of the so-called Legendary saga of Óláfr helgi (Helgisagan) which,although it derives from the Icelandic Oldest saga, contains interpolations fromtwo Norwegian works and only survives in a Norwegian manuscript (Jónas
Kristjánsson 1976, 293).
Whatever the truth about the early Norwegian historians’ debt to Icelandic
tradition, influence in the opposite direction is beyond dispute. Oddr Snorrason,
for instance, ‘evidently knew and used Theodoricus’ (Jónas Kristjánsson 1988,157), and Snorri in Heimskringla occasionally incorporates passages more or lessverbatim from Ágrip, as does the author of Fagrskinna. All the Icelandic sagas ofÓláfr helgi were served, directly or indirectly, by Latin accounts of miracles
which were set down in Ni›aróss (Trondheim), home of the saint-king’s shrine.
Ni›aróss in the days of Archbishop Eysteinn (1161–88) is an obvious base forhistoriographical and hagiographical effort; indeed Theodoricus dedicated his
book to Eysteinn, and evidently drew on his Acta Sancti Olavi (Turville-Petre
1953, 171).
Norwegian royal patronage also doubtless played a part in the emergence of theKings’ Sagas, but the importance of this is not easy to assess. Not all would
necessarily agree with the attractive view voiced by Anne Holtsmark that theKings’ Sagas in a sense take the place of skaldic encomia from the mid-twelfth
century onwards (1964, 42), and even Sverris saga, despite the claim of its
prologue that it was supervised by Sverrir himself, does not seem as ingratiating
as might be expected (see Andersson 1985, 224 and 226, and references there).
A few decades later the court of Hákon Hákonarson (1217–63), firmly associated with works such as Tristrams saga, Mo≈ttuls saga and Konungs skuggsjá, aswell as with Sturla ﬁór›arson’s saga of Hákon himself, may well have encouraged
the writing of sagas about earlier kings of Norway by Icelanders or possibly
Norwegians. The strongest case can be made for Fagrskinna, which not merely
incorporates narrative materials of Norwegian origin, but was probably composed
for a Norwegian patron, and possibly by a Norwegian.9 Fagrskinna may indeed
have been the ‘konungatal’ read to King Hákon Hákonarson on his death-bed.
Heimskringla, meanwhile, hardly reads like a royal command performance, any
more than its author fulfilled his early promise as a royal sycophant; but most of
the main extant manuscripts have known early links with Norway, and it seems
likely that some or all of these, together with other Kings’ Saga manuscripts, were
produced for the Norwegian market during Iceland’s subjection to Norwegianrule, c.1262–1380 (see Stefán Karlsson 1979).

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DIANA WHALEY

However strong the Norwegian links, the fact remains that even if sagas do notby definition have to be Icelandic, the great majority of the Kings’ Sagas are fairly
and squarely so.10 Their authors, therefore, each with his individual perspective
shaped by local or familial affiliations, religious and political preferences, present
us with a rich variety of Icelandic perceptions of the Scandinavian past, whichhave not yet been explored to the full (although Andersson 1985, 224–27 gives auseful lead in the direction of synthesis).
(iii) Clerical influences. The clerical status of authors to some extent goes hand inhand with the use of the Latin language, and with influence from the mainstreamsof Latin historiography and hagiography. Theodoricus is an extreme example: amonk who appears to have studied abroad, perhaps at S. Victoire in Paris (TurvillePetre 1953, 171 n., citing O. A. Johnsen). Among his sources and models were thelost Translatio Sancti Olavi, a Catalogus Regum Norwagiensium, Latin histories by
French authors, and works by Pliny, Lucan, Sallust and Horace, and the Church
Fathers. His contemporary, the author of Historia Norvegiæ, knew and used the workof Adam of Bremen. In Iceland, Gunnlaugr Leifsson was a monk at the Benedictinemonastery of ﬁingeyrar, the best Latinist of his generation, and author of a life of
Bishop Jón O≈ gmundarson of Hólar. Styrmir Kárason, author of a Lífssaga Óláfs
helga and friend of Snorri Sturluson, was prior of the Augustinian community onVi›ey. In fact Snorri himself is exceptional in being the only identified author ofKings’ Sagas who was fairly definitely not in holy orders, and who cannot bedemonstrated to be directly indebted to any writings in Latin.11 The sophistication of
Snorri’s intellectual background is now better appreciated than formerly, thanks
especially to Margaret Clunies Ross’s work on Snorra Edda (1987) and Sverrir
Tómasson’s work on prologues (1988), but the extent of Snorri’s direct knowledgeof Latin, long a point of disagreement, has only recently been discussed head-on, in
an illuminating paper by Anthony Faulkes (1993).
Clerical training equipped men for literary endeavour, and ecclesiastical direction and the monastic life encouraged mutual influence and corporate enterpriseamong clerical writers, as has already been seen in connection with the see ofNi›aróss. In Iceland, ﬁingeyrar is the school most often mentioned in relation to
the Kings’ Sagas, with the sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason by Oddr Snorrason and
Gunnlaugr Leifsson among its most famous products. But the role of these two
distinctly hagiographical works, ‘full of exaggeration and supernatural intervention’ as Jónas Kristjánsson puts it (1988, 157), is debatable. Jónas himself sees
their role as significant: ‘They are the first sagas that deal with the distant past andhave roots both in native oral tradition and in foreign literature: they point the way
forward to Snorri Sturluson and the anonymous authors of the sagas of Icelanders’(1988, 159). Theodore Andersson, on the other hand, has suggested that ‘theyTHE KINGS’ SAGAS

51

represented an eccentric school of saga writing and should not be taken as thepoint of departure for the later tradition’ (1985, 213).
Certainly there are reasons to think that these two works are not necessarily
representative even of the whole ‘ﬁingeyrar school’. Among the other works
associated with these same two writers, Eymundar saga and Merlínússpá have amarkedly different character, as has Sverris saga, partially the work of the ﬁingeyrar
abbot Karl Jónsson.12 The variety of the ﬁingeyrar productions reminds us thatclerical authorship is far from synonymous with ‘clerical style’. Further, the preeminence of ﬁingeyrar as an ancient home of the writing of Kings’ Sagas (Nordal(ed.), Egils saga 1933, lxviii, and 1953, 199–200) is open to challenge, for, asAndersson argues in a recent paper (1993, following Kválen 1925), Munkaﬂverá
may well have been the focus for the writing of sagas, including Morkinskinna,
which emphasised human character and political conflict and hence paved the way
for the author of Heimskringla.
Another old scenario which now appears too straightforward is that which
envisaged a gradual separation of clerical from secular culture in Iceland, culminating in the secular classics of the thirteenth century. Nordal pointed out thataround 1200 original native literature was still very much in the minority inrelation to foreign literature, Latin or translated (1953, 208), and reckoned that theyears around 1220 were a watershed, after which clerical influence was in retreat(1953, 225). This view has now given way to a much more complex picture, which
recognises the heterogeneity of clerical productions and the difficulty of pinning
down ‘clerical’ or ‘learned style’ (Jónas Kristjánsson 1981) or defining the boundary between clerical and secular activity. Lars Lönnroth has asserted that contemporary authors and audiences did not make a real distinction between native andforeign writings, and emphasised the co-operation between laymen and clerics inthe production of literature (1964, 33–42), rather as Anglo-Saxonists have eroded
the notion of a great divide between monastery and mead-hall in England after theconversion (Wormald 1978). The clean distinction between two streams of historical writing, one clerical, with a strong legendary tinge, and the other a more
realistic attempt to write about contemporary or past rulers, is blurred from thevery outset by the passio -like nature of Hryggjarstykki, emphasised by BjarniGu›nason (1978). Theodore Andersson therefore has some justification in writing: ‘There is now no reason to believe that the history of the Kings’ Sagas entails
the gradual freeing of native talent from the confining traditions of the Church.
Most of the first narrative efforts in the vernacular (Orkneyinga saga, Færeyinga
saga, Jómsvíkinga saga, Morkinskinna) are as secular as Snorri’s work’ (1985,
213). But even if Andersson is right that the sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason by Oddr
Snorrason and Gunnlaugr Leifsson are not the mainstream but a minor tributary,
we cannot ignore them, or Ágrip, the Legendary Saga and Styrmir, and perhaps

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there is now a danger of underrating the clerical input where earlier scholarshipoverrated it.
(iv) Textual affiliations. Even in the days when talk of the possible oral roots of sagawriting was more in vogue, the Kings’ Sagas were recognised as exceptionally‘literary’ in their make-up, deriving their material chiefly from written sources, andhandling it in ways characteristic more of written than oral culture (e.g. Heusler
1914, 66). This, coupled with the fact that some of them can be assigned fairly
certain authorship, dates and/or provenance, opens up rich possibilities for tracing
lines of literary-historical development. The extreme complexity of the literary links
is shown, for instance, in the stemma proposed by Fidjestøl for the works containingskaldic verse (1982, 10). It is not surprising, then, that what we might call thecomplex intertextuality of these sagas has given rise to some extremely weighty anddetailed investigations, especially of the earlier stages in the tradition, by Bjarni
A›albjarnarson (1937), Siegfried Beyschlag (1950) and Svend Ellehøj (1966). I
suspect that those who have read these books from cover to cover are a small andheroic minority—none of them was reviewed in Saga-Book. But in fact, whether theKings’ Sagas are viewed as historical sources, as literature, or as something in
between, any evaluation of them will almost inevitably involve considering where
the authors or compilers got their materials, and what they did with them, or will
want to discover what is the co-operative product of a process of accretion, and what
is unique to a particular work. The books by Hallvard Lie on the style of Heimskringla(1937) and by James Knirk on oratory in the Kings’ Sagas (1981), for instance,
would be greatly impoverished without their comparative dimension, and this kindof ‘applied’ source study tends to reach a wider readership than the ‘pure’ variety.
Perhaps one reason why the ‘pure’ work on literary affiliations can seem remoteand disheartening is that much of it has been more concerned with what is notthere than with what is—with speculation about the contents of Sæmundr’s
postulated history or Ari’s lost Konunga ævi, or with reconstructing the original,
lost version of Morkinskinna rather than appreciating the one we have. Thisapproach seems to be less fashionable now than formerly, at least as far as it
concerns works for which there is no direct evidence at all. Finnur Jónsson
postulated early sagas of individual kings including Magnús gó›i and Haraldr
Sigur›arson as models for the relevant parts of Morkinskinna and hence for
Heimskringla (1920–24, II 622–23, 628, n. 3), and as recently as 1967 de Vries
considered it almost self-evident (‘fast selbstverständlich’) that such biographies
must have existed (1964–67, II 281); but even so patient a scholar as Jónas
Kristjánsson is willing to lay these phantoms to rest: ‘Since any that may haveexisted have disappeared, it is safer to leave them out of the picture’ (1988, 160;
see further Andersson 1985, 218–19).

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And of course we know that the picture will never be complete. Scholars ofintegrity and prodigious stamina will sift all the evidence and reach quite different
conclusions about literary links; many lost written stages will never be found; andthe contribution of oral tradition, despite the valiant efforts of scholars like
Beyschlag, can never be fully defined, so that works such as Oddr Snorrason’sÓláfs saga Tryggvasonar or Morkinskinna, whose sources are not easily pinned
down, are left in dignified neglect (Andersson 1985, 218).
On the other hand, real progress can be made and has been made, especiallyconcerning the sagas about Óláfr Haraldsson inn helgi. For most of this century
the consensus was that an intermediate stage lay between the Oldest and Legendary sagas of Óláfr helgi—the so-called Middle saga, now lost, which had beencharacterised by interpolations from Ágrip and Fóstbrœ›ra saga.13 Then in 1972,
in the course of his reappraisal of Fóstbrœ›ra saga, Jónas Kristjánsson brought off
a wonderful coup by relieving us of the Middle Saga (1972, esp. 156–63 and 223).
Views of the ‘Oldest saga ’ have also been radically revised. The eight fragments taken by Gustav Storm as belonging to it have been reduced to seven (deVries 1967, 240 n. 17) and then to six (Louis-Jensen 1970 and Jónas Kristjánsson
1972). The two rejected fragments, in AM 325 IVa 4o, are now believed to belong
to a separate collection of Óláfr miracles, so that we have returned to the position
taken by Árni Magnússon, who labelled them Ex miraculis Sancti Olavi (quotedin Kålund 1889–94, I 554). Without the last two, Arnamagnæan, fragments, theOldest saga no longer appears so hagiographical as formerly, or so old, since theevidence for dating it in the third quarter of the twelfth century was mainly to befound in the so-called seventh fragment. It is now considered more likely to be a
product of the years around 1200, so that it must relinquish its claim to be ‘theoldest saga known to us, and probably the first ever written’ (Turville-Petre 1953,
190). This also opens up the possibility that the sagas of Óláfr Tryggvason may
predate those about Óláfr helgi, or be contemporary with them, rather than beinga response to them, although of course the cult of Óláfr helgi in Norway, and theearly writings associated with it, presumably predated that of his namesake in
Iceland. Another related development is that the Oldest and Legendary sagas,
whose close kinship has always been recognised, are now seen almost as texts of
one and the same work (Jónas Kristjánsson 1976, 292–93 and 1988, 160).
The sources for the konungasögur of Snorri Sturluson received thorough andsensible scrutiny from Gustav Storm in 1873, and surprisingly little has been
added on the subject since then, except for some excellent introductions toeditions and translations. The view that Snorri’s Separate saga of Óláfr helgi
predates Heimskringla has been generally accepted (Nordal 1914, anticipated byothers; summary in Whaley 1991, 54–55). The question of the sources of Snorri’sÓláfs saga helga, however, remains unsatisfactorily open, and Thorkil Damsgaard

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Olsen may have been right when he said that Snorri’s Separate Óláfs saga depended on the same sources as the Legendary saga, but with such a rich admixtureof material from oral and written tradition, and the author’s imagination, that it
would be a desperate undertaking to try to discover what the sources were (1965,
67). It is usually asserted that Styrmir Kárason’s Lífssaga Óláfs helga must havebeen a major source, if not the major source, for Snorri’s Óláfs saga (e.g. Bjarni
A›albarnarson, ed., Heimskringla 1941–51, II ix). But the scraps from Styrmirpreserved in Flateyjarbók and elsewhere are so different from Snorri’s usual tastethat it seems very unlikely that Styrmir’s work was a major source, except ofcourse that it can be argued that this is precisely why they are left over, Snorri
having already used the parts that were congenial to him. Another difficulty is thenumber of stages postulated within a short space of time, given the later dating of
the Oldest saga, if it has to turn into the Legendary saga (in Norway) and influence
Styrmir before he in turn influences Snorri, presumably in the mid 1220s. Such achronology is possible, but tight. I confess that I personally warm to the suggestion of Anne Heinrichs (which, so far as I know, she has not argued in detail) that
Styrmir’s saga did not really exist in any fixed and unitary form (1976, esp. 18;
Legendary saga 1982, 12–13).
Apart from the light it throws on individual sagas, the chief value of source
study is the insight it gives into the chronology and development of saga-writing,and this kind of investigation will doubtless continue to flourish, even if theconfidently deterministic approach of older scholars has been challenged by asense of variety and chance mutation at work, as expressed by Andersson when
he claims, ‘There is nothing in Icelandic literature from 1150 to 1200 that leads
inevitably to Snorri’ (1985, 216). In any case there is at least one major leap ofdevelopment still to be explained: the fusion of detailed individual biography (ofthe two Óláfrs, or of Sverrir, for instance) with the rapid surveys of longer tractsof time. Depth and breadth come together for the first time in Morkinskinna, andthere were plentiful structural models of both to stimulate the venture, but we stillcannot answer the question where the materials for it came from. On a yet broader
front, we are still a long way from having a definitive account of the place of theKings’ Sagas in the development of saga-writing as a whole.
(v) Historical basis. More than any other genre, the Sagas of Kings are founded upon
historical events—events which seem to have some basis in actuality and are of morethan personal consequence. Several of them have prologues; they incorporate theevidence of major skaldic poems which we still take to be probably genuine; and ingeneral they appear more seriously concerned with sifting evidence than theÍslendingasögur, for instance.14 They also seem to express a collective will toprovide comprehensive coverage of large spans of history. Thus Sverris saga,
Bo≈glunga saga, Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar and Magnúss saga lagabœtis form aTHE KINGS’ SAGAS

55

continuum; and Morkinskinna may have been composed to fill the gap betweenÓláfs saga helga and Sverris saga.15 All these characteristics suggest that the authorsof the Kings’ Sagas at least wanted to give the impression of striving to inform, topresent historical truth, however they understood that. The historical element in the
konungasögur is undoubtedly part of their attraction; it provides historians with agreat wealth of information, however much they protest about its unreliability, andit should suggest that these works are to be read, each on its own terms, but always
as something rather different from the Íslendingasögur.
In sixteenth-century Scandinavia the Kings’ Sagas were treasured by humanistic scholars first and foremost for their historical interest, and, as Else Mundal hasemphasised (1977, 9–12), this had profound consequences for the criticism notjust of the konungasögur but also of the Íslendingasögur and fornaldarsögur,which were sought out with the same zeal for information about the Nordic pastand treated, along with the konungasögur, as historical documents. Belief in thehistoricity of various sorts of sagas was sustained by the assumption that narratives of events had been passed more or less unchanged down the generations by
popular oral tradition. The great ‘saga-debate’ began when scholars started toquestion these assumptions. In this sense, the post-medieval study of the konungasögur
influenced the study of other sagas, just as the writing of the konungasögur
influenced saga-writing generally.
The battle over the historicity of the Kings’ Sagas has produced what is probably the most spectacular reversal of all in scholarly positions, and at times it has
generated real fighting talk, as when Finnur Jónsson declared: ‘The historicaltrustworthiness of the sagas—however grandiose that sounds—I will maintain anddefend until I am forced to lay down my pen’ (my translation).16 Perhaps it would
not be a gross overstatement to say that in the nineteenth century the konungasögur
were taken as reliable until they were proved unreliable, whereas now the opposite
principle holds sway. As a specific example, P. E. Müller in the early nineteenth
century thought that the more dialogue a saga contained the more likely it was tobe trustworthy (so Magerøy 1965, 96), whereas Knut Liestøl, speaking of Sturlunga
saga and the Íslendingasögur in 1930 (88–89) asserted that the reverse was true.
Although historians such as P. A. Munch, writing his monumental history of
Norway in the 1850s, were well aware that there were contradictions and unlikelihoodsin the saga accounts of early Norwegian history, there was a general willingness,in default of any better evidence, to accept them as true in broad outline. His
account of the Jómsvíking battle at Hjo≈rungavágr, for instance, is almost nothing
but a tissue of quotations from the sagas (1852–63, I 2, 114–22). Early thiscentury, however, scholars such as Lauritz Weibull, Moltke Moe and Halvdan
Koht turned their attention to Heimskringla and other Kings’ Sagas, and not only
uncovered specific factual errors but more importantly realised that the narratives
were often shaped by international folk-tale or by ideological templates derived

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from more recent Norwegian history. To illustrate, Weibull not only questioned
details about the Jómsvíkingar but disputed their very existence (1911, 178–95).
Halvdan Koht saw Historia Norvegiæ’s famous image of Óláfr helgi as the once
and future king, rex perpetuus Norvegiæ, and the corresponding prophecy of his
eternal reign in the Legendary saga, as a propagandist invention inspired byarchiepiscopal policy in Ni›aróss after 1163 (1914, 382).
There are various ways in which historians could respond to the ground being
cut from under their feet in this way. One is to proceed as before, but with greater
caution. It is difficult to write a history of medieval Norway without referring toworks such as Ágrip, Fagrskinna or Heimskringla, and with the appropriate
caveats it seems perfectly reasonable to cite their witness, however second-hand
it may be.
Another response to the loss of trust in the konungasögur as historical documents is to appreciate them instead for what they are: twelfth- or thirteenthcentury views of the past, which can give us a profound insight into the mental
world of the author and his contemporaries (e. g. de Vries 1964–67, II 295, speakingof Heimskringla). The issues raised by the events in the Kings’ Sagas are, after all,on the same grand scale as the events themselves: such things as the evolution of
the Norwegian nation-state and its conversion to Christianity; the balance ofpower within Scandinavia; the rule of law and the nature of true kingship.
Investigation of the ideology of the konungasögur is certainly an area withpromise for growth, and the few sorties in this direction have been invigorating.
They began with the skirmish between Koht (1914 and 1954–56) and Paasche(1922) as to whether there were any consistent ideological tendencies in Heimskringla,
and they culminate in Sverre Bagge’s recent book, Society and Politics in Snorri
Sturluson’s Heimskringla, whose purpose is ‘to reconstruct his [Snorri’s] generalideas of society and political behaviour’ (1991, 5). In the hands of someone lesscareful than Bagge, however, this kind of study could be a rather risky venture.
It should ideally be founded on a clear notion as to how much freedom a sagawriter had—from the influence of sources or of historical actuality—to select orslant his materials in particular directions; but this freedom is very difficult
to gauge.
Yet another option is to write off Heimskringla and other Kings’ Sagas as any
kind of history, and rehabilitate them as literature; to apply to them Hayden
White’s dictum, ‘When a great work of historiography or philosophy of history
has become outdated, it is reborn into art’ (1975, 67; his italics). This may soundvery new and liberating, and although it is not new (for scholars of the early
Enlightenment period already revalued the Íslendingasögur and Eddaic poems inthis way; see Mundal 1977, 18), it is liberating. Studies like James Knirk’s book
Oratory in the Kings’ Sagas (1981) or Marianne Kalinke’s article on the saga ofTHE KINGS’ SAGAS

57

Sigur›r Jórsalafari in Morkinskinna (1984) are to be welcomed, and certainly agreat deal remains to be said about the Kings’ Sagas from the literary point ofview: about the shaping of individual narrative episodes or the structure of wholesagas, the portrayal of character, diction and style, and so on. However, it would
again be naive to think that we can leave the question of historicity behind, foreven if we know that the konungasögur are not factually reliable, we cannot ignore
the likelihood that their authors felt themselves bound to preserve ancient traditions, indeed to write history, however partisan it might be, however muchattended by supernatural happenings, heroic gestures and improbable utterances.
The writers of the Kings’ Sagas may therefore have been less free, and lessmotivated, than the authors of the Íslendingasögur to produce elegant and imaginatively compelling narratives.
Finally, one of the greatest challenges in this area still to be met is to establish
how the konungasögur relate to other medieval European historiography. It has
been suggested, for instance, that Snorri might have known the works of Henry of
Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury (Moberg 1987, 56–60 and 78–79), but
this could be investigated further, and although Sverre Bagge’s work (1990 and1991) again makes strides in relation to Heimskringla, it would be interesting tosee a broader discussion of the question how far the authors of the konungasögur
resemble their continental contemporaries in terms of their aims, their choice ofmaterial or their style.

Summary and envoy
To review the ground covered so far: I began by characterising the Kings’ Sagas
rather uncharitably as old, ugly, unshapely and badly made up. They are certainly
a very amorphous category, in which saga is flanked by, and at some points fuses
with, hagiography and historiography, and in which the interests of imparting
information or pressing a partisan line may override aesthetic considerations.
However, the variety of these sagas, together with their relatively early date, turns
out to be a positive advantage: the diverse materials and styles of writing areinteresting in themselves, and they mature and merge in Heimskringla, as well,presumably, as influencing the development of the Íslendingasögur. Their mainly
Norwegian subject-matter and the influence of Norwegian protagonists and skalds,
patrons, authors and scribes makes them more deserving than any other branch of
the sagas of the old title ‘Old Norse sagas’ in its newer sense of ‘Old Norwegiansagas’. Clerical influence is also more demonstrable here than in most varieties ofsaga, although still in some ways elusive.
The literary relations of the Kings’ Sagas, and their place in the development ofsaga-writing generally, have always preoccupied scholars, and will surely continue to do so. Certainly, some large questions of literary history remain to be

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answered. We seem to have blurred the simple elegance of the evolutionary model
proposed by Sigur›ur Nordal, in which dry historical scholarship matures into art,
literature frees itself from clerical constraints, and Sagas of Icelanders are heirs to
Sagas of Kings; but we have not overturned it altogether.
The historical or quasi-historical content of the Kings’ Sagas is part of theirfascination, and if they have ceased to be treasured as historical sources, they arestill at least the noble containers in which most of the skaldic encomiastic poetry
is preserved.17 New ways of appreciating them as historiography or literature haveopened up, and much is still to be explored. We have not exhausted the potential
for considering what medieval Icelandic authors thought they were doing—informing, educating, edifying or entertaining, and we have not, in the wake ofSteblin-Kamenskij (1973), finished enquiring about the distinction, if there is one,
between history and fiction (e.g. Sverrir Tómasson 1988, 189–94).
I am aware that, in addressing very general issues, I have not said very muchabout the Kings’ Sagas themselves, and I would like to end with some simple
remarks on the appeal of these sagas.
To modern minds nourished on novels and lyric poetry—to my mind at any
rate—the spectacle of a monarch in the ruthless pursuit of political supremacy isless interesting than that of an Icelandic farmer of noble heart and good willcaught in a web of circumstance and impelled towards destruction by old-fashioned notions of honour; and few characters in the Kings’ Sagas compel ouranguished sympathy in the way that a Njáll, a Gísli, a Gu›rún or a Kormakr does.
If we share the excitement that Victorian readers and travellers such as Lord
Dufferin felt in contemplating the ‘heroic phantom[s] from Norway’s past’, that
excitement is muted, and it enters into scholarly writings still less than it did in
Dufferin’s day. Travelling in western Norway, Dufferin wrote of one of thosephantoms (1857, 352–53):
A kingly presence—stately and tall; his shield held high above his head—a broken
sword in his right hand. Olaf Tryggvesson! Founder of Nidaros;—that cold Northern
Sea has rolled for many centuries above your noble head, and yet not chilled the battle
heat upon your brow.

And later:

Who shall say how much of modern heroism may owe its laurels to that first throb offiery sympathy which young hearts feel at the relation of deeds such as Olaf Tryggvesson’s?

We may be too grown-up, too sane and too professional to join in the boyish heroworship engaged in by some Victorians. But our perception of questionable
motives behind much of the heroic behaviour does not disfigure the picture, it justdarkens its colours, and we may still appreciate the scope that the royal subjectmatter and grand scale of the Kings’ Sagas gave their authors for the portrayal of

THE KINGS’ SAGAS

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individual character and for the depiction of grand events—bold exploits on the
distant shores of Ireland, the Mediterranean or the Holy Land, the movements ofgreat fleets and armies, the deliberations of assemblies, or scenes of doom-laden
kings fighting to the death amid huge armies. As Shakespeare knew, there are few
sights more stirring than the fall of kings, ‘for within the hollow crown keeps
death his court’. Three kings and two jarls meet at Svo≈l›; a king dies and a saintis born at Stiklasta›ir; the Wends are routed at Hl‡rskógshei›r by the young kingMagnús Óláfsson, with supernatural aid from his saintly father, while the bells ofNi›aróss, five hundred miles away to the north, echo across the battlefield.18 Onlya king could vow to Christianise Norway or die in the attempt, or declare: ‘A kingis for fame, not for long life (Til fræg›ar skal konung hafa, en ekki til langlífis)’;19
and even a Kjartan or a Bolli could not match the glamour of Sigur›r Jórsalafari.
Against the background of large political and military manoeuvrings, the quieter
and more subtle moments gain in poignancy: Óláfr Haraldsson rests his head on
Finnr Árnason’s lap before taking up arms at Stiklasta›ir; Hákon A›alsteinsfóstri
makes painful compromises between religious faith and political expediency.20
And perhaps because there is no class distinction in Icelandic saga-writing—nostilus grandiloquus in the Sagas of Kings to alienate by its pomposity—the scenes
portrayed, both the grandiose and the homely, retain their appeal, and will doubtless continue to do so for at least another hundred years.
NOTES
1 See Nordal 1953, 180 for a summary of the traditional groupings of sagas (1953, 180).
Surveys of the Kings’ Sagas, with or without explicit discussion of the definition of thegenre, include Jón Helgason 1934, 137–63, de Vries 1964–67, II 233–314, Olsen 1965,
Schier 1970, 9–33, Andersson 1985, and Jónas Kristjánsson 1988, 147–78.
2 Among them Thorkil Damsgaard Olsen (1965), whose title is ‘Kongekrøniker og
Kongesagaer’.
3 This dating is not entirely new. W. P. Ker, for instance, put Eiríkr Oddsson c.1150,
adding that he was ‘thought by some to be the first author in the characteristic Icelandicstyle’ (1908–09, 250).
4 For the sake of brevity and simplicity, I am, with apologies, leaving out of account Sven
Aggesøn’s Brevis Historia Regum Dacie and the Historia Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus,
and their connections with Icelandic tradition. A survey of these and other works of Danish
historiography, Latin and vernacular, is given by Brix, 1943, 3–24. Also regrettably beyond
the scope of this paper are the ﬂættir about Icelanders at the Norwegian court which areeither preserved independently or incorporated into lives of kings in works such as Morkinskinna
and Flateyjarbók. A useful introduction is Bjarni Gu›nason 1976.
5 Rudolf Keyser even believed that sagas had been written down in Norway, and only
later copied in Iceland, but this view was generally rejected by his contemporaries (Magerøy
1965, 97). Toralf Berntsen also argued that Snorri Sturluson must have obtained traditional
materials in Norway not only in oral form but also in written narratives comparable withthe Íslendingasögur (1923, esp. 96–97).

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6 Berntsen 1923, Seip 1954 and Wessén 1952. Magerøy 1965, 99 also refers to Liestøl’s
work on popular tradition, in which he stresses the usefulness of detailed local knowledge
as a sign of genuine Norwegian tradition.
7 The Ágrip manuscript was in Iceland in the sixteenth century, but the preparation of thevellum looks Norwegian (so Olsen 1965, 69, who lists other manuscripts of Kings’ Sagas
with Norwegian connections). Bjarni Einarsson considers it most likely that the manuscript
was copied in Iceland from a Norwegian exemplar (Ágrip 1984, vi).
8 See especially Bjarni A›albjarnarson 1937, Beyschlag 1950 and Ellehøj 1965; summarised in Andersson 1985, 201–11.
9 Bjarni Einarsson, ed., Ágrip 1984, cxxvii–cxxxi. Jakobsen 1970, 123: ‘Det er mestsannsynlig at forfatteren var nordmann—Trønder’.
10 So Magerøy 1965, 98: ‘Kongesogene er altså ein del av den islandske, ikkje den
norske, nasjonallitteraturen’.
11 The status of Eiríkr Oddsson is not known. Bjarni Gu›nason thinks it likely that hereceived a clerical education, perhaps at Hólar, but that he was not ordained a priest (1978,
140).
12 It has been suggested that Eiríkr Oddsson also had links of some kind with ﬁingeyrar(Nordal 1953, 196; Bjarni Gu›nason 1978, 146); and Nordal inclined to the surmise that
Styrmir was son of Kári Rúnolfsson, abbot of ﬁingeyrar (1953, 210). Nordal also believedthat Hei›arvíga saga might originate from ﬁingeyrar (Egils saga 1933, lxviii).
13 Nordal 1914, esp. 201; his view of the evolution of the Óláfr sagas was built on
Maurer’s. For stemma, see Andersson 1985, 212.
14 E.g. the Oldest saga with its reference to tœkilig vitni; on this and related matters
see Sverrir Tómasson 1975 and 1988.
15 An opposite kind of co-operation seems to be in evidence when writers avoid what has
already been covered. It is likely that Fagrskinna gives such light and unsatisfactory
coverage of Stiklasta›ir and the career of Óláfr helgi because it had been well documented
elsewhere. In a similar way, some manuscripts of Heimskringla lack an Óláfs saga helga,
presumably because the writer or patron already owned a copy of Snorri’s Separate sagaof Óláfr helgi.
16 ‘Sagaernes historiske troværdighed—hvor “stolt” dette end lyder—vil jeg hævde og
forsvare, til jeg tvinges til at nedlægge min pen’ (1921, 141). Finnur was, it should be said,
careful to point out that by ‘historical’ he meant based on events which actually happened.
17 Fidjestøl estimates that about 1270 strophes or part-strophes are quoted within theKings’ Sagas (1985, 322).
18 In Snorri Sturluson’s version, Heimskringla 1941–51, I 353–70 (Svo≈l›), II 354–94(Stiklasta›ir), and III 41–45 (Hl‡rskógshei›r).
19 Respectively, Óláfr Tryggvason in Heimskringla 1941–51, I 303, and Magnús berfœttr
in III 237.
20 Heimskringla 1941–51, II 368, and Hákonar saga gó›a in I, esp. 166–73 and 192–93.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

I Primary sources
Adam of Bremen. Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiæ Pontificum. 1917. Ed. Bernhard Schmeidler.
Ágrip af Nóregskonunga sog≈ um. Fagrskinna—Nóregs konunga tal. 1984. Ed. Bjarni Einarsson.
Íslenzk fornrit 29.
Bo≈glunga saga I–II. 1988. Ed. Hallvard Magerøy.
Danakonunga so≈gur : Skjo≈ldunga saga. Kn‡tlinga saga. Ágrip af so≈gu Danakonunga. 1982.
Ed. Bjarni Gu›nason. Íslenzk fornrit 35.
Egils saga. 1933. Ed. Sigur›ur Nordal. Íslenzk fornrit 2.
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MICHAEL BARNESNORSE IN THE BRITISH ISLESIntroduction
BEGIN by offering a number of quotations. First, on the positions of Norse(synonymous in this article with Scandinavian) and Gaelic in the Western Isles,and particularly Lewis:

I

The invasion of the Vikings [in Lewis] amounted to a clearing out of the previous
possessors, and the names of the chief features of the country, mountains, rivers, lakes,
sea-lochs and capes were all changed (Henderson 1910, 185).
With the exception of some of the island-names themselves, none of the Gaelic placenames in the Isles can be proved to be of pre-Viking date (Fellows-Jensen 1984, 151).
The place-nomenclature in the west of Lewis, then, provides substantial evidence fora continuous Gaelic speaking presence through the Norse settlement period . . . From
this we can anticipate that language contact between Norse and Gael ranged over
several centuries, from the advent of the first Norse settlers up to and beyond thecession of political sovereignty to Scotland in 1266 (Cox 1991, 483).

Second, on the Norse language of Orkney and Shetland, or Norn, as it is often
called:In several parts of Shetland, especially Foula and the North Isles, the present generationof old people remember their grand-parents speaking a language that they could hardly
understand, and which was called Norn or Norse. But it must have been greatlyintermixed with Scotch, for many of the old words now dying out and being supplanted
by English, are really Scotch, although they are believed by many to be Norn (Jakobsen
1897, 11).
The statement that the Norn died out in the previous century [the nineteenth] must not. . . be taken too literally. The process has been a steady and gradual one, which is still
continuing even at the present day. One must certainly suppose that even at the
beginning of the 18th century the dialect was hard hit, and after that time it seems tohave degenerated very rapidly (Jakobsen 1928–32, xix).
. . . as long as the Norn was spoken by the Shetlanders ‘amongst themselves’, it did
not deteriorate in the manner thought by some, neither by being inextricably mixed up
with Scots, nor by a breakdown of the grammatical system. As far as the available
evidence shows, Norn stood firm to the end (Rendboe 1984, 80).

Third, on the result of language contact between Norse and English speakers in
the Danelaw:. . . as it is most unlikely that OE [Old English] and ON [Old Norse] were fully
mutually comprehensible, contact forms (Anglo-Danish pidgin) must have been used tosome extent in trade and commerce. As the bilingual situation receded, the varieties thatremained must have been effectively Anglo-Norse creoles with a tendency in the postcreole situation to restore some of the grammatical distinctions lost in pidginization(Milroy 1984, 11).

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The very close similarity between the two languages [Norse and English] makes the
emergence of a pidgin language as unlikely on linguistic grounds as it is on social
grounds: linguistically, communication could be effected without drastic elimination of
linguistic complexities, and socially the need (at least in most places) was for an allpurpose language, not merely for a restricted-purpose minimal language. Creolizationis also unlikely on social grounds, and again the languages seem too close linguisticallyfor such an extreme response to communication difficulties (Thomason and Kaufman
1988, 307).

I have chosen these quotations for several reasons. First, to span, as nearly as
possible, the hundred years of the Viking Society’s existence. Second, to introduce some of the issues pertaining to Norse in the British Isles which have been
widely and vigorously debated. Third, to show how greatly views of these issues
may differ. The disagreement has various causes. One is increased knowledge: theuncovering of new evidence leads to new interpretations. Another cause is the ageold conflict between the believer and the sceptic. A third is the markedly different
extent to which scholars succumb to the blandishments of changing academic
fashion. All of this will become apparent in the following survey, which will takethe form of brief, critical snapshots of a hundred years of research into the life anddeath of Norse in England, Ireland, Man, the Hebrides and the Northern Isles.
Naturally, given so vast a subject, the range of topics covered and the space
devoted to each will have to be severely restricted. I hope nevertheless to be able
to mention most of the major issues and to give something of the flavour of thedebate.
Before I begin to look at the individual regions of the British Isles, it is perhaps
worth making two general points. First, research into the fate of the Norse
language in Britain and Ireland by and large reflects the prevailing concerns ofhistorical linguistics at any given time. Up until the middle of this century, forexample, the emphasis was almost exclusively on phonology, loan-words andplace-names, and the approaches were relatively unhampered by the constraints ofdefinition or of theory. Recent decades have seen a broadening of the scope, agreater willingness to define terms and in some scholars a positive zest fortheoretical models against which to evaluate the data. The second point to be madeis that the interest of many researchers in the field has not been entirely orsometimes even primarily linguistic. The coming of Norse to the British Isles, its
subsequent existence and ultimate demise have not, at least until very recently,
featured at all prominently in the literature. The emphasis has instead often beenon such questions as the extent of Danish settlement in England or the fate of the
pre-Viking Gaelic-speaking population in Man and parts of the Hebrides. Even
where the linguistic data are ostensibly the main concern and are not merely
brought in to bolster conclusions about the size of Danish armies and the like,
Viking settlement patterns usually form the wider context in which they are

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67

discussed. A notable exception to this has been the study of Orkney and Shetland
Norn. Because of the survival of these branches of Norse until the eighteenth
century, attention here has mainly been focused on the question of language shift.

Norse in England
The received wisdom just after the turn of the century on the subject of the Norse
language in England was expounded in a much quoted and often praised chapter
in Otto Jespersen’s Growth and Structure of the English Language (1905, 59–83).
Jespersen begins by describing the Viking invasions of England. Having set thescene, he goes on—drawing to some extent on Björkman 1900–02—to stress theclose kinship and similarity of Norse and English, to discuss at length different
categories of Norse loan-words in English and the competition between Norse andnative forms, and to suggest that a ‘fusion of the two languages’ (p. 82) took place.
The chapter ends with three brief paragraphs, one on the morphology of the loans,one on contact with Norse as a cause of inflectional simplification in English, andone on Norse syntactic influence. The last of these, despite its speculative character and attribution to Viking-Age Norse of modern Danish constructions, hasbeen quoted with approbation by many later scholars. Jespersen has not been
without his critics (cf. in particular Einenkel (1906) and Kirch (1959), who bothstress the invalidity of his examples of syntactic influence), but even in the mostrecent edition of one of the standard histories of the English language (Baugh andCable 1981, 90–106), it is still substantially his story that is being re-told.
A question of importance to students of the Scandinavian languages, which
Jespersen scarcely raises, is: how long did Norse continue to be spoken in England? Later writers tend to show slightly greater interest in the matter, but still
often provide no more than a sentence or two in which the conclusions of Ekwall’s(1930) and more recently Page’s (1971) article on the survival of the Scandinavian
language in England are rehearsed. Baugh and Cable (1981, 95) have the following to say: ‘While in some places the Scandinavians gave up their language early
there were certainly communities in which Danish or Norse remained for sometime the usual language’—a conservative enough conclusion, and perhaps the
only one for which there is warrant, but its blandness could, one feels, have been
tempered by brief discussion of the evidence. For such discussion, Baugh andCable’s readers are directed to the articles by Ekwall and Page. Ekwall begins byarguing in general terms that the survival of Norse in England would have been
determined by the number of speakers as a proportion of the population in any
given district. He does not think political submission to the English would necessarily have led to the rapid demise of Norse. His examination of the evidence
provided by inscriptions, place-names and Norse loan-words in English appears
to confirm these initial views, though it is hard to be sure, for he does not present

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MICHAEL BARNES

an orderly set of conclusions at the end of the article, but relies rather on theplanting of a few stray remarks at different points in his text. In only one case is
he unequivocal: the Pennington inscription from Lancashire ‘proves that so late as
about 1100 a Scandinavian language was spoken in the district even by the upperclasses’ (p. 24).
In his 1971 article, Page dismembers that part of Ekwall’s case which is basedon epigraphical sources, and concludes that the epigraphical evidence for thesurvival of Scandinavian in England is slight. The Pennington inscription, hethinks, could exhibit either corrupt Old Norse or Norse-influenced Old or Middle
English: ‘From it I would hesitate to argue what language the people of the area
spoke in the twelfth century’ (p. 172). Page nevertheless stresses that the absenceof clear epigraphical evidence of Norse language survival cannot be assumed toindicate an absence of Norse speakers. There are simply insufficient data to
determine the matter either way.
Space forbids detailed comment on Ekwall’s place-name and loan-word evidence. Suffice it to say that both would benefit from reinterpretation in the lightof current knowledge. Many of his linguistic arguments in particular no longer
hold, deriving as they do from views about the development of the Scandinavian
languages most would now deem invalid. The upshot is that there seems to be very
little direct evidence that could help us decide how long Norse survived inEngland, and we are therefore thrown back on indirect testimony such as the sizeof the Norse element in later English and on comparison with better-known
language contact situations elsewhere.
The extent of Norse influence on English has been widely assumed to indicate
prolonged contact between speakers of the two languages (or between speakers ofa derivative of Norse and English). About the nature of this contact and its prerequisites, there has been little agreement. To most scholars around the turn of the
century, who tended towards a literal interpretation of the sources, the matter was
straightforward enough: vast numbers of Scandinavians settled in the eastern halfof England and the north-west; they continued to speak Norse for a generation or
two, but eventually gave it up in favour of a mixed Anglo-Norse which graduallybecame more anglicised and was ultimately the source of the influx of Norse
elements into English. None of these various assumptions has remained unchallenged. Later scholars have sought to refine them, have questioned their meaning,or totally rejected them. The following points in particular have been made:(1 ) There is no incontrovertible evidence that the number of settlers was vast, anda good many indications that it was small. (2) The settlers would have consisted
chiefly or only of men and would therefore have taken English-speaking wives
who would have taught English to their children; the continuation of Norse
speech in England must therefore have been dependent on new waves of settlers.

NORSE IN THE BRITISH ISLES

69(3) The term ‘mixed’ or ‘fused’ language is by most who use it left undefined; inthe absence of a definition, we can have no clear idea what is envisaged. (4) In thelight of current socio-linguistic models, the results of Norse-English linguistic
contact are only explicable on the assumption that a pidgin developed that was
subsequently creolised. (5) There is no warrant whatsoever for the belief that apidgin or creole developed in Viking-Age England, and by definition, therefore,no justification for talk of a ‘mixed’ or ‘fused’ language.
Of these five points, the second is the most easily dealt with in that, unlike theothers, it is a matter of pure speculation and raises no theoretical issues. The
following seems a fair assessment of the arguments (Hansen 1984, 81):

This entire discussion is of little avail; we are dealing with sociolinguistic subtleties
which cannot be reconstructed by means of the borrowings. Besides, it was not necessarily decisive whether Danes married other Danes or married into English families.
More important is the relative status of the two languages outside the family . . . and
if Scandinavian was a high-prestige language for a couple of generations, the nationality of the Danish soldiers’ wives is of minor importance.

The mention of high prestige leads naturally to the debate about numbers. Are
the Norse settlers to be numbered in tens of thousands, as originally believed, orin a few hundreds, as argued at one time by Sawyer (see the review of thecontroversy in Fellows Jensen 1975)? The principal argument against a verysmall settlement has been the extent of Norse influence on English, but this has
been countered by pointing to Weinreich’s statement (1953, 92): ‘Even for extensive word transferring, large numbers of bilingual speakers need not be involved
and the relative size of the groups is not necessarily a factor.’ The higher or evenaristocratic social status of the Norse settlers is sufficient explanation for the
borrowing, it is suggested. Argument and counter-argument here form part of ahistorical rather than a linguistic debate, which is perhaps why Weinreich’s words
of caution, taken out of context, have been elevated almost to the status of anaxiom (Kisbye 1982a, 50). It is certainly possible, given the right circumstances,
for a minority to exercise linguistic influence on a majority, but were the circumstances in Viking-Age England right? The linguistic evidence, such as it is, tends
to suggest they were not. Norman French—indubitably a high-prestige minority
language in England—left its mark on areas of life such as government, administration, culture and fashion; Norse influence, on the other hand, seems for themost part to have been restricted to basic, everyday vocabulary. Historically, too,
there are difficulties. Whatever the status of the Danish and Norwegian settlers intheir homeland (and this is uncertain), it remains to be demonstrated that they
enjoyed higher prestige in England than the natives. For those primarily interested
in Scandinavian linguistic history, the numbers question is in any case largely ared herring. Norse speech, for whatever reason, clearly enjoyed sufficient prestige
for a sufficiently long period to exercise widespread influence on English.

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It is with the nature and process of this influence that recent discussion on
Norse-English language contact and the fate of Norse in England has been concerned. Kisbye (1982a; 1982b), arguing without the benefit, or burden as somemight see it, of a general theoretical model, reaches the following conclusions.
(1) There was a degree of mutual comprehensibility between speakers of Norseand English. (2) The settlers and their descendants did not constitute an upperclass. (3) Norse lasted into the eleventh century in England and an Anglo-Norse
mixed language was still in existence in some parts of the country as late as theearly twelfth century. (4) Anglo-Norse arose primarily through the efforts of thesettlers to speak English. (5) Norse influence caused or helped on its way the
inflectional simplification of English. (6) The influence of Norse on English wasof enormous dimensions. The arguments that accompany these conclusions varyin quality and extent. Mutual comprehensibility is supported by a demonstrationof far-reaching structural and lexical similarities between Norse and English.
Against the notion that the settlers enjoyed upper-class status, detailed arguments
are adduced along the lines of the point made above about the nature of Norseloans in English. The Anglo-Norse mixed language is little more than an articleof faith, but is said to make an appearance in some of the inscriptions discussed
in particular in Page 1971 (see above). The origin of Anglo-Norse in settlers’attempts to speak English is offered as the most reasonable explanation of the data,
while the effects of Norse influence in causing or assisting the simplification of
the English inflectional system, as well as the massive extent of the influence, aretaken as more or less axiomatic.
Less sanguine than Kisbye is Hansen (1984). Her conclusions at the end of awide-ranging, though somewhat rambling and occasionally turgid article are thateverything is uncertain (p. 88):
Whatever the result of the contact between English and Scandinavian is called andwhatever models we try to fit the borrowings into, it is impossible to make inferences
about the causes. There are too many unknown quantities. Therefore we mainly findourselves compelled to guessing, though some hypotheses are of course more valid thanothers.

In much the same style she goes on to suggest widespread bilingualism, among
both Norse and English speakers, as a cause of Norse influence on English. Like
Kisbye, she does not find that any particular prestige can have attached to theNorse settlers or their speech, and she therefore concludes that there must havebeen a large number of settlers ‘to ensure the necessary, long survival of the
Scandinavian language in England, which is compatible with the theory of secondary immigrants’ (p. 89). As an alternative explanation to bilingualism shesuggests the extensive transference of vocabulary as a result of language death—a phenomenon that has been noted elsewhere:

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71

At the time when they [the borrowings] first emerged, that is 1200–1400, there was nostandard English owing to the Normal [sic] French influence . . . and this weakened
position may have facilitated the acceptance into the various ME dialects of Scandinavian
words introduced during the last stages of the language shift (p. 88).

The full theoretical implications of the Anglo-Norse mixed language so widely
touted in the literature are given a thorough airing in Hines 1991. The observabledata, he suggests, point to a mixture on at least two levels (p. 415):. . . a level of basilectal, restricted and utilitarian language produced by a shift in Old
English targeted upon Scandinavian or containing the residue of the atrophy of Scandinavian
under English dominance, and a higher level in which English is the dominant, lexifier
language but within which Scandinavian items also carry definitive status.

Hines’s argument, as I understand it, is that the language of the first-generation
Scandinavian settlers had higher prestige than English and therefore became atarget language for English speakers when the need arose for communication
between the two groups. This explains, among other things, why items of basic
Norse vocabulary were carried into English: if English had been the target language, one would have expected its basic vocabulary to have been the firstelement mastered. The form of speech that arose in these circumstances probably
fulfilled the criteria for a ‘model pidgin’ (p. 408). Not long after the initial
settlement, however, perhaps as early as in the second generation, a change set in.
A desire arose among the Scandinavians to distance themselves from their sordid
past and to adapt to the higher and more stable Anglo-Saxon culture. The productof this attitudinal shift was a process of Anglo-Scandinavian acculturation,
thoughtful and deliberate, one of whose manifestations, if not the most visible,
was the establishment of a higher-level form of Anglo-Scandinavian speech,
which served to make the settlers feel more at home in their new surroundings
while still emphasising their separate identity. (Though Hines does not himself
make the point, it might be that the English loans in Scandinavian discussed by
Hofmann (1955, 21–148) occurred as part of such a process.)
Hines’s paper is closely argued, and both evidence and theoretical models are
adduced at relevant points. He does not jump aboard the pidginisation and creolisation
bandwagon which has been rolling with increasing velocity in recent years, but iscontent to give it an encouraging wave as it passes (p. 420):
The value of the term [creole] lies not in summarizing the details of the history of
Scandinavian English language mixing, but in locating analogous data and associatedtheory. From this the usual cross fertilization of case-study and general understanding
can proceed.

Whether one is convinced by the scenario Hines sketches is another matter.
Scarcity of evidence is a problem, and there is at least one aspect of the question
to which he gives little consideration: the degree of mutual comprehensibility
between Norse and English. The talk in the first of the above quotations from his

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paper of ‘the residue of the atrophy of Scandinavian under English dominance’ isa reference to the following notion (cf. Hines 1991, 406): because Norse andEnglish were fundamentally so similar, resistance to the loss of the former wasprobably weaker than might otherwise have been expected; as Norse was gradually worn down, the bulk of what remained will have been basic vocabulary
which, because of the kinship of the two languages, was easily preserved in a final
amalgam of the dominant and subordinate forms of speech. Hines does not
actually recommend this idea, but it is not dismissed either and seems to feature
as an alternative to his pidginisation hypothesis (cf. the above quotation fromp. 415 of his paper). It is legitimate to wonder, I think (in spite of the fact thatdefinitions of pidginisation do not appear to require a specified level of dissimilarity for the process to take place), whether the conditions for the developmentof a basic system of communication would have existed where the languages incontact were as similar as it is suggested Norse and English were. Of course, Hines
may have reasoned as follows: either they were not similar—in which case apidgin must have been the answer—or they were similar—which will have obviated the need for a pidgin and facilitated the retention of basic Norse vocabulary
in English as Norse died out as an autonomous language. However, these two
hypotheses are never discussed as alternatives, so it is hard for the reader to judge
their precise status in the overall analysis. Difficult though it is, the question of thedegree of mutual comprehensibility between Norse and English does, I think,require serious discussion, not least because it has loomed so large in the debate
about Norse-English language contact in the Danelaw and elsewhere in England.
In the same year as Hines gave his paper, Thomason and Kaufman published
Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics (1988), which contains
as one of a number of case studies a section entitled ‘English and other coastal
Germanic languages, or why English is not a mixed language’ (pp. 263–342). Thisdeals in part with the influence of French on Middle English, but is in the maina detailed study of the process and effects of language contact between English
and Norse. As the title of the section suggests, the two authors do not believe that
English and Norse fused; they are in particular vehemently opposed to theories ofcreolisation, partly because such theories do not in their view accord with theobservable facts and partly because of an innate scepticism about claims to havefound the Holy Grail.
In spite of the relatively large number of grammatical elements of Norse origin in
Norsified ME, their effect on English structure was almost trivial. Thirty-eight of thefifty-seven traits [that the authors deem to be indicative of Norse influence], or 67
percent, are mere phonological variants of what English had had in the first place. It is
as though Norsification largely reflects a fad whereby an English speaker would paradehis knowledge of Norse while speaking English (p. 298).

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73

We . . . acknowledge . . . that overarching models that use a small number of axioms
and try to explain practically everything annoy us. We dislike reductionism (ad absurdum).
We are splitters, not lumpers. The purpose of this book is to introduce some subtlety
into the thoughts and words of historical linguists (p. 328).

Thomason and Kaufman’s contribution is to the debate about the developmentof English. Detailed argumentation is brought to bear not just to show that Middle
English is not a mixed language, but also to demonstrate the geographical routeby which the Norse element, which the authors believe originally existed in its
most widespread form in Midland English, ultimately spread to all dialects. This
concentration on the fate of English allows Thomason and Kaufman rather a free
hand in their treatment of Norse. To begin with, it permits them to ignore most of
the recent and some of the earlier debate not only about the effects of contact
between Norse and English, but also about the size of the Scandinavian settlementin England. Thus the names of Ekwall, Fellows-Jensen, Hansen, Kisbye andPage—to mention but a few—are missing from their bibliography, and Sawyer isoffered as the principal historical authority (‘Sawyer’s [1971 edition of The Ageof the Vikings] is the most up-to-date analysis of the archeological and historical
data on the Viking raids on and settlement of parts of Britain, and will be taken
as essentially the latest word for the purposes of this study’ (p. 360)). The authors’
reluctance to delve too deep into the Scandinavian element of the equation has
consequences for their presentation. Most noticeable is the vagueness they display
about what might have happened when speakers of Norse and English came into
regular contact with each other—a vagueness which stands in stark contrast, forexample, to Hines’s carefully sketched scenario. What we are offered is a numberof contradictory or improbable statements which stand more or less bereft of
supporting documentation. On p. 267 it is suggested that Norse ‘probably lasted
no more than two generations after 955’, while on p. 282 the authors say they are‘convinced that Norse was largely or entirely absorbed by English in the Danelaw
by A.D. 1100’; a map (p. 337) depicting ‘the demise of Norse’ in different areasof England gives dates ranging from 920 to 1160. ‘An intense contact situation’between Norse and English led, we are told, to ‘category (3) [heavy] borrowing
or considerable influence through shift, or (more likely) both’, although, to takeaccount of Sawyer’s view that the number of settlers was small, it is also suggested that the ‘pre-existing close typological fit’ between the two languages
might have permitted heavy borrowing with less intensive contact (p. 281).
Whatever the truth of any (or none) of this, ‘Norsified English arose at a time
when Norse was still spoken but going out of use in its area’ (p. 284), for ‘in many
ways Norse influence on English was a kind of prestige borrowing that took little
effort to implement’ (p. 303).
I would not want these quotations, which I think amply illustrate the deficiencies of Thomason and Kaufman’s treatment of Norse, to be taken as typical of the

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work as a whole. On the wider theoretical questions, and on the development fromOld to Middle English the authors exhibit a higher level of competence and float
a number of interesting ideas. The contention in particular, well supported byevidence, that the change from synthetic to analytic structure in English began
before Norse influence became relevant, coincides neatly with the recent demonstration by Ringgaard (1986) that simplification of the Common Scandinavian
inflectional system was well under way in parts of Denmark before the onset ofMiddle Low German influence in that country.
A great deal more could be said on the subject of Norse in England, but it
is time now to turn to the Q-Celtic-speaking areas in the west of the British Isles.

Norse in Ireland, Man and the Hebrides
As far as is known, Norse settlers in Ireland were for the most part concentrated
in a small number of towns, notably Dublin, while in Man and the northern
Hebrides they appear for a time to have become the dominant element in the
population, if not to have driven out the earlier inhabitants altogether. Only in partcommensurate with this picture, we find that Norse influence on Irish is small andthat there are very few place-names in Ireland of Norse origin, that Manx vocabulary has no more than a scattering of Norse loans although Norse place-names in
the island are plentiful, and that the northern Hebrides, especially Lewis, show
considerable Norse influence, even, if we are to believe certain scholars, on thelevel of phonology.
To cover with anything like the care I accorded to the situation in England evenpart of the debate that has surrounded the rise and fall of Norse in the Q-Celticspeaking areas of the British Isles would lead too far in the present context. I must
therefore pass by such theories as the one (which enjoyed some popularity in theearly years of this century) that Norse saga-writing began in Ireland—a theory
which presupposes not only a highly developed literary culture, but also a sufficiently stable linguistic situation and a language prestigious enough to support
such a culture. Norse was written in Ireland—we now have some thirteen runicinscriptions from that country (the majority from Dublin), virtually all of whichappear to be in a kind of Norse, but it is a far cry from these laconic, sometimes
incomprehensible messages to the lengthy sagas envisaged by, for example,
Bugge (1908). What I would like principally to do in the following is to stress thesimilarity and the differences I perceive between the debates about Norse in the
Q-Celtic areas and Norse in England, and to offer a few comments of my own.
Once again, it cannot fail to strike those whose primary interest lies in the
Scandinavian field how little interest the majority of scholars discussing Norse–
Celtic language contact in Ireland, Man and the Hebrides have shown in the fateof Norse. Just as was the case with England, attention has focused on the useful-NORSE IN THE BRITISH ISLES

75

ness of the linguistic evidence as historical source material and on the extent of
Norse influence on the indigenous language. One difference can, however, beobserved: there has been less talk of pidgins and creoles in the Celtic context,
although in fact, because of the wide linguistic gap between Q-Celtic and Norse,
one would imagine that the islands of the west provided more fertile ground thanEngland for the development of basic contact languages. Indeed, such a language
is just what Marstrander (1915) seems to be describing when he says of thenotorious Gall–Ghoídhil (p. 8):
At de i stor utstrækning har vært bilingve ligger i navnet og i sakens natur. At
ordforraad, syntaks og fraseologi er blandet sammen, kan man ta for givet. (‘That they
were to a large extent bilingual is clear from the name [Gall–Ghoídhil] and really goes
without saying. That vocabulary, syntax and phraseology were mixed [Norse and Irish],can be assumed as a matter of course.’)But then, the sophisticated terminology of sociolinguistics was not available
in 1915.
It is with Marstrander’s book (which, exceptionally, does evince some interestin Norse) that serious investigation into the linguistic effects of the Scandinavian
presence in Ireland can be said to begin. Although in the years since it appeared
the work has been shown to have many inadequacies, there has been no attempt
at a full-scale revaluation of the material that forms its subject-matter. Indeed,later studies often do little more than chew over various of the details, approvingsome of Marstrander’s findings and condemning others (cf. e.g. Greene 1976).
This means that the dominant themes in discussion of the contact between Norseand Irish have been phonology and loan-words, although place-names have also
featured (e.g. Oftedal 1976). Jackson (1962) shows awareness of the need to
distinguish between loan-words and structure in the discussion of Norse influenceon the Celtic languages, but in the case of Irish, at least, he finds evidence ofstructural influence to be lacking. Regarding the survival of Norse speech in
Ireland, most writers consider that it lasted in Dublin and certain other towns until
shortly after the Norman invasions began in the 1160s, its final demise perhaps
coming early in the thirteenth century. The reasons for this judgement are
historical rather than linguistic—the self-contained nature of many of the Viking
centres—but it has also been shown that most of the small number of Norse placenames to be found in Ireland passed directly from Norse into English.
Perhaps the reason relatively little has been written about Norse–Irish linguistic
contact lies in the paucity of the sources—although lack of evidence is seldom abarrier to the voicing of scholarly opinion. I cannot help wondering, however,whether the application of new methods and modes of thought to such little
evidence as there is might not help us to a better understanding of the linguistic
consequences of the Norse invasions of Ireland.

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In comparison with Ireland, the Isle of Man offers a rich harvest to the seeker
after Norse: a wealth of place-names and between thirty and forty runic inscriptions, though Norse loan-words in Manx are few. Here as elsewhere, the debate
has centred on the nature and extent of the Scandinavian settlement, and the
linguistic evidence has been used in support of differing interpretations of Manxhistory in the Viking and early Middle Ages. Recently it has been claimed that theplace-name evidence in particular suggests that Man was largely, if not wholly,
Norse speaking in the period 900–1300, or, in the most conservative terms inwhich the argument has been couched: ‘If, during these centuries, Man is to beconsidered a predominantly Gaelic-speaking kingdom under Norse rule, the evidence for this must be sought elsewhere than in the place-names’ (Gelling 1970–
71, 138; cf. also Gelling 1978). Against this it has been argued that the totality ofthe evidence, archaeological, historical, literary and linguistic, points to the widespread survival of Gaelic, certainly among the peasant population, and probably
at a higher social level too, during a period of dominance by a small Norse
aristocracy (Megaw 1978). To the extent that a consensus has now been reached,
it is that the Norse settlement was considerable and involved all levels of societyrather than just a small ruling class, but that Gaelic did continue to be spoken sideby-side with Norse (Fellows Jensen 1978; 1983; Gelling 1991). I concur in thisconclusion, and therefore reckon with a long period of Norse–Gaelic contact
on Man.
Not all who have discussed the linguistic evidence have had a historical agenda.
It is true that Marstrander’s great monograph on the Norse settlement of Man(1932b), although written by a philologist and containing much linguistic material, was (as he himself admits, p. 340) primarily historical in its intention, but inparallel with the wider debate which this work in part initiated there has, to takejust one example, been intermittent discussion of the likelihood of Celtic influenceon the language of the Manx runic inscriptions (Olsen 1909; Seip 1930; Page
1983)—a discussion characterised in equal measure by its clear linguistic concerns and its inconclusiveness. In part arising from the perceived intermixture of
Norse and Gaelic in the Manx inscriptions is the assumption that behind it mustlie an intermixture of the two populations (Marstrander 1932b, 51; Megaw 1978,
276–78), and the concomitant assumption of widespread bilingualism (Megaw
1978, 288). Oddly enough, though, in the light of the apparent breakdown of theNorse inflectional system in at least one of the inscriptions, no one seems to haveproposed pidginisation and creolisation as alternatives to bilingualism. Perhaps, asin the case of Irish, this is because later Manx Gaelic shows no effects of such adevelopment.
The date at which Norse finally became extinct on Man has been the subject ofdiffering estimates. Marstrander (1932b, 49) thought some time in the fifteenthNORSE IN THE BRITISH ISLES

77

century likely, and in this he was followed by Gelling (1970–71, 174), but thedemonstration that one of the principal sources on which they based their conclusions is about a hundred years older than was originally thought has led to arevision of this estimate: Gelling (1978, 257) now offers a conservative ‘sometime after 1300’, Megaw (1978, 279) ‘within a generation or two of the end of thenative dynasty—that is, soon after 1300’.
Investigation of Norse in the Hebrides echoes the Manx debate to the extent thatmuch interest has focused on the question of the continuity of Gaelic speech in theareas of densest Norse settlement. Three of my initial quotations deal with thisissue, starting with Henderson’s somewhat simplistic assumption that the changing of the names of ‘the chief features of the country’ implies ‘a clearing out ofthe previous possessors’, continuing with Fellows-Jensen’s contention that virtually none of the Gaelic place-names in the Isles can be shown to be pre-Viking andending up with Cox’s counter-claim that a substantial body of place-names in thewest of Lewis do appear to pre-date the Norse settlement. Cox’s conclusion,
which is clearly significant, is based on phonological and morphological featuresin a group of nearly 3,000 names he collected over an area of about 150 square
kilometres. Cox further considers that his evidence supports the notion of a
gradually developing bilingualism, though perhaps only on a limited scale (1991,
484–90), and he believes that collection and study of all the relevant material will
ultimately reveal ‘evidence for what we might call Hebridean Norse, the variety
of Old Norse spoken in the Hebrides’ (p. 489).
Borgstrøm, in his purely linguistic study (1974) of Norse–Gaelic contact in theHebrides (in which he picked up the thread from Marstrander 1932a) had someyears earlier argued the odd and in its presuppositions opposite case (from Cox)
that although the relative paucity of Norse loan-words in Scottish Gaelic indicateda lack of Gaelic–Norse bilingualism, Norse had nevertheless exercised considerable phonological influence on Gaelic, imparting preaspiration to a variety of
dialects and a south-west Norwegian pitch pattern to that of Lewis. He explains
this unexpected development in terms of a sudden language shift (p. 102):
When the mutual isolation of the two linguistic groups ended, new generations of Norse
children learnt Gaelic in a correct native form, only occasionally carrying over some
sub-phonemic features or other habits of speech from their first language.

Irrespective of the correctness or otherwise of Borgstrøm’s belief in suchphonological influence, he does seem, albeit incidentally, to have put his finger ona paradox: a massive Norse settlement and a Norse speech community lasting forseveral centuries, but only marginal or uncertain influence on spoken or written
Gaelic to show for it. His explanation is lack of significant linguistic contact. Yetin the case of Man, where a similar historical development is assumed and its
impact on the indigenous language appears no greater, it has been argued by some

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that bilingualism was widespread. Here, a solution to the paradox might be thealleged re-settlement of the island in the late Middle Ages by Gaelic speakers from
Galloway and elsewhere (cf. Gelling 1991, 146–47; it should be remembered,though, that Galloway was reputedly the home of the linguistically mixed Gall–
Ghoídhil), but evidence for such re-settlement is lacking. (A similar influx ofGaelic speakers into Lewis—equally unsusceptible of proof—appears an unavoidable assumption, one might add, for those who believe that this part of theHebrides became entirely Norse speaking during the Viking Age.) It is clear that
we are dealing here with matters of the utmost uncertainty. Even the size of theNorse loan-word element in Lewis Gaelic and Gaelic as a whole seems as yet
poorly documented (cf. Christiansen 1938; Oftedal 1962b; Cox 1991, 490, 492–93).
With evidence so scarce, it is hardly surprising that views about the length oftime for which Norse persisted as a spoken language in the Hebrides should havethe appearance of guesswork (see, however, Cox 1991, 479). ‘Probably in the 13thor 14th century’ is Borgstrøm’s seemingly intuitive estimate of the period inwhich Norse was finally superseded by Gaelic (1974, 91), while survival into theearly fifteenth century is mooted as a possibility by Oftedal (1962a, 48), who inan article published in the same year nevertheless offers the more conservative
suggestion that Norse influence on Gaelic language and culture ‘may have continued long after 1266’ (Oftedal 1962b, 118).

Norse in Caithness, Orkney and Shetland
As we have seen, it is the arrival of Norse in England, Ireland, Man and theHebrides—and the extent of the subsequent contact between speakers of Norseand the indigenous languages—that has fired the scholarly imagination. With
Caithness, Orkney and Shetland it is different. Here interest has centred on thedemise of Scandinavian speech. This is understandable in the light of the historicaland linguistic circumstances. However long the indigenous language or languagesof Caithness and the Northern Isles survived the Viking settlement, Norse seems
rapidly to have become dominant, and sooner or later to have become the native
idiom of the whole area, extinguishing more or less without trace such tongues as
may have been spoken there earlier. Nothing is therefore to be learnt about
language contact, loan-words, pidgins, creoles and the like from Viking-Age or
early medieval Caithness, Orkney or Shetland. Such interest as has been evincedin the linguistic situation in northernmost Britain during this period has instead
revolved around the type of Scandinavian speech the settlers brought with themand the extent to which features characteristic of developing Shetlandic, Orcadianand Caithness Norse can be observed in the relatively plentiful written sourcesfrom the region. Results in both cases have been meagre. There is a consensus thatsome variety of western Norwegian must have been the dominant strain, but

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disagreement over whether the input was primarily from the north-west or thesouth-west of Norway (Barnes 1984, 34–35). Few, if any, specifically Caithness
or island features can be found in the runic inscriptions or the Latin-alphabet
documents from the region: the most significant collection of inscriptions—thosefrom Maeshowe in Orkney—seem largely, if not entirely, to have been carved byvisitors to the islands (Barnes 1991a), while Scandinavian writing in the Latinalphabet mirrors faithfully the development of the written language in Norway.
Given such a comprehensive lack of exciting data, it is hardly surprising thatscholars concerned with the Norse of Caithness, Orkney and Shetland should haveturned their attention to the period after c.1350, when the language entered aperiod of competition with Scots. It has been customary to refer to the Norse ofthis period as Norn (from norrœnn ‘Norwegian, Norse’, or norrœna ‘Norwegian,
Norse language’), a term first recorded in 1485 or thereabouts; that is a custom I
shall observe here.
Knowledge of Norn comes from loan-words in Scots or English, of which wellover 10,000 have been recorded, from a few texts written down or published in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while Norn was probably still a living
language, and from odd verses, sayings and snatches of conversation collected in
the late nineteenth century some time after the last native speaker had gone to thegrave. (Discussion of these sources together with references can be found in
Barnes 1991b. In the following I shall concentrate entirely on Orkney and Shetland Norn; for the Caithness variety, which died out much earlier, possibly in the
fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, I refer the reader to Thorsen 1954.)
The study of Orkney and Shetland Norn until recently had concentrated oncollection and documentation (best exemplified by Hægstad 1900, Jakobsen 1928–32, and Marwick 1929). To the extent that opinions were expressed about themanner in which Norn succumbed to Scots, they reflected a general belief in a
gradual shift between about 1600 and 1850, accomplished at least in part by thesteady infusion of Norn with Scots vocabulary and grammar—a process which, it
seems to have been thought, led ultimately to an amalgamation of the two languages. The unusually large Norn substratum to be found in Orkney and Shetland
Scots was seen as the remains of the Norn share in this mixed language. In itspurest form the Scots–Norn fusion hypothesis is probably to be found in Flom
1928–29.
It was not until 1984 that a challenge was made to the prevailing view of postReformation linguistic development in Orkney and Shetland. In an article with the
intriguing title ‘How “worn out” or “corrupted” was Shetland Norn in its final
stage?’—‘worn out’ and ‘corrupted’ being descriptions applied to Orkney and
Shetland Norn by earlier, mainly eighteenth-century writers—Laurits Rendboe
made the plausible claim that ‘worn out’ means not ‘decayed’, but ‘dropped out

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of fashion’, and he went on to argue that as long as Norn continued to be used bynative speakers it survived in pure form, unadulterated by Scots pronunciation,
grammar or lexicon. According to Rendboe, there can be no question of a gradualintermixture of the two languages in Shetland. All the evidence points to theconclusion (reproduced in one of my initial quotations) that ‘Norn stood firm to
the end’.
Against this, it seems to me, rather romantic view of the demise of Norn, I haveargued (1989; 1991b): (a) that such data as we have in no way warrant Rendboe’s
conclusion; and (b) that the shift from Norn to Scots in both Orkney and Shetland
should be viewed in the light of political and social developments in the islandsin the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries and in the context of the increasing bodyof knowledge about language death. In particular I commended to Rendboe’s
attention Nancy Dorian’s splendid and seminal study of the death of East Sutherland Gaelic (1981). This work describes with admirable clarity and in great detailthe loss of functions and the structural erosion that are affecting another languageof northern Britain as it reaches the end of its struggle against English encroachment. The difficulty, of course, is to know whether the changes that Dorianobserved in the dying Gaelic dialect of eastern Sutherland are general tendencies
or specific to that particular situation. Many of the changes, it is true, seem also
to characterise other languages in decline (cf. Dressler and Wodak-Leodolter
1977; Rindler-Schjerve 1989), but it would be unwise to attempt a reconstructionof the death of Norn in Orkney and Shetland on the basis of linguistic parallels
alone. That is where study of the political and social developments in the relevant
period comes in. Such study may, as I have suggested, be expected to uncoveruseful supporting evidence. It should go hand in hand with more thorough analysisof the linguistic sources—not only of the Norn fragments that have survived, butalso of certain writings in Scots. Brian Smith has recently pointed out to me that
there were several attempts as early as around 1800 to reproduce Shetland dialect(i.e. the form of Scots then used in the islands) and that the differences between
these and the dialect texts of today are so small as to make plausible the contention
that a settled linguistic situation pertained before the beginning of the nineteenth
century. This could indicate, he thinks, that the language shift in Shetland took
place somewhat earlier than the late seventeenth–early eighteenth-century date
which has normally been proposed.
Whatever view we take of the way or ways in which Scots supplanted Norn in
the Northern Isles and the dates at which the shift took place, we can all agree thatmuch work remains to be done. This unoriginal if not uninspiring conclusion
clearly applies with equal force to the other instances of Scandinavian language
death in the British Isles on which I have touched, but in the case of Orkney and
Shetland the relative nearness of the events perhaps holds out greater hope thatsuch work will produce tangible results.

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Concluding remarks
In this paper, I have approached the subject ‘Norse in the British Isles’ from alinguistic and from a Scandinavian point of view. My principal concerns havebeen the coming of Scandinavian speech to Britain and Ireland, its interaction withthe different indigenous languages, the length of time for which it survived and themanner of its demise. About most of these matters our knowledge is poor, as I
have shown, and in many areas lack of evidence seems likely to ensure that itremains so. We can employ new theories and models as they become available,
but these will hardly be sufficient to overcome the chronic shortage of data.
A vacuum such as this is clearly what inspires the enunciation of diametrically
opposed views like those I quoted at the outset. As so often in life, certainty comesin inverse proportion to knowledge.
Since, in spite of my gloomy prognostications, scholars are likely to continue
to work in the field, I will end by entering a plea (a) for clear definitions and arigorous adherence to definitions once given, and (b) for the judicious use oftheories and models coupled with the cultivation of a healthy scepticism towards
the claims that are made concerning their explanatory powers.
The need for clear definitions is adequately illustrated by the many assertions
about the date at which Norse died out in different parts of the British Isles. Suchassertions can only be properly understood if we know precisely what we mean
when we say that a language has died. It is widely held, for example, that for Manx
Gaelic the end came with the passing away of Ned Maddrell on 27 December 1974
(e.g. Thomson 1984, 257; Broderick 1991, 63–64), since he was the last native
speaker. But is the death of the last native speaker what is meant by those who
speak of the demise of Norse in Man shortly after 1300 or in the fifteenth century?
The ‘mixed language’ is another problem area. Definitions of ‘creole’ vary widely(Hines 1991, 420), but creoles, under different definitions, are at least entities
which have been shown to exist. Most who talk of mixed languages or the like do
not appear to have any clear conception of the creature they are describing,largely, I suppose, because true language fusion is a very sparsely documented
process indeed. The development in Orkney and Shetland apparently envisaged bysome, according to which Norn gradually adopted more and more Scots features
until it became more Scots than Norn, is, as far as I know, without parallel.
The problem with theories and models in the present context is one that bedevils
historical linguistics in general: the uncertainty involved in basing conclusions
about what happened in a given linguistic situation on the results of analogous
situations elsewhere. Lack of evidence may force one to suggest that what has
been documented for other languages at other times has been replicated in one’s
own case study, but in adopting such a solution one must never forget that
language is a human activity—and human activity is, in the final analysis,
unpredictable.

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BIBLIOGRAPHYMICHAEL BARNES

Barnes, Michael. 1984. ‘Norn’, Scripta Islandica 35, 23–42.
Barnes, Michael P. 1989. ‘The death of Norn’. In: (Heinrich Beck ed.) Germanische Restund Trümmersprachen, 21–43.
Barnes, Michael P. 1991a. ‘Norwegian, Norn, Icelandic or West Norse? The language ofthe Maeshowe inscriptions’. In: (John Ole Askedal, Harald Bjorvand and Eyvind Fjeld
Halvorsen eds.) Festskrift til Ottar Grønvik, 70–87.
Barnes, Michael P. 1991b. ‘Reflections on the structure and the demise of Orkney and
Shetland Norn’. In: (P. Sture Ureland and George Broderick eds.) Language Contact in
the British Isles, 429–60.
Baugh, Albert C. and Cable, Thomas. 1981. A History of the English Language (3rd ed.).
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Borgstrøm, Carl Hj. 1974. ‘On the influence of Norse on Scottish Gaelic’, Lochlann 6(Norsk tidsskrift for sprogvidenskap, suppl. vol. 11), 91–103.
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CHRISTINE FELLTNORSE STUDIES: THEN, NOW AND HEREAFTERHIS title is not of my choosing. I do recall agreeing to give a lecture on thisor some such subject. That it appears under this head I suppose to be the fault
or virtue of Professor Peter Foote, and I started doing what Professor Foote
instructed when I was his postgraduate student virtually a third of a century ago.
This clearly demonstrates, as we today celebrate the centenary of the Viking
Society for Northern Research, what powerful influences have been at work in thelast third of that century in the shaping of Norse Studies Now and Hereafter. I will
however start with the Then, that dim, forgotten past before the Enlightenment ofProfessor Foote’s era.
Historians are only just beginning to recognise the dangers inherent in periodisation and nowhere is periodisation more curious than in our fossilised andarbitrary division of European chronology into the three ages: Classical Antiquity,
Medieval and Modern. We who work in the humanities have lived with thisdivision for so long we can forget how odd it seems to the non-specialist. A few
years ago, arguing on Nottingham University Senate for the importance of retaining a Chair of Modern Literature, it was some time before I realised that to myscientist colleagues I appeared to be arguing for a Chair of Late Twentieth Century
Literature.
Following Denys Hay’s exposition on ‘Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages’, we
attribute to Biondo (1392–1463) the dubious distinction of being the first scholar
to have a concept of the Middle Ages, though his term was media tempestatis.
Other Italian writers stumbling uncertainly among similar phrases lit on mediumævum in 1604. The NED surprisingly has no citations for the ‘Middle Age’ or‘Ages’ before the mid-eighteenth century, none for ‘medieval’ before the nineteenth, where a remarkably large number are from Ruskin’s Lamps of architecture. Presumably the Latin rather than the Anglicised form was preferred. It must
be one of the greatest con-tricks of all time. One thoughtful historian decided thatcirca 1000 years had elapsed since the fall of Rome at the hands of the Goths (AD476) and so now was a new dawn. Evidently throughout Europe people andnations rushed to change their thinking and their plumbing overnight in order toturn from ‘Medieval’ into ‘Renaissance’ man.
At any rate the period covered by the term Old Norse studies in theory stops
when these so-called Middle Ages also come to an end, though in practice sincesagas continued to be copied by hand, editors of sagas continue to use postmedieval material in preparing their editions. The period of Norse Studies may bysome scholars be defined more narrowly yet according to which scholar is presenting the evidence and what the evidence is. Since publishers (not to mention

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sponsors of exhibitions) currently consider ‘Viking’, for example, more of a buzz
word than ‘Norse’, the Viking Age gets into many a book or onto the dust-jacket
where its scholarly credentials are distinctly unsound.
But Norse Studies may also be defined by region, or by discipline. The last ofthese may now mean the study of historical event, language in text or surviving
as place-name, literature in the widest sense, artefact and excavation. Geographically we may follow wherever the Vikings led, or, if we engage in source
criticism, whatever led to them. Or we may confine ourselves to country, province, town or trade route. My survey of the way in which these studies havedeveloped will inevitably be selective in its use of data and arbitrary in its
generalisations.
Part of the mythology brought about by periodisation, especially in the division
between ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’, is the assumption that it is only with the newlearning of the sixteenth century that we began serious studies of the early period.
The pace and range of scholarship may have changed but the assumption is open
to challenge. In this country we can cite King Alfred as the first Norse scholar of
distinction. Janet Bately does not attribute to Alfred the writing of the Old English
Orosius, but the words Ohthere sæde his hlaforde Ælfrede cyninge suggest that it
was Alfred’s own probing questions that prompted detailed information from
Ohthere on Norwegian geography, demography, economy, philology and trade.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a record made for posterity and on it has been based
the writing of history about Viking raids and invasions in England ever since. Not
all subsequent historians have known it as a primary source. But the early Norman
chroniclers used it at first hand and then their work was used in turn by later
chroniclers. The ‘tremulous Worcester hand’ that glosses so many Old English
manuscripts is that of a thirteenth-century historian and philologist teachinghimself a language in order to read primary vernacular sources.
However, a number of events in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
contributed to an intensification of historical research, some of them European,some peculiarly English. By peculiarly English I mean, of course, Henry VIII, by
European the change from script to print, perhaps more significant long-term forthe development and diffusion of scholarship than any so-called Renaissance andReformation. (Current political double-talk about the ‘reform’ of the universities,
induces thoughtfulness about the balance of meaning and propaganda in suchterminology.) But in England it was that act of vandalism, the dissolution of themonasteries, that gave impetus to the private collector, the private library, theindependent, secular scholar. It is not always easy to divorce Anglo-Saxon and
Norse studies in any discussion that involves either links between Germanic
cultures or the Viking presence in Anglo-Saxon England, but it might be fair tosay that among Tudor scholars the concentration of Matthew Parker and his circle
was exclusively on the Anglo-Saxon material. In the early seventeenth century itNORSE STUDIES: THEN, NOW AND HEREAFTER87

was Sir Henry Spelman and the Dutch scholar Richard Verstegan who recognised
and re-introduced the Norse dimension. It is not, to Spelman, of interest in its own
right, merely a part of the early history of England.
When he refers to Danes in his general prose they feature as the villains against
whom Alfred fought. But Spelman recognises their impact on both English law
and English language. He is in correspondence with the major Scandinavian
scholars of his day and discusses etymologies in his letters to Ole Worm. In his
Glossarium Archaiologicum, first published 1627, he does not recognise ‘law’ asa Norse word, but certainly recognises lahslit as vox Danica, husting as forum
Danis, and in discussing dreng can inform us that the Danish still have a class ofpeople whom they call dreng in the singular, drenge in the plural.
Verstegan’s interest also is very much with language and culture, not merelywith the sequence of historical events. In A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence In
Antiquitie, concerning the most noble and renowned English Nation published in
1605 he has sections on ‘The Antiquitie and Proprietie of the Ancient English
Toung’, ‘The Etymologies of our Saxon proper names’, ‘Of the Surnames of ourAncient Families’. He is however concerned on the one hand to minimise theinfluence of both Danish and Norman, and on the other hand, to stress theirrelationship, thus on both counts emphasising Englishness. He has read Olaus
Magnus and can look at linguistic cognates with occasional accuracy. Writing of
the word konungr /cyning he says ‘Wee Englishmen have abridged it into one
sillable and so made it king and the Danes and Swedians have made it kong. On
the other hand I fear our place-name experts would not be happy with his comments on what we know as the Norse settlement indicator by.
In this termination many of our ancient surnames do end, as first for example Willoughby,
the surname of honorable and woorshipfull families, also Kirkby, Holtby and manyothers: the particle by serving to express neer unto what thing of note the resydence ofsuch a familie was, when this their surname first began; as beeing neer unto some noted
willow tree, or by a Churche, or by a wood, for holt in our language is otherwise wood.

Knowledge of the Scandinavian part in the settlement of the British Isles wasnever lost, and it seems likely that knowledge of the cultural, linguistic andnational links between the various Germanic peoples was not lost either. But it is
not until Sheringham’s De Anglorum Gentis Origine, published 1670, that Britain
re-acquires knowledge of Norse and Icelandic literature. I say re-acquires withsome diffidence for it is hard to separate Old Norse and Old English literary
traditions in post-Conquest, multi-racial, multi-lingual Britain. Certainly there isclear indication in the work of William of Malmesbury that he knew some names
and stories that otherwise feature only in Icelandic saga. The Norse runic futharkis used not only in epigraphy but appears in post-Conquest manuscripts, mostnotably Oxford St John’s 17, but not only there. The Outer Isles continue to speak
Norn, and to ballads in Norn I shall return. And I may as well here mention my

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conviction that the Gawain poet’s extraordinary obsession with and control ofform owes a good deal more to the art of the skald than any other poetic tradition.
But, as Verstegan and Spelman would say, all these traditions had merged into
‘Englishness’—apart from the survival of independent cultures in the islands.
Sheringham starts again, looking at Scandinavian literature and related antiquities
as a separate study.
He is extremely well-read in contemporary Scandinavian scholarship, particularly influenced by the work of Ole Worm. There being in that period no adequate
English translations for words such as ‘runic’ and ‘skald’, and indeed no Latin
equivalent either, he adopts Scandinavianised Latin for such terms as he cannot
translate. He is interested in runes, interested in Norse mythology, interested in
Eddic poetry and presents whole chunks of Hávamál both in Old Norse andtranslated into Latin. For those in the seventeenth century who did not have directaccess to Scandinavian authors, Sheringham is the first English writer to alert hisreaders to this range of material, and to quote Old Norse texts at length. Following
close on Sheringham is Aylett Sammes whose Britannia Antiqua Illustrata or the
Antiquities of Ancient Britain derived from the Phoenicians was published in 1676.
There is a short enough space between the two publications of Sheringham andSammes, but since Sheringham writes in Latin and Sammes writes in English theircontributions are different. To Sheringham belongs the credit of being the firstwriter to publish Old Norse literature in England, to Sammes the double creditsof Anglicising certain Norse words (some of which we retain) and of translating
Old Norse literature not into Latin but into English, and colloquial English at that,not stilted translationese. Sammes’s introduction of Norse words into English infact ante-dates the NED on a number of items. The NED offers Sir Walter Scott’s
use in his novel The Pirate for the first appearance of berserk and continues with
Emerson’s stunning contribution ‘Out of terrible Druids and Berserkers come atlast Alfred and Shakespeare’. By the time the NED’s first Supplement was
published English had developed the adverb ‘berserkly’, illustrated by two examples, (1) The Economist in 1963 claiming a policy as ‘berserkly dangerous’; (2)a novel of 1967, ‘The headlamps illuminated a tree which seemed to be leaping
berserkly towards her’. This is a perfect example of a word introduced as atechnical term because it was deemed untranslatable which has gone on to havea semantic life of its own. But it was Sammes in 1676 who introduced the wordfrom Old Norse (or rather from his reading of contemporary Scandinavian scholarship) and he introduced it in its precise Norse sense. Some of the words he tries
to naturalise fade again out of the language, for example the Old Norse term forgoddesses, dísir, which had no popular future ahead of it. The history of scald andscaldic is more interesting.
Today only scholars use the terms skald /skaldic, and whether they choose thespelling c or k will depend on the accident of their training and the consciousness

NORSE STUDIES: THEN, NOW AND HEREAFTER89

of their preferences. The c spelling of course goes back to Sheringham and his
sources because when one Latinises a barbarian word with a k in it one must
replace the k by a civilised roman c. Sheringham and Sammes both adopt the word
though remain in a good deal of doubt about its grammatical forms. The NED’s
first citation is a century later, from Percy’s Five Pieces of Runic Poetry. I havedealt in other places with the reinvention and rubbish in the use of the terms ‘rune’
and ‘runic’ and will leave that one out of my discussions here.
The uncertainty about grammar allows Sammes three forms of the plural,
scaldri, scaldi and scalders and we find briefly that two forms of the singularsurface in English, scald and scalder. The NED entry says austerely under skald :Usually applied to Norwegian and Icelandic poets of the Viking period, but often
without any clear idea of their function and the character of their work.

Sammes himself is fairly clear about the nature of skalds, or skaldic poetry and of
kennings, as indeed was Sheringham, though I find Sammes of a more engaging
and questioning turn of mind. Thus Sammes:

The Scaldi were commonly of the chief Blood of their Country, oftentimes of the Kings
Councel and his attendance in War, that with their own eyes they might be witness ofgreat Actions, and not taking them upon trust, might be better able with truth to deliver
them to Posterity. Those things which in the Verses of the Ancients we find wrapt up
in Fables, shew only the genius of the Authors, who accounted it a piece of Art to hideplain truths under the shadow of words, by which colours as a pleasant bait they sought
to recommend their works to the Reader.

Sammes continues with an exposition of the nature of kennings, though not underthat name, and again his grammar is, not surprisingly, uncertain. His sources
varied in their transliteration of › and ﬂ, so here begins in England the double form
Odin/Othin. Like others before and after him Sammes is happy with the identification of Woden and Ó›inn. On skaldic poetry he tells us that ‘from its sweetnessof its running it was called Odins miod that is Odins mead’. On weapons ‘a sword
by the Scaldri is called Othin edur, Wodens fire’, and, one I particularly like,skurtur Odin rendered ‘Wodens doublet’.
Post-Sammes the word scald in its variety of forms enjoyed a vogue among theliterati and for some time the precision with which seventeenth and twentiethcentury scholars endeavour to use it was totally lost. Warton in his History ofEnglish Poetry of 1774 kindly tells us, ‘In the place of their old scalders, a newrank of poets arose called Gleemen or Harpers’; Finlay in 1808 refers to ‘Skaldic
remains preserved in the Edda’. But everyone’s favourite reading on the subject
must be Edward Jerningham’s The Rise and Progress of the Scandinavian Poetry
Part the First :‘Ye glowing masters of the Scaldic song
Still other pow’rful gifts to you belong:

The lofty pine that meets the mountain gale,
Th’ expanding oak that crowns the lowly vale,

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Shall as your fingers touch the furrow’d rind,
Display the treasures of the musing mind:
There by the voice of whisp’ring nature call’d,In future times shall stand the youthful Scald,
There shall he meditate the Runic store,
There woo the science of the tuneful lore;...

Enough—the pow’r I now bestow enjoy,
In Virtue’s cause the forceful harp employ:
Go forth, ye glorious conquerors of the mind,
Achieve the hallow’d task to you assigned:
Applaud the valiant, and the base controul,
Disturb, exalt, enchant the human soul.’Thus to his minstrels spoke the awful pow’r—
The conscious Scalds avow the’ inspiring hour:
And now dividing into many a band,
Strew their wild poetry o’er all the land.

The romantic image of the north, found in the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge,
blended with a concept of poetry inspired by the grandeur of nature and of such
poetry as a moral force, is clear enough in the above quotation from Jerningham,more fully realised in Southey. For Amos Cottle’s incompetent translation of the
poetic Edda (1797) Southey wrote an introductory poem:
Wild the Runic faith
And wild the realms where Scandinavian Chiefs
And Scalds arose, and hence the Scalds’ strong verse
Partook the savage wildness. And methinks
Amid such scenes as these, the Poet’s soulMight best attain full growth.

‘Such scenes as these’ are then predictably identified as a landscape of pinecovered rocks, mountain forests, lakes and beech trees.
Edith Batho, former student of W. P. Ker at London University was, I think, thefirst to point out that it was Sir Walter Scott who had the firmest grasp on therealities of Norse life or Viking life or indeed of the medieval period in general.
He disparages his own light reading of works at which ‘taste may blush and frown,
and sober reason mock’ but those works appear to include such medievalromances as now figure on a university’s English department syllabus. His own
thoroughly light-hearted frivolity Harold the Dauntless contains much sentimentappropriate to its day and its audience. But the account of the conversion ofHarold’s heathen father I consider to be the most penetrating brief summary I
know of the likely pragmatic realities of the Viking Age in England. The oldheathen in question, responding to the Bishop of Durham’s admonitions on thewelfare of his soul, says simply:
Give me broad lands on the Wear and the Tyne
My faith I will leave and I’ll cleave unto thine.

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91

Scott’s novel The Pirate is a stern indictment of the romantic folly of viewing
Viking raids as in some way more splendid, more admirable than the ruffianly
piracy of any other period. And it is Scott who pursued not only secondary sources
but Old Norse originals. In his abstract of Eyrbyggja saga he shows again theacuteness of his scholarly perception in his comments on Snorri Sturluson:

That such a character . . . should have risen so high in such an early period, argues thepreference which the Icelanders already assigned to mental superiority over the rude
attributes of strength and courage, and furnishes another proof of the early civilizationof this extraordinary commonwealth.

For evidence of continuity rather than renaissance of Norse literature Scott has one
magnificent footnote to The Pirate, the reliability of which I leave to others todetermine. Thomas Gray’s poems, published in 1768 included The Fatal Sisters
based on a Latin version of Darra›arljó›. Gray’s sources have been extensively
analysed, and there is no conclusive evidence that he knew any Old Norse. But his
poems, real poems not just tranlationese, enjoyed considerable popularity. Scott’s
footnote, appearing some forty years after Gray’s publication, reads:
Near the conclusion of this chapter it is noticed that the old Norwegian sagas were
preserved and often repeated by the fishermen of Orkney and [Sh]etland while that
language was not quite forgotten. Mr Baikie of Tankerness, a most respectable inhabitant of Kirkwall, and an Orkney proprietor, assured me of the following curious fact.
A clergyman, who was not long deceased, remembered well when some remnants of
the Norse were still spoken in the island called North Ronaldshaw. When Gray’s Ode,entitled ‘The Fatal Sisters’ was first published, or at least first reached that remoteisland, the reverend gentleman had the well-judged curiosity to read it to some of theold persons of the isle, as a poem which regarded the history of their own country. Theylistened with great attention to the preliminary stanzas:Now the storm begins to lour,
Haste the loom of hell prepare
Iron sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darken’d air.
But when they had heard a verse or two more, they interrupted the reader, telling him
they knew the song well in the Norse language, and had often sung it to him when heasked them for an old song. They called it the Magicians or the Enchantresses. It would
have been singular news to the elegant translator, when executing his version from thetext of Bartholine, to have learned that the Norse original was still preserved bytradition in a remote corner of the British dominions.

Throughout the Victorian period scholarly and literary interest in the north increases, and is presented in history, in editions of texts, novel or poetry withvarying degrees of accuracy. Tennyson gets more hooked on Arthur and the Celtic
twilight than the Norse, but Matthew Arnold offered in 1855 an epic on the deathof Balder. I was deeply moved to find in my mother’s copy of Arnold, written withthe fine nib of the map-pen she used when young, the sage comment on Balderdead : This is also Homeric in tone, even though the subject is taken from the92

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Norse mythology’ followed by the elegiac apology ‘This poem will only be readby the few.’ I fear she was right. She then added a marginal note in which she
simply bracketed three names Balder, Samson, Achilles, and it took me several
seconds to get the point. A pity Dumézil was not equally laconic!
One thing we note among the skalds and others still in literary vogue in thisperiod is the prevailing and recurring myth that the Vikings drank mead/ale/wine(take your choice) out of the skulls of their enemies. It is now so well-known that
this belief arose out of a mistranslation of a kenning that it is hard to see why itremained so long uncorrected. As an exercise for pure amusement I thought I
would excavate some of the more bizarre examples. Sammes and Sheringham taketheir text of the death-song of Ragnar from Ole Worm but whereas Sheringham
presents his material in a straightforward manner Sammes finds it funny and gives
us a burlesque version:
They believed that after death they were to go into Wodens hall, and there drink Alewith him, and his Companions, in the Skulls of their Enemies. To this end they
imagined a certain goddess called Dyser, employed by Woden, to convey the souls of
the Valiant into his drunken Paradice. And methinks I see the Danish king Lothbrock,in his Fur-Leather Breeches (for so his name importeth) in as good Verses as Ale could
inspire, hugging himself with the hopes of Full-Pots in the World to come.

Two stanzas of the death-song are given in runes (copied of course from Worm)and translated. I quote only the first:
We have stood true to Snick and Snee
And now I laugh to think
In Wodens Hall there Benches be,
Where we may sit and drink.
There we shall tope our bellies-full
Of Nappy-Ale in full-brim’d Skull.

The error was not Sammes, but that of his source, and no one in England knew
enough of Norse or of the kenning habit to correct it. Thomas Penrose writing The
Carousal of Odin in 1775 begins:
Fill the honeyed bev’rage highFill the Sculls, ’tis ODIN’s cry:and a little later tells us:

The feast begins, the Scull goes roundwhich always sounds to me irresistibly like a comment on the morning after.
Byron, being Byronic as who shall blame him, in his poem on a drinking cup madeout of a skull, offers the happy thought:
And when at last our brains are gone
What nobler substitute than wine?

Lestley (1793) sees deprivation of a well-filled skull as Odin’s punishment for
crime (my italics):

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93

Know thou feeble Child of Dust
Odin’s brave and Odin’s just;From the Golden Hall I comeTo pronounce thy fatal doom:
Never shalt thou pass the scull
Of rich Metheglin deep and full.

In the Victorian era Matthew Arnold, being, as my mother observed, Homeric in
his treatment of northern myth, is not content with a plain undecorated skull,
certainly not one filled with anything so vulgar as Sammes’s ‘nappy ale’:And on the tables stood the untasted meats
And in the horns and gold-rimm’d skulls the wine.

Yet Arnold had clearly not read his latest guide to Northern Antiquities. As I. A.
Blackwell judiciously says in the Preface to his 1847 reissue of Percy’s translationof Mallet, the original publication was at a time when the most important documents bearing on the period were but imperfectly known. One of his revisions
occurs in the description of ‘the religion which prevailed in the north’ and it is no
surprise to find ourselves once again reading the death-words of Ragnar:
Accordingly King Ragnar Lodbrok, when he was going to die, far from uttering groans,or forming complaints, expressed his joy by these verses. ‘We are cut to pieces withswords; but this fills me with joy when I think of the feast that is preparing for me in
Odin’s palace. Quickly, quickly seated in the splendid habitation of the gods, we shall
drink beer out of curved horns’.

Blackwell’s footnote is worth quoting at length:

We have substituted ‘curved horns’ for ‘the skulls of our enemies;’ Finn Magnusen andProfessor Rask having shown that this is the true meaning of the original passage,
literally ‘soon shall we drink ale out of the curved branches of the skull’ ie of an animal,a figurative expression employed by the Scald to indicate the usual drinking horns, andthat Olaus Wormius, Bartholin and other writers of that period whom our author has
followed were totally mistaken in rendering it ‘ex concavis crateribus craniorum . . . It
is this mistake that has given rise to the erroneous notion, that the heroes of Valhalla
drank their ale out of the skulls of those they had slain in battle . . . We think that a daily
dinner consisting solely of boiled pork, washed down with ale and an occasional
draught of mead, was bad enough in all conscience, without making skulls serve fordrinking cups. — Ed.

What must make the strongest impression on those of us who work in Norsestudies today is, if one can disregard the more extreme absurdities, how one-sided
all this is. The image of the North is coming through a fairly slight range of skaldic
and Eddic poetry, and of course through mixtures of fact and nonsense on runes,on mythology, on ‘barbarian’ customs from widely read secondary syntheses such
as Mallet. Genuine historical and editorial work is going on alongside these
extravagances, but popular image either lags far behind scholarship, or uses
scholarship for its own fantasies. The superb philologist George Hickes, working
from the edition of Verelius, transcribed and translated into English in 1705 ‘The

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CHRISTINE FELL

Waking of Angantyr’ from Hervarar saga. His rendering is not bad except for thetransformation of bones rotting in an ant-hill into ‘so may you all be within yourribs as a thing that is hanged up to putrifie among insects’. But the melodrama of
the tale induced many a dreadful translation. Poor Hervor had to conform toinappropriate stereotypes, in one version not even allowed to get back safely to her
ship, but perishing in the burial mound ‘while flames amid her ringlets play’. After
Scott’s sensible abstract of Eyrbyggja saga we have to wait for Icelandic prose to
make its impact on the English imagination, which it slowly does. The sober worldof Íslendinga sögur does eventually take over from the wild world of runic bards.
Nevertheless the imagination of the Victorians often seems limited by its own
conditioning, and as any feminist critic knows it is hard to get behind Victorian
automatic assumptions about appropriate roles for men and women, as also views
about ethnic superiority and ‘the white man’s burden’. This sometimes comes overmost clearly in the children’s books of the period. In Wray Hunt’s The voyage
to Vineland, Viking culture meets Maya in a confrontation which sounds like, but
is not intended to be, a caricature of the Kiplingesque view of the British in India.
I quote one incident only. A Maya slavegirl is rescued from a cruel owner byRolf the Viking leader. Rolf took the child to ‘be petted and consoled by the fierce
Vikings who would kill a thousand men in open fight without a qualm, but drew
the line at such torment of children . . . Rolf was sick of the stupid superstition of
the people, and of their senseless cruelties. “I think”, he cried, “that these folk are
not of our human race at all. They have no manhood or womanhood in them, but
are worse than wolves and bears.” The Vikings nodded agreement, “Let us getaway”, they cried, “back to our own clean lands in the North, where men are men
and women are women.”’
The dimension that has been totally lacking so far is the visual. When the AngloSaxons looked at Vikings the image that dominated their vocabulary was seafaring. True, they sometimes refer to Vikings as heathens or even slaughterwolves, often as ‘Danes’, though ‘Danes’ is rarely precise and obviously used of
invaders from any part of Scandinavia. But four common words are flotman,sæman, sceig›man, and æscman. The first two are etymologically transparent, notapparently pejorative, and synonymous, since Old English flot is ‘water deep
enough to float a ship on’. Old English sceig› is borrowed from Old Norse, but
the compound sceig›man for the chap who arrives in a sceig› is an Anglo-Saxon
invention. I do not want here to go over the linguistic complexities of æsc, æscmanand æschere, but independent Old English words or loans, they are used only of
the Vikings from the ninth century onwards. Another Old Norse word for a ship,kno≈rr, is Anglicised as cnearr. But though those who copied historical records, like
Camden, continued to mention the Vikings as raiders from the sea, it is not really
until archaeologists discovered the great Gokstad and Oseberg ships in 1880 and
1904 respectively that the Vikings as sea-goers recaptured the imagination.

NORSE STUDIES: THEN, NOW AND HEREAFTER95

The serious discipline of philology goes back to Hickes, but archaeology is acomparative newcomer. We do not have to go back very far to see what improbable or anachronistic visual impressions earlier periods produced of Anglo-Saxon
or Viking ships, weapons, dress, buildings and the like. Together with a moresophisticated approach to art-history this has been one of the major developmentsof the twentieth century. But one of archaeology’s difficulties has been that
historians like to use it as a hand-maid rather than a partner. Philology has had
similar trials. I recall a promotions committee at Nottingham where a historian
who shall be nameless said of a colleague in the English Department who shall be
nameless that he had ‘a remarkable grasp of history for a man of letters’.
The pattern, which obviously I simplify, goes something like this: in the first
instance, the very first instance, scholars, or annalists, or chroniclers, endeavour
to get the record straight, to report events. At a later date some historians are stilltrying to get the record straight but viewing it from a greater distance they lookat a variety of documents and endeavour to extrapolate actual occurrence frompartial and prejudiced accounts. At this stage they may start looking at othersources than documentary record, at coins, at epigraphy, even at poetry or saga.
Yet it becomes apparent that no historian can master all the disciplines, can control
all the materials. Scholars in different areas of history become specialists, becomearchaeologists, runologists, numismatists, even literary critics. The historian, still
viewing herself or more probably himself as the synthesiser, believes that he canuse the findings of all these disciplines whereas in fact, in areas where he does notcontrol the methodology it is unwise to deploy the results. A few of us, recognising these dangers, established a quarter of a century ago a group of interdisciplinary scholars to ensure that the next time Peter Sawyer published The Ageof the Vikings we savaged it in draft rather than in reviews. The distinguishedhistorian Henry Loyn was one of this group. It did not prevent him from bringing
out The Vikings in Britain without asking for a word of advice from philologist
or archaeologist, and therefore making a thorough balls-up, if I may use thattechnical term, of philological and archaeological evidence.
We are in a perilous situation. All of us are constantly approached by publishers
for more glossy books, preferably with the word ‘Viking’ somewhere in the title.
Yet no historian can control the vernacular sources nor indeed any data other than
Latin record: the archaeologist cannot read texts, Latin or vernacular, except intranslation: the philologist, like myself, has to ask constant questions of others tomake sure that word and thing (in translating descriptions of objects) have somerelation. I once asked a professor of French how he felt about relying on translation. He assured me that wherever he knew a language he knew also translation
was totally unreliable: wherever he did not know a language he found translations
perfectly adequate.

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CHRISTINE FELL

We are all in the same blinkered situation. On the one hand we plunge ever moredeeply into our own specialisms. On the other hand we emerge from them to be
greeted by demands for overall syntheses which we are ever less qualified to
produce. This should be the situation which the Viking Society aims to rectify in
future programmes and developments not only in itself but in its relation to therelevant disciplines throughout UK Universities. It is a society for Northern
Research and Northern Research has shifted as fashions change and as those who
run the Society define the term. But we do in Britain have something unique tooffer in this field. In Scandinavia Norse Studies have naturally enough evolved indepartments of Scandinavian Studies as they have in one or two places in Britain:
in America as in Germany, Old Norse is studied within departments of German.
Anglo-Saxonists in the USA are, by and large, as profoundly ignorant of the Norse
dimension as Matthew Parker of blessed memory. And equally many Norse
scholars are ignorant of the Anglo-Saxon dimension. This is not deeply significant
in all areas of Norse studies. But in this country much fruitful scholarship hascome out of the fact that Old Norse language and literature is read in departmentsof English and read alongside the language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons. In
so far as we look at vernacular languages side by side, as we look at Norse
influence on English, and, because English missionaries went to Norway and
Iceland, at English influence on Norse; in so far as we look at Vikings in England,
whether at their historical impact or their traces in the sculpture, the epigraphy, thejewellery, the laws and the language, there is much to be said for an educational
tradition which encourages students and scholars to investigate Anglo-Saxon andViking links and parallels. It is not the only way of approaching Vikings or Norse
Studies but it is a way practised seriously only in this country and worth preserving.
The other tradition that is useful and important particularly in the present
educational climate in this country (I do not speak for others) is that the Viking
Society like the Viking Congress has existed to promote interdisciplinary awareness. I do not say either has always succeeded in this, for I have clear memories
of some Viking Congresses where wicked philologists snuck out to the nearest
source of beer while the archaeologists were lecturing, and even those upright andvirtuous characters the archaeologists did not attend every lecture on manuscript
minutiae. But interdisciplinary studies are both academically desirable and atpresent politically encouraged. It has been said, possibly by the quondam librarianof Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, that the stress is too often on the inter andnot enough on the discipline. He may be right. But for all that, I was taught in an
English department where the only facts I was ever told about the Anglo-Saxonand Icelandic texts I read were grammatical ones—‘Kindly note, Miss Fell, thatthat -an ending is a weakened dative plural’—and it was not until I joined theViking Society that I knew there were such artefacts as Viking ships, or swords
or even runes. I would not have known a pseudo-penannular brooch if it had beenNORSE STUDIES: THEN, NOW AND HEREAFTER

97

handed to me on a dinner-plate, and I certainly would not have known that
academic studies existed which would enable me to discover whether such an
object was Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Pictish or Indonesian.
It is in the hope that such ignorance may be a matter of the Then rather than the
Now of Norse studies that we at Nottingham as elsewhere now have interdisciplinary undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Viking studies where students
may learn a little of the range of scholarly methodologies that give us a picture ofa culture, a context within which individual academic disciplines work, the way
in which those individual disciplines contribute to a holistic view.
The other aspect of our studies that is Then, Now and must be Hereafter isinternational co-operation. Again the extent to which this is or has been present
has fluctuated through the centuries. But anyone who has read the learned andlong correspondence between Henry Spelman and Ole Worm (not to mention therecord of what Ohthere said to his hlaford Ælfred cyning) knows that such cooperation has a long and distinguished history. As we use other disciplines andmust at least know something of their methodologies, so we use the work ofscholars in parallel disciplines and other countries. Anglo-Saxon runologists needto know intimately the work of Scandinavian runologists and vice versa. If we use
Norse mythological material to interpret Anglo-Saxon paganism it is not enoughsimply to have read the primary texts (or, as sometimes happens, a generalised
summary). We must know the latest work in Scandinavia on those texts, thescholarship on the manuscripts, not merely the syntheses. We are actually quite
good at this at the moment, perhaps more in some disciplines than others, and it
is particularly welcome to see so many of our friends from Scandinavia here at thisCentenary Symposium. I merely stress the importance of its continuation where
we are good at it, its fuller implementation where we are—I will not say ‘bad’,
merely ‘less good’.
Since Professor Foote included Hereafter in my title he clearly has faith in myvisionary and prophetic powers. But I do not know what else to say about
Hereafter. I have already quoted Byron in this paper and his view of the future is
one that has always appealed to me:
I say the future is a serious matter:
And so, for God’s sake, hock and soda-water.

Or, looking at the present higher education scenario, something stronger than hockmight be needed. It is hard with the existing government returned to power toretain belief in a salaried academic future for those of us in esoteric disciplines,
or in the survival of time for serious research. The writing of more Jorvik scripts
may even be thrust upon us. We are already aware that the private scholar is again
with us, the brilliant young academics working in banks or insurance offices,
engaged in serious research evenings and weekends. Research and teaching instead of being mutually beneficial become the objects of separate University

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CHRISTINE FELL

Funding Council exercises, and I strongly suspect the hidden agenda behind theabolition of the binary line was in order to prevent university teachers fromclaiming in future that their research is essential to their teaching role. How far we
can make change, or of course ‘reform’, work for us rather than against us remains
to be seen.
If I may end on an exhortatory note, I think it essential that we do two things:
firstly as far as possible that we use change wherever we can in the interests of ourscholarship, that we look to ways of making, for example, modularisation give us
frequent full-semester sabbaticals, that we look for international funding of international and interdisciplinary co-operation. Many of us are already committed tothis way of thinking and engaged in these activities. In my view they are anecessary condition for survival. Secondly, though there is room for the private
scholar there is no room in universities now for the amateur. The media image ofour profession is deeply injurious to us, we are ‘whingeing dons living in ivory
towers set in groves of academe’. Where do journalists get their language? And
what the media feeds them on, politicians and the public appear to devour with
unseemly greed. We must not only be committed to being professionals but tobeing seen as professionals. I confess to being unsure how we are to achieve it,
but I consider this, too, essential for our survival.
Doubtless in another Hereafter in whatever Valhalla awaits us we shall bedeemed in scholarship as in other walks of life to have left undone those things
which we ought to have done and to have done those things which we ought not
to have done, and it may well be that there is no health in us. But I at least shalltake comfort from the words of my favourite author (other than Byron), Saki:
Not that I ever indulge in despair about the Future; there have always been men who
have gone about despairing of the Future, and when the Future arrives it says nice,superior things about their having acted according to their lights. It is dreadful to thinkthat other people’s grandchildren may one day rise up and call one amiable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS
Arnold, Matthew. 1908. Poetical Works [annotated copy ex libris G. M. Fell].
Bately, Janet (ed.). 1980. The Old English Orosius.
Batho, Edith C. 1929. ‘Sir Walter Scott and the Sagas: Some Notes’, Modern Language
Review 24, 409–15.
Blackwell, I. A. 1847. Northern Antiquities translated from the French of M. Mallet by
Bishop Percy, new ed.
Cottle, Amos. 1797. Icelandic Poetry, or the Edda of Saemund translated into English
verse.
Earle, John and Plummer, Charles. 1892. Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel.
Hay, Denys. 1959. ‘Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages’, Proceedings of the British
Academy 97–127.
Hay, Denys. 1977. Annalists and Historians.

NORSE STUDIES: THEN, NOW AND HEREAFTER

99

Hickes, George. 1703–5. Linguarum Veterum Septentrionalium Thesaurus.
Hunt, Wray. [n.d.] The voyage to Vineland.
Jerningham, Edward. 1784. The Rise and Progress of the Scandinavian Poetry. A Poem in
Two Parts.
Mallet, Paul Henri. See Blackwell 1847.
NED = A new English dictionary on historical principles. 1884–1928.
Omberg, Margaret. 1976. Scandinavian Themes in English Poetry, 1760-1800.
Penrose, Thomas. 1775. Flights of Fancy.
Robinson, Fred. C. 1984. ‘Medieval, the Middle Ages’, Speculum 59, 745–56.
Sammes, Aylett. 1676. Britannia Antiqua Illustrata.
Sheringham, Robert. 1670. De Anglorum Gentis Origine Disceptatio.
Spelman, Henry. 1687. Glossarium Archaiologicum.
Tolkien, Christopher (ed. and trans.). 1960. The saga of King Heidrek the Wise.
Verstegen, Richard. 1605. Restitution of Decayed Intelligence.

BJARNE FIDJESTØLPAGAN BELIEFS AND CHRISTIAN IMPACT: THE
CONTRIBUTION OF SCALDIC STUDIESTI

HE impact of Christianity is difficult to measure. If I were asked whether
Norway is now a Christian country, I would be rather embarrassed how toanswer. I would have to search for some tangible criterion of a country’s being
Christian, perhaps the habit of bell-ringing from church towers on Sunday mornings. Bell-ringing in my country is performed by mechanical means, the ropes
untouched by human hand, and most people have more or less forgotten thesignificance of it. Still, according to this heuristic criterion, Norway is a Christiancountry and the United Kingdom even more so.
In scaldic poetry there is no bell-ringing, but nevertheless some resonance fromthe scalds’ faith or si›r may be heard in their language and poetic figures. In order
to find something that can be measured, I shall not in the first instance talk about
the ideas of their poetry, but of the more unconscious level of their poetic diction.
There is an attempt at unveiling the religion of the scalds by means of counting
the religious references in their language in Jan de Vries’s famous study De
skaldenkenningen met mythologischen inhoud (1934). In this book he noted theoccurrence of mythological names in scaldic poetry, and he found a rapid decline
coinciding with the introduction of Christianity—as was to be expected—but
more interestingly he observed a new increase in the second half of the twelfth
century, which he interpreted as a mythological renaissance (de Vries 1934, 9, 53).
From these findings de Vries drew important conclusions for the history of Eddaic
poetry, conclusions beyond the scope of this paper. But first and foremost they
relate to the religious history of the scaldic art, showing the heathen ‘bell-ringing’
first fading away and then growing stronger again.
The increase detected by de Vries in the second half of the twelfth century is notvery marked, and it may be questioned whether it is statistically significant. Since
it coincides, however, with a well-documented interest in the past, attested by theprose histories and historical poetry of the period, it is hardly unexpected. De
Vries’s material is too heterogeneous, however, to tell us very much about the real
attitudes of the scalds. Since the scalds sometimes chose to treat matter from thepast which included heathen mythology, they inevitably had to use a mythologicalvocabulary, but little is known about their real attitudes towards it. What is needed
for this purpose is a text corpus where other factors as far as possible are kept
constant, so that the development in the use of mythological kennings can bestudied in isolation. In particular the choice of subject-matter should not be

SCALDIC STUDIES

101

allowed to interfere with the statistics. This, of course, is the ideal situation of thelaboratory which we cannot expect to obtain in real life. In the well-establishedcorpus of scaldic poetry addressed to princes, however, we come fairly close tothis ideal. This is a conservative genre covering nearly four centuries of Nordic
history before and after the introduction of Christianity, and its main themes anddiction remain remarkably little changed down the centuries. It therefore offers aneminently level playing-field for the study of minor changes and longitudinaldevelopments.
I have therefore made an effort to rework de Vries’s study, but unlike him I haverestricted the scope to the corpus of court poetry, a genre covering a long period,
which because of its relationship to political history had the best possible conditions of transmission.1
In this corpus I have noted all occurrences of names of divine beings inkennings, and kennings only,2 and after having counted the total number ofkennings, I have calculated the percentage of kennings containing a mythologicalallusion, distributed in spans of 25 years apiece. De Vries calculated the frequencyof mythological allusions in relation to stanzas, but following a sensible suggestion of Stefán Einarsson (1936), I have given the frequency in relation to the total
number of kennings.
The results of my calculations may be tabulated as follows.
PERIOD–949

950–974
975–999
1000–1024
1025–1049
1050–1074
1075–1099
1100–1124
1125–1149
1150–1174
1175–1199
1200–1224
1225–1249
1250–1274

CORPUS NUMBER

STANZAS

KENN. MYTH. K. MYTH. K. %

1–3

26.25
22.50
56.50
109.75129.00146.75

60
70
199
197
168
162

7
18
57
19
16
16

28.64
9.64
9.52
9.87

•

•

•

•

81.25
54.75
28.75
3.00
104.5012.50
96.25
Σ 871.75

104

6

5.76
2.77
2.00
0.00
10.76
10.52
5.00
11.90

4–7
8–17
18–26, 30–31
27–29, 32–39, 43–44
40–42, 45–60
61–67, 74, 76–77
68–69, 75, 78–79
70–71, 73, 80–81
82–83
84–86
87–89
90–95

36
50
5
288
19
180
Σ 1538

1
1

0

31
2
9
Σ 183

11.66
25.71

102

BJARNE FIDJESTØL
BAR
CHART
Bar Chart forcolumn:
X 1 Myth.kenn. %

27.5
27.5
25
25

Myth.kenn.
% %Mythologicalkennings

22.5
22.5
20
20
17.5
17.5
15
15
12.5
12.5
10
10

77 .5555
2.55
0

Year: ±900

10b
10c

10b 10c 10d 11a
10c 10d 11a 11b
10d 11a 11b 11c±1000

11b Observations
11c 11d 12a 12b 12c 12d
11c 11d 12a 12b 12c 12d 13a
11d 12a 12b 12c 12d 13a 13b

±1100

±1200

13a 13b13b 13c
13c

The bar chart shows the percentage of kennings containing a mythological allusion,
calculated as a ‘moving average’ for three-quarters of a century. The percentages found incolumn 6 of the table, which represent the numbers actually occurring in the stanzas foreach separate period, have thus been replaced by the average of the figures for threeadjacent periods. The purpose of this operation is to even out the impact of the greatly
varying number of stanzas transmitted from each period; see column three in the table. The
figures under the bar chart represent centuries and the letters quarter-centuries; thus forexample 10b means the period 925–949 (though in this particular case it includes everything prior to 950).

My result is less striking than that of de Vries, but in my opinion both thereliability and the validity of the statistics are greater. The graph shows a rapid
decrease in mythological allusions in the kennings in these poems, from 25% in
the latter half of the 10th century to 2–3% in the latter half of the 12th century,
but then there is a notable increase, obviously due to the ‘renaissance’ of Snorri
Sturluson and his nephews. The important difference from de Vries’s results isthat there is no trace whatsoever of a twelfth-century renaissance.

SCALDIC STUDIES

103

II

The perhaps rather trivial conclusion to be drawn from these statistics is thus that,judged by their use of mythological kennings, the court poets were in the courseof time thoroughly converted to Christianity. The statistical decrease in their useof mythological kennings is a rather crude index of their attitude towards religion,
however, and I should like to supplement the purely statistical view of court poetry
by a second examination of the same material, highlighting the usually brief
statements of religious content which occur sporadically in it. These short statements correspond to ‘die eingeklammerte Floskel’ in the terminology of Wolfgang
Lange, and to a certain extent to ‘Aussage in der Randzone des Gedichts’ (Lange
1958, 31–42; cf. also the material and discussion in Edwards 1982–83). By
examining the content of these statements the nature of the change of religion may
be described rather more closely, and it may be possible to detect continuity as
well as renewal.
Scaldic style is known to be highly repetitious and so are these short statements.
In fact, the greater part of them turns out to be clearly divisible into no more than
three groups—the first expressing the idea that the prince is carrying out the willof the gods or of God, the second containing intercession for the prince, and thethird expressing ideas on the king’s position as intermediary between God and thepeople.
(1) At mun banda
The first item, which I have found some 16 times in my corpus, may be labelled
at mun banda—‘at the will of the gods’.3 This is a quotation from a poem by
Eyjólfr dá›askáld on Eiríkr bló›øx, which occurs in the stef of the drápa, in a
sufficiently prominent position to provide the name for the whole poem—
Bandadrápa:

Dregr land at mun banda
Eiríkr und sik . . .
. . . ok ræ›r sí›anjarl go›vo≈r›u hjarli.
Eiríkr conquers the land to the pleasure of the gods (or at their will), and thereafter herules over the god-protected country.

The king acts so to speak on behalf of the gods, and they protect his realm.
In a poem addressed to Eiríkr’s son, Haraldr gráfeldr, this idea is developed, sothat the king almost appears as an incarnation of the divinity: ‘Sigt‡r himself wasin the sea warrior; the gods governed him’.
According to the sagas, Eiríkr bló›øx and his sons were Christian, but evidently
only superficially so. The scalds treated them as good heathens, as the quotationfrom Bandadrápa demonstrates. How far back into heathen antiquity the idea

104

BJARNE FIDJESTØL

expressed in Bandadrápa reached cannot be decided, but it clearly survived theconversion to Christianity, apparently unchanged. Sigvatr ﬁór›arson has the same
motive in its briefest possible form, Go› vildi svá, and ﬁórleifr jarlsskáld used it
in a markedly Christian context in a poem to Sveinn tjúguskegg:
Opt me› œrnri giptuo≈›lings himins ro≈›la
Jóta gramr en ítriEnglandi rau› branda.
Often with abundant luck from the prince of heaven the glorious king of Jutes reddened
swords in England.

In Sigvatr’s verse the verb is given in monotheistic singular, which is Christian,but any heathen scald might probably have said the same, putting the verb in theplural. Wolfgang Lange even points to an instance where the same scald uses bothplural and singular, namely ﬁjó›ólfr Arnórsson, in his lausavísa 13: Do≈num vó≈rugo› gro≈m, and 26: gengr sem go› vill (Lange 1958, 32). (Lausavísur are notincluded in the Appendix, since my corpus is confined to the more prestigious andreliable genre of court poems.)
Not only these ‘eingeklammerte Floskeln’ show an unbroken continuity on bothsides of the religious watershed; so does the view of the relationship between the
king and his god. In one of the most profoundly heathen poems in the corpus,
Vellekla by Einarr skálaglamm, in a pair of verses which may have been the stefof the drápa, Earl Hákon is said to be mightily strengthened by the gods:
Rammaukin kve›k ríkiro≈gn Hó≈konar magna.

A similiar expression is used by Sigvatr more en passant in the Erfidrápa on StÓláfr, where he is talking about his life as a saint in heaven (Skj. A I 264; B I 245):
Jo≈fur magnar go›.

From a religious point of view this idea, ‘Gott mit uns’, is trivial and ubiquitous,
far from the profound religious motivation of lordship found in poetry addressedto the earls of Hla›ir, where the ruler may be depicted as the bridegroom of theearth, making it blossom. I presume that is the reason why it could so easily betaken over by the Christian scalds, and in its turn this easy continuity may havecontributed to the change of religion. From this point of view, the kings had
nothing to lose by adopting the new religion; on the contrary, there was every
reason to believe that White Christ was a more powerful ally than the old gods,
who had been obsolete for generations in the most prestigious European countries.
The two other groups of brief religious statements in court poems, however, show
a more interesting renewal in mentality and ideology.

SCALDIC STUDIES

105(2) Hafi Kristr konungs o≈nd

The second group consists of brief statements expressing concern for the soul ofthe prince. In my corpus I have found seven examples, the first of which is fromthe Erfidrápa by Hallfre›r vandræ›askáld on his godfather King Óláfr Tryggvason:Kœns hafi Kristr enn hreini
konungs o≈nd ofar lo≈ndum!
May the pure Christ have the king’s soul above the earth!

The klofastef in Stúfsdrápa by Stúfr ﬁór›arson is very reminiscent of Hallfre›r’s
verse, and may be an allusion to it, unless perhaps both are reflecting someliturgical formula:Hafi ríks ﬂars vel líkar
vist of aldr med Kristi
Haralds o≈nd ofar lo≈ndum!
May the mighty Haraldr’s soul have an eternal gratifying dwelling with Christ above
the earth!

In his Erfidrápa Sigvatr ﬁór›arson even prayed for the soul of St Óláfr, obviously
unaware that St Augustine had declared that it is offensive to pray for the martyrs(Injuria est enim, pro martyre orare, Sermo CLIX 1, PL 38, 868).
Particularly zealous in his prayers was Arnórr ﬁór›arson jarlaskáld. In his
poetry the motive is found no fewer than four times, three of which occur in court
poetry—the fourth example in a poem to an Icelandic chieftain. (For a discussionof the comparable formula in runic monuments, see Segelberg 1972.)
Old Norse funeral customs as well as literary sources testify to the belief in a life
after death among the heathens, and some of Vo≈luspá ’s descriptions of a happylife in the new world are among the parts of this poem that are most reminiscentof Christian ideas. Nevertheless, the Christian doctrine of Heaven and Hell, andin particular the idea that man’s eternal fate is dependent upon his religious faith
in this life, meant a new outlook on life and death. Preoccupation with a man’s
inner life, or his soul, is probably one of the most important shifts of mentality
brought about by the new religion. To judge by the scaldic sources, however, theonly trace of this great human revolution discernible in the first generations ofChristian poetry is no more—and no less—than a concern about the dwellingplace of the spirit in the afterworld.
Only around 1100, in Markús Skeggjason’s poem in honour of King Eiríkr
Sveinsson, the royal founder of the archbishopric of Lund, is concern expressed
for the welfare of the soul in this world. The scald says among other things thatthe king went on pilgrimage in order to heal his inner wounds (str. 12: mildingr
fór of munka veldi mó›um fœti só≈l at bœta; cf. str. 28: læknask só≈r en i›ri ).
Expressions like these mark in my opinion a new phase in the process ofChristianisation.

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(3) Herr sésk sem go› ﬂengil

From the point of view of political ideology the third group is the most important.
I have labelled it with a phrase from a stanza by Gunnlaugr ormstunga, where themotive first occurs. The ﬂengill in question is King Ethelred:
Herr sésk allr vi› o≈rva
Englands sem go› ﬂengil;4
ætt l‡tr grams ok gumna
gunnbrá›s A›alrá›i.
All the host stands in awe of the generous prince of England as of God; the race of the
war-swift king and all the race of men bow to Ethelred.

Sem go› may mean ‘as well as God’, I presume, but at the same time it means ‘asmuch as God’. At all events, the king is placed in God’s vicinity, he is honoured
as his representative in the kingdom. Two later scalds, Hallvar›r háreksblesi andﬁórarinn loftunga, use nearly identical terms to express the idea that the king, inthis case King Canute, protects his land as God protects heaven—God and the kinghave each their realm, so to speak, and as God’s representative on earth, the kingis nearer to God than other human beings.
These are the earliest examples of the idea of something like ‘king by the graceof God’ in Old Norse literature, and it is worth while noticing that, with one
relatively untypical exception (no. 5 in the Appendix), all refer to English or
Dano-English kings, namely Ethelred and Canute. In his study of English influence on Old Norse poetry Dietrich Hofmann has traced the origin of these ideas
in Anglo-Saxon literature (Hofmann 1955, 53–55, 96–97; cf. Lange 1958, 140–
43). In embryonic form they contain one of the great themes of medieval political
ideology, and it is not possible here to pursue the theme through the history ofEuropean kingship. Instead we shall try to follow its development some way in thescaldic poetry on Norwegian kings.

III

In the first instance one is struck by a remarkable restraint in the scalds’ use ofreligious motives for political purposes. The coercive Norwegian mission of thetwo Óláfrs is often described as a struggle for dominance, in which Christianity
was used—or misused—in order to achieve worldly power. And certainly there is
no doubt that for these royal zealots their functions as missionaries and as conquerors were not distinct from each other. Success in one field meant success inthe other. Nevertheless, it is hard actually to pin-point the political benefit thesekings drew from their missionary work in their struggle for power. If politicalconsiderations were paramount, it might have been wiser in the first instance notto irritate the Norwegian chieftains by an attack on their religion. After all, Haraldr
hárfagri perfectly well succeeded in winning power without having recourse to the

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107‘God who created the sun’, to quote the words Snorri Sturluson attributes to thispre-Christian king, and for his son Hákon A›alsteinsfóstri Christianity was an
obvious disadvantage, so that eventually he had to give up his missionary work
altogether. I therefore do not think the possibility should be excluded that the twoÓláfrs were driven by personal enthusiasm for the religion they had converted to, andperhaps some concern for the ‘modernisation’ of their country (cf. Wolf 1959, 13).

The quotations from scaldic poems addressed to English kings show that there
actually was an ideological potential in Christian ideas of kingship, but in theencomiastic poetry about the two Norwegian militant missionaries there is hardly
a trace of it. It is also difficult to see how it could appeal to a nation which was
not already largely Christianised.
The significant change occurred only after the death of St Óláfr. The turning-point
is Glælognskvi›a by ﬁórarinn loftunga, a poem on the sanctity of King Óláfr,
which has been described as our first hagiographic poem (Lange 1958, 111).
There are two particularly striking aspects of this text. Firstly, it was composed atmost a couple of years after the king’s death, and it demonstrates that the belief
in the wonder-working sanctity of the king was already so well established that thescald invites the new king to pray to the saint to grant him his land:Bi› Áleifat unni ﬂér—hann’s go›s ma›r—
grundar sinnar;hann of getr
af go›i sjo≈lfum
ár ok fri›o≈llum mo≈nnum.

To Olaf pray
To eke thy day,To save thy land
From spoiler’s hand.
God’s man is he
To deal to thee
Good crops and peace;
Let not prayer cease.
(Trans. Laing)

As Fredrik Paasche has pointed out (Paasche 1914, 15 [= 1948, 44]; cf. Magerøy
1948, 41), it looks as if the later motive of St Óláfr as rex perpetuus Norvegiae isalready present.
The second striking point is the fact that the poem is addressed to King SveinnÁlfífuson, the son of King Canute, who reigned in Norway on his behalf after hisallies had beaten King Óláfr in the Battle of Stiklasta›ir. In the fragments ofGlælognskvi›a quoted in the Kings’ Sagas very little is said about King Sveinn
himself, to whom the poem is addressed, and whom we must expect to have been
the primary object of praise. The greater part of the fragment concerns St Óláfr
and his miracles. How are we to explain this policy, which produces a poem toKing Sveinn, composed by the main scald of his father, but filled with praise of
the former leader of the opposing party?

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It has been suggested that the scald was inspired by the politics of Sveinn’s
father in England. According to Erich Hoffmann (1975, 45–46, 81–84) Canute had
been active in promoting the worship of St Edmund in England by founding andendowing St Edmund’s abbey, notwithstanding the fact that the saint’s martyrdom
had been caused by Danish invaders and to a certain extent served as a symbol ofanti-Danish opposition. King Canute so to speak usurped the ideology and madehimself the symbol of the English party. As king of England Canute was now the
representative of the same royal institution as St Edmund had belonged to and theadvantage to be drawn from this fact outweighed the risk that St Edmund’s
memory might strengthen the opposition between English and Danes.
Glælognskvi›a very strongly suggests that something of the kind may havemotivated the scald when he composed a poem on St Óláfr in honour of his
Danish/English lord. We have seen that ﬁórarinn had been the scald of King
Canute and a probable connection between St Edmundsbury and Ni›aróss may beestablished through the family of ﬁorkell hávi. ﬁorkell was earl of East Anglia at
the period of the endowment of St Edmund’s abbey by the king, and he ismentioned in the sources as one of the principal promoters of this policy (Arnold
1965, 47, 126–27, 341, 344). Now in Trondheim his son Haraldr was the mostprominent among the advisers of the young King Sveinn. It is to be noted that Earl
Haraldr is referred to in the very same poem, str. 1 (ﬁar var jarl fyrst at upphafi),
and he may have suggested the political programme to be followed in it.
However that may be, the only substantial piece of information on King Sveinn
in this poem is the significant fact that he had now taken his seat in ﬁrándheimr(hefr sér til sess hagat . . . í ﬁrándheimi ), where Óláfr had dwelt before he went
to Heaven, and where the great king was buried ‘alive’, i.e. as a saint (kykvasettr).
In the cult of saints control of the holy body is of course of paramount importance, and a recent analysis of the development of the city of Trondheim indicatesthat differing locations of the shrine, in close connection with the developing royalfoundations, were a decisive factor in the early medieval history of the town
(Christophersen 1992). Glælognskvi›a demonstrates that even at this early period
Trondheim was a goal of pilgrims and miracles happened at the king’s shrine. The
shrine was therefore an object of great value to whoever disposed of it and in thepoem the scald entreated the king to take advantage of this position. Possibly oneof the reasons for King Sveinn’s eventual failure was a certain reluctance on hispart to play this card. According to the sagas at least, his powerful mother was
rather loath to venerate the Norwegian saint.
The representation of King Óláfr as Norway’s eternal king was to be one of themost salient ideological themes in the medieval history of the Norwegian monarchy, as is well known, and from Óláfr’s death onwards the cult of the saint becamea determining factor in the history of Christendom in Norway as well as in the

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109

nation’s political development. However, with the exception of the Englishinfluenced Glælognskvi›a, the scalds seem to have been relatively reluctant toassimilate this ideology during most of the eleventh century. This impression may
be due to accidental lacunas in the scaldic material. One might also think, however, that among the kings’ political advisers other groups than the scalds had theinitiative in this respect, e.g. his clergy or political magnates like Earl Haraldr. The
scalds may have been more tied to the traditional view of a king’s legitimation.
But this is mere speculation, of course.
In the Erfidrápa of Sigvatr ﬁór›arson, composed a few years after Glælognskvi›aand during the reign of St Óláfr’s son Magnús the Good, Sigvatr confirms that theworship of the saint is well established—he has a golden shrine, mass is celebrated
and many miracles are performed: ‘I praise the holiness of the king.’ But nopolitical exploitation of St Óláfr’s sanctity is apparent in Sigvatr’s poem, only amoral exhortation to his listeners and himself not to neglect their duties towards
the saint.
Sigvatr is also the first to testify to the eclipse of the sun at Stiklasta›ir. But inhis description of the battle the scald does nothing to conceal the fact that the kinghad heathens in his army as well as Christians; he just assigned the Christians toa position to the right of the king, which may or may not be a veiled allusion to
the Last Judgement.
In the poetry of the reign of Magnús the Good, of which about 85 stanzas arepreserved, Christian themes are touched on occasionally, but the fact that Magnús
is the royal heir of a holy king is passed over in silence. Referring to Magnús’s
father in a kenning, instead of using the epithet inn helgi, ﬁjó›ólfr Arnórsson
describes him as ‘the stout’: Áleifs mo≈gr . . . ens digra (Skj. A I 364; B I 335).
In a poem in runhent addressed to Haraldr har›rá›i ﬁjó›ólfr mentions that hewas the brother of the holy king (Skj. A I 368; B I 338–39):

Jarizleifr of sá
hvert jo≈fri brá
hófsk hl‡ri framsens helga grams.
Iarizleif saw in what direction the prince developed. The outstanding holy king’s
brother came on. (Trans. Faulkes; 1987, 131)

King Óláfr’s sanctity is taken for granted, however, and it is by no means focused.
In this poem King Haraldr is characterised above all by his membership of thefamily: he is not only ‘brother of the holy king’, but ‘father of Óláfr [kyrri]’ as
well, and King Magnús is referred to as Haralds bró›ursonr. The stanza quoted
above concerns another relative, namely Haraldr’s father-in-law, King Jaroslav,
and the mention of Haraldr’s holy brother may be motivated by fact that KingÓláfr was well acquainted with Jaroslav. Whether Óláfr is referred to as ‘holy’ oras ‘stout’ matters little in this context.

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More significant in this connection is a poem in honour of Haraldr’s son Óláfr
kyrri, the first literate king of Norway, who read the Psalter and wore drambhosurlerka›ar at beini (‘costly hose laced about the legs’). Óláfr kyrri was contemporary
with, and brother-in-law of, King Eiríkr Sveinsson in Denmark, whose eulogy
Hrynhenda by Markús Skeggjason I have already mentioned as an introduction tothe ‘high medieval period’. In Steinn Herdísarson’s Óláfsdrápa we also feel a new
spirit permeating literary forms. In this respect it is significant, I think, that thetraditional introduction, ‘the scald’s bid for a hearing’, is supplanted by a Christian exordium: ‘I call upon the holy lord of heaven (to listen) to my poem, before
men, because he is the more glorious.’ The scald alludes to the traditional beginning of a scaldic poem, but he emphatically breaks with the tradition.
In this poem the motive from Glælognskvi›a, that the holy king will grant thepresent king his land, is taken up once more, and this time it is reinforced by theclose relationship between the saint and the king (Skj. A I 411; B I 381):
Sín ó›ul mun Sveini
sóknstrangr í Kaupangi,
ﬂars heilagr gramr hvílir,—hann’s ríkr—jo≈furr banna;
ætt sinni mun unnaÁleifr konungr hála—Úlfs ﬂarfat ﬂar arfi—
alls Nóregs—til kalla.
From Drontheim town, where in repose
The warrior king from Trondheim,
The holy king defies his foes,
Where his sainted uncle lies,
Another Olaf will defend
Bravely defends his heritageHis kingdom from the greedy Svein.
Against the greed of Denmark.
King Olaf has both power and right,
St Olaf gladly granted
And the Saint’s favour in his fight.
Norway to his descendants;
The Saint will ne’er his kin forsake
No son of Svein of Denmark
And let Sveinn Ulfsson Norway take.
Has any right to claim it.
(Trans. Laing)(Trans. Magnusson and Pálsson)

The scald insists that the Norwegian king is the legitimate ruler in the city where
the holy king is resting, to the exclusion of another Danish King Sveinn, this time
Sveinn Úlfsson, cousin of Sveinn Álfífuson. It is tempting to read this as a kindof polemic against Glælognskvi›a; the political weapons forged by Sveinn Álfífuson’s
scald are turned against the Danish party, and Óláfr kyrri uses the political andlegal advantage of belonging to the family of the saint, as it were invoking his
uncle St Óláfr as his ‘Spitzenahn’. Nevertheless, the legal notion of ó›al seems to
be no less prominent in the argument than the religious motive of the saintlinessof his relative.5

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111

IV

In this final section I would like to return to the two principal representatives of
the court poetry of the transition period, Hallfre›r vandræ›askáld and Sigvatrﬁór›arson, the main scalds of the two missionary Óláfrs.
In his important survey of Old Norse Christian poetry before 1200, Wolfgang
Lange (1958) characterised Hallfre›r as ‘Typus des dürftig Bekehrten’; according
to Hallfre›ar saga, the hero, during his stay among the heathen Swedes, blés íkross yfir drykk sínum, á›r hann drakk, en fátt so≈ng hann (ÍF VIII, 177). In
connection with this, one of the most interesting aspects of Hallfre›r’s poetry is
the way in which he refers in it to his own conversion. He was compelled toabandon Njo≈r›r’s kin and pray to Christ, he says (ÍF VIII, 159):ver›k ok neyddr frá Njar›arni›jum Krist at bi›ja,

and he openly resented the loss of his former faith. However, at the same time heacknowledged the gain, which first and foremost consisted in his close relationship with Óláfr Tryggvason, who consented to be his godfather. Hallfre›r knew
what he had done, and there is nothing to indicate that he found the final balance
negative. I think that Lange (1958, 38) is quite justified when he argues that
‘Hallfreds Christentum heißt Olaf’. On the other hand, Lange did not in my view
succeed in finding convincing examples of syncretism in Hallfre›r’s poetry. The
sad fact that the stanzas addressed to his old rival Gríss are ‘av betydligt grov och
oaptitlig karaktär’ (Noreen 1926, 224; see Lange 1958, 37) is irrelevant to thequestion of his conversion—after all the scald had not converted to Victorianpuritanism. By adding to his Erfidrápa on Óláfr Tryggvason a prayer for the king’ssoul, Hallfre›r was practising his Christianity. Lange thought that the scald had toforce himself to this single Christian sentence at the end of his poem (Lange 1958,37) and that it would have become the Christian poet better to seek comfort inthoughts about God’s ‘Ratschluß’. But this amounts to begging the question.
Intercession for somebody is after all a manifestly Christian act.
Hallfre›r may have been sincere to a greater or lesser extent in his prayer; I do
not think that it is possible to know precisely. In the introduction to his study
Lange has some very sensible remarks on the inevitability of some kind of
syncretism in the assimilation of a new religion. Insofar as the new wine is poured
into the bottles of the existing language, the meaning previously invested inreligious terms which were reused in a new context must have lingered on sometime before the bottles burst. But this view does not legitimate a systematic
minimisation of the seriousness of the manifestly Christian statements which are
actually to be found in the poetry of the first generation of Christian scalds. Lange
accused Paasche of going too far in interpreting Old Norse poetry in the light ofmedieval Western theology (1958, 25), but one wonders whether Lange himself
has not gone too far in reaction to Paasche.

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In Hallfre›r’s prayer there are no theological subtleties, and it comprises only
a tiny part of the total poem (1%). As far as that goes, however, he could just be
said to be complying with the Biblical commandment ‘when ye pray, use not vain
repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think they shall be heard for their muchspeaking’ (Matt. 6: 7). The question of the scald’s personal commitment to his
own prayer seems in this case not only insoluble, but the very question may be ananachronism.
Lange’s general characterisation of Sigvatr ﬁór›arson’s poetry is also worth
noting: ‘Der Gesamttenor—nicht eigentlich die Themen seiner Dichtung—ist
christlich’ (Lange 1958, 29). If Hallfre›r was the type of the newly converted, or‘the reluctant Christian’, Sigvatr seems remarkably well established in the newfaith, as if he had belonged to it for generations. It is of course possible that he had.
According to Skaldatal his father was the court poet of Sigvaldi jarl, who in Old
Norse sources is depicted as a great scoundrel, but who was presumably a Christian
all the same, being a subject of the King Haraldr who ‘made the Danes Christian’.
His scald may well have been Christian too. However that may be, on his journey
into heathen Sweden, Sigvatr—unlike Hallfre›r—observed the uncouth mannersof the natives with amused curiosity, like a man to whom the heathen religion now
seemed rather obsolete.
Of Sigvatr’s faith and religious practice we get only glimpses. I have alreadymentioned that he admonished himself and his listeners to attend to St Óláfr’s
mass; and he seems to have been particularly attached to the sacrament of baptism.
A fragment which is preserved only in Snorri’s Edda, and which Finnur Jónsson
on dubious grounds ascribed to the Erfidrápa on King Óláfr (Finnur Jónsson 1920,
295; cf. Fidjestøl 1982, 121), apparently refers to the baptism of Christ in Jordan,
and this is the only direct allusion to Biblical history in the known fragments ofSigvatr’s poems. (A possible veiled allusion is mentioned below.) A lausavísa isdevoted to the pleasure the scald took at the baptism of his daughter Tófa, whom
the King had honoured by acting as her godfather. In this case a Christian ritual
has inspired the scald to a beautiful poetic expression, in his prayer for the kingwho ‘lifted my daughter home from heathendom’ (Skj. A I 268–69; B I 248):
Dróttinn, hjalp ﬂeims dóttur
(d‡rr’s ﬂinn vili) mínaheim ór hei›num dómi
hóf ok nafn gaf Tófu;
helt und vatn enn vitri(var›k ﬂeim feginn har›amorni) mínu barni
mó›rakkr Haralds bró›ir.

Help Thou, O God, him who—
hallowed be Thy name—from
heathendom redeemed mydaughter and called her Tofa;
Harold’s hardy brother
held o’er the font the infant,grudged not to be her godfather—glad was I that morning!
(Trans. Hollander)

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113

Sigvatr himself was godfather to King Óláfr’s only son, Magnús, and in lausavísa
30 there seems to be an allusion to this fact in an obscure context (Heimskringla,
Magnúss saga ins gó›a ch. 9; ÍF XXVIII, 18–19), and this is probably also the casein Berso≈glisvísur 18, where he addresses the young king: . . . me›al okkar alt’sháligt . . . erum, Magnús, vér vegnir; vildak me› ﬂér mildum . . . lifa ok deyja.
Me›al okkar alt’s háligt is usually translated ‘our relationship is sacred’, namely
the spiritual relationship which exists between godson and godfather (LP, 315).
The next line is more difficult to interpret: erum, Magnús, vér vegnir. The lastword is usually emended to vægnir, but perhaps the original reading could be
retained and taken to refer to baptism by means of a pun. Vega means (1) ‘lift up’,and (2) ‘kill’. The first sense might correspond to levatio, the lifting up from thebaptismal font, cf. hefja ór hei›num dómi. The second might correspond to atheological interpretation of baptism, according to which it is a symbolic orsacramental death and resurrection. A baptized Christian is thus dead or killed(veginn) and yet living. This piece of Pauline theology might lead on to the scald’s
conclusion where he expressed his wish to lifa ok deyja with the generous
Magnús.
A possible explanation of Sigvatr’s interest in baptism is clearly that it implicitly included him in the royal family, by what for him was a sacred relationship.
There are further examples where he treats his relationship to the king in religious
language: ‘Let Christ punish me with the burning fire if I wanted to be far fromthe king (namely in the battle)’ (lausavísa 25, Skj. A I 273; B I 252):
Hafa láti mik heitan
Hvítakristr at víti
eld, ef Áleif vildak—emk skírr of ﬂat—firrask.

The same suffering is in store for those who betrayed the king for money (lausavísur
16–17). In an article in Maal og Minne (1975) I have tried to show that Sigvatr
here gives an early example of Biblical typology used to promote the king’s cause.
His betrayers are seen in the image of Judas, which implies, of course, that Óláfr
is seen in the image of Christ, whose rule he was about to expand.
The most elaborate triangle God—King—scald is found in two carefully structured stanzas, where the scald says his prayers for the king, lausavísur 7–8 (no. 6
might also have been included in the context; Skj. A I 267–69; B I 247–48):
Nú sittu heill, en hallar
hér finnumsk meir ﬂinnar
at, unz ek køm vitja,Áleifr konungr, mála.
Skald bi›r hins, at haldi
hjalmdrífu vi›r lífi
—endisk leyf›—ok landi—l‡kk vísu nú—ﬂvísa.

Sit happy in thy hall, O king!
Till I come back and good news bring:
The scald will bid thee now farewell,
Till he brings news well worth to tell.
He wishes to the helmed hero
Health, and long life, and a full flow
Of honour, riches, and success—And, parting, ends his song with this.

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Nú eru mælt—en málameir kunnum skil fleiri—or›, ﬂaus oss of var›aalls mest, konungr, flestra.
Go› láti ﬂik gæta,ge›har›r konungr, jar›ar,—víst hefik ﬂann—ﬂvít, ﬂinnar,
ﬂú ert til borinn—vilja.

The farewell word is spoken now—
The word that to the heart lies nearest,
And yet, O king! before I go,
One word on what I hold the dearest.
I fain would say, ‘O! may God saveTo thee, the bravest of the brave,
The land which is thy right by birth!’This is my dearest wish on earth.
(Trans. Laing)

Above I have highlighted some of the most conspicuous correspondences between
the two stanzas, italicising the semantic parallels and underlining identical ornear-identical words in the same verse-position. Sigvatr focuses on his own
relation to the king (skald—konungr—ek—oss), on his function as scald (endisk
leyf›—l‡kk vísu nú) and as intercessor, first with himself as subject of thesentence and next with God as subject of an optative verb: Skald bi›r hins, at. . . Go› láti . . . The scald has in an artistically clever manner used the poetic
means of stanza structure in order to give his prayer an elaborate form. I take it
as a indication that he took personal interest in his pious undertaking.
The last stroke in my sketch for a religious portrait of Sigvatr scald is in lighter
tone, but not necessarily less significant for that reason.
I have already referred to Sigvatr’s strenuous journey—or journeys—into
Sweden, which he described in an extremely vivid manner in Austrfararvísur. The
linguistic tenor of this flokkr is rather colloquial, and on one occasion, when hehad great trouble with a miserable boat, we even learn how the scald was swearing
in his bad moments: taki hlœgiskip hauga herr (Skj A I 233; B I 220). Any of us
would probably say: ‘The devil take . . .’—and I think that is almost exactly what
Sigvatr meant. Hauga herr is a conventional kenning for the jo≈tnar, who have here
been demonised in a Christian interpretation of Norse mythology. Eventually hesucceeded in getting over the river, but the way through the great forests was no
easier: Menn veit at mœttum meini (Skj. A I 233; B I 221)—‘people know that I
had problems’, it might be translated. The important detail is the singular verb
form veit, which reveals that it is to be read as a mild oath: ‘all the saints know’or something of the kind, cf. expressions like go› veit . . . According to Fritzner(III 971b), ‘Den jevnlige Brug av veit i deslige sværgende Udtryk medførte, at det
brugtes ogsaa, hvor Ord som betegnede Personen, hvorved man svor, var et
Pluralis, istedetfor at svare dertil med Hensyn til Numerus, noget som blev det
almindelige ved menn : ﬂat veit menn’. The occurrence of this piece of bad
language in Sigvatr is remarkably early. It is not the language of a fresh convert.
I suspect Sigvatr of having room in his religion also for his humour. In his
Vestrfararvísur there is a rather ticklish point when he mentions the gifts fromKing Canute to his fellow-scald Bersi and himself. We have seen what Sigvatr
thought about the king’s men who sold their lord for money, and now the two

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115

scalds might be accused of the same offence. In this stanza (Skj. A I 242; B I 227),
however, he only comments on King Canute’s generosity, complaining that Bersi
had got much more than he had. In this connection he somewhat inappropriately(Lange 1958, 32) inserts the commonplace discussed earlier: ræ›r go≈rva o≈llu go›
sjálfr. God himself governs everything—and the scald evidently has to comply
with His will. This sounds very pious, but one wonders whether it is not utteredtongue-in-cheek: in the long run God may have looked after Sigvatr by letting him
have a worse lot than Bersi this time. (On Sigvatr as a pilgrim to Rome, cf. theinteresting remarks in Naumann 1986.)

V

In this contribution I have restricted the scope of investigation to the scaldic court
poetry, which in my opinion is a particularly helpful corpus. I do not claim that
this corpus is representative of all scaldic poetry. On the contrary, in a general way
I think it is probable that heathen elements showed stronger resistance at a greater
distance from the missionary kings, but—like Fredrik Paasche—I also find it
legitimate to attach particular interest to the ideas of the leading circles of society.
My narrow choice of corpus has been counterbalanced by viewing the material
from a variety of perspectives, ranging from a purely statistical evaluation of
mythological kennings, through a survey of ‘eingeklammerte Floskeln’, as Langecalls them, and of one religious/political theme, ending with a closer scrutiny of
two main scalds of the period of transition.
My brief conclusion is that the court scalds seem to have been quick to take to the
new religion. Real syncretism is hard to detect in their poems, and the scalds of
the Norwegian kings are slow to exploit the religion for political ends in any open
and obvious way. As far as our corpus can tell us, a Christian royal ideology ismanifest in scaldic poems in England already in the days of Ethelred, but particularly in the poetry addressed to King Canute and his son. Only towards 1100 is thistheme developed by the scalds of Norwegian kings. At the same time a newconcern for the inner life of the human personality also manifests itself.
For the court poets of the first Christian generations the new religion is verymuch part of their personal relationship with the actively Christian kings, andsince they were hir›menn it is natural to think that this relationship was important
for their relatively eager reception of the new si›r. Loyalty to the king and loyalty
to Christ were not to be separated, and the new religion offered strong links bywhich the scald could be even more closely associated with his king. The court
poetry does not give much information on their thoughts about God, but they
believed in the reality of Hell and Heaven, and that their life on earth—not least
their relation to their Christian king—had consequences for their eternal fate.

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APPENDIX : BRIEF STATEMENTS OF RELIGIOUS CONTENT

At mun banda (16 occurrences)(1) ﬁórbjo≈rn hornklofi:Glymdrápa, str. 6 (Skj. A I 23; B I 21):
Sá vas gramr . . .
go›var›r . . .

This king wasprotected by the gods.

ﬁar vas—ﬂrafna byrjar
ﬂeim st‡r›u go› Beima—
sjalfr í sœkialfi
sigt‡r Atals d‡ra.

There was—the gods
governed this warrior—Ó›inn himself
in the sea warrior.

ﬁeim st‡ra go›.
Hverr sé if, nema jo≈fraættr‡ri go› st‡ra?
Rammaukin kve›k ríkiro≈gn Hó≈konar magna.

The gods guide that man.
What doubt can there be but that the gods
control the destroyer of the race of princes?
I say that the most mighty gods strengthen
the authority of Hákon.
(Trans. Hollander)(2) Glúmr Geirason: Gráfeldardrápa, str. 12 (Skj. A I 78; B I 68):(3–4) Einarr skálaglamm: Vellekla, str. 15 and 32 (Skj. A I 126, 130; B I 119, 123):(5) ﬁórleifr jarlsskáld: fragment on Sveinn tjúguskegg (Skj. A I 141; B I 133):

Opt me› œrnri giptuo≈›lings himins ro≈›la
Jóta gramr en ítriEnglandi rau› branda.

Often with abundant luckfrom the prince of heaven
the glorious king of Jutes
reddened swords in England.

Dregr land at mun banda
Eiríkr und sik . . .
. . . ok ræ›r sí›anjarl go›vo≈r›u hjarli.

Eiríkr conquers the land
to the pleasure of the gods
and thereafter he rules
the god-protected country.

Go› vildi svá.

God willed it thus.

ﬁik remmir go› miklu. . . gagni . . .

God strengthens you with a great
victory.

The authenticity of this fragment may be questioned (cf. Fidjestøl 1982, 101–02).
(6) Tindr Hallkelsson’s poem on Earl Hákon is difficult to interpret, but in str. 8
the earl’s success is ascribed to the will of the gods (bo≈nd at vildu) (Skj. A I 146;
B I 138).
(7) The klofastef in Bandadrápa by Eyjólfr dá›askáld (in abbreviated form) (Skj.
A I 200–02; B I 192):(8) Sigvatr ﬁór›arson: Erfidrápa (?—cf. Fidjestøl 1982, 121) on St Óláfr, str. 3(Skj. A I 257; B I 239):(9) Óttarr svarti: Ho≈fu›lausn, str. 18 (Skj. A I 295; B I 272):

SCALDIC STUDIES

117(10) Arnórr ﬁór›arson jarlaskáld: Magnússdrápa, str. 10 (Skj. A I 340; B I 313):. . . en skipti
skapvo≈r›r himins jo≈r›u.

The protector of heaven
distributed the land.

ﬁar má enn hvárr annano≈ndu nemr e›a lo≈ndum. . . go› valda.

Again God will decide
who takes life or land
from the other.

Y›r tjó›i go›.

God helped you.

Go›s rá› er ﬂat.

This is God’s will.

. . . vi› sko≈phreins go›s.

according to the luckof the pure God.

Har›ró≈›um gu› jar›ar
tyggja lér me› tíri.
Vindræfrs jo≈furr gæfuo≈›lingi skóp ungum.

God grants the hard-ruling kingland and honour.
The king of heaven assigned
good luck to the young king.

Svá vildi gu›, frami›r mildi.

The gracious God willed it thus.

(11) ﬁórleikr fagri: flokkr on Sveinn Úlfsson, str. 2 (Skj. A I 397; B I 365):(12) Haldórr skvaldri:Útfarardrápa, str. 6 (Skj. A I 487; B I 459):(13) Haldórr skvaldri: fragment on Haraldr gilli, str. 5 (Skj. A I 489; B I 461):(14) ﬁórarinn stuttfeldr: Stuttfeldardrápa, str. 2 (Skj. A I 490; B I 462):(15) Snorri Sturluson: Háttatal, str. 12 (stál ) (Skj. A II 55; B II 64):(16) Óláfr hvítaskáld: Hrynhenda on King Hákon and Earl Skuli, str. 12 (Skj. A
II 97; B II 108):

Hafi Kristr konungs o≈nd (7 occurrences)(1) Hallfre›r vandræ›askáld: Erfidrápa on Óláfr Tryggvason, str. 29 (Skj. A I 166;B I 157):
Kœns hafi Kristr enn hreini
konungs o≈nd ofar lo≈ndum!

May the pure Christ havethe king’s soul above the earth!

(2) Sigvatr ﬁór›arson: Erfidrápa on St Óláfr, str. 22 (Skj. A I 264; B I 244):Fe›r Magnúss bi›k fagna
flóttskjo≈rrum go› dróttin.

I pray to God the Lord that he receive
Magnus’s father, who is loath to flee.

(3) Stúfr ﬁór›arson: Stúfsdrápa on Haraldr har›rá›i, klofastef (Stúfr 2/8, 3/8, 6/4) (Skj. A I 404–05; B I 373–74):

Hafi ríks ﬂars vel líkar
vist of aldr me› Kristi
Haralds o≈nd ofar lo≈ndum!

May the mighty Haraldr’s soul havean eternal gratifying dwellingwith Christ above the earth!

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(4–6) Arnórr ﬁór›arson jarlaskáld: Ro≈gnvaldsdrápa, str. 3; Erfikvæ›i on Earlﬁórfinnr, str. 24–25 and on Haraldr har›rá›i, str. 19 (Skj. A I 332, 348, 353; B I
306, 321, 326):

Sa›r stillir, hjalp snjo≈llum,
sóltjalda, Ro≈gnvaldi!
. . . inndróttar . . .
ﬂeim hjalpi go› geymi!
Ættbœti firr ítran
allríks, en bi›k líkna
trúra tyggja, d‡rum
Torf-Einars go› meinum!
Bœnir hefk fyr beini
bragna falls vi› snjallan
Girkja vo≈r› ok Gar›a;gjo≈f launak svá jo≈fri.

True ruler of heaven,help valiant Ro≈gnvaldr!
God help thisprotector of the bodyguard!
God, free the kin of
the mighty Torf-Einarr from all evil!
I pray for grace
for the glorious prince.
I lift my prayers to the glorious protectorof Greece and Gar›ar
for the ruler of men.
Thus I reward the king.

Líkn gefi læknir
lofa›r fri›rofa
heims hafljóma
hár lausnari!

May the praised Saviour
grant his grace
to the noble
foe of gold!

(7) Einarr Skúlason: Haraldsdrápa, poem in tøglag on Haraldr gilli, str. 3 (Skj. A I
457; B I 425):

Sem gu› ﬂengill (5 occurrences)(1) Gunnlaugr ormstunga: poem on Ethelred, stef (Skj. A I 194; B I 184):
Herr sésk allr vi› o≈rva
Englands sem go› ﬂengil;
ætt l‡tr grams ok gumna
gunnbrá›s A›alrá›i.

The whole host fears the generous kingof England as God;the family of the warlike king and the raceof men bow before Ethelred(Trans. Foote and Quirk)(2–3) Hallvar›r háreksblesi: Knutsdrápa, str. 7 and 8 (Skj. A I 318; B I 294):

Esat und jar›ar ho≈slu. . . munka valdimæringr an ﬂú næri.
Knútr verr jo≈r› sem ítran
alls dróttinn sal fjalla.

No famous man under the hazel of the world is
closer to the ruler of monks (God) than you.
Knútr protects his country as the Lord of all(protects) the splendid hall of the mountains (heaven).

(4) ﬁórarinn loftunga: Ho≈fu›lausn, stef (Skj. A I 322; B I 298):

Knútr verr grund sem gætir
Grikklands himinríki.

Knútr protects his land as the keeper ofGreece (protects) the realm of heaven.

SCALDIC STUDIES

119(5) Arnórr ﬁór›arson jarlaskáld: Hrynhenda, str. 19 (Skj. A I 337, B I 310):

Ey›endr frák at elska ﬂjó›ir. . . grœ›i lostins go›i et næsta
geima Vals í ﬂessum heimi.

NOTES

Sure it is that all the people ever,wrecker of the foam-flecked (ships) . . .
love thee next to God above in heaven.
(Trans. Hollander)

I refer to my thesis of 1982, Det norrøne fyrstediktet, where I have defined this corpus
in detail. I have been criticised for not including poems such as Ynglingatal or ‘Haraldskvæ›i ’,and though this criticism is not unjustified, the purpose of such exclusions, namely toestablish a collection of one genre as homogeneous as possible (cf. Fidjestøl 1982, 179–82),
is in the present context an obvious advantage. For the present study I have included nos.
1–95 in the corpus list (Fidjestøl 1982, 170–75). One item has been excluded from it,
however, namely ‘Øxarflokkr’ by Einarr Skúlason (no. 72). In the original corpus list it was
accepted with some doubt (Fidjestøl 1982, 156), and in the present context it can be seen
to be too strongly biased, as it more or less amounts to a scaldic exercise in the use of
mythological kennings, concentrating on the goddess Freyja.
2 Most occurrences are proper nouns, but appellatives like áss or regin, along withkennings for gods, have been included. Names of valkyries are also included, except hildr
and gunnr, which may be common nouns denoting ‘war’. Giantesses are not included,
partly because it is uncertain to what extent a kenning of the type trollkvenna byrr carried
heathen connotations. Ger›r has been included, however, as an unambiguously mythological figure.
3 The whole material from my court poetry corpus (cf. note 1) is quoted in the Appendix,
with references to Finnur Jónsson’s edition (1912–15). Further material from lausavísur
may be found in Lange 1958, 32. Nos. 1–5 are discussed in Fidjestøl 1991, 117–18, which
is an article largely treating similar problems to those in the present article, but concentrating on the heathen period.
4 It should be noted that sem go› ﬂengil is an emendation (by Jón ﬁorkelsson), acceptedby all. The manuscripts have sem gu›s eingill (Sth. perg. 18, 4to) or sem gu›s ﬂeingils (AM557, 4to). Cf. Hofmann 1955, 53.
5 The argument of ó›al is also encountered in Sigvatr’s stanza on St Óláfr discussed
below, and it is a motive in the saga, where the exiled king’s duty to recover his ó›al ispresented in a vision as a divine calling (Snorri’s Óláfs saga helga ch. 188; ÍF XXVII, 340–
41).
6 I think that modern minds often underrate the importance of authority in the acceptanceor rejection of a religion and misinterpret its effect as a lack of commitment on the part ofthe convert. Even St Augustine declared that his belief was dependent on the authority of
the church: ‘Ich würde dem Evangelium keinen Glauben schenken, wenn mich nicht die
Autorität der Kirche dazu bestimmen würde’ (quoted from Michael Schmaus, Die
psychologische Trinitätslehre des Hl. Augustinus (1927), 171).
1

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BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS

Arnold, Thomas (ed.). 1965. Memorials of St. Edmund’s Abbey. Vol. 1 (Rerum britannicarum
medii ævi scriptores 96:1). [Reprint of original edition of 1890]
Christophersen, Axel. 1992. ‘Olavskirke, Olavskult og Trondheims tidlige kirketopografi—
problem og perspektiver.’ In Suphellen, Steinar (ed.). Kongsmenn og krossmenn. Festskrift
til Grethe Authén Blom, 39–67.
Edwards, Diana C. 1982–83. ‘Christian and pagan references in eleventh-century Norse
poetry: The case of Arnórr jarlaskáld’, Saga-Book 21, 34–53.
Faulkes, Anthony (trans.). 1987. Snorri Sturluson. Edda.
Fidjestøl, Bjarne. 1975. ‘Kongetruskap og gullets makt. Om nokre Bibel-allusjonar hjå
Sigvat skald’, Maal og Minne, 4–11.
Fidjestøl, Bjarne. 1982. Det norrøne fyrstediktet.
Fidjestøl, Bjarne. 1991. ‘Skaldediktinga og trusskiftet. Med tankar om litterær form som
historisk kjelde.’ In Steinsland , Gro et al. (ed.). Nordisk hedendom. Et symposium, 113–
31. [Also published in English in Proceedings of the Seventh Biennal Conference ofTeachers of Scandinavian Studies in Great Britain and Northern Ireland 1987, 58–77]
Finnur Jónsson. 1920. Den oldnorske og oldislandske litteraturs historie I. 2nd ed.
Fritzner, Johan. 1886–96. Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog I–III.
Heimskringla. 1941–51. Ed. Bjarni A›albjarnarson. ÍF XXVI–XXVIII.
Hoffmann, Erich. 1975. Die heiligen Könige bei den Angelsachsen und den skandinavischen
Völkern. Königsheiliger und Königshaus.
Hofmann, Dietrich. 1955. Nordisch–englische Lehnbeziehungen der Wikingerzeit.
ÍF = Íslenzk fornrit. 1933– .
Lange, Wolfgang. 1958. Studien zur christlichen Dichtung der Nordgermanen 1000–1200.
LP = Finnur Jónsson. 1931. Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis. Ordbog
over det norsk–islandske skjaldesprog oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbjörn Egilsson. Revised ed.
Naumann, Hans-Peter. 1986. ‘Nordische Kreuzzugsdichtung.’ In Festschrift für Oskar
Bandle zum 60. Geburtstag am 11. januar 1986. Ed. Hans-Peter Naumann (Beiträge zur
nordischen Philologie 15), 175–89.
Magerøy, Hallvard. 1948. Glælognskvida av Toraren Lovtunge.
Noreen, Erik. 1926. Den norsk–isländska poesien.
Paasche, Fredrik. 1914. Kristendom og kvad. En studie i norrøn middelalder. [Reprinted in
Paasche, Fredrik. 1948. Hedenskap og kristendom. Studier i norrøn middelalder]
PL = Patrologiæ cursus completus . Series Latina . 1 844 – 64 . Ed . J . Migne .
Segelberg, E. 1972. ‘God help his soul.’ In Ex Orbe Religionum. Studia Geo Widengren,1 6 1– 76 .
Skj. = Finnur Jónsson (ed.). 1912–15. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning A I–II (‘Tekst
efter håndskrifterne’), B I–II (‘Rettet tekst’). [Reprinted Copenhagen 1967–73]
Stefán Einarsson. 1936. Review of de Vries 1934 in Modern Language Notes 51, 194–95.
Vries, Jan de. 1934. De skaldenkenningen met mythologischen inhoud.
Wolf, Alois. 1959. ‘Olaf Tryggvason und die Christianisierung des Nordens’, Innsbrucker
Beiträge zur Kulturvissenschaft 6, 9–32.

URSULA DRONKETPAGAN BELIEFS AND CHRISTIAN IMPACT:THE CONTRIBUTION OF EDDIC STUDIESWO Eddic poems are central to the study of pagan and Christian impact in the
Norse and Anglo-Celtic world, Vo≈luspá ‘The sibyl’s prophecy’, and Rígsﬂula‘The rigmarole of Rígr’, one a religious, the other a political poem. Vo≈luspá tellsof the cosmic cycle: the birth of the world and the gods is seen to pass into their
death, and from that death a fresh world, younger gods, spring. The theologicalclimax of the poem—if I may call it so—is the sacrifice of Baldr. Rígsﬂula tellsof the progress of man from Thrall to Earl to King, a progress genetically inspiredby a god. I shall concentrate on these two poems.
For Vo≈luspá we follow the Codex Regius (c.1275). Apart from some obvious
scribal interference and error, it presents a meticulous text, the closest we shallever get to that of the original poem. The Hauksbók text (c.1350) owes its origin
to Snorri. He, or a scribe under his direction, altered a text closely similar to thatof the Codex Regius, in order to fit certain stanzas where he wanted them in
Gylfaginning. The variant stanza-sequence in the central section of the poem inthe Hauksbók text—the most notorious difference from the Codex Regius text
(stanzas 21–43)—cannot be shown to have any link with Snorri’s interests, but it
can be shown to be a distortion of the sequence preserved in the Codex Regius.
Vo≈luspá is a unique poem in Norse: unique in its sibylline framework, in its
logically ordered sequence of ideas, in its control of sub-themes. In the use of
double meaning and hidden meaning it is akin to the subtlest scaldic verse of thetenth century, and the extreme allusiveness of reference to mythological material—material often otherwise unknown to us—indicates an audience deeply
versed in pagan legend and, no doubt, fluent in citing it themselves. At the sametime there are two pieces of Christian homiletic matter cleverly woven into thepoem, the scene of sinners (stanza 39) in the sibyl’s vision, plunging through therivers of death, and the threatening prophecy of the imminent self-destruction of
the world through the violence and vice of men: ‘Brother will fight brother—they
will kill each other’ (stanza 44). Neither of these themes of sin have I found in
Norse pagan tradition outside Vo≈luspá.
One could argue that these two Christian motifs represent two interpolations by
a Norse Christian poet into a purely pagan Vo≈luspá, and that it is only by anaccident of preservation that we do not have other Norse poems similar toVo≈luspá, totally pagan in content. The poetic skills and scope of heathen sibyls
might well have developed greatly since 845, when the lady Ota simply ‘gave heranswers’ to a questioning audience at her séances on the high altar of Clonmacnoise.

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I do not deny these possibilities, but I am led by a few pieces of possible evidence
in the text of the poem to argue otherwise. I shall give, first, categorical statementsof what I think to be the case, and then attempt to give reasons for them.
Vo≈luspá arises from Christian impact on Norse pagan beliefs: without Christianity as an intellectual pace-setter, there would have been no Vo≈luspá such as wehave it. But the poem, though it was designed under Christian intellectual influence, was designed for pagan, not for Christian ends. The poet adapted Christiangenres and Christian theological subtleties to give finer articulation to pagan
material: to surpass the rough, archaic modes of Vafﬂrú›nismál and Lokasenna
while preserving their religious inheritance. Vo≈luspá would originate—I suggest—in the recognition that much of Christian doctrine had its counterpart in
Norse: the poet and his circle might be sustained by the conviction that there wasno need for a Norseman to adopt Christianity in order to have a religion just as
good—a situation adumbrated by Helmut de Boor sixty years ago (‘Die religiöse
Sprache der Vo≈luspá und verwandter Denkmäler’, in Deutsche Islandforschung,ed. Walther H. Vogt (1930) I, 68–142).
My reasons for these neo-pagan statements lie in the text.
One might suppose that the close of the poem would point to the poem’s
purpose. Take, for example, stanza 63, the third stanza from the end of the poem.
Hœnir probes the future by sacred lottery: he picks out a twig wet with sacrificial
blood—a hlautvi›r. Like a good Norse architect planning a dwelling-place inpagan times, he uses divination to find the most auspicious site (see Kormáks sagach. 2, Íslenzk fornrit VIII (1939), 205). Hœnir finds the most suitable site for the
dwelling-place of the two sons of the brothers Baldr and Ho≈›r to be in the ‘wide
realm of the winds’, that is, in heaven. This is a new location for Norse gods, but
one to which the Christian God is well accustomed. We know no son of Ho≈›r, but
Snorri attributes a son, Forseti, to Baldr. He is a god, we are told in Grímnismálstanza 15, ‘who puts all dissensions to sleep’. And his dazzling home, Glitnir,roofed with silver and raised on pillars of gold, mirrors the moonlit and sunlit
heavens destined for him. Like the Christian God, he will administer justice andpeace from above.
But who is Hœnir? Why is the focus upon him here? He is to be identified asthe Æsir’s high priest of sacrifice, whose task it is to effect all the ‘dangerous
transitions from death to life’, the sacred godfather who sings to awaken life atbirth and rebirth. Vedic ritual texts describe very precisely the functions of sucha high priest, the ‘singer’, ‘crowing cock’, ‘bird of the sun’, who heralds the dawn
(for references and commentary see A. K. Coomaraswamy, ‘The sun-kiss’, Journal of the American Oriental Society LX (1940) 49–51). Hœnir, whose namerelates him to the ‘crowing cock’, gave ó›r ‘the living spirit of the mind’ to Askr
and Embla, the first twigs of mankind in the old world (Vo≈luspá stanza 18). In the

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123

new world Hœnir presides over the destiny of the sons of the gods who have risen
from death and ensures for them life in a limitless heaven. This optimistic close
draws upon pagan and Christian concepts.
I suggested that Christian theology had influenced Vo≈luspá. I would see suchinfluence in the role of Loki in the poem. In Lokasenna his role is savage andminatory, played at the front of the stage. In Vo≈luspá he is in the background, inthe shadow of his deeds, until his hostility is open at Ragnaro≈k. While the gods
are still weeping for Baldr’s death (stanza 33), the vo≈lva has a vision of a figurein the underworld, lying in fetters: it is ‘recognizable’ (áﬂekkr ) as that of the
malevolent Loki—the one creature who would not weep for Baldr. Why does thepoet use this term áﬂekkr ? I suggest the term relates to the fact that Loki, when
he refused to weep Baldr out of Hel, disguised himself (as a giantess) and called
himself ﬁo≈kk, ‘Thanks’, ‘Contented Acceptance’. The vo≈lva ’s term, áﬂekkr, is aplay upon Loki’s disguise-name, ﬁo≈kk, and upon the fact that he is now no longer
disguised, but recognizable. By calling himself ﬁo≈kk, Loki is embodying the‘Thanks’, the Deo gratias that the Christians give, for the sacrificial death uponwhich the redemption, the renewal of life after death, depends. Loki has twice
committed the felix culpa that secures redemption. Baldr had two chances of
escaping death, and Loki foiled both of them. He found the mistletoe that could
kill him, and he refused to weep him out of Hel. In this Loki is quite unlike theDevil, who sent a dream to Pilate’s wife, so that she begged her husband to have‘nothing to do with that just man’. Had she won her plea, Christ would have been
uncrucified. In a Carolingian commentary on Matthew 17: 19 (attributed wrongly
to Bede: In Matthaei evangelium expositio, Patrologiæ cursus completus. Series
Latina, ed. J. Migne (1844–64), LXXXXII, col. 121) the commentator notes that
Satan was terrified that Christ would harrow Hell and make him lose his kingdom
of death. On that account he tried to stop the crucifixion, using Pilate’s wife as his
instrument. Augustine debated anxiously, in considering predestination, what God
would have done if Judas had chosen to yield to grace and had refused to betray
Christ. God would then have had to find some grace that Judas would refuse, sothat the crucifixion could take place: it was indispensable.
The elaborate game of Loki and Baldr’s death was, I suggest, provoked by thisChristian dilemma: the ambiguous trickster Loki becomes almost heroic in his
persistence in achieving the necessary death of Baldr—an irony the Norsemen
would greatly enjoy. It is sometimes said that the sequence of events in thecharade of Baldr’s death in Gylfaginning is not known from any Norse poem ofheathen provenance. This is contradicted by the term áﬂekkr, which refers to theepisode of ‘ﬁo≈kk the giantess’ and by the ambivalent phrasing of á gengoz ei›ar‘oaths were violated’, ‘oaths paid for oaths’ (stanza 26), where allusion is madeto the oaths sworn to spare Baldr, which are effectively cancelled to compensate

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for the oaths broken in the killing of the giant builder (a structural equivalence no
doubt devised by the poet of Vo≈luspá ). Vo≈luspá thus confirms two motifs fundamental to the charade of Baldr’s death as related in Gylfaginning : the swearing ofoaths to save Baldr from death, and Loki’s refusal to weep for him. The charade
might well, therefore, be a development of the late heathen period.
I have suggested that Vo≈luspá was influenced by Christian genres. The liturgical
Cantus Sibyllae, prophesying the end of the world, was introduced into the Church
service, in England and elsewhere, from the ninth century onwards, and at least
one substantial Latin Sibylline Oracle, the Prophetiae Sibillae Magae, survives
from the same period: it is extant in three manuscripts, one of which, dating fromthe ninth century, can be associated with the area of Tours. The scholarly links
between Tours and York were strong: Alcuin of York was abbot of Tours from
794 to 804. It is conceivable that a Latin form of the Sibylline Oracle, as well asthat of the Cantus Sibyllae, was known in Anglo-Saxon England.
There are many parallels between Vo≈luspá and the Sibylline Oracles, both
Latin and Greek, but their more remarkable differences suggest that if the poetof Vo≈luspá knew the Christian sibylline mode, s/he remodelled it on the lines of
Norse pagan sibylline tradition, in the style of a vo≈lva’s séance. Nowhere in Latin
or Greek sibylline tradition is there an interplay of sibylline voices, as in Vo≈luspá,
where the vo≈lva in the séance—‘I’—is informed by a spirit vo≈lva—‘she’. The
Christian sibyl is informed only by God. Nor is the crucifixion of Christ madestructurally central to any of the Sibylline Oracles, as the sacrifice of Baldr—
bló›ogr tívorr—is made central to the structure of Vo≈luspá. The vision of thegleaming mistletoe (stanza 31) foretells not only the sacrifice, but the certainty of
return. The Sibylline Oracles are more profoundly concerned with the loss ofredemption through human sin than with its certainty. By contrast Vo≈luspá is an‘Easter poem’.
If any of my suggestions as to the influence Christian thought upon Vo≈luspá areat all correct, we have to reckon with a deep absorption of Christian doctrine ina Norse-speaking community, which maintained its own Norse religious traditionsin the wider political context of a Christian society.
For Rígsﬂula the context of composition may not have been very dissimilar fromthat of Vo≈luspá, but there is no evidence whatever of Norse religious partisanshipin the poet’s behaviour, as there is in Vo≈luspá. Rígsﬂula is a political poem, forwhich the poet has marshalled only those Norse pagan religious traditions which
relate to the structure of society and its politics. He sketches a social history of
man and offers a blue-print for ideal kingship.
In order to do this, he employs some of the most archaic material in IndoEuropean record—to him, no doubt, familiar, old, native stuff—and gives it amodern vitality, that of his own contemporary world. There are the three secularEDDIC STUDIES

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classes, serf, free commoner, nobleman, that we see in the oldest Germanic laws,
but they are not presented as a static system which came into being all at the same
moment of time, like the Indian classes formed from the cosmic body of Purus≥a,or the Biblical classes from the sons of Noah. In Rígsﬂula the three classes are seen
as an evolving family: upon Thrall’s ardent, and arduous, labour the prosperity ofChurl is based, and upon Churl’s prosperity the power of Earl is based. Neither
Churl nor Earl is begotten before the class that precedes him has been established.
There is a certain economic realism in this, for wealth is based on labour, and rankfollows wealth. In Anglo-Danish laws of the early eleventh century it was provided that a ceorl could attain the rank of ﬂegn if he possessed five hides of land,
or a merchant if he made three profitable voyages. The progress of man in
Rígsﬂula would seem to reflect just such a society of ‘upward social mobility’ (forvivid discussion and ample reference see W. G. Runciman, ‘Accelerating social
mobility: the case of Anglo-Saxon England’, Past and present CIV (1984) 3–30).
Alongside this modernity the poet has maintained the archaic tradition of classcolour-symbolism, black for the serf, red for the warrior-farmer, white for thepriest-king (see G. Dumézil, ‘La Rígsﬂula et la structure sociale indo-européenne’,
Revue de l’histoire des religions CLIV (1958) 1–9). The poet has not, however,related the symbolic colour to the garments or other trappings of the serf or farmer
or aristocrat, as is usual in other records; he has depicted it in the pigmentation of
the babies, the first Thrall being black-skinned, the first Churl being ruddycheeked and red-haired, the first Earl being shiningly fair. The poet has madethese complexions seem naturalistic, in accord with the life each class will lead—muddy or muscular or sportif—but that the three-colour schema for the babies wasitself older than the poem is shown by the fact that the other motifs in thedescriptions of the babies—their different eyes, their swaddling bands—have had
to be developed by the poet himself in a tripartite schema for which there is no
traditional evidence: only Earl’s eyes have ancient authority behind them.
The poet’s plan is to show the king as the crown of the three human estates. To
this end, he combines two ancient Norse myths, a myth of Heimdallr and a mythof Ó›inn. Heimdallr is progenitor of all mankind in its different estates (Vo≈luspá
stanza 1; Hyndlolió› stanza 43). His teaching is of procreation. Ó›inn is ancestor
and patron only of aristocratic houses, of earls and kings (Hárbar›slió› stanza 24;
Háleygjatal ). By this conjunction of Heimdallr and Ó›inn the poet can make allmen ‘sons of God’ and give to one man only—the highest—‘the divine authority
to rule’.
For his progenitor god the poet adopts the exotic name Rígr, the Irish term for‘king’. The name points to the poem’s climax, the establishment of the first kingin the Norse world. In his name the union of human and divine will be explicit.
Though Rígr ensures the conception of the archetypal babies of all three classes,

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he only acknowledges as son, and gives his name to, one, and that is Earl. He
appears to him, teaches him runes, names him Rígr and sends him to conquer lands
by war. Rígr iarl, however, is not the ultimate king. He is outclassed by his
youngest son, whose name, Konr ungr ‘Young Noblekin’, foreshadows the future
title konungr. Konr ungr defeats Rígr iarl in runic contest and wins from him, asa rightful inheritance, the name of Rígr. He now has two royal names, one byhuman baptism as a scion of noble blood—the Germanic peoples took their kingsfrom the nobility, Tacitus tells us (Germania ch. 7)—and one by divine gift: Rígr
Konr ungr. By so lucidly presenting the persona geminata of the ideal king, thepoet of Rígsﬂula associates himself with the political ideals of kingship of thetenth and eleventh centuries in the Ottonian courts, Anglo-Saxon England, andNormandy (see E. H. Kantorowicz, The king’s two bodies: a study in mediaeval
political theology (1957), 60–61; C. Carozzi in Adalbéron de Laon: poème au Roi
Robert. Introduction, édition et traduction (1979), cxix–cxxx).
I have boldly spoken of Rígr Konr ungr as the ‘crown of the three estates’, the‘ideal king’ with whom the poem culminates. But this is, of course, a reconstruction, because the end of the poem is lost. The last extant stanza contains part ofthe speech of an irate crow, who is urging Konr ungr to feel envy for the richVikings Danr and Danpr. She hopes, no doubt, that he will take up arms againstthem and win their lands, that he will follow in the footsteps of his father, Rígr iarl.
Snorri Sturluson and Arngrímur Jónsson preserve versions of a Danish legendary genealogy which contain the names Danr and Danpr and Rígr and no doubt
relate to the lost ending of Rígsﬂula (see Ynglinga saga ch. 17, Íslenzk fornrit
XXVI (1941), 34–35, where Arngrímur’s version is summarized in the notes).
Snorri adds that Rígr ‘was the first to be called konungr in the Norse tongue (ádanska tungu)’ and names Rígr ’s son as Danpr konungr. Snorri does not say whom
Rígr married. Arngrímur gives Dana as the name of Rígr ’s wife, daughter ofDanpr.
In the light of these two texts, and of the character of Konr ungr portrayed in
Rígsﬂula, I would suggest that Konr ungr rejects the crow’s warlike plans for
attacking Danr and Danpr. However, when she mentions that Danpr has a wise andlovely daughter, Dana, his interest is stirred. Following in his grandfather’sfootsteps, he approaches Dana’s home—where the doors will be wide open—andwins her hand by rá› more courtly than that of the archaic old god. Behind thisromantic finale lies the pattern of a myth. Rígr Konr ungr creates the first kingdom
for himself by exogamy: he weds Denmark as Ó›inn wedded Jo≈r›. But he brings
with him, with the new title, ‘King’, a cultural revolution. He is not a swashbuckling Viking: he knows the runes of life—ævinrúnar ok aldrrúnar—for saving men
and blunting swords (stanza 43). He is a giant with the strength of eight men, but
he only fights with the power of his mind. Compounded of age-old Norse fictions,

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Rígr Konr ungr introduces the modern image of Christ-centred kingship (Kantorowicz,
op. cit. ch. 3) to the North.
The evidence of Christian impact upon pagan Norse beliefs in the Eddic verseof Vo≈luspá and Rígsﬂula is very considerable. The experience of acquaintancewith Christian society and religion stimulated a reappraisal of native intellectual
ideals on the part of Norsemen and their poets. With their own materials they madetheir own versions of what they learned from their Christian neighbours. Whilethey were learning, they were also practising, steadily, subtly and flexibly, theirown poetic arts. Only these circumstances can, I suggest, explain the depth andbrilliance of the poems.
NOTE

These brief pages are drawn from written work on Vo≈luspá and Rígsﬂula already in press
for The Poetic Edda, vol. II. I have not, therefore, reproduced here the full documentation.
Relevant documentation already published will be found in ‘V–luspá and sibylline traditions’, in Latin Culture and Medieval Germanic Europe. Proceedings of the First Germania
Latina Conference held at the University of Groningen, 26 May 1989 (1992), 3–23, and in‘ Eddic poetry as a source for the history of Germanic religion’, in Germanische
Religionsgeschichte. Quellen und Quellenprobleme. Ed. Heinrich Beck, Detlev Ellmers
and Kurt Schier (1992), 656–84. References to poems of the Elder Edda are to the editionof Hans Kuhn, Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern I, 1962.

128

ELSE ROESDAHLELSE ROESDAHLSPAGAN BELIEFS, CHRISTIAN IMPACT AND
ARCHAEOLOGY—A DANISH VIEW

INCE the manuscripts and the great editions of the Eddas became available tothe learned world much thought has been given to pagan Scandinavian beliefs. The dramas of pagan mythology have long fascinated both Scandinavia andthe rest of Europe, and for some time—especially during the nineteenth century—
the pagan pantheon even produced subjects for great painters.
But historical painting of gods and Vikings, sadly, came to an end, partly
because of the development of archaeology as an academic discipline during thesecond half of the nineteenth century. There were many great discoveries such as
the Mammen grave in 1868 and the boat-burials of Gokstad and Oseberg in 1880
and 1904. Contemporary artefacts could now be identified and shown in museums, and painters were much criticized for not being exact in every detail.
Around the turn of the century, however, there seems often to have been a happy
relationship between archaeologists dealing with the remains of the late pagan
period (graves, pagan symbols, iconography etc.) and Old Norse philologists.
Archaeologists, such as Oscar Almgren in 1904, seriously investigated the possibility of interpreting their material (burial-customs for example) against thebackground of a competent knowledge of Old Norse literature. But as time wenton, archaeology became much more concerned with description, typology, dating,function, possible international connections, and, much later, with society,than with religious interpretation. This was partly a result of source-criticism of
Old Norse and other medieval texts by the Weibull brothers and others in the earlytwentieth century, though this criticism was mainly concerned with matters relating to the political history of the Northern countries. A serious blow to the use of
Old Norse sources for archaeological interpretation came in 1966 with Olaf
Olsen’s thesis Hørg, hov og kirke. Further, prehistoric archaeologists in Scandinavia who dealt with artefacts of the Viking period generally had very little
familiarity with written sources. Anxious to escape criticism, they avoided Old
Norse literature; links with philology were broken.
Although this is a reasonably fair general description of the situation in Scandinavia, there were, of course, exceptions. After the inception of the Viking
Congresses in 1949, archaeologists at them came to realize that written material
might conceivably be useful in the interpretation of archaeological material.
Gradually other disciplines in their turn discovered that archaeology could sometimes be helpful to them, not least in relation to such matters as the problems ofpagan belief and the conversion.

PAGAN BELIEFS, CHRISTIAN IMPACT AND ARCHAEOLOGY 129
But on the whole there was little interest in archaeology on the part of students
outside this select band, save that nice objects—such as the ferocious animal-head
posts from the Oseberg grave, the figure of Freyr from Rällinge, indeed any gravewith rich furnishings—were deemed useful illustrations with which to enliven
articles and books. There was little effort to co-operate with archaeologists to usematerial culture as a source for a better understanding of Scandinavian paganism.
And paganism, of course, continued to fascinate both the lay and the learned world.
One of the interesting points about archaeological material is that it is contemporary, that more of it is discovered day by day, and that it can be seen andtouched. Objects and monuments can be investigated. They are ‘real’. But for our
purposes they must also ‘talk’. They must be described and dated, and theninterpreted in relation to our individual studies. And as with written texts they areoften susceptible to varied interpretations. The scholar who tries to marry archaeological material to written sources (be they contemporary European, or later Norseor Danish) often gets into trouble, because the texts were written for purposes
other than description and explanation of material expressions of pagan beliefs.
Hard work in trying to understand each other is necessary before a happy union
between archaeology and other disciplines can be brought about and a better
understanding of pagan beliefs achieved.
Recent years, however, have seen a great growth in interdisciplinary and international co-operation, both inside and outside formal frameworks. This has opened
the eyes of archaeologists and, so it seems, of scholars in some other disciplines
to the advantages of using each other’s results—and, more importantly, of speaking and working together too (e.g. Steinsland 1986; Sawyer, Sawyer and Wood
1987; Iversen 1991; Steinsland, Drobin, Pentikäinen and Meulengracht Sørensen
1991; Nilsson 1992). This has, for archaeology, resulted in a move towards
broader contextual interpretation as a supplement to the usual archaeologicalmethods of describing and dating, finding parallels and plotting distribution patterns.
Much recent work on Scandinavian archaeological material concerned withdating, distribution patterns and cultural identity has also produced a more solid
basis on which scholars in different disciplines can work together on pagan beliefs
and the conversion. Perhaps the most important innovation has been the use ofdendrochronology by which one can date the exact felling-year of a piece oftimber used in a construction. One of the most significant dates provided by thismethod concerns the burial-chamber in the north mound in Jelling: it was, with ahigh degree of probability, closed in the year 958–59 (Christensen and Krogh1987). It was undoubtedly here that the last pagan king of Denmark, Gorm, wasburied with splendid grave-goods in Denmark’s largest burial-mound, following
pagan burial-customs. He was buried only a few years before Denmark was
declared Christian (which was in about the year 965) by his son, the man who musthave been responsible for the pagan burial, and who made Jelling into an enor-

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mous dynastic and religious monument park, a true conversion-period monument
park. I shall return to Jelling—as this exact year (958–59) provided bydendrochronology gives ample opportunity to investigate very late paganism andvery early Christianity in the precise milieu in which decisions were taken.
Likewise, other exact dendrochronological dates—such as the dating of the Mammen
grave to 970–71 (Andersen 1991), and the dating of Trelleborg and Fyrkat, andtheir cemeteries, to c.980 (Bonde and Christensen 1982; Christensen and Bonde1991)—provide totally new possibilities for the understanding of the process ofChristianization in Denmark (cf. Roesdahl 1982, 171–83; 1991, 298–300).
Dendrochronology has so far been mainly applied to Viking-Age material in
Denmark and south Scandinavia, where oak was abundant. But work in thedendrochronological laboratory at the Danish National Museum has provided
dates for some of the main Norwegian royal or aristocratic pagan burials: Oseberg(834), Gokstad and Tune (both c.900–05; Bonde, forthcoming). This is of theutmost interest for students of pagan beliefs, and indeed for nearly all Viking
studies.
Normal archaeological work on graves and grave-monuments, which together
with symbolic objects such as the Thor’s hammers and other miniature tools are
the main archaeological sources for paganism, have also resulted in a much better
chronological framework for the various types of graves. We can now to someextent trace the development of burial-customs. The seemingly enormous mixture
and variation in Scandinavian Viking-Age burial-customs begin to make sensewhen it is realized that certain burial-types mainly belong to particular regions
within Scandinavia and differ from those found elsewhere and at other times.
Pagan burials were not the same throughout Scandinavia, nor were they the same
throughout the Viking Age, nor did they apply to all strata of society. This ishardly surprising, considering the length of the Viking Age, the enormous extent
of Scandinavia and the great social differences within the whole area and period.
Moreover, in interpreting their material, archaeologists have become much
more aware that the various Scandinavian regions had different external connections
and were influenced by different parts of the world. Norway mainly looked west
(and south), Denmark mainly looked south (and west)—and central Sweden
turned mainly to the east. This is attested by all manner of archaeological material,
including imported objects themselves (e.g. From Viking to Crusader 1992, cat.
nos. 119–43). We should, therefore, remember that objects and ideas often travel
together. The archaeological material of Viking central Sweden is, for example,
oriented very much to the east—as has recently been emphasized by the fascinating
excavations in Sigtuna (Tesch 1990). Here much eastern European material has
been found, including objects from the Kiev region and from the Mediterranean,finds which include such religious symbols as the so-called resurrection eggs
from the Kiev region (glazed clay eggs) and pendant crosses of Byzantine type.

PAGAN BELIEFS, CHRISTIAN IMPACT AND ARCHAEOLOGY 131
Because of these chronological and regional variations, it would be preferable
first to apply information from West Norse literature to archaeological material inwest and south Scandinavia and vice versa, and not so generally to central
Swedish material, although such comparisons may be tempting as the material
culture there is so rich and generally the best known to scholars of other disciplines. This is especially true of the Birka material. But many of the ideas present
in Viking-Age Birka may well have been semi-Russian, as were the dress andornaments of some of the people buried there (Hägg 1983).
After this introduction I shall present some selected archaeologically-based
topics, the problems of which will only be solved, or fully illuminated, if scholars
from more than one discipline work on them—and work together on them. The
problems raised by modern archaeology in relation to pagan belief and Christian
impact nearly always require interdisciplinary co-operation.
Is it possible to relate concepts of death and after-life known from West Norse orDanish sources to certain burial-customs?
Viking-Age burial-customs in Scandinavia are manifold, as are the concepts ofdeath in the written sources. But one male burial-rite, the horsemen’s graves of theearly to mid-tenth century (the late pagan period), stands out. Such graves areespecially well known in Denmark, but also occur in Norway, Iceland and Sweden.
These are clearly upper-class graves, often laid down in timbered burial-chambers,
the man accompanied by standard grave-goods consisting of riding-equipment(horse, harness, stirrups, spurs), weapons (sword and spear, sometimes an axe, butrarely bow and arrow, which were not upper-class weapons), items of leisure(such as gaming-boards and hunting-dogs), food in containers and various small
necessities such as a knife and whetstone. No mail-coat or helmet is known in
Denmark; indeed they are only found in one Viking-Age grave at Gjermundbu insouthern Norway.
This burial-type is so stereotyped that it probably relates to a distinct social
stratum and to specific religious beliefs about an after-life. Could it be that thiswas related to the idea that dead heroes go to Odin’s Valhalla? They would needtravel on horse, with food for the journey and the right equipment for the sort oflife they would live there, a life of fighting and feasting (mail-coat and helmet
being unnecessary and therefore not put in the grave?). In the grand ship-burials,
like the Gokstad burial, the ship may have been thought a necessary means oftransport for some of the way—it was to a large extent the obvious means oftransport for the great chieftains of Viking-Age Scandinavia (Ellmers 1980;
Roesdahl 1983; Steinsland 1990a; Näsman 1991).
I can note in passing that the wives of these men also had splendid andstereotyped burials, with waggon-bodies as coffins and fine grave-goods. Verylittle is known from Old Norse sources about the kind of after-life women were

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assumed to have had, but judging from the graves it seems to have been comfortable and to have included means of travel—hence the waggon body instead of awhole waggon (e.g. Roesdahl 1982, 169–70; Müller-Wille 1985; Steinsland 1990b).
Was there a late pagan revival just before the introduction of Christianity?
The grandest of the Danish horsemen’s burials was probably in the north moundin Jelling and this must have been the grave of King Gorm, the last pagan king ofDenmark. As mentioned above, the burial-chamber was almost certainly closed in
958 or 959, that is a maximum of seven years before Denmark was declared a
Christian country (according mainly to the Saxon chronicler Widukind). There
have been suggestions that this was a Christian burial, partly because of the small
silver cup from the chamber, interpreted by some as a Christian chalice (mostrecently by Capelle 1986), but more convincingly explained as a cup for a rather
strong alcoholic drink, beor (Fell 1975).
In my opinion there can be no doubt that this burial is pagan, and that the king,Gorm, was buried with splendid pagan ceremony by his son King Harald. Moreover it was very pagan. There is a mound (the biggest in Denmark), there weresplendid grave-goods of the sort known from the horsemen’s graves, but more ofthem and of better quality (though little is preserved). The burial is on a royal scale
and is clearly a dynastic monument. It is probably also an expression of a latepagan religious and cultural revival, feeding on ancient religious concepts andancient monument-types and—very interestingly—built at the very same timeas the composition of the grand scaldic poems about Valhalla and dead Viking
kings in Norway and England, Eiríksmál and Hákonarmál, c.955–65 (Krogh
1983; Roesdahl 1992). The idea of a pagan revival in the last days of paganism
has recently been put forward by Gro Steinsland (1990c; 1991a) on a different
basis. The burial in the north mound at Jelling seems to support her idea. It isbest understood in such a light, and it seems to throw some illumination on two
famous poems.
Many attempts have been made to identify pagan cult-places. Recent archaeological excavations have added to the discussion about them. At Borg on Vestvågøy,Lofoten, excavation by Tromsø Museum and University have revealed a chieftain’s residence of the eighth–ninth century. Here there were imports from western
Europe and the British Isles such as glass vessels, Rhenish pottery and jet jewellery, as well as some gold and silver. Borg was clearly the seat of some local
aristocrat, a man like, for example, the roughly contemporary Ohthere fromHålogaland who visited King Alfred of Wessex about 890.
The house at Borg was 83 metres long—the longest Viking-Age building knownin Scandinavia. It contained byres and store-rooms, but one room must have been
the hall, about 14 metres long and 112 square metres in area. There were unusual

PAGAN BELIEFS, CHRISTIAN IMPACT AND ARCHAEOLOGY 133
fireplaces in the hall. From probably one single posthole came five guldgubber(each with a picture of a man and woman embracing each other), which clearly
have some religious significance (Stamsø Munch 1991). Steinsland suggests(1990b; 1991b) that they may represent ideas of pagan rulers, the myth of holymarriage between god and giantess whence Norwegian pagan rulers traced theirancestry.
Such an interpretation stresses the importance of the hall at Borg in relation topagandom. This was probably the very hall where the local aristocrat, the Borg
chieftain, celebrated the cult of the region along lines described by Snorri Sturluson(Stamsø Munch 1991; cf. Meulengracht Sørensen 1991). The hall excavated atBorg and the objects found there certainly raise many questions and the evidence
has been presented at interdisciplinary symposia; the Borg publication will contain contributions on this topic from scholars of various disciplines.
Recent excavations at Lejre (a place mentioned by Thietmar of Merseburg as apagan Danish cult-centre, and known from scaldic poetry and histories as anancient Danish royal seat) have examined a new area. Important archaeologicalmonuments, such as a long ship-setting and rich treasures, have long been known
from Lejre, but now an enormous hall has been excavated, 48 metres long and up
to 11 metres wide, covering some 500 square metres. It is the largest Viking-Agehouse known, truly a royal hall. Nothing of religious significance was foundduring these excavations, but many good quality artefacts were (Christensen
1991). And the existence of this unique building at Lejre, of all places, adds
weight to the idea of Lejre as an important cult-centre, with close connections withthe king. It is possible that full-scale reconstruction of this hall of all halls will bebuilt by the architect Holger Schmidt.
My last examples of archaeological finds related to pagan cults comprise somesmall metal human heads with horned head-gear of eighth-century date found in
Ribe in connection with the seasonal market (there are parallels in Staraja Ladoga,in Uppland and in south-east England). The Ribe examples are particularly interesting, for not only do we have several examples, we also have moulds in whichsuch objects were cast. The Ribe craftsmen obviously mass-produced them. Was
this because pagan cult-ceremonies took place during the market season whenmany people met? (Jensen 1992, 30–34, 50–51; From Viking to Crusader 1992,
cat. no. 184.)
The problem of possible cult-continuity at the same place from pagan to Christiantimes was discussed for many years. After the publication of Olaf Olsen’s thesis
in 1966, however, the matter seemed closed, at least as far as Denmark wasconcerned. No traces had been found of paganism under medieval churches, andmany had been excavated. Churches were not built on top of ancient cult-sites.

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Nowadays the picture is not so simple, for the first churches are unlikely to havebeen placed exactly where the later (still standing) churches were built.
The early churches were undoubtedly built close to the more important farms
and villages of their time, but large-scale excavations have now shown that
Viking-Age and earlier villages often moved later on, as for example Vorbasse did(Hvass 1984; cf. Roesdahl 1991b, 97–101; From Viking to Crusader 1992,
131–33). The earliest churches would be found with villages or farms on their sites
in the Conversion period (although none was found in Vorbasse), not in presentday settlements which sometimes go back only to the eleventh or twelfth century.
The medieval village might include a church which survives to the present day
even if the settlement moved. It has also been shown by excavation that the church
site might move too, even if the church remained connected with the original
settlement. This means that excavation in existing churches cannot greatly illuminate the problem of cult-continuity (cf. Gräslund 1992).
There are, of course, many other problems concerning pagan beliefs and thegradual introduction of Christianity which can be illuminated by archaeology withinterdisciplinary co-operation. One such is the study of changing burial-customs
and the establishment of Christian cemeteries and churches during the Conversion
period—this has already proved a fruitful area of study and is increasingly being
researched (e.g. Roesdahl 1982, 164–83; Gräslund 1991; Jeppesen and Madsen
1991; Näsman 1991; META 1992:1–2; Birkedahl and Johansen 1993; also Nielsen
1991, though this work must be used with some care as it contains a number of
strange and controversial views). The same is true of syncretism. Awareness of theregional and political variations within Scandinavia is of the utmost importance inthis context. In Denmark, for example, there seems to have been a relatively
peaceful transition from paganism to Christianity; the Jelling monuments seem toindicate such a policy. Pagan and Christian monuments are side by side. The
pagan king Gorm was translated from the burial-mound to a grave in the Christianchurch which was built between the mounds, where Gorm himself was excavatedby Knud Krogh. It has also been demonstrated (using dendrochronological dating)that much of the enormous south mound was constructed after the conversion; it
was not finished before the 970s though the ideas connected with mounds musthave been basically pagan (Krogh 1983; Christensen and Krogh 1987).
Archaeological sources, supported by written ones, also point increasingly tothe tenth and eleventh centuries (the conversion period in Scandinavia) as a periodof general turmoil and development, political, social, and artistic. This was theperiod of many new towns, a new economy (gone was eastern silver), intenseinternational connections (in many directions and on many levels), new ideas ofkingship, new artistic ideals, and, we may be sure, social change. This was thePAGAN BELIEFS, CHRISTIAN IMPACT AND ARCHAEOLOGY 135
period of Scandinavian conversion and probably gives the general background to
it. Society was on the move.
For archaeological studies in the fields of pagan beliefs and the Christian impact
on the North the future, as I see it, lies partly in serious interdisciplinary work andpartly in studying the Scandinavian phenomena in a wider context. We might for
example consider the near-contemporary conversion of Poland in 966, of Hungary
in 975 and of Russia in 988. Not least interesting is the Russian situation, as theburial-customs there (as well as the upper classes themselves) were deeply influenced by Scandinavia, just as central Sweden was influenced by Russia. The
earlier conversions of other European countries are also of interest; many similar
mechanisms seem to have been at work during their conversions even if thechronology is not the same. The introduction of Christianity often seems to haveactivated parallel expressions and reactions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Almgren, Oscar. 1904. ‘Vikingatidens grafskick i verkligheten och i den fornnordiska
litteraturen’. In Nordiska Studier tillegnade Adolf Noreen, 309–46.
Andersen, Harald. 1991. ‘Dendrokronologisk datering af Mammengraven’. In Mammen.
Grav, kunst og samfund i vikingetid. Ed. M. Iversen, 43–44.
Birkedahl, Peter and Johansen, Erik. 1993. ‘Nikolajbjerget’, Skalk 1993, 3–8.
Bonde, Niels. Forthcoming. Article in Antiquity.
Bonde, Niels and Christensen, Kjeld. 1982. ‘Trelleborgs alder. Dendrokronologisk datering’,
Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, 111–52.
Capelle , Torsten . 1 986 . ‘ Zum Silberkelch von Jelling ’, Acta Archaeologica 55 (1 984) ,1 99 – 200 .
Christensen, Tom. 1991. Lejre—syn og sagn.
Christensen, Kjeld and Bonde, Niels. 1991. ‘Dateringen af Trelleborg—en kommentar’,Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, 231–33.
Christensen, Kjeld and Krogh, Knud J. 1987. ‘Jelling-højene dateret’, Nationalmuseets
Arbejdsmark, 223–31.
Ellmers, Ditlev. 1980. ‘Fränkisches Königszeremoniell auch in Walhall’, Beiträge zur
Schleswiger Stadtgeschichte 25, 115–26.
Fell, Christine. 1975. ‘Old English beor ’, Leeds Studies in English. New Series VIII, 76–95.
From Viking to Crusader. Scandinavia and Europe 800–1200. 1992. Ed. Else Roesdahl andDavid M. Wilson. [Scandinavian ed.: Viking og Hvidekrist. Norden og Europa 800–
1200. 1992. Ed. Else Roesdahl.]
Gräslund, Anne-Sofie. 1991. ‘Var Mammen-mannen kristen?’. In Mammen. Grav, kunst
og samfund i vikingetid. Ed. Mette Iversen, 205–10.
Gräslund, Anne-Sofie. 1992. ‘Kultkontinuitet—myt eller verklighet? Om arkeologins
möjligheter att belysa problemet’. In Kontinuitet i kult och tro. Ed. Bertil Nilsson, 129–50.
Hägg, Inga. 1983. ‘Birkas orientaliska praktplagg’, Fornvännen 78, 204–23.
Hvass, Steen. 1984. ‘Wikingerzeitliche Siedlungen in Vorbasse’, Offa 41, 97–112.
Iversen, Mette (ed.). 1991. Mammen. Grav, kunst og samfund i vikingetid.
Jensen, Stig. 1992. Ribes vikinger. [Also English ed. 1992]

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Jeppesen, Jens and Madsen, Hans Jørgen. 1991. ‘Storgård og kirke i Lisbjerg’. In Fra
Stamme til Stat i Danmark 2. Høvdingesamfund og Kongemagt. Ed. Peder Mortensen
and Birgit Rasmussen, 269–75.
Krogh, Knud J. 1983. ‘The Royal Viking-Age Monuments at Jelling’, Acta Archaeologica
53 (1982), 183–216.
META. Medeltidsarkeologisk Tidskrift. 1992:1–2.
Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben. 1991. ‘Håkon den Gode og guderne. Nogle bemærkninger
om religion og centralmagt’. In Fra Stamme til Stat i Danmark 2, Høvdingesamfund og
Kongemagt. Ed. Peder Mortensen and Birgit Rasmussen, 235–44.
Müller-Wille, Michael. 1985. ‘Frühmittelalterliche Bestattungen in Wagen und Wagenkasten’.
In Archaeology and Environment 4, In honorem Evert Baudou, 17–30.
Nielsen, Leif Chr. 1991. ‘Hedenskab og kristendom. Religionsskiftet afspejlet i vikingetidens
grave’. In Fra Stamme til Stat i Danmark 2. Høvdingesamfund og Kongemagt. Ed.
Peder Mortensen and Birgit Rasmussen, 245–67.
Nilsson, Bertil (ed.). 1992. Kontinuitet i kult och tro från vikingatid till medeltid.
Näsman, Ulf. 1991.‘Grav og økse. Mammen og den danske vikingetids våbengrave’. In
Mammen. Grav, kunst og samfund i vikingetid. Ed. Mette Iversen, 163–80.
Olsen, Olaf. 1966. Hørg, hov og kirke.
Roesdahl, Else. 1982. Viking Age Denmark. [Danish ed.: Danmarks vikingetid. 1980.]
Roesdahl, Else. 1983. ‘Fra vikingegrav til Valhal’. In Beretning fra Andet tværfaglige
Vikingesymposium. Ed. T. Kisbye et al., 39–49.
Roesdahl, Else. 1991a. ‘Nordisk førkristen religion. Om kilder og metoder’. In Nordisk
Hedendom. Ed. Gro Steinsland et al., 293–301.
Roesdahl, Else. 1991b. The Vikings. [Paperback 1992; Danish ed.: Vikingernes verden.
1987.]
Roesdahl, Else. 1992. ‘Princely Burial in Scandinavia at the Time of the Conversion’. In
Voyage to the Other World. The Legacy of Sutton Hoo. Ed. C. Kendall and P. Wells,
155–70.
Sawyer, Birgit, Sawyer, Peter and Wood, Ian (ed.). 1987. The Christianization of Scandinavia.
Stamsø Munch, Gerd. 1991. ‘Hus og hall. En høvdinggård på Lofoten’. In Nordisk Hedendom.
Ed. Gro Steinsland et al., 321–33.
Steinsland, Gro (ed.). 1986. Words and Objects. Towards a Dialogue Between Archaeology
and History of Religion.
Steinsland, Gro. 1990a. ‘Antropologiske og eskatologiske ideer i førkristen nordisk religion’, Collegium Medievale 3, 59–72.
Steinsland, Gro. 1990b. ‘De nordiske guldblekk med parmotiv og norrøn fyrsteideologi’,Collegium Medievale 3, 73–94.
Steinsland, Gro. 1990c. ‘The change of religion in the Nordic countries—a confrontation
between two living religions’, Collegium Medievale 3, 123–35.
Steinsland, Gro. 1991a. ‘Religionsskiftet i Norden og Vo≈luspá 65’. In Nordisk Hedendom.
Ed. Gro Steinsland et al., 335–48.
Steinsland, Gro. 1991b. Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi.
Steinsland, Gro, Drobin, Ulf, Pentikäinen, Juha and Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben (ed.).
1991. Nordisk Hedendom. Et symposium.
Tesch, Sten (ed.). 1990. Makt och människor i kungens Sigtuna. Sigtunautgrävningen
1988–90.

PETER FOOTEHISTORICAL STUDIES: CONVERSION MOMENT AND
CONVERSION PERIODT

HERE is, I regret to say, an element of fraud in this short paper, which is
supposed to discuss the contribution of historical studies to the theme of thecurrent session. I am not a historian; and it may well be that the questions I would
ask of a historian are not those a historian would ask of himself. Indeed, I havea further suspicion that I may be talking not so much about the contribution ofhistorians as about their lack of contribution. That doubtless results from myparticular bias, for my curiosity is chiefly roused by that obscure interim period
between the time of official conversion and the age of Church consolidation,
especially at the Icelandic ‘interface’, to use a modish term. To my mind, what weneed above all is a clearer understanding of the ambience in which genuine pagan
poetry, for instance, and whatever went with it, could survive.
I have to be brief and will generalise cheerfully at the same time as I selectwilfully. But this is a symposium, a party, in which hearty overstatements, likely
to provoke rejoinder, should be the order of the day.
Mainstream historians generally agree, overtly or not, on distinguishing between
a gradual process of conversion and a decisive conversion ‘moment’. That occurred
when a king or other public authority decreed that henceforth the population
should depend on Christian rites alone for their peace and prosperity and forwhatever else they looked for from divine aid. The ‘moment’ might be followed
by a period of challenge and balance—it seems to have been long drawn out ineleventh-century Sweden—but the decisive step had been taken. Before the ‘moment’
there was obviously a period, longer or shorter, of growing familiarity with
Christian imagery, notions and claims, and after it a period of gradual Christianconsolidation. For practical purposes we can take the establishment of the metropolitan
sees as marking the terminus of that transition period, in Denmark just after 1100,
in Norway just after 1150, and in Sweden ten years or so later. It had taken about
150 years in each case, say five or six generations. The foundations of thesenational archbishoprics did not mean that the conversion process was at an end,
but by then a sufficient ecclesiastical network for the cure of souls existed andcould be extended. And in our secular world many historians, often inheritors of
the anti-clerical attitudes of eighteenth-century rationalists and nineteenth-century
liberals, tend to forget that cure of souls was what the new dispensation was
fundamentally about.
By and large, mainstream historians have been more interested in the conversion‘moment’, where we have at least some sources to dissect and discuss, than in the

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conversion process as a whole, where we must mostly work by inference andanalogy; and they frequently prefer to analyse the sources and read the events interms of power politics, kingship and commerce. Beliefs and cult practices,
continuity and change, at the public level may receive some attention, but theextent and nature of the grasp that Christianity finally had on men’s minds islargely neglected. A recent survey of early Norwegian history by Knut Helle, as
we should expect a brilliant conspectus in many ways, pays heed, for example, tochurch organisation and to the alliance of hierarchy and monarchy in establishing
the concept and imagery of kingship in Norway. But I find nothing in it on theadjustment of external attitudes, personal and communal, that followed the conversion ‘moment’, and the subsequent assimilation of Christian ideas—in ethicaloutlook, perspectives of the past and the future (matters on which Christian
thinking has always been keen to let you know where you stand), and the partthese played in changing social arrangements—marriage and slavery come tomind—and perhaps even in the ‘emergence of the individual’. Neither the impactof Christianity on the idiom of language and the idiom of thought, nor its impact
on the rhythm of life—for with Christian observance the day, the week and theyear were all different from before—appear to be counted among grunntrekk of
Norwegian medieval history. Which seems to me a pity, and different from fifty
and more years ago when Sigrid Undset and Fredrik Paasche were not afraid ofengaging with such matters, though not perhaps as critically as one could wish. In
his time Arne Odd Johnsen tried something similar, but rather less effectively, for
his large claims are often supported by untrustworthy detail. But whatever theirdefects, these authors and their topics should not be consigned to limbo—and thatis an idiom with a good Christian history.
I naturally endorse such a broad and systematic programme of research desiderata as Birkeli (1982) has sketched for our field of study, but I would be content
to ask historians for answers to much more limited questions. What can you tell
us of the mingling of past and present, of pagan and Christian, in men’s minds inthe late tenth and through the eleventh century? What sort of syncretism existed?
Where can it be reliably detected? In tackling such problems, those of us who haveread a bit will naturally think first of looking to the poets and to the later
entanglements of saga narrative in which much of their verse is preserved. We
might do more to examine the circumstances of scalds and their wider circles—
were there scaldic schools, as Dag Strömbäck once wondered? How do we
account for the preservation of the stuff that appears to be authentically antique?
Most people’s ideas about such matters, including my own, I hasten to add, seemto remain quite inchoate. I shall come back to sagas.
Neither scaldic poetry nor sagas of any kind are much referred to by historians
nowadays. In The Christianization of Scandinavia, for instance, papers publishedin 1987, edited by the Sawyers and Ian Wood, there is the odd reference to tenth-CONVERSION MOMENT AND CONVERSION PERIOD

139

century poetry and cursory reference to Ari, Gunnlaugr (but not Oddr), Hungrvaka,and one or two other texts. Heimskringla is cited a little more frequently, but it ishard to see what sort of criticism has gone into it all. A reader would certainly liketo know when Snorri is at one with his predecessors and when he differs from
them; and what sort of authority the modern historian imputes to Snorri when heis alone in his information and interpretation, and why. Some mainstream historians, allegedly expert in sifting sources, show singularly little interest in thefindings of literary historians.
Sources—what sources? Alongside the early verse, there is another class oftexts whose status has long been politely acknowledged, but which have still not
yet been fully exploited. I mean the corpus of so-called Christian laws from
Norway and Iceland. In many cases their articles demonstrably belong to acomparatively early stage in the consolidation of the Christian dispensation, andcertainly before Gratian and the elaboration of the study of canon law that theDecretum brought about. It has been encouraging to see Swedish scholars in thefield of Church history making a new attack on restricted topics, where they bringin all kinds of evidence but have a fresh examination of the early laws at the heartof their study. They ask new questions of them, essentially in the light of comparison with the practices and legislation of the universal Church. What is decidedly
local is thus isolated; and inherited forms and ways of thought in the native society
are in turn illuminated. I may mention two comparatively recent studies by wayof illustration. One is Smedberg’s Nordens första kyrkor (1973); and, to my mindof still greater interest, Nilsson’s book, De sepulturis (1989), on graveyards andburial practices, not nearly as gloomy an undertaking as it may sound. Perhaps
because Swedish theologians have not yet received the good news of interdisciplinary effort, both these scholars appear to be better at Latin than they are at
Norse: they occasionally mistranslate bits of vernacular law and are too often
distressingly careless in quoting Norwegian–Icelandic forms. Sometimes theirassumptions about pre-Christian religion and cult appear naive, as if we knew
rather more about those matters than we actually do. Books like these cannot of
course present a whole picture, but they take us close to some activities andattitudes which may reasonably be counted characteristic of the mingling of pastand present, old and new, in an early phase of the period of Christian consolidation. Our cloud of unknowing is dense enough, but studies like these bring theoccasional glimmer which may at least help to guide our fumbling speculation.
I have mentioned scaldic verse and early laws, but the problem of other texts,
narrative texts, sagas—that is still with us. Mainstream historians mostly ignore
them, and it is hard to blame them. They offer accounts that cannot be tested or
substantiated; as ‘sources’ they are often centuries away from conditions they
purport to describe. Professional students of the past are unable to read them asfragments of history made palatable and convincing by artistic shaping, and find

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it hard to grasp the notion that the authors who moulded them were very unlikely
to have been starting cold, but were themselves recipients of what had alreadybeen shaped, whether as repeated, and perhaps conflicting, report or as chiselled
anecdote.
Ninety-two years ago Björn Magnússon Ólsen published a remarkable 120-pagemonograph, Um kristnitökuna ári› 1000, gratefully building on the work of
Konrad Maurer, to whom he dedicated his study. In his account of the conversion‘moment’ in Iceland and its background, he drew all strands together and interwove personal history, place-names, political and constitutional affairs, foreign
relations, religious thinking—he did not leave out Vo≈luspá and the tale of ﬁi›randi
whom the dísir slew—and produced a plausible whole, most beautifully integrated. But those strands were drawn from all the texts available to him, and to us,that touched the subject: Landnámabók, Íslendingabók, the Kristni saga that isfound in Hauksbók, the Kristniﬂáttr in Njáls saga, the conversion section in the‘biggest’ Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, with its attendant ﬂættir about ﬁorvaldr inn
ví›fo≈rli and Stefnir ﬁorgilsson. Björn drew on these with selective and not insensitive fingers, but spent no time on the chronology of the texts or their tendencies
and relationships—he maybe took that sort of knowledge, to be found in Maurer,
and the validity of the record as a whole for granted. His approach is summed up
in a sentence in which he says that he has followed Íslendingabók as far as it goesand from other sagas he has taken what seems to him to be nearest the truth—‘ﬂa›er oss ﬂikir næst sanni’.
When Jón Jóhannesson published the first volume of his Íslendinga saga in
1956, he wrote more briefly and more cautiously, but in essence he appears tohave accepted Björn Magnússon Ólsen’s account from 1900 as a fundamentallysound analysis of all the factors to be considered in explaining, as far as may bepossible, the events and the wider context of the adoption of Christianity as thenational religion at the Alﬂingi of the year 1000. Icelandic historians, and others
too, have since been much more taciturn on the subject and altogether morecircumspect. Like Dag Strömbäck, they stick to Ari’s early twelfth-centuryÍslendingabók and some scaldic verse, and leave aside the more detailed andcolourful narratives of the thirteenth-century texts so skilfully synthesised by
Björn Magnússon Ólsen.
Kristni saga, to speak briefly of just one of these neglected thirteenth-century
texts, is admittedly difficult for us to get to grips with, but there may be ways offinding some historical pabulum in it. There are one or two things we know, or
think we know, about this description of the Icelanders’ adoption of Christianity,
things of a kind to give us food for thought, though not for a moment do I supposethat we shall all draw the same nourishment from them. One thing is that thecomposition of Kristni saga is associated with Sturla ﬁór›arson, a man who would
have been a professional historian or biographer in our day, writing for money andCONVERSION MOMENT AND CONVERSION PERIOD

141

fame—and doubtless as accurately as possible in the circumstances. If we look at
Sturla’s other known works, we see that he did indeed behave like a historian andmade all the use he could of available material, oral report, which was clearlyextensive, written narratives, of which he knew many, and occasional letters anddocuments from archival sources. We can make the reasonable assumption thatwhen he put Kristni saga together, or oversaw its composition, he thought he wasretailing credible information about the past. I stress ‘credible’—as Albani argued
some years ago, he meant it as history—how could he tell whether his information,
wherever it came from, was absolutely true to the facts? In other words, it seems
to me much more natural to believe that Sturla in his situation was doing what
Björn Magnússon Ólsen, in his situation at the turn of the century, was doing thanto believe that his activity bore any close resemblance to what Halldór Kiljan
Laxness was doing at any time in his situation, even when he was writing Íslands
klukkan or Gerpla. If historians want to say something sensible about Rimbert or
Adam of Bremen, they start by defining as closely as possible the man and his
situation and assessing his personal and institutional bias. Might we not work
harder on the same lines in the case of Sturla ﬁór›arson? And if Sturla can beshown not to have had any obvious institutional bias—and why should he have
had?—I would count that an advantage. That he had evident preconceptions isanother matter, and in a proper study of the subject it would obviously be needful
to discuss how far and in what ways we may be justified in counting Sturla a
representative voice—something which for the moment I merely take for granted.
But if we try to approach an author and a text in the way implied by these
remarks, we are obliged to treat ‘truth’ as a relative matter. Sturla had miscellaneous information from the past and he sorted it to best advantage; we have small
reason to assume he invented it. In the circumstances, I would be inclined to argue
that, while a text revealing a thirteenth-century view of the past may, and probably
can, tell us something about the writer’s own time, it must also tell us something
about that past itself. What Kristni saga purveys after all is a set of recollections
formed, and maybe in some cases fixed and formalised, in the intervening period
between event and written statement. It must represent, at least in a sort ofsemiotic way, some filtering of the sense which generations of Icelanders had
made of the past whenever the subject of the conversion came up, whether inspeech or writing, say between the year 1001 and Sturla’s prime some 250 years
later. Folklorists and ethnologists can also appreciate ‘truth’, the import of arecord, on similarly appropriate lines. Several of them could be quoted, but I cite
only Nils-Arvid Bringéus, of course out of context: ‘. . . verkligheten har olika
dimensioner. För etnologen är det ofta ej en tillräcklig uppgift att utforska yttre
skeenden och förhållanden. Det kan vara väl så viktigt att klarlägga människors
uppfatning av verkligheten . . .’ (Bringéus, 86).

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Another thing to ponder is the inclusion of scaldic stanzas in Kristni saga andthe fact that these are generally acknowledged to be authentic and well preserved.
How did they maintain themselves over so long a period? Most people would say
because they were accompanied by anecdote, and that seems to me a reasonable
enough explanation. We might try to draw up clearer rules for deciding when and
if an anecdote authenticates a verse and when and if a verse authenticates ananecdote. But that is a fraught issue and, as experience has shown, it can lead to
subtle special pleading and diametrically opposed conclusions. I am happy to do
no more than mention it.
Kristni saga also has a good many little stories, some of them famous, that haveno scaldic verse attached to them. They are interesting, even entertaining, butadventitious rather than integral in the narrative. By way of conclusion, I shall takethe liberty of reminding you of one or two of the best known of these items—theybear repeating—along with a minimum of comment. They all come in the accountof the decisive meeting of the Alﬂingi when Christianity was accepted.
Just after the opposing parties had declared themselves ‘out of law’ with eachother, we are told:
Then a man came at a gallop and said there was an eruption in Ölfus and the lava would
run over ﬁóroddr go›i’s homestead. Then the pagans spoke up and said, ‘No wonder
the gods get angry at such talk.’ Then Snorri go›i said, ‘What made the gods angry
when the lava we are standing on now was on fire?’

Later, after ﬁorgeirr the Lawspeaker’s decision:

All the Northerners and the Southerners were baptized in Reykjalaug in Laugardalr
when they rode from the assembly, because they would not go into cold water . . . Mostof the men from the West were baptized in Reykjalaug in Sy›ri-Reykjadalr.

And further:

When Rúnólfr [go›i Úlfsson] was baptized, Hjalti [Skeggjason] said, ‘Gömlum kennum
vér nú go›anum at geifla á saltinu’, [—or crudely paraphrased, with some lilt and too
much alliteration] ‘Now we teach the leader late in life to lick the salt.’

Naturally, I pluck out these three familiar bits for extrinsic as well as intrinsic
reasons. There are considerations which make it plausible to think that they arestories that go back a long way. Jón Jónsson has recently been able to date an
eruption in Nyr›ri-Eldborg, followed smartly by another in Sy›ri-Eldborg (bothlie between Lambafell and Blákollur), to about the time of the conversion, and thelava from them ran in the direction of ﬁóroddr’s land at Hjalli, some 12 km. away.
Snorri go›i’s sardonic response, with an Augustinian ring, is in itself timeless but,whether he actually made it at the Alﬂingi or not, it seems more likely that an
association of the relativist attitude he is credited with and the fact of the eruption
stems from a time when the lava, threatening the home of a well-known go›i but
one who otherwise plays no part in the narrative action of Kristni saga, was still

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143

a living memory. The identification of the places of baptism of most of theassembly participants is presumably a true recollection, and equally the explanation of their choice—‘because they would not go into cold water’. Of course, it
could be taken as an inference from the tradition which mentioned these warmspring localities, but why anyone should wish to draw it long after the event is hard
to see. What after all does the explanation convey? That in mid-summer a wholebatch of the most notable men in Iceland shuddered at the prospect of a dip in thecold water of Öxará or ﬁingvallavatn? Or that those same men were of a haughty
independent spirit, who made their own decisions, not much moved either way by
the change of dispensation they had just accepted? Hjalti’s utterance, verse-like inword-order, rhythm and alliteration, not out of keeping with the kvi›lingr at
Lögberg attributed to him by Teitr and Ari, stamps itself on the memory of anyone
who hears it. Naturally, it could have been made up in the course of subsequent
telling, but again more likely early than late.
Anecdotes like these encode attitudes. They are gestures which we observe atfirst hand only in a thirteenth-century literary context, but there is a fair amountof circumstance to suggest that they were not novel gestures. Should they notrather be seen as typical of the period of transition and transmission that followed
the conversion ‘moment’ in Iceland? We shall differ on what we read out of them.
For my part I find them significant of varying degrees of religious neutrality,
tolerance, indifference, among leading groups in Icelandic society; which is, ofcourse, entirely at one with Teitr Ísleifsson’s account, in Ari’s report, of thecompromises which led to the acceptance of Christianity and which marked thefollowing generation of legally regulated pagan–Christian coexistence in the
country. If influential men of cool, unfanatical mind were not in an absolutemajority at the time of the conversion, there were certainly enough of them to do
better than hold the balance between the frændaskömm legislators on the one sideand the convinced militant Christians on the other. But in that case we can hardly
avoid the conclusion—far from new, needless to say—that they represented
intellectually uncommitted attitudes, ranging perhaps from well-developed cynicism to active free-thinking, that were equally pervasive in late-pagan Iceland as
well. And then the obscurity of the atmosphere in which pre-Christian poetry andmythology survived the conversion may seem perceptibly lightened.
NOTE

I should like to record my sincere thanks to Dr Sveinbjörn Björnsson of the University of
Iceland for drawing my attention to Jón Jónsson’s papers and sending me copies of them.

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PETER FOOTE

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nordisk lagstiftning.
Ólsen, Björn Magnússon. 1900. Um kristnitökuna ári› 1000 og tildrög hennar.
Sawyer, Birgit, Sawyer, Peter and Wood, Ian (eds.). 1987. The Christianization of
Scandinavia.
Smedberg, Gunnar. 1973. Nordens första kyrkor. En kyrkorättslig studie.
Strömbäck, Dag. 1975. The Conversion of Iceland. A Survey.

R. I. PAGEJ

SCANDINAVIAN SOCIETY, 800–1100: THE
CONTRIBUTION OF RUNIC STUDIESUST over a hundred years ago, when the Viking Society was but a gleam in theeyes of a group of genial Orcadian expatriates, there was published one of themost delectable books about Vikings, The Viking Age: the early history, manners,
and customs of the ancestors of the English-speaking nations: illustrated from theantiquities discovered in mounds, cairns, and bogs as well as from the ancient
Sagas and Eddas. By Paul B. du Chaillu, author of ‘Explorations in Equatorial
Africa’, ‘Land of the Midnight Sun’, etc. London, 1889.
After a title like this a book seems hardly necessary. Yet there is one, twovolumes of it, over a thousand pages altogether. It treats of the period from theStone Age onwards, with discussion of material antiquities, religion and burial
rites, superstitions, land and inheritance, social classes, legal assembly, law, social
practices, war, ships and travel, buildings, dress, occupations and sports, moral
principles and a host of other topics. Among this is a chapter on runes, some forty
pages long, mentioning thirty or so northern runic monuments. In only two or
three cases does du Chaillu bother to give a transliteration and translation of thetext and so make its material content available to the reader. Indeed, the larger partof this chapter is devoted to literary accounts of runes, taken from the post-Viking
period.
Such neglect of the runic evidence for the Vikings is typical of work publishedin the English language during most of the past hundred years. Runes have been
noted, even described as a script, usually in rather perfunctory terms. But the factthat the Vikings speak directly to us, without the intermediary of the later Middle
Ages, only in their runic inscriptions has seldom been found relevant to a serious
study of the Viking Age.
If we take some of the major books on the Vikings written in English in thepresent century, we see this ignorance of, or perhaps I should say ignoring of, theevidence of runic texts clearly displayed. In reviewing the appropriate items I am
uncomfortably aware that I shall be commenting on the work of honoured members of the Viking Society, indeed also of Honorary Life Members, Past Presidents, present Presidents and perhaps even future Presidents of our society.
T. D. Kendrick was not a professional historian, though his A history of theVikings, published in 1930, is a beautifully controlled exposition of one part of theevidence. But it deals with the runes in a couple of pages and thereafter mentionsa few specific monuments only casually and in passing.1 As an art historian
Kendrick could hardly ignore the great Jelling stone, and he commented briefly ona few Swedish rune-stones that record eastern journeys, but that is all.

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Gabriel Turville-Petre was a literary historian. But his The heroic age of
Scandinavia from 1951 failed to find anything heroic in the rune-stones, even in
those that specifically invoke the heroic code in describing exciting exploits; thosethat break into verse whose language all but the most imperceptive must recognize
as ‘heroic’. Not that I suggest that Professor Turville-Petre was imperceptive; but
I think he did not accept as heroic literature what was not recorded in the form thathe thought proper for heroic literature, that is in manuscript. He also displays
another attitude that seems common among those who look without sympathy at
the runic field: ‘it must be conceded that the inscriptions teach us little factual
history,’ he complains.2 From the example he then gives it seems he thinks that(like biography) ‘history is about chaps’, and unless you have a chap’s namewhich you can link to other sources, your inscription has no historical content.
Peter Sawyer, as befits a historian with an enthusiasm for primary evidence,
devoted about three pages of the 250 or so in his The age of the Vikings to therunic record, and a good deal of that is complaint that we cannot often identify thepeople mentioned in the runic inscriptions. Noting the Hedeby stones that refer tothe siege of that town, he says sadly, ‘there are, however, very few “historical”
stones of this kind’,3 history presumably gaining its validity by being confirmed
by proper, non-runic, sources. The implication is that runic material is secondary
evidence that is only important if it deals with people who also appear in real,manuscript, records. Thus Sawyer in his first edition of 1962. By the time of thesecond edition of 1971 he was no wiser.
Something of a contrast is Gwyn Jones’s A history of the Vikings from 1968.
Jones is not professionally an historian, though all his work shows a lively interestin historical record. He stresses in a single paragraph the range and variety of
information that the runic texts, particularly the rune-stones, give on the Vikings.4
Often he is concerned with runic confirmation of events and people known from
historical sources, but he also notes the Swedish Ingvar stones, the records ofvarious journeys east found on eleventh-century Swedish stones, inscriptions
concerning Swedes who took part in raids on England, the Piraeus lion
inscription and the memorials to Scandinavians who died at Hólmgar›r. Thus
when writing about Vikings he very properly dwells on their ventures overseas;
but this results in a comparatively slender reference to the Vikings in their homelands, even though there are some rune-stones that make it clear that property in
Scandinavia was the fruit of profits made on voyages abroad. In part they answer
the question posed by the title of one of Sir David Wilson’s memorable lectures,‘What did the Vikings do with their loot?’
The Viking achievement by Peter Foote and David Wilson, from 1970, showsno such inhibitions of principle in that it is largely concerned with medieval
Scandinavians at home (are these Vikings?). Even though there are long sectionsof the book devoted to the nature of Norse society, the runic evidence is largely

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ignored. When it is included it is sometimes in trivial form: ‘For the first time we
begin to learn a little about the artists who carved the stones, for they begin to sign
their work.’5 An artist has no existence until you know his name. When you havea name he exists, even if you know nothing more of him than his name.
Luckily things have improved in recent years. As late as 1971 Peter Sawyer was
still able to write that the rune-stones ‘do something to compensate for the
inadequacy of the more conventional written sources. It is, however, rarely possible to identify the individuals who are mentioned . . .’6 Twenty years later, incontributing to his Festschrift, Mrs Sawyer saw the runic evidence in a morecreative and positive light: ‘considering the problems involved in using all thislate evidence for conditions during the Viking Age it is remarkable that more
attention has not been paid to the contemporary evidence of the runic inscriptions.
These inscriptions . . . provide, for the first time, written evidence produced in the
North that casts some light on contemporary circumstances.’7 The difference inemphasis here is marked. Even the rune-stones that Professor Sawyer accepts as‘historical’ derive their historicity from the fact that they refer to people, events,
places that are known from formal (even if suspect) written sources. Mrs Sawyer
properly regards rune-stones as historical documents in their own right.
The strange thing about the conventional attitude of historical writers to the useof runic sources in the last three decades is that the material was readily available
to them, even to those who were not prepared to encounter it in a foreign language.
In 1962, the year that saw the publication of the first edition of The age of theVikings, appeared the English translation of Sven B. F. Jansson’s The runes of
Sweden. The book’s title was misleading since it omitted most of the earliest
inscriptions, which of course were in some ways the most interesting linguistically; indeed even the publishers seem to have thought so since they included a
selection of further facts on runes on the dust-jacket. The revised and expanded
version of the book had the more accurate title, Runes in Sweden.8 Nevertheless,
Jansson’s 1962 book should have come as a revelation to an unlearned society,and encouraged its members to think more precisely about the significance of theirevidence. For the first time there was available in modern English some accountof the range, variety and style of these important documents. There was revealed
the distinction between verse and prose memorials, between records of (to use
Jansson’s own sub-titles) ‘the Viking expeditions’ to a great number of destinations to the East and West, ‘northern battles’ within Scandinavia, a ‘peacefulhomeland’, ‘farms and farmers’, ‘good works’ (that is, works of social charity),‘the conversion’ to Christianity, legal meeting-places, the qualities that made up‘the good man’, and so on. Professor Jansson’s book is only an appetizer, but itshould have been an aperitif that tempted the historian to taste further.
Of course, Professor Jansson had a mass of existing research to build upon, theindividual volumes of Sveriges runinskrifter as well as his own personal contri-

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bution to this field which he made so much his own. Probably The runes of
Sweden suffered from its readability, for it is axiomatic that a good read cannot
also be a good piece of scholarship. Inevitably the book lacked a strongly explicated philological content since that was not the writer’s intention. Those who
could not repair this deficiency by going to the more austere pages of Sveriges
runinskrifter were soon to find relief in a work compiled by perhaps the mostdistinguished of living Viking historians, Lucien Musset, who brought Fernand
Mossé’s material to the light of day in Introduction à la runologie in 1965. Herethe anthologie runique gave the reader a more detailed, geographically distributed,
picture of, among others, the Viking inscriptions.9 Thus the historical content of
the runic texts has been made available to non-specialists through recent decades.
But this underestimates the conservatism of scholars. If you kill a cow or sheep,
flay it, clean, stretch, scrape and process the skin, get yourself a load of wood galls(perhaps imported from the Middle East), pound them in a pestle and mix the juicewith a reagent to precipitate a dark deposit, catch a goose, pluck out a quill,
sharpen it to a point, cut up the treated skin into arbitrary pieces, rule them witha stylus and fold them, and then use the quill, dipped in the darkened liquid, topaint arbitrary characters on the surface of the skin, you produce a historical
document. If you incise a piece of wood with a knife or engrave a piece of stone
with a punch, you don’t.
Despite that, there has recently been a strong movement to make the runicmaterial more accessible. Erik Moltke’s monumental Runes and their origin.
Denmark and elsewhere, published in 1985, is an example.10 Though it is formallya book on the Danish inscriptions, it uses them to explicate social history. One ofits chapters is challengingly entitled ‘Runes reflect society’, and examines thesocial and professional ranks mentioned in the inscriptions, with sections onservants, slaves, illiterates and women. For the immediately pre-Viking period (orwhat is now, by an ingenious redating, the proto-Viking period) Moltke treats ofdifferently named social groups, the go›i and the ﬂulr, linked to religion andperhaps the law. There are chapters on the monuments whereby kings made theirgreatness manifest, on those that tell of heathendom and Christianity, on those
inscribed objects that suggest literacy or the reverse. Altogether Moltke’s bookprovides a feast of fine confused reading for the Viking historian to make use of.
It is well that in recent years we have found numbers of younger scholars
prepared to make full use of this type of material. To give an example. Judith
Jesch’s Women in the Viking Age, published in 1991 devotes a chapter to‘Women’s lives in runic texts’.11 It is true that much of it is concerned with thequality of the men commemorated rather than of the women who commemorated
them. Apparently the women gain their status by this relationship. But Jesch also
makes deductions about women’s importance within the family, their high rate ofmortality in infancy and childhood, the impact of Christianity, their patronage ofTHE CONTRIBUTION OF RUNIC STUDIES

149

the arts. And specifically and most significant, their rights to inherit. This isnatural in view of the immensely important inscription on the rock at Hillersjö,
Uppland, Sweden and its related pieces, with their detailed account of a complex
inheritance pattern that ends up with mother-in-law taking all. The main inscription begins with a stern admonition to the passer-by, raﬂu, ‘Read (this)’; theinformation had to be made patent to everyone who was literate. When you
consider that the section on women’s right to inherit in The Viking achievement
makes no reference to this essential document (but instead relies on the supportof ‘Danish historians towards 1200’—the word ‘towards’ is elegantly ambiguous—or on ‘late medieval and subsequent records’—perhaps a little imprecise?)12
you have to wonder why the prejudice against the runic evidence survived for solong. Jansson’s comment on the Hillersjö text is worth noting. ‘The Viking Agerules of inheritance that were applied in this case agree with the statutes of theUppland Law, codified in 1296.’13 The later legal texts only confirm what theViking Age was already practising.
Questions of land ownership and inheritance of wealth are central in any studyof the runic evidence for Viking society. I recall stating this as, I thought, a selfevident and generally accepted proposition in a lecture given some twenty years
ago before a university in the south of England. A senior member of the audience(who later wrote a two-volume work on the Vikings) took me up on this; heseemed to think it fanciful. I suspect it is now generally accepted without demur.
A number of scholars have worked to make it so, and if I pick out one it is without
prejudice to the contribution of others. In recent years Birgit Sawyer has publisheda number of influential papers on the topic, and though one may not always agreewith all her conclusions, one must pay tribute to her commitment.14
And of course, one need not be thinking of women’s studies when adducing therune-stones as land-holding and inheritance records. Jansson’s monograph on the
Malsta and Sunnå, Hälsingland, stones, from 1985, interprets the text of the firstof these:
Frømundr put up this stone (?these stones) in memory of Fægylfi Bræsi’s son. AndBræsi was Lini’s son. And Lini was Unn’s son. And Unn was Ofæigr’s son. AndOfæigr ﬁorir’s son.
Groa was Fægylfi’s mother And then . . . Gu›run.
Frømundr Fægylfi’s son cut these runes . . .
Gylfi took over this land and then land north in Vika in three townships, and thenLønangr and then Fæ›rasio.

The genealogy is precise and detailed, the extensive property which presumably
gave Gylfi his nickname Money-Gylfi is defined. Frømundr here attests his rightto the property in direct male line. ‘Thus,’ says Jansson, ‘the Malsta stone is not
only a memorial in the usual sense. It is also a certificate of inheritance (‘Den äräven ett arvsdokument’).’15

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Most recently Marie Stoklund has suggested that in linking rune-stones toinheritance we are defining their use too narrowly. Though individual later inscriptions may serve this function, not all do. Their references to family relationships, social position, place and circumstances of death, and their laudatory
epitaphs connect them with the eptirmæli, which I take it here means ‘the goodreport after one’s death’.16 It is indeed salutory to have someone warning us
against taking a simplistic view of a social practice that could serve more than one
purpose.
Land-tenure is not the only subject which recent scholars have illuminated fromthe runic inscriptions of the Viking Age. There is also information on social ranks
or classes, on duties or rights of individual groups within the Viking peoples. Suchinformation is often not recorded anywhere else, but the runic examples requireinterpretation, and this can lead to dispute. As a case in point I quote the discussionof a number of terms—are they common words or technical ones?—found on
rune-stones to describe a person’s position within his social group.
How are we to define terms like drengr, ﬂegn, búma›r, landma›r, heimﬂegi onthese memorial stones? The trouble is that the meaning can be derived only fromthe contexts in which the word occurs. Some years ago, in lecturing on Vikings
before a distinguished metropolitan university college, I ventured to translate theword félagi on a particular rune-stone as ‘comrade-in-arms’. During questions
afterwards the head of the department asked what was the evidence for such atranslation. I answered that it was contextual. ‘Ah, I thought there wasn’t any real
evidence,’ he retorted, as though it was not self-evident that in most cases only
context can be a safe guide to meaning in a dead language. Now I do not think hewas really as daft as this anecdote suggests—I think he was trying to score up a
public debating point without concern for scholarly values. But his question does
enshrine a problem, and from this problem arise the controversies about themeanings of class describers in early Norse runic texts. In what way does thecontext help?—and context here includes the total context, not simply the linguistic one. Moltke has documented some of the dispute over the Danish use of terms
like drengr, ﬂegn.17 Whether a ﬂegn was a free peasant or a royal servant. Moltke’s
assertion that ‘private individuals do not seem to have had “thegns”, so it musthave been the ruler’s prerogative to appoint “thegns”. . .’ is hardly a precise one(or at least a precisely demonstrated one). And his follow-up, ‘We may assume
that “thegns” and certain “drengs” were associated in some way with the king’s
military organisation’ is fine as long as you accept it is only Moltke’s assumption
and receives no demonstration in his book. On the other hand the total context—that these terms occur on rune-stones, which were presumably expensive luxuries—shows that the social groups involved were wealthy or at least well-off.
Jan Paul Strid has examined the Swedish use of the word ﬂægn and found it
regionally variable.18 It is apparently frequent in Västergötland, there are twoTHE CONTRIBUTION OF RUNIC STUDIES

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cases in Småland, one (together with some uncertain examples) in Södermanland;none in Uppland—these apart from the use of the element as a personal name. To
clarify its significance Strid has to adduce the use of ﬂægn as a place-nameelement, and on this basis suggests ‘that at least one of the senses of Runic
Swedish ﬂægn was ‘man (warrior) of high rank in the service of a king or
chieftain’, but he is pretty cagey about using this definition generally. The worddrængr Strid sees as a more general word, one that could have a variety of
meanings dependent upon context, ‘to denote a member of an army unit, a fighting
ship or a merchant fraternity’, becoming ‘associated with all the manly virtues thatwere so much esteemed in the Viking Age: courage, boldness, loyalty, and soforth.’ This word’s relationship to wealth or social rank he holds less secure,though inevitably the material contexts of the inscriptions, often on stones of somesplendour, will imply riches. Whether one can go farther than Strid here I do not
know. It would certainly be rash to ignore geographical distinctions, to assume
that what applies to parts of Sweden may be taken for Denmark and Norway too.
There is, for instance, a problematic pair of examples from south Jutland. Oneof the Hedeby stones, no. 3, is set up by a king Sveinn in memory of his himﬂiga
who, having travelled in the west, now met death at Hedeby.19 Runic students
inevitably connect this with Hedeby stone no. 1 which records that a himﬂigi of
Sveinn (the same Sveinn presumably) erected it in memory of his filaga Eiríkr
who met his death when trekiaR (drengiar ) beseiged Hedeby: he was a ship’s
captain and a very good drengr. This is a case where I might suggest the translation‘comrade-in-arms’ for félagi. Whether the word drengr is used in two different
senses on Hedeby 1 I do not know. That Eiríkr was a drengr har›a gó›r mightmean just ‘a jolly good chap’ as Moltke suggests with strong reservations,20 but
the context on these two stones requires a more serious interpretation. Why did
King Sveinn set up a memorial stone to his hemﬂægi at Hedeby? Why did
someone who called himself Sveinn’s hemﬂægi set up one to his ‘fellow’ Eiríkr?
Here we may get back to the concept of the rune-stones as legal documents. If thetwo dead men were formally in the king’s service, he might be liable to pay
compensation for their deaths. We remember the incident in Egils saga when
Egill’s brother ﬁórólfr had been killed in the service of Athelstan of England. Egill
was very peevish until the king paid over lavish compensation: tók Egill ﬂa›an af
at gle›ask, ‘from then on Egill perked up.’21
In the same way Hedeby 3 may be a king’s recorded admission of his duty tocompensate for a hemﬂægi killed under his command. Hedeby 1 may be a man’srecord of compensation paid to his ‘fellow’ (does this then have the primary andmore technical meaning ‘business partner’?) with the acknowledgment that it was
his duty to repay a share of this to the dead man’s family. Both these would beproper aspects of the eptirmæli. In these interpretations drengr might seem to have152

R. I. PAGEa more formal interpretation, ‘officer called up in the king’s service’. It is impossible to be sure without more examples.
One of the cheering, and sometimes terrifying, aspects of runic studies is that
there is always the possibility of new finds that could lighten our darkness. To givean illustration. Between the publication of the first edition of Moltke’s Runerne
i Danmark og deres oprindelse and the second edition in English translation nine
years later the Danish corpus had increased by over 90 inscriptions. Or to compare
great things with little, consider the Manx runic material. When I recorded this in1983 it had 29 Viking Age inscriptions.22 In December 1991 Sir David Wilson
took up residence on the island. He had been there barely a week when I received
from him the record of another fragmentary inscription found, he assured me,‘under the Communion Table at Kirk Braddan Church.’ While I was gloating overthis new accession, the colleagues to whom I reported it speculated what Sir Davidwas doing under the communion table at Kirk Braddan church. Some weeks
afterwards I had the chance of examining the new rune-stone, and found its
inscription was part of a maker’s formula. At the same time the Manx Museum
authorities made available to me a fragment found some years earlier but hitherto
unreported. It is a tiny piece, part of the upper surface and one side of a slate slab.
The top has the lower part of an elegant warrior with a sword at his belt, cut inlow relief. The side shows the tops or bases of up to five staves, with a punctuation
point. Not enough remains for any single letter to be identified, so this is one of
the handful of Manx stones that provides only a point on a distribution map. But
two new points added to about thirty is not a negligible number.
The most astonishing increase in runic finds—not necessarily Viking Age—inrecent decades is the effect of urban archaeology. This began when some wise man
burned down half of Bryggen, Bergen, in 1955. Archaeologists moved into thedevastated site and uncovered huge numbers of pieces of wood and bone inscribedwith runic characters. Norwegian runologists have been playing with them eversince.23 The effect has been twofold. The simple one was to increase the numberof known Norwegian runic inscriptions dramatically—by over a half. The more
complex one was to reveal a common use of runes, for commercial, social,
practical, epistolary and scurrilous purposes, that had hitherto only been hinted at.
Later research on other Scandinavian urban sites, Trondheim, Ribe and Lödöse,for example, confirmed something of the Bergen observations: that runes were
often used in the early post-Viking period in a variety of ways neither memorial
nor formal. The effect of this was to make some runologists speculate on whether
the same range of use could be postulated for the Viking Age. Did Vikings use thescript for everyday purposes, for sending messages, recording business transactions, making rude comments on their neighbours, and so on? Could some of thelater medieval written accounts of rúnakefli have a basis in fact?

THE CONTRIBUTION OF RUNIC STUDIES153

The scholar who went farthest in this direction was our late and much missed
colleague Aslak Liestøl who put forward in 1971 the hypotheses that (a) newlyfound runic inscriptions on portable objects, and in particular on sticks of wood
whose sole purpose was to hold the inscription, suggest that the Viking Age also
may have used runes in this way, though as yet there were few examples known,(b) letter-writing on runic sticks such as those found in Bergen may have been a
Viking practice, (c) short-twig runes, being simple in form and easy to cut, would
have been a perfect script for this, and so (d) many Vikings were probably literate
in this sense.24
Runes were not solely or even chiefly a monumental form of writing—that I must beallowed to maintain. Their use in memorial inscriptions and the like is secondary—firstand foremost they were employed in practical, everyday life. Indeed this should be selfevident. I find it difficult to conceive of someone learning to write simply in order tocarve tomb-stones, but even if there were such people, their work would be in vain—
unless others were prepared to learn to read, simply in order to decipher those same
tomb-stone inscriptions!

Of course, this argument is less forceful than it appears at first glance. Runestones are not necessarily, and are sometimes clearly not, tomb-stones. If theirtexts are not simple memorials but also legal or formal documents, cut on stone
because of the greater permanence of that material and because a stone could be
exposed in a public place where its claims would be visible to all, people could
well be persuaded to read and inscribe them. To return to Liestøl’s own words:
I think we are bound to conclude that the majority of Viking Age Scandinavians—atleast those of any standing, and those intent on making their way in life—were able toread and write. Their system of writing was in constant use, and the inscriptions extant
today are merely the pitiful remains of the wealth of documents written by them.

Finally a prophecy that is still unfulfilled:

True, only a few texts have come down to us—but quite an unusually fortunate
combination of circumstances is required if such inscriptions are to be preserved. For
one thing, we must presume that most of them were intentionally destroyed in their own
day, being reduced to waste, broken, burned, chopped or cut up . . . If a rune stick
escaped such a fate, it would still have to be lodged in a hermetically sealed place withina fairly short time of its making if it was to have any chance of surviving for a thousand
years and more. It is our job to find the rune letters which have been preserved in thisway, we must dig them up, we must draw attention to them and see to it that they aretaken care of. When the odds against preservation are so great, it is remarkable that any
have come to light at all . . . We believe more runic inscriptions on wooden sticks are
yet to be found in the unexcavated parts of Viking Age and early medieval towns, andwe have no doubt but that the leaders of excavations now and in the future will do all
they can to bring them to light.

Of the importance of Viking Age runic correspondence—were any to be found—
there could be no doubt. One of the most revealing of the Bergen letters is a late
twelfth-century one calling up a ship for the king’s service.25 Could we have

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something like this for the tenth century we might learn much about the king’s
right to summon support for the defence of the realm. The melancholy fact is thatlittle has so far appeared. Consider the cases of two Viking towns where a great
deal of archaeological investigation has been completed in recent years, York andDublin. York is surprisingly deficient in Norse runes. This may be a chancesurvival effect even though the ground here preserves organic materials—I cannot
think it the result of indifferent excavation techniques. Dublin, however, hasrunes.
There are twelve inscribed pieces altogether, with runes cut on wood, on rib andother bones of animals, on a red deer’s antler. Some are worked and served otherpurposes than the holding of texts; a handle, a wooden plane, a wooden textilebeater. Others are unworked and their only interest is that they bear runes. Though
we claim twelve pieces, there are at least two of them where, though theircharacters have the same general effect as runes, they are not runes; only ‘runelike symbols’. They could be a cryptic script on a runic base but I do not think so—they are not carefully enough cut to sustain that hypothesis, and they do contain,
mixed with arbitrary characters, occasional genuinely runic forms. They may be
people’s attempts to appear literate though they were not; which would tell us
something of the status of literacy in the society. There is a comparison here withthe silver pseudo-penannular brooch found at Hunterston, near Largs, Ayrshire,
which has a comprehensible inscription on one section, malbriﬂa a stilk, ‘Melbrigda
owns (this) brooch’, followed in the next by a matching group of lines which
Magnus Olsen describes as ‘carelessly carved signs resembling runes.’26 The
brooch was owned by someone with a Celtic name, and it may be relevant that
Dublin also is in Celtic territory—Celts were notoriously addicted to cryptic
formulae.
Other of the Dublin runic inscriptions have occasional odd letter-forms thatmake them hard to interpret, others again have letter sequences that look to bewithout meaning. Only occasionally do we get meaningful and unambiguousgroups, as the personal name kirlak (= Geirlákr ) on the textile-beater and thegroup hurn:hiartaR, ‘hart’s horn’ on the deer’s antler, though in each of thesecases there is a less clear continuation of the text. But there is nothing in all thesefinds that suggests that runes had a practical and commercial application, and theygive no support to Liestøl’s thesis. Liestøl’s warning of the problems of survivalthat wood, bone and similar materials face is a proper one, and we should also take
into account the fact that, here as generally in runic studies, we have a small andnot necessarily representative sample of what was once cut. Yet for all that the
Dublin finds prove that wood and bone survive for many centuries in Dublin earth,and the absence of ‘commercial’ inscriptions in what should be a commercial city
is striking.

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In working on these inscriptions Michael Barnes has asked the very apposite
question of whether there is any Celtic influence on their language, a question not
yet answered and indeed not yet precisely posed. It will be remembered that when
I wrote on the Manx runic crosses some years ago I referred to the possibility that
their language might represent that of a racially mixed society, and that this wasin some degree supported by the mix of Celtic and Norse names in the commemorative inscriptions as well as the occasional intrusion of a Celticism into thewritten Norse.27 Dr Jesch took the point up in her Women in the Viking Age, andin the absence of other contemporary records of the Norse Manx settlement, itsuggests something of the mixed nature of Manx society in the tenth century.28
Other runic inscriptions in Ireland—though they are few—suggest a similar
cultural intermix, though whether of creoles or pigeons I do not know. A swordmount from Greenmount, Co. Louth, has the ownership inscription tomnal selshofoﬂa soerﬂ [ﬂ]eta, ‘Dufnall sealshead owns this sword’, with both an Irish personalname and an Irish spelling of it.29 The cross at Killaloe, Co. Clare, has the runictext ﬁurkrim risti+[k]rusﬂina, ‘Thorgrim raised this cross.’30 Celtic influence
may perhaps be seen in the lack of inflexional -R in the masculine personal namenominative, as in contemporary Manx texts. It is certainly in the accompanying
ogham inscription which is alleged to have the remains of an Irish prayer, ‘a
blessing on Thorgrim’. Again there may here be information on a mixed-language
community not noted in the formal records.
At this point I note the subtitle of this series of papers: current problems. So I
sum up a few of my points in problem form.
(1) The difficulty of convincing historians that runic inscriptions may also behistorical documents. To some extent this is the fault of runologists, because they
fail to make their material easily available to non-runologists, preferring to writefor one another in the rather forbidding format that specialists adopt to convince
their colleagues of their scholarship. We must experiment in making inscriptions
and their contexts readily accessible; but we must also make our methodology
comprehensible to others, so that they can understand the reasons for our readings
and interpretations, and be able to judge how much is fact, how much interpretation. Moreover, runologists of different disciplines must communicate more freely
as indeed they have begun to do in recent years. For instance, to an English
runologist it is astonishing how long it has taken some Scandinavian experts tobecome aware of the influence Roman scripts have sometimes had on runic texts.
(2) The statistical background. We must keep in mind the probability that whatsurvives is only a small and very likely random sample of what was produced.
How do we know if it is representative? Representative of what? Social class,wealth, literacy, nation, date? At first glance, major stones ought to survive moreeasily than minor objects on wood or bone, or perhaps than objects of precious

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metal. How far this is true I do not know, but some study of the history of runicstudies might help here. The Manx experience shows that in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries rune-stones were being freely broken up for use in newbuilding;31 indeed, there is some indication this may have happened as recently as
the second half of the twentieth century. And this is in an island where buildingstone is not hard to come by. The Bergen finds, on the other hand, show how
modern excavation of a single site can revolutionize runic knowledge of a particular district or a particular period. Taking a smaller case: before the Dublin
excavations Ireland had only three certainly known runic inscriptions, those of
Killaloe, Greenmount and Beginish. Now it has in the region of fifteen. The increase may not be significant statistically, but it is striking to the non-statistician.
We must also ask whether runes were always more common in some areas thanothers. Why has Sweden so many more rune-stones than Norway or Denmark?
Why is the distribution within Sweden so patchy? Why are there large areas ofDenmark without known Viking Age runes? Can we say simplistically, as Sawyer
could in 1962, ‘the distribution of rune stones in Sweden, by and large of theeleventh century, gives a reasonably reliable indication of the areas then settled
and the correspondence between the distributions of rune stones and of hoards oftreasure is very close. . .’?32 Do rune-stones occur as a matter of course in the
more densely populated areas, or does the nature of the population, its social class,awareness of history, its religious or political affiliations, have some effect? Do
rune-stones have a comparable regional distribution to treasure hoards because
both indicate people of wealth within the area, or are there other reasons? How can
we explain, on any of these hypotheses, the relatively large number of rune-stonesof the Viking Age on Man, and their rarity in the Danelaw?
(3) Related to (2). When historians are short of information from a particularregion or time they tend to combine a variety of sources to get a fuller picture. Is
it appropriate to do this with runic data? Should we use Swedish illumination topenetrate the deeper darkness of Norway and Denmark? How far do local variations—of education, social custom, religion—affect the content, meaning andstatus of rune-stones?
( 4) Should we attempt to define hierarchies of script , introduce a more‘palaeographical’ element into runology? Is it possible, as Aslak Liestøl attempted, to identify a ‘cursive’ variant of runic script which might work withindifferent bounds from a more formal one? What sort of training did different runemasters have? Do different types of script derive from different social or commercial groups; or different regional groups as implied by the rather old-fashioned
terms ‘Danish runes’ and ‘Swedo-Norwegian runes’? Swedish scholars have, ofcourse, worked on individual traditions within their rich rune-stone corpus, but the
principle needs wider examination. Was the maker of a rune-stone usually also theTHE CONTRIBUTION OF RUNIC STUDIES

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carver of its runes? Or did you send for a specialist for specialist work? And—thisapplies to some Viking areas—to what extent was a rune-master literate in otherscripts such as roman or ogham?
(5) Why is there so much uncertainty in our interpretations of runic texts and can
we do anything about it? What an archaeologist, faced with an inscription, asks his
epigraphist is the simple question, ‘What does it say?’ And all archaeologists I
have worked with tend to get exasperated when I reply, as I often do, that I could
put forward some suggestions, but I cannot guarantee a meaning. In the case of
rune-stones we often have a general pattern of text into which an individual
inscription can be fitted; and this gives a preliminary interpretation though there
may be pockets of uncertainty as well as linguistic peculiarities. This makes therune-stones more open to use than the inscriptions on other objects, and should
give any summary of runic usage an improper bias. When we get to inscriptions
on miscellaneous portable objects we are so often unable to define the sort of texts
they are and this makes interpretation perilous. A modern sceptic should ponder
how much he might make out of some present-day demotic inscriptions if he wereto find them completely out of intellectual context: ‘For best before see cap’, ‘This
door is alarmed’, ‘Heavy plant crossing’, ‘Disabled toilet’, ‘No right turn mandatory’, ‘Away coaches and fans’, ‘Unisex hair’ and so on. Armed with a minimal
word-list and a minimal grammar (which is all we have for runic Norse) would hebe sure he could identify parts of speech, word separation, extended meanings ofwords? So with the runologist: he can make suggestions, but seldom is it possible
to do more. And this means that most interpretations must be put in the subjunctive. When three field-workers, Michael Barnes, Jan Ragnar Hagland and I, came
to contemplate our individual contributions on the Dublin inscriptions, we foundwe were on occasion able to put forward alternative interpretations of the other’s
text. But had these any validity other than to show that the text was ambiguous toa modern reader unable to share the original context? Much runic time has beenspent exchanging, for interpretations that could not be proved, alternatives of no
greater probability. We cannot spend our lives suspending judgment. But whatelse can we suspend unless it is disbelief?
(6) It was that wise Swedish scholar, Lena Petersen, who defined for us thegreatest runic problem of all, how to get enough money to support runic research.
In a sense this derives from some of the issues I have presented above, the needfor runology to achieve recognition and credibility, to be shown as central rather
than marginal to historical and linguistic study. That can be done if we make ourmaterial and its methodology more readily available to our fellow-workers thanperhaps we have done hitherto.

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NOTES
1

Kendrick 1930, 100–01, 137, 163.

2 Turville-Petre 1951, 23.
3 Sawyer 1962, 43.
4 Jones 1968, 266–67. He also gives an appendix, two pages long, on runes as a script,

419–20.
5 Foote and Wilson 1970, 313.
6 Sawyer 1971, 43.
7 Sawyer 1991, 215.
8 Jansson 1962 and 1987.
9 Musset 1965, 380–444. For those scholars who dared venture into German there wasa good selection of material in Ruprecht 1958.
10 Moltke 1985, a revised version in English translation of Moltke 1976.
11 Jesch 1991, 42–74.
12 Foote and Wilson 1970, 109.
13 Jansson 1987, 98.
14 Sawyer 1988, 1989 and 1991. Birgit Sawyer has a number of other articles on related
topics in Swedish, for which see the running bibliographies in Nytt om runer.
15 Jansson 1985, 34.
16 Stoklund 1991, 296.
17 Moltke 1985, 287. Dr Jesch discusses these words in her paper in this volume. Thereis still more work to be done on them: cf., for example, the implications of drenc used ina precise sense in a Latin context in the Chronicon Laudunensis, noted in Fell 1974, 182.
18 Strid 1987.
19 Moltke 1985, 196–97.
20 Moltke 1985, 290.
21 Nordal 1933, 145.
22 Page 1983, 134.
23 The first volume of Norges innskrifter med de yngre runer to deal with inscriptions
from Bryggen is Liestøl 1980 together with Johnsen 1990. There have, of course, been
numbers of discussions of Bryggen runes earlier than this, notably Liestøl 1964 and Dyvik,
Seim and Grandell 1988.
24 Liestøl 1971, particularly pp. 75–78.
25 Liestøl 1964, 54–56.
26 Olsen 1954, 169–71
27 Page 1980, 196–97; 1983, 135, 142–43.
28 Jesch 1991, 72–74.
29 Olsen 1954, 180.
30 Olsen 1954, 180–81.
31 Page 1980, 185–86.
32 Sawyer 1962, 103.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dyvik, Helge, Seim, Karin Fjellhammer and Grandell, Axel. 1988. The Bryggen papers.
Supplementary Series 2.
Fell, Christine. 1974. ‘The Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor: its version of theAnglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium’, Anglo-Saxon England 3, 179—96.

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Foote, Peter and Wilson, David M. 1970. The Viking achievement: the society and cultureof early medieval Scandinavia.
Jansson, Sven B. F. 1962. The runes of Sweden. (Trans. P. G. Foote.)
Jansson , Sven B . F . 1 985 . Två runstenar i Hälsingland : Malsta och Sunnå . Filologiskt
arkiv 33 .
Jansson, Sven B. F. 1987. Runes in Sweden. (Trans. P. G. Foote.)
Jesch, Judith. 1991. Women in the Viking Age.
Johnsen, Ingrid Sanness. l990. Bryggen i Bergen I (= Norges innskrifter med de yngre
runer, vol. 6, 2, ed. James E. Knirk).
Jones, Gwyn. 1968. A history of the Vikings.
Kendrick, T. D. 1930. A history of the Vikings.
Liestøl, Aslak. 1964. Runer frå Bryggen. [A reprint of Liestøl’s article in Viking 27, 1964,
5–53, with an added postscript reporting the letter of Sigur›r Lávar›r.]
Liestøl, Aslak. 1971. ‘The literate Vikings’. In Peter Foote and Dag Strömbäck (ed.),Proceedings of the Sixth Viking Congress. Uppsala 1969, 69–78.
Liestøl, Aslak. 1980. Bryggen i Bergen (= Norges innskrifter med de yngre runer, vol. 6, 1).
Moltke, Erik. 1976. Runerne i Danmark og deres oprindelse.
Moltke, Erik. 1985. Runes and their origin. Denmark and elsewhere. (Trans. P. G. Foote.)
Musset, Lucien. 1965. Introduction à la runologie.
Nordal, Sigur›ur (ed.). 1933. Egils saga Skalla-Grimssonar. Íslenzk fornrit 2.
Olsen, Magnus. 1954. ‘Runic inscriptions in Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man’. In
Haakon Shetelig (ed.), Viking antiquities in Great Britain and Ireland 6, 151–233.
Page, R. I. 1980. ‘Some thoughts on Manx runes’, Saga-Book 20:3, 179–99.
Page, R. I. 1983. ‘The Manx rune-stones’. In Christine Fell et al. (ed.), The Viking Age in
the Isle of Man. Select papers from The Ninth Viking Congress, Isle of Man, 4–14 July
1981, 133–46.
Ruprecht, Arndt. 1958. Die ausgehende Wikingerzeit im Lichte der Runeninschriften.
Sawyer, Birgit. 1988. Property and inheritance in Viking Scandinavia.
Sawyer, Birgit. 1989. ‘Women as landholders and alienators of property in early medieval
Scandinavia’. In Karen Glente and Lise Winther-Jensen (ed.), Female power in the
Middle Ages. Proceedings from the second St Gertrud symposium, Copenhagen 1986,
156–71.
Sawyer, Birgit. 1991. ‘Women as bridge-builders: the role of women in Viking-Age
Scandinavia’. In Ian Wood and Niels Lund (ed.), People and places in northern Europe
500–1600. Essays in honour of Peter Hayes Sawyer.
Sawyer, P. H. 1962 and 1971. The age of the Vikings. 1st and 2nd editions.
Stoklund, Marie. 1991. ‘Runesten, kronologi og samfundsrekonstruktion. Nogle kritiske
overvejelser med utgangspunkt i runestenene i Mammenområdet’. In Mette Iversen, Ulf
Näsman and Jens Vellev (ed.), Grav, kunst og samfund i vikingetid.
Strid, Jan Paul. 1987. ‘Runic Swedish thegns and drengs’. In Runor och runinskrifter.
Föredrag vid Riksantikvarieämbetets och Vitterhetsakademiens Symposium 8–11 september
1985, 301–16.
Turville-Petre, G. 1951. The heroic age of Scandinavia.

JUDITH JESCHSSKALDIC VERSE AND VIKING SEMANTICSKALDIC verse is an important but underused source for the historical studyof the Viking Age in Scandinavia and elsewhere. In this paper I will outline
some principles for the study of skaldic vocabulary and show how such a study
illuminates the social history of early Scandinavia.

Skaldic verse : the nature of the evidence
Most skaldic poetry is preserved in Icelandic manuscripts of the thirteenth century
or later. In the prose contexts in which the verses are preserved, they are often
linked to a specific historical moment and usually attributed to an identifiable
historical individual, and scholarly consensus would therefore assign to mostskaldic verses a date of composition before their first extant recording. On thebasis of these medieval attributions, we appear to have a substantial body of versethat is roughly dateable to the period before 1100. Naturally, not all medieval
attributions can be correct, and we need to distinguish verse that has been correctly attributed and is therefore dateable from spurious verse which remains of
uncertain date. The principles for making this distinction have yet to be subjected
to a full and rigorous scrutiny, but most scholars would probably go along with
Foote’s ‘pragmatic distinction’ (1984, 74) between verse in the Kings’ Sagas andthe poetic treatises that is ‘on the whole more likely than not to be correctly
ascribed’, and the verse in Íslendingasögur and related texts which should be left
out of the historical ‘canon’ in the absence of any clear indications as to its dateand circumstances of composition.
This historical ‘canon’ of both praise poems and lausavísur from the Kings’
Sagas and the treatises, although substantial and dateable, has its limitations. The
subjects that interested the skalds are few and predictable: war, gold and sailingpredominate, with topics like love and more mundane matters largely restricted tothe ‘non-canonical’, possibly spurious, corpus. The scholar searching for enlightenment about Scandinavian society before 1100 will find that only certain aspectsof that society are illuminated, directly or indirectly, by skaldic verse.
As well as being circumscribed in subject-matter, skaldic poetry is an art-form
that does not give much away, with its brilliant formalism drawing attention fromthe message to the medium. That message is generally cliché-ridden, repetitive
and often deceitful, and even where skaldic verse attempts narrativity, its main
tactic is to link a series of set-pieces. But it is possible to make a virtue of thisskaldic failing. The elaborate static quality of skaldic verse is both cause andeffect of a largely nominal style, a discourse that is rich in nouns and adjectives.

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The vocabulary of skaldic verse, with its many synonyms and near-synonyms forhuman beings and their social relationships, deserves particular attention.

Principles of the semantic study of skaldic verse
Some general principles need to be agreed before the vocabulary of skaldic verse
can receive this attention. The principles I suggest here arise out of my work on
the Old Norse nouns ﬂegn and drengr,1 often untranslatable and hovering between
being general terms of approbation and technical terms of rank. These terms havebeen discussed in a series of earlier studies (Aakjær 1927–28; Kuhn 1944; Lindow
1976; Strid 1987), but none of these is restricted to the skaldic usages; they are all
etymological, comparatist and, often, decontextualised in approach.
There is much to be gained from a recontextualisation of semantic studies andfrom a more precise application of the comparative method. As for etymology, I
tend to agree with Fell (1987, 295) that it ‘may obfuscate discussion of meaning
and translation’. Thus, any study of skaldic semantics should pay particularattention to the following:(1) Defining the corpus. For a historical investigation it is essential to limit thematerial to verse that can be localised in a particular historical and chronologicalcontext. Using the Foote principle, this means restricting the analysis to verses
that are preserved in Kings’ Sagas and Snorri’s Edda.
It is useful to further delimit the corpus by date. Once we have applied Foote’s
principle, we find a preponderance of verse dated to the eleventh century, greatly
helped of course by such prolific poets as Sigvatr, Arnórr and ﬁjó›ólfr. It is wise
to concentrate on this material which is relatively abundant and relatively near thetime of writing. However, I would argue for stretching the eleventh century
somewhat, and making the limits c.980–1105.
(2) Editorial problems. Using skaldic verse as the basis for such a study because
it originated in the Viking Age presupposes a text-critical approach in which theaim is to reconstruct the original form of the verse as far as is possible, independent of its prose context. Since Finnur Jónsson, few strides have been made in the
direction of providing such an edition. However, the absence of a reliable textcritical edition of the corpus (see Fidjestøl 1985) should not present an insuperable
obstacle. The textual difficulties of skaldic verse are not evenly spread and, asFoote pointed out (1978, 59), ‘a very large number of scaldic stanzas are extraordinarily well-preserved’. My own impression is that textual problems do not
greatly affect our understanding of the type of vocabulary items under consideration here.
(3) Special problems of skaldic diction. The concept of ‘skaldic vocabulary’ is not
an uncomplicated one. In skaldic verse we have to contend with at least threelevels of vocabulary. Thus, many words have a straightforward denotative mean-

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ing, while others have a denotation that is limited to their use in poetry, or acquire
a new denotation when entering into the metaphorical collocations we call kennings.
While kennings present their own special problems, the first two categories arealso not always easy to distinguish. For instance, when faced with the word ekkja
in a skaldic verse, we need to decide whether it literally denotes a ‘widow’, or
whether it has the more generalised poetic sense of ‘woman’.
Terms for social status and rank are particularly vulnerable to this kind ofimprecision. The skalds needed many synonyms for and variations on terms formen of high rank and warrior status, and the exigencies of skaldic metre would nothave allowed them to be too fastidious about their choice of word. Thus, for any
noun in the skaldic corpus, we have to allow for the following possibilities:— that it has a meaning which is not specific to poetry, and which may or may
not be precise;— that it has a meaning restricted to poetry which is nevertheless coloured by
its non-poetic meaning, and which may or may not be precise;— that it has a meaning restricted to poetry which is not coloured by any
meanings it may have elsewhere, and which may or may not be precise.
Recognising the theoretical possibility that a term has a straightforward, nonpoetic meaning is of course not the same thing as being able to determine thatmeaning, since most of our prose instances of the word will be from a later period.
However, despite the problems, the only way to determine the meanings available
to any one term in the poetic corpus is to examine the full range of occurrences.
(4) Defining the semantic unit. As well as the simple terms like ﬂegn and drengr,
account needs to be taken of adverbial derivatives such as fulldrengila or compounds such as búﬂegn. It may be that the component -ﬂegn or -dreng- is not
semantically identical to the simplex but, again, this can only be discovered when
the whole range has been investigated.
(5) The semantic contexts. The meaning of a word is not intrinsic but determinedby its relationship to other words in the linguistic system.
(a) Collocations. In skaldic verse, with its fairly free word order and often
multiple possibilities of combining lexical units, it is sometimes difficult todetermine precisely which collocations the terms being investigated enter into.
Recasting the stanza in prose misrepresents the way skaldic poetry works, andit may be necessary to take the helmingr in which the term appears as thecollocational unit.
(b) Contrasts. The meaning of a word is also delimited by the ways in which it
contrasts with related words in the same semantic field. Thus, terms like ﬂegn
and drengr need to be considered in relation to functionally parallel terms suchas húskarl, rekkr, hir›ma›r. The wider semantic field also needs to be considered, including words that are functionally different but conceptually related,

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such as drótt, li›, ver›ung representing the social unit in which the ﬂegn or
drengr operates, or dróttinn, ﬂengill, etc., for the leader whom he serves.
(6) The literary contexts. We must also consider the wider literary context inestablishing the meaning of a word.
(a) The poem. On occasion a word may have an idiosyncratic meaning that ischaracteristic of one poem or poet. Thus, I believe that Sigvatr uses the word
drengr in such an anomalous way in his Austrfararvísur, as I will demonstrate
below.
(b) Intertextuality. As a small, professional class, most poets probably knew
each other’s work well, and either borrowed from it or made use of formulaic
expressions. A number of the examples of ﬂegn and drengr occur in lines thatare identical or nearly identical in two or more poems by different poets and thisphenomenon may affect our understanding of their meaning.
(c) The saga. The text-critical approach, in which we aim to work with a text thatis the closest possible to the original Viking Age composition, would seem topreclude any serious consideration of the prose context in which the verse isfound. However, it is a fact that skaldic verse is mediated to us throughthirteenth-century Icelandic prose texts and it is better to acknowledge thisinfluence and make allowances for it if necessary, rather than to pretend we areable to read the verse unmediated.
(7) Comparative angles. Even a contextual semantic study needs to take accountof occurrences of the word in non-skaldic texts. This comparative material can beof many kinds, but two seem especially relevant to the current investigation:(a) Runic inscriptions. The eleventh-century date of much skaldic verse coincides neatly with the date of the numerous late Viking Age runic inscriptions
from mainland Scandinavia. East Norse forms of the terms ﬂegn and drengr
occur in Swedish and Danish memorial inscriptions.
(b) Old English texts. ﬁegn is a perfectly good Old English word, widely usedin both literary and historical sources, dreng is a loan-word that appears in The
Battle of Maldon and sporadically after 1066. Again, the period c.980–1105
neatly covers the bulk of the relevant English material.

Skaldic meanings of drengr and ﬂegn
With these principles in mind, I propose to discuss the meanings of drengr andﬂegn as they emerge in skaldic verse of the late tenth to the early twelfth century.
The range of questions raised by these two terms can be seen from the following
selection of conclusions scholars have reached about their meanings:
For Svend Aakjær (1927–28, 28–29), ‘the Nordic thegns and drengs wereonce . . . royal servants, members of the king’s attendant nobility and of his hirdor bodyguard.’ But, ‘as time went on . . . they came to connote the possession

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JUDITH JESCH. . . of certain moral qualities, especially nobility, generosity, chivalrousness
and courage.’
Hans Kuhn concluded (1944, 111–14) that neither ﬂegn nor drengr was
originally used as a term of rank in Norway and Iceland, but that there isevidence that drengr developed such a meaning in Denmark and that this spreadto Norway, as shown by some skaldic examples.
John Lindow wrote (1976, 106) that ‘if drengr and ﬂegn ever were technicalterms in contemporary West Norse, this usage left no trace in the language ofthe skalds.’ From the runic evidence, he deduced (pp. 111–12) that drengr andﬂegn belong to the sphere of ‘the large, free middle class of farmers who madeup the backbone of old Scandinavian society’ but that they ‘did not make up partof Nordic comitatus terminology.’
Jan Paul Strid concluded (1987, 313) that ‘there is no substantial difference
between the runic drængiaR of Svealand and the drengir of the Old Icelandic
literature’ and he followed Peter Foote in suggesting that ‘they are similar to
English gentleman in their variety of connotations.’
The importance of determining the meanings of drengr and ﬂegn is shown by thekinds of conclusions historians and archaeologists wish to draw from their uses.2
Thus, Peter Sawyer (1989, 34) believed on the basis of Danish and west Swedishrunic inscriptions that ‘Drengs who fought for Cnut and survived may well havecontinued, as thegns, to acknowledge him as their royal lord after returning homewhere some may have acted as his local agents.’
A close analysis of the dateable skaldic evidence presents a quite different
picture in which drengr and ﬂegn are neither technical terms of rank nor generalterms of approbation. Instead they belong to a semantic sphere that demonstrates
the workings of the society that produced and consumed skaldic verse. Of particular interest are the relationships between a king or military leader and his immediate companions, his wider group of supporters, both military and political, andhis subjects at large. These relationships occur in the spheres of both war and morepeaceful political activity. It is clear that these relationships are in flux in theeleventh century and the terminology reflects this.

Drengr
A primary meaning of drengr appears to be that of the member of the comitatus,
as we know him from many generations of explication of Old English and Old
Norse heroic literature, in which the follower fights by the side of his lord in battle
and is in turn richly rewarded. This element of reciprocity is important, and almost
overshadows the hierarchical nature of the relationship. This idea of the firstamong equals is expressed quite clearly in three stanzas of Halldórr ókristni’s
Eiríksflokkr, describing the battle at Svo≈l› (Skjd. A I 203–04; B I 194; Hkr. I 360,
365, 367).3 In st. 4a, we see the drengir performing their duties:

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165

Ger›isk snarpra sver›a,slitu drengir fri› lengi,
ﬂars gollin spjo≈r gullu,
gangr of Orm enn langa.
There was movement of keen swords around Ormr enn langi, drengir broke the peace
for a long time, where gilded spears called out.

In st. 6a their leader jarl Eiríkr calls on his drengir :Hét á heiptar n‡tahugreifr , me› Ó≈ leifi
aptr sto≈kk ﬂjó› of ﬂoptur,
ﬂengill sína drengi.
The cheerful ruler called on his drengir, useful in battle, the troop sprang back acrossthe rowing-benches with Óláfr.

And in st. 7b Eiríkr, the d‡rr drengja stjóri, does his bit in the battle:

Gn‡r var› á sjá sver›a.
Sleit o≈rn gera beitu.
D‡rr vá drengja stjóri.
Drótt kom mo≈rg á flótta.
There was crash of swords on the sea. The eagle tore the wolf’s food. The excellent
leader of drengir fought. Many warriors fled.

The rhyme with ﬂengill in st. 6a is common for drengr and occurs in Steinn
Herdísarson’s Óláfsdrápa, where the equation between military support and theleader’s generosity is made explicit in st. 16 (Skjd. A I 413; B I 382):

Dyggr lætr ﬂungar ﬂiggja
ﬂengill af sér drengi,
vás launar svá vísiver›ung, Hó≈ars ger›ar.
The valiant ruler lets his drengir receive heavy Ó›inn’s gear [armour], thus the leader
repays his retinue for their trouble.

Finally, it should be noted that the term drengr could be used to refer to theenemy, as when Vígfúss Víga-Glúmsson mentions the Danish drengir at the battleof Hjo≈rungavágr (Skjd. A I 120; B I 115; Fsk. 134).
It could be argued that it is not the word drengr itself that implies membershipof the comitatus, but the contexts in which it occurs; that drengr simply means‘man’, or possibly ‘warrior’, and takes on the more specific connotation because
everyone knew that was what the relationship between a lord and his ‘man’entailed. There is some support for this view in stanzas where the term drengr is
explicitly paralleled by another term in the same semantic field, as in st. 2 ofHallfre›r vandræ›askáld’s Erfidrápa, where the rekkar are in the same relationship to their leader as the drengir (Skjd. A I 159; B I 150; Hkr. I 356; Fsk. 152–53).

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Where I believe it is possible to trace the particular connotations of drengr is,paradoxically, when the term begins to lose this specific meaning and takes onother connotations. It is the specific meaning of drengr (close follower of amilitary leader) and not a more general meaning (man, warrior) that enables newmeanings of the word to develop in the eleventh century. From Sigvatr onwards,
we can trace the twofold development of drengr, with emphasis on one hand on
the semantic component of ‘intimacy’, on the other of ‘followership’.
Sigvatr rings the changes on the element -dreng- in his Austrfararvísur (Skjd.
A I 233–40; B I 220–25). He is called armi drengr by a heathen woman he meetsin Sweden (st. 5; Hkr. II 137; Turville-Petre 1976, 82), and when his horse
stumbles it is referred to as fákr drengs (st. 11; Hkr. II 93–94; Turville-Petre 1976,
80; Frank 1978, 72–74). Despite the fact that it is a difficult and uncomfortable
mission (drjúggenginn vas drengjum), the poet (drengr) still feels able to praise his
ﬂengill (st. 14; Hkr. II 139–40). Indeed, he triumphs over adversity and emphasises that he has managed the journey fulldrengila (st. 15; Hkr. II 140; TurvillePetre 1976, 83), and he achieves an agreement for equal treatment of Ro≈gnvaldr’s
húskarlar with Óláfr’s drengir (st. 18; Hkr. II 142; Fsk. 180). Throughout thepoem, Sigvatr contrasts his happiness on the king’s ship with his troubles on land,
and uses drengr when the discomforts are being emphasised. The implication isthat the king’s followers are more than willing to endure trouble and difficulty forhis sake, but also that they are intimate enough with him to make open andcomplaining reference to this. Sigvatr’s usage is individual, even idiosyncratic,
but builds on the semantic components of the basic term. His verse is very muchthe poetry of camaraderie, of the in-group. Speaking, as Sigvatr does, from withinthat in-group, it is logical for drengr to develop the first-person meaning. This
meaning is common in non-canonical skaldic verse, where the poet refers tohimself in the third person as drengr. The semantic component ‘intimacy’ that
seems important to the meaning of drengr can lead to the use of the term in othercontexts than that of the relationship between the war-lord and his followers. Thus
drengr is commonly used in poetry about women and love.
In a lausavísa preserved in Orkneyinga saga, Arnórr ﬁór›arson expresses his
unwillingness to get involved in a battle between the two Orkney jarls ﬁorfinnr
and Ro≈gnvaldr, referring to himself as drengr (Skjd. A I 354; B I 326–27; Orkn.
66–67). But besides demonstrating the common first-person meaning of this term,
this verse also reminds us (gótt’s fylgja vel dróttni ) of the important collocation
with the term dróttinn. In Arnórr’s poetry we sense a new relationship between adrengr and his dróttinn that is no longer the easy camaraderie of the comitatus. In
his Magnúsdrápa, for instance, the king is drengja harri in the centre of thefighting (st. 14; Skjd. A I 342; B I 314), or drengja dróttinn when he wins both
Denmark and Norway (st. 7a; Skjd. A I 340; B I 312–13):

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Ná›i siklingr sí›ansnjallr ok Danmo≈rk allri,mó≈ttr óx drengja dróttins,d‡rr Nóregi at st‡ra.
The courageous, excellent prince then achieved rule over Norway and all Denmark, thepower of the lord of drengir increased.

This stanza is a good example of the type of praise poetry that centres entirely on
the king, heaping up nouns and epithets referring to him—the drengir have only
a shadowy substance, providing at most an unspecific background to the achievements of their king. This style reaches its culmination in the Eiríksdrápa of Markús
Skeggjason which always seems to me to have a flavour of pastiche about it. In
st. 7, describing Eiríkr’s generosity, the emphasis is entirely on the king and thegifts he is distributing, while the drengir are the mere passive recipients of hisbounty (Skjd. A I 445–46; B I 415; Kn‡tl. 214–15):

Drengir ﬂó≈gu au› at yngva.
O≈ rr fylkir gaf sver› ok kno≈rru.
Eiríkr veitti opt ok stórum
armleggjar ro≈f d‡r›ar seggjum.
Hringum eyddi hodda sløngvir
hildar ramr, en stillir fram›ifyr›a kyn, svát flestir ur›u,Fró›a stóls, af hó≈num gó›ir.
The drengir received wealth from the king. The generous captain gave swords andships. Eiríkr granted often and lavishly arm’s amber [gold] to men of excellence.
The battle-brave distributor of treasure destroyed rings, and the occupant of Fró›i’sthrone honoured men so that most became enriched by him.

With the growing power and ambitions of kings, then, the drengir, far frombeing their most trusted followers and intimates, have become mere cannonfodder (Steinn, Óláfsdrápa, st. 4; Skjd. A I 410; B I 379; Hkr. III 180–81; Fsk. 279)
or rowing-power (ﬁjó›ólfr, lausavísa 19; Skjd. A I 381; B I 351; Hkr. III 142).
And anyone who is not totally loyal to his dróttinn is accused of the crime ofdrengspell (ﬁjó›ólfr, Sexstefja, st. 11; Skjd. A I 371; B I 341; Fsk. 264). Sigvatr,
who reserved the right to criticise his kings, would not have approved.

ﬁegn
Also reserving their right to criticise the king are the ﬂegnar of skaldic poetry. In
the corpus under investigation, the term ﬂegn first appears in stanza 19 of Óttarr
svarti’s Ho≈fu›lausn (Skjd. A I 295–96; B I 272; Hkr. II 172–73; Fsk. 181; Orkn. 41):
Gegn, eru ﬂér at ﬂegnum,
ﬂjó›skjo≈ldunga gó›rahaldi› hæft á veldi,
Hjaltlendingar kenndir.

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Engi var› á jo≈r›uógnbrá›r, á›r ﬂér nó≈›um,
austr, sás eyjum vestan,ynglingr, und sik ﬂryngvi.
You rule skilfully and worthily the dominions of good folk-kings, the Shetlanders are
acknowledged to be your ﬂegnar.
There was no vehement king in the east [Norway], before we got you, who forced
the islands in the west under him.

Here, the word ﬂegn appears to mean ‘subject’. In the prose introduction to thisverse in ch. 31 of Fagrskinna, this relationship is interpreted as one of taxpayment: Óláfr konungr lag›i undir sik fyrst Nóregskonunga ok tók skatta um
Orkneyjar ok Hjaltland ok Færeyjar. But in the verse itself, the relationshipbetween the king and the Shetlanders, while clearly one of subordination, is nota legalistic fiscal one but is expressed in basic terms of subjugation. The poetaddresses the king and praises him for having a firm hold on his kingdom, and forbeing the first Norwegian king to have subjugated the islands in the west.
This connotation of resistance that must be crushed is present in almost all theoccurrences of ﬂegn in eleventh-century skaldic verse. Sigvatr, as usual, uses theconnotations for his own purposes: in Berso≈glisvísur, he is on the side of theﬂegnar who are in a state of opposition to the rule of Magnús the Good. But they
are in opposition because of the king’s heavy-handed behaviour in keeping themin line. Hverr eggjar ﬂik ho≈ggva . . . bú ﬂegna? he asks (st. 11; Skjd. A I 254; BI 237; Hkr. III 29; Fsk. 213–14), and he reports their amazement that mínn dróttinn
leggr sína eign á ó›al ﬂegna (st. 14; Skjd. A I 255; B I 238; Hkr. III 30). In hisverses on the Battle of Stiklestad, the idea of opposition is also present: the ﬂegnar
opposed to the king gained an advantage because they were twice as many
(Erfidrápa, st. 9; Skjd. A I 259; B I 241; Hkr. II 377), and in a lausavísa warning
King Óláfr of treachery, it will be every ﬂegn for himself (lausavísa 20; Skjd. A
I 271; B I 251; Hkr. II 304).
Sigvatr could usually see both sides of a question, but other poets adopted amore single-mindedly royalist tone, and the ﬂegnar are there seen entirely from theking’s point of view, as unruly subordinates to be curbed. Thus, echoing a linefrom Sigvatr, Arnórr ﬁór›arson praises Magnús for that which Sigvatr criticised
him for: Eignask namt ﬂú ó›al ﬂegna (Hrynhenda, st. 8; Skjd. A I 334; B I 307–08). The ﬂegnar become as much a part of the king’s possessions as the land, sothat Magnús and Haraldr har›rá›i can share them out between them (ﬁjó›ólfr,Sexstefja, st. 9; Skjd. A I 371; B I 341; Hkr. III 97–98). Stanzas 19–23 of Sexstefja
illustrate how Haraldr subjugates the different parts of Norway, and this sectionof the poem is summed up in st. 24 with the statement that Haraldr refsir ﬂegnum
reyndan ofsa (Skjd. A I 375; B I 344–45; Hkr. III 199).

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Haraldr was not the only king admired for dealing with his subjects with a hard
hand. Even the mild Óláfr kyrri was praised by Steinn Herdísarson for forcing(kúga) the ﬂegnar til fri›mála (Óláfsdrápa, st. 13; Skjd. A I 412; B I 382; Hkr. III
203; Fsk. 299). As usual, the eleventh-century attitude is summed up by Markús
Skeggjason. Stanza 8a of his Eiríksdrápa enumerates four classes of miscreants
that the king has dealt with (Skjd. A I 446; B I 415; Kn‡tl. 216):

Vo≈rgum eyddi Vin›a fergir.
Víking hepti konungr fíkjum.
ﬁjófa hendr lét ﬂengill st‡fa.
ﬁegnum kunni hann ósi› hegna.
The conqueror of the Wends destroyed outlaws. The king decisively stopped piracy. The
ruler had thieves’ hands chopped off. He curbed the rebellion of the ﬂegnar.

Placing ﬂegnar in the company of outlaws, pirates and thieves is hardly flattering!
Thus, in skaldic verse about 11th-century Scandinavia, the term ﬂegn was
clearly used in the context of growing royal power, which felt the need to assert
itself strongly against its own subjects.

Comparisons
The occurrence of the word dreng in a pre-1066 English source,4 The Battle ofMaldon, l. 149 (Scragg 1981, 61), is undoubtedly a loan-word and corresponds
fairly closely to the meaning outlined above. In borrowing the word dreng, theEnglish poet used it very much as it would have been used in an equivalent skaldic
verse about the battle, if only we had one.
Two lines later in the poem, we find the word ﬂegen, referring to the hero,
Byrhtnoth, as Æﬂelredes ﬂegen. The word occurs three more times in the poem,
always clearly referring to men of rank, in the context of emphasising their loyalty
to, and willingness to die for, their lord. These two semantic components of highrank and loyalty to a superior are basic to the secular uses of the word ﬂeg(e)n in
Old English. This is not the place to embark on a semantic analysis of the Old
English word, which is extremely common, except to say that the Old English
term is generally quite specific and there seems to be little or no overlap with theskaldic usage as I have sketched it above. The English influence on the meaningof the word, if any, must come later (Hofmann 1955, 77).
Post-1066 uses of the word dreng (including the Lancashire Domesday) have avery different meaning from that of The Battle of Maldon and seem, like ﬂegn, torefer to a specific rank (Harmer 1952, 532). It is likely that this usage wasintroduced in the time of, or as a result of, the reign of Cnut, and that it came from
Denmark. Thus a more proper comparison would be with its use in East Norserunic inscriptions rather than West Norse skaldic verse, and this is a topic thatneeds further investigation.

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At the same time, runic inscriptions raise a different set of questions comparedwith skaldic verse. With runic inscriptions we have the original text and dating ismore secure, if not very precise. Perhaps more significant is the fact that we are
dealing with an entirely different type of text, in a different register, composed for
different reasons and for a different audience, in East rather than West Norse. Yet
there are also areas of overlap. Both skaldic verse and runic inscriptions could besaid to have the general function of ‘praise’, and some runic inscriptions havepoetic pretensions.
Despite this overlap, it seems clear that both terms, ﬂægn/ﬂiagn and drængR, areused very differently in runic inscriptions from the way they are in skaldic verse.5
In general, it can be said that the runic usages of these two words are not as clearly
differentiated as the skaldic ones. In the runic inscriptions, the two terms are usedin very similar ways, usually referring to the dead, very often in collocation withan adjective, usually go–›r, goﬂr etc. There is nothing in the inscriptions to indicate
whether these were terms of rank or not. The only discernible differences between
the two terms are generational and regional: the drængiaR are more likely to becommemorated as sons or brothers (or in Denmark as partners), the ﬂægnaR as
fathers and husbands; in eastern Sweden, ﬁiagn is known only as a proper name.
There is also, in the Swedish inscriptions, a fairly strong correlation between useof the term drængR and what might be called ‘viking’ activity, expeditions ordeath abroad, particularly if we include the few inscriptions containing the adverbdrængila.
The only safe conclusion is that the skaldic poems and the runic inscriptions areusing an entirely different vocabulary, despite the apparent identity of the twoterms under investigation. Whether this is because the words meant something
different in East Norse and West Norse, or whether it is because either the skalds or
the rune-carvers (or both) were using a specialised vocabulary, remains to be seen.
NOTES
1 I am grateful to David Parsons who, financed by the Scandinavian Studies Fund of the
University of Cambridge, has created a machine-readable version of a large proportion of
Skjd. B and has thereby made the task of finding individual words considerably easier.
2 Recently, Marie Stoklund (1992, 295–96) has wisely warned against drawing too wideranging conclusions from the variable and not always securely dated runic material.
3 For all skaldic stanzas and half-stanzas cited, I give references both to Skjd. and to
one or more Íslenzk fornrit editions, if relevant. I tend to follow the latter, if cited, inmatters of both normalisation and punctuation (though not slavishly). The translations are
my own and aim at consistency and accuracy rather than elegance.
4 In fact, the term (spelt ›reng) is also used in Gospatric’s writ which, although surviving
in a 13th-century transcript, almost certainly represents an original from the late AngloSaxon period (Harmer 1952, 421).

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5 The occurrences of these words in Danish and Swedish runic inscriptions can be
deduced from the concordances in Andersen and Holmboe 1983, and Peterson 1989. For
discussion, in addition to the studies already cited, see Jacobsen and Moltke 1942, cols 643,
730–31.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONSAakjær, Svend. 1927–28. ‘Old Danish thegns and drengs’, Acta philologica Scandinavica
2, 1–30.
Andersen, Ingeborg, and Holmboe, Henrik. 1983. Kondordans over de danske runeindskrifter—
Transskription.
Fell, Christine. 1987. ‘Old English wicing : a question of semantics’, Proceedings of the
British Academy 72, 295–316.
Fidjestøl, Bjarne. 1985. ‘On a new edition of scaldic poetry’. In The Sixth International
Saga Conference, 28.7.–2.8. 1985. Workshop papers, 319–35.
Foote, Peter. 1978. ‘Wrecks and rhymes’. In Thorsten Andersson and Karl Inge Sandred(eds.). The Vikings. Proceedings of a symposium of the Faculty of Arts of Uppsala
University, June 6–9, 1977, 57–66.
Foote, Peter. 1984. ‘Things in early Norse verse’. In Bjarne Fidjestøl et al. (eds.). Festskrift
til Ludvig Holm-Olsen på hans 70-årsdag den 9. juni 1984, 74–83.
Frank, Roberta. 1978. Old Norse court poetry: the dróttkvætt stanza.
Fsk. = Bjarni Einarsson (ed.). 1984. Ágrip af Nóregskonunga so≈gum. Fagrskinna—Nóregs
konunga tal.
Harmer, F. E. 1952. Anglo-Saxon writs.
Hkr. = Bjarni A›albjarnarson (ed.). 1941–51. Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla.
Hofmann, Dietrich. 1955. Nordisch-englische Lehnbeziehungen der Wikingerzeit.
Jacobsen, Lis, and Moltke, Erik. 1942. Danmarks runeindskrifter. Text.
Kn‡tl. = Bjarni Gu›nason (ed.). 1982. Danakonunga so≈gur.
Kuhn , Hans . 1 944 . ‘ Altnordisch rekkr und Verwandte ’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi 58 ,1 05 – 2 1.
Lindow, John. 1976. Comitatus, individual and honor. Studies in North Germanic institutional vocabulary.
Orkn. = Finnbogi Gu›mundsson (ed.). 1965. Orkneyinga saga.
Peterson, Lena. 1989. Svenskt runordsregister.
Sawyer, Peter. 1989. The making of Sweden.
Scragg, D. G. (ed.). 1981. The Battle of Maldon.
Skjd. = Finnur Jónsson (ed.). 1912–15. Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning.
Stoklund, Marie. 1992. ‘Runesten, kronologi og samfundsrekonstruktion’. In Mammen.
Grav, kunst og samfund i vikingetid, 285–97.
Strid, Jan Paul. 1987. ‘Runic Swedish thegns and drengs’. In Runor och runinskrifter.
Föredrag vid Riksantikvarieämbetets och Vitterhetsakademiens Symposium 8–11 september
1985, 301–16.
Turville-Petre, E. O. G. 1976. Scaldic poetry.

PREBEN MEULENGRACHT SØRENSEN

I

HISTORICAL REALITY AND LITERARY FORM

N ITS broad sense, the term ‘philology’ implies not only the studies that arenecessary to produce an edition of a text—work on manuscripts and language,along with emendation and comment—but also consideration of its form andsignificance; in fact what is more usually thought of as literary study. Saga studies
have traditionally belonged both to the domain of philology in this broad sense
and to the domain of history—and in that order. Most modern contributions reveal
the same divide, at least if we count historical anthropology as a legitimate branchof historical scholarship. The two approaches are closely related but the boundaryline between them is clearly drawn. Philological and literary study seeks thereality in the text. Historical and ethnological study seeks some kind of reality
behind the text.
The subject I have been asked to speak on is the contribution of saga studies toour understanding of Scandinavian society in the early Middle Ages, seen as acurrent problem. I find I am best able to do this by looking at the present-day
situation in saga research and then casting a glance to the future. But inevitably
I shall start with a quick look at the past.
In the course of this century no small confusion has arisen in the study of Norse–
Icelandic literature: a collapse of the consensus that once existed about its origin
and significance. When the Viking Society was founded, and for some time after
that, it was possible to read sagas, even Sagas of Icelanders, as truthful historicalaccounts; and Eddaic poems, myths and legends were still accepted by mostscholars as valid sources of information about the pre-Christian North. This
general attitude was an outcome of the Romantic movement, whose nineteenthcentury sons found no difficulty in reading sagas as history, poetry, mind andspirit, all at the same time. In his history of Old Norse literature, published in
1865, N. M. Petersen could say: ‘The word has two revelations: poetry andhistory.’ He goes on: ‘The idea goes forth and creates the particular; particulars
form an assemblage, and therein the human mind perceives the idea. It is the taskof history to achieve this perception.’ On these lines, and with a reference toAlexander von Humboldt, he explained the creation of sagas: ‘The narrator
discovers the idea inherent in an age . . . An idea reveals itself in the narrative. It
becomes critical history presented with historical art. The saga turns into history’(Petersen 1966, 182; my translations).
The seeds of schism in our own century were already sown in the Romantic
dichotomy between history and poetry (imaginative creative writing, as we would
probably call it). When Carsten Hauch, Petersen’s colleague at the University of

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Copenhagen, lectured on Sagas of Icelanders in 1848 and 1849, he spoke of thedifferences between the realm of poetry and the realm of history—but only to seesaga literature as a higher unification of the two (Hauch 1855, 467). A generation
later the synthesis was being dissolved. Positivism and her straightlaced daughters, source-criticism and the ‘book-prose’ theory, made an either/or distinction
between poetry and history; and now it could no longer be a question of perceiving
the coherent idea of a past age through the particulars of saga literature. On thecontrary, it was the particulars themselves that attracted all the attention.
Historians tried to sort sagas, which they referred to as ‘sources’, into historicaland unhistorical groups. Philologists and literary historians did the same and wenteven farther down that road. They regarded sagas as written compositions, thework of authors with individual personalities; and their most obsessive search wasfor the sources those authors used, for their preoccupations and prejudices, sometimes even for their names and addresses.
Sagas of Icelanders were dissected with particular zeal. Scholars tried to distinguish between written sources and oral tradition, between historical fact andauthorial fiction, between native inheritance and foreign influence, between pagan
and Christian, between honest description of the past and contemporary roman à
clef. But it rarely happened that a saga was considered as what it primarily is:letters on a page, a text, which irrespective of its origin presents itself as a coherent
whole to anyone who hears or reads it. The scholars who based their approach toa saga on the axiom that it was the work of a creative author seldom or never went
the whole way, which would have entailed a purely literary interpretation of thetext they studied. And few scholars attempted to explain why, if the sagas are
fictions, the texts themselves persist in claiming they are works of history; or why,
if they were thus regarded as history, they should be presented in aesthetic form,in literary mode.
The uncertainty that has lingered over the status of sagas as texts, Sagas of
Icelanders in particular, has meant that there has been no firm hermeneutic base tobuild on. When the historians dismissed sagas as usable sources, they left a voidwhich literary scholars have not succeeded in filling. It is true that much time andeffort have gone into analysis of sagas from fresh points of view, and many valuableadditions have been made to our knowledge, but we have not reached any newconsensus on how sagas are to be read and understood. Most studies of a literarykind have been concerned with something outside the text rather than with the text
itself. That is not my idea of literary scholarship, and I hope it is not yours either.
Sagas were deprived of their status as records of historical reality. Debate about
what they meant and what value-system or systems they represented neverthelesscontinued. A central point round which discussion revolved concerned the ethicsof the Sagas of Icelanders. The traditional idea had been that they portrayed an

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authentic heathen code, but when the notion of their immaculate oral conception
in the pre-literate past was abandoned, that idea had to be abandoned too. But as
the sagas now came to be seen as products of the Christian Middle Ages, so theirethical ideas came to be seen as Christian as well. The argument was, and is, thatsince sagas were written by Christians for the benefit of a Christian public, thenthey must be interpreted on the basis of received Christian values.
A good many studies have sought to demonstrate Christian modes of thought
and theological perspectives behind the sagas’ apparently pre-Christian façade.
There is plenty of academic discord in this field too. Acknowledgment that
Christian literary culture affected sagas as written texts has served a useful
purpose, but in the last resort the approach has only stretched sagas out on a new
Procrustean bed. Older scholars saw Sagas of Icelanders as lineal kin of heroic
poetry, and equated ‘honour’ with the Germanic heroic outlook. Younger scholars
believe the same sagas are ruled by ideas that were shaped and fostered by themoral theory of medieval churchmen. Both attitudes start with value-systems thatare external to the sagas, and neither approach does more than throw fitful lighton the themes and principles offered by the texts themselves.
Some attempts at a strictly literary interpretation of individual sagas have been
made, but few have been successful. But if we miss the mark in approaching sagas
with the literary methods at our disposal, the fundamental reason for the failure is
obvious. The fact is that these very methods put us off our aim from the start. The
sagas present themselves as factual historical narratives and it by no means
immediately follows that instruments developed for the critical dissection offiction of one kind and another are suitable tools for the analysis of a saga-text.
Or to put it another way: saga-language imitates the language of everyday life,
which has direct reference to reality, and it does not contain the rhetorical andfigurative significances, the symbolic play with ordinary speech, which our practice of literary criticism is primarily designed to observe and evaluate.
Saga style, particularly in the Sagas of Icelanders but in Kings’ Sagas andContemporary Sagas as well, is an imitation of spoken narrative, of a tale told; andthe style itself is indicative of the truth of what is reported. The form is the formof tradition, and the stock phrases in sagas, ‘It is told’, ‘Now to be told is’, convey
the primary setting, where the narrator is face to face with his audience, guaranteeing with his personality the truthfulness of his account. If we want to understand what a saga means, we must take it seriously for what it claims to be in all
its language and form: a truthful report of past events. A historian may find thisdifficult, because he is committed to a narrow modern definition of truth; but it is
not hard for students of literature or ethnology: they can operate with other notionsof truth, not bound by the concept paramount in their own culture.
There has recently been a reorientation in attitudes towards sagas and Norse–
Icelandic literature as a whole. As at the turn of the century, the impulse has

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mainly come from historical studies, but characteristically enough not so muchfrom the mainstream discipline as from kindred branches, legal history, cultural
history, history of religion, and from social anthropologists who are now
reoccupying the territory deserted by the historians. The interminable discussion
about truth and fiction, the inherited and the novel, has worn itself out. The
relegation of Norse–Icelandic texts from the realm of history to the realm of
invention, which has now in effect lasted for nearly a century, cast a pall, but it
has not stifled a perceived need to confront saga literature afresh and profit fromthe rich material it can contribute to our knowledge of ancient Northern culture.
I shall in all brevity attempt to illustrate the new attitude by reference to recent
work by four scholars who, we can say, have lifted corners of that pall and let fresh
light in. None of them is concerned primarily with sagas as texts, but all haveconsequences for saga study and all have a bearing on aspects of early Scandinavian
society.
Social anthropology has played a key part in the current change of attitude, notso much by the direct contributions of the discipline as by the inspiration it hasgiven to scholars in the fields of history and literature. The most important andsubstantial of the direct contributions have been made by Kirsten Hastrup in her
Oxford dissertation, Culture and history in Medieval Iceland (1985), and in a
number of papers collected in Island of anthropology. Studies in past and present
Iceland (1990). The first of these is an attempt at historical ethnography, taking
a by-pass, as it were, round the historians’ blockade of the Norse–Icelandic
source-material, though certainly at such a level of abstraction and with such ageneralising use of texts, chiefly laws and Ari’s Íslendingabók, that her study will
not meet the historian’s demand for an account of the past as close to reality as
possible. But the value of her book lies as much in her concepts and method as inany concrete results. What is new is the social anthropologist’s overall view,which once again makes it possible to synthesise on the basis of those relics ofNorse civilisation we still possess. For Kirsten Hastrup this kind of cultural
totality is discovered as a conceptual system which can be described by means of
ethnographic models. It is no less important that in subsequent studies she comprehends that system as formed in narrative—she maintains that the past cannot
be understood without ‘some kind of narrative structure’. So the problem of therelationship between the tale and the truth simply dissolves. The text is history,
and in that sense it is true. She concludes: ‘The sagas were representations of atimeless history that was kept alive in the collective memory by being repeatedly“said”’ (Hastrup 1990, 142, 153).
It is not difficult to find less convincing stuff in other recent ethnographic
studies of sagas. Some social anthropologists seem to move into this field in a
spirit like that of their predecessors plunging into darkest Africa; but, apart froma sometimes deficient acquaintance with primary sources and ignorance of the

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long history of scholarship in the Norse field, social anthropologists run thegeneral risk, noted by Vilhelm Grønbech in 1909, of reducing all problems to one
low level, ‘a crude cross-section of different people far removed from each otherin culture’, to a common denominator which is imposed on ‘Negroes and Indians
and Greeks without distinction’ (Grønbech 1955, II 347; my translations). Something of the kind has happened in recent saga studies. Society as portrayed in sagas
is compared with ‘primitive, stateless societies’ anywhere in the world, and it isclaimed that the outcome tells us something about the Icelandic past, though infact it throws no more light on it as a historical reality than it does on the sagas
themselves.1
The social anthropological approach gives better results when it is combinedwith the methods of the historian and literary scholar, or at least it should. William
Ian Miller is to some extent representative of this kind of combined operation, alegal historian who uses Sagas of Icelanders as a source for the description ofsocial institutions. He has reproached Kirsten Hastrup, not wholly without justification, for an uncritical use of sources, and in particular for not making use ofsaga-literature. In a number of papers (e.g. Miller 1983 and 1986) and in his book,
Bloodtaking and peacemaking (1990), he himself employs Sagas of Icelanders
and Sturlunga saga, along with Grágás, as his primary sources of Icelandic social
history in the last century of the Free State. His own source-criticism is limited todefending in general terms the use of literature as material the historian cannot
neglect and emphasising that ‘the saga sources are admirably suited to certainsocial and legal historical enquiries concerning the time in which they were
written’ (Miller 1990, 45). He maintains that ‘the sagas describe a real worldexternal to themselves’ and that it is possible to ‘recover’ this world ‘in those areas
where the saga description is thick enough and makes sense in the light of relevant
comparative data’ (Miller 1990, 76). Here we are back to unhesitating confidence
in the value of sagas as sources but, be it noted, not as sources of information about
people and events. The focus is now on social patterns and cultural institutions.
As with Kirsten Hastrup, Miller’s strength lies in his desire to make a coherent
whole of the images of society conveyed in sagas. His weakness is that he takes
the descriptions of the past in Sagas of Icelanders to be sources of knowledge
about the contemporary world of the writers of those sagas, and neglects toconsider the problems which arise as a result. He does not make much of the factthat sagas are narratives given literary form, that they are reality but with aconstruction put upon it. He on the other hand accepts them without qualification:
for him they are trustworthy accounts of an immediate reality on which a social
history can be based. His results show that his method is effective. Sagas and laws
together give a homogeneous all-round picture, but it remains an open question
whether this picture is of historical reality or only of the reality of the text—and
if it is historical, is it then tenth-century history or thirteenth-century history?

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Miller cannot tell us the answer, for he does not put it to the test. He rarely
analyses any text as a literary creation.
Miller’s method is as much that of the social anthropologist as of the legal
historian, and only very few ‘straight’ historians have dared to start using sagas
as sources again. One of them is Sverre Bagge, brought up in the Scandinavian
school of source-criticism. Bagge strikes off on a different path from that followedby older members of the profession—Erik Lönnroth, for example, who has counted
both the sagas and Saxo ‘absolutely useless’ as sources for the history of preChristian Scandinavia (Lönnroth 1977, 7–8). In a paper given in 1984 Bagge
maintained that the general picture of social conditions, kinship and customs
which we can draw from sagas does not depend on the truthfulness, as such, of theaccount of any event, and he consequently finds it justifiable to use them assources for particular enquiries (Bagge 1986, 148). His words have been quoted
several times since, not because they express something never said before, morebecause it comes as a relief to hear a historian say them. More recently Bagge has
devoted several smaller studies (e.g. Bagge 1991b–c, 1992) and a whole book,Society and politics in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (1991a), to an analysis ofKings’ Sagas as historical evidence. He claims that, insofar as they show no
consistent preference for any party in a conflict, Sverris saga and Heimskringla
must be held to represent ‘objective’ historiography. Their ideology is common to
all the characters depicted and also in agreement with the values of the audience
their authors addressed. Therefore, he says, the sagas can be used to understandfundamental aspects of the society in question, its culture and mentality. On theother hand, like the traditional historians, he also considers the ‘literary character’of sagas to be an impediment when it comes to seeking factual historical information in them (Bagge 1992, 67–70).
Miller and Bagge are on common ground in using texts like Íslendingasögur
and Heimskringla as sources relevant to the contemporary world of their authors.
This is based on no more than an assumption, or in Miller’s words: ‘It is simply
safest to assume that the society of the family sagas is the society that the author
knew by experience, idealised somewhat to advance his narrative agenda’ (Miller
1990, 50). But his ‘safest’ offers no security at all. The Sagas of Icelanders claim
to be telling their audience about the Viking Age, and if they are treated as sources
for some later period, questions arise to which no answers are as yet forthcoming.
One or two literary studies, closely related to those of the historians I have justmentioned, have perhaps brought us in closer touch with the Viking world; but thebest current example of the way in which the early literature can be used tocontribute to a fresh understanding of Scandinavian society in the period from AD
800 to 1100 is a work by a historian of religion. It is Gro Steinsland’s Oslodissertation, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi (1991), a book with avery specific aim. It is based on a study of the poems, Skírnismál, Ynglingatal,

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Háleygjatal and Hyndluljó›. Her thesis is that a myth of sacred marriage between
a god and a giant-woman explained the origin of the royal dynasties of the Northand provided the model for the special status accorded to rulers. She too claims
to be saying something about a historical reality behind the texts; but the reality
in this case is a myth with cult function, a myth which finds expression in the four
poems she deals with. Literary interpretation and description of the past thus
become one and the same thing. Her analysis of the texts reveals a pattern ofthought and belief which proves to have had wide currency in the pre-ChristianNordic world. The pattern accommodates a conception of polarised groups orforces which, when united, lead to a new creation or a new beginning. This is afundamental factor, perhaps the fundamental factor, in Norse mythology, but it
also becomes the model for the perception of the past found in Kings’ Sagas andSagas of Icelanders.
The studies I have mentioned all deal with conceptual structures. Kirsten Hastrup
looks for general models which can describe both the Norse world-picture and thehistorical development of Icelandic society in the Commonwealth Period. Fromsagas and laws Miller seeks to demonstrate concrete social relations and thepatterns into which they fall. Sverre Bagge considers that reliable information
about institutions and mentality can be read out of Kings’ Sagas. Gro Steinsland
focuses on a mythical concept which was active in an ideology and which both
explained history and influenced its course. A number of other studies in the last
few years, including some of a more strictly literary or historical kind, have been
similarly concerned with structures in Nordic culture, society, politics or religion.
Their authors are not interested in people and events, either in the saga-writers’
own time or in the past they describe. They do not relate a text to any external
system of norms but interpret it purely on its own terms. At the same time, someof these scholars appear relaxed, not to say nonchalant, in the face of questions
traditionally asked—about dating, transmission, authorial individualism, intention, genre, and so on. Where interest lies in behavioural paradigms and social
institutions, the source-value of sagas is taken for granted.
The works I have referred to are important for the literary study of sagas because
they reveal set patterns of thought and attitude in the early medieval Norse
mentality. On the other hand, it is equally clear that if the social anthropologist
and the historian in any relevant branch is to achieve valid results, he or she needs
what the text-disciplines can provide. The prime reason is simple: the sourcematerial in question is written as literature or, to use the term of the Romantics,
as poetry.
In his Etymologiæ (I. xli. 1), Isidore says that history is a form of narrative. Thatremained the prime medieval concept. Are we not then obliged to study medieval
historiography first and foremost as narrative? So, if I am asked in what way saga
research can contribute to our knowledge of Scandinavian society in the Viking

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Age, then against the background I have sketched I can only answer that renewedinterest in the reality behind sagas must entail new recognition of the reality of the
text: that is, a need for philological and literary study. We must both reconsider
the content of sagas and attempt to comprehend their whole mode of expression,
their style, rhetoric, motives. Older historians believed sagas were windows
through which they could view reality. Rejecting that, the strict source-critics said
there was nothing at all to view except the saga itself. Now we must grasp the factthat the text in itself is the truth, is the history.
I should like to propose three tasks. First, deeper study of the ‘meaning’ in saga
literature. At the beginning of this century Alexander Bugge and Lauritz Weibull
dismissed the Kings’ Sagas’ account of the chain of events that led to the deathof Óláfr Tryggvason because they detected a similarity between Sigrí›r in stórrá›a’s
plot against Óláfr and Brynhildr’s treatment of Sigur›r in heroic legend (Bugge
1910, 21–28; Weibull 1911, 125–26; further discussed in Meulengracht Sørensen
1993, 19–21). They did not explain why such a sequence in history should follow
a pattern from legend; but we can now see, for example, that in sagas kinship andmarriage provide explanatory models of a basic kind. The poetic model made thehistory true by making it comprehensible to the medieval public.
I may stick with this example for a little longer in further illustration of therelationship between literary form and historical reality. Both Queen Sigrí›r in theKings’ Sagas and Brynhildr in heroic legend are manifestations of the stock
character who has been called ‘the female inciter’: a woman who eggs on her
husband or son to take revenge. She is a type familiar in sagas of every kind andhas been paid a good deal of attention in recent studies. Some writers think she
reflects the actual role of women in the Viking Age, others that the woman’s
goading is purely a literary motive. Judith Jesch, who as far as I know has uttered
the latest word on the subject, is in the latter camp. She counts ‘the female incitersof the sagas’ as ‘literary clichés’ (Jesch 1991, 190). But what does it mean to saythat something is a literary cliché? Are we not rather bound to assume that thisvery widespread motive had significance among the ideas which the original
audience of a saga had about women and their role in relation to honour andvengeance, and that it was that significance which could, for example, make
Sigrí›r in stórrá›a’s machinations true as history?
A second pressing need is for studies of the style and rhetoric of sagas, and byrhetoric I mean not merely the influence of classical doctrine and example on
Icelandic prose but equally the specific character and specific development ofsaga style. In what ways does saga rhetoric differ from European rhetoric ingeneral? Study of developments in style from the twelfth to the fourteenth century
and of the conventions that governed the individual saga genres will be able toteach us something about what saga-writers thought they were doing, how they
related to reality, and what their original public made of their work.

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That leads to my third desideratum: studies of the reception of sagas. The old
preoccupation with oral sagas and then the succeeding concentration on individual
authors and their background both let the limelight fall on hypothetical originals
and left the transmission of our extant texts in the shade. We need a shift which
will put the spotlight on audiences and readers of sagas and on the work ofrecension and revision which in the course of the Middle Ages actually shaped thetexts we have. Instead of dogma about original or archetype, we must recognise
the text as a process, a moulding by different ages and different outlooks. Suchconsideration has found a more natural place in comment on Kings’ Sagas than on
Sagas of Icelanders; but the study of Kings’ Sagas as literature is in a feebler stateeven than comparable study of Sagas of Icelanders—and both still in infancy.
What is needed then is a better understanding of sagas as forms of literarycommunication addressed to a public; and studies of the kind I have proposed will
help us to see more clearly what use we can make of sagas as sources of
information about the historical world they portray. Research in reception history
will also contribute to a new conception of literary history, where instead ofstarting from an author and his non-existent autograph we shall start from theextant manuscript record. Last but not least, reception studies will make their markon the work of editing, when principal interest is switched from a hypotheticaloriginal to the preserved text.
I shall end by referring to a development of the last few decades which seems
to me to present the biggest problem of all in our current practice of Northern
Research. This is the splitting of scholarship into separate disciplines which, likepetty self-sufficient kingdoms, impose heavy tolls on any exchange of ideas andmethods. Recognising the fact that texts in all their meanings express historicalreality—and those meanings are all we have—we are basically back to the
Romantics’ perception of poetry and history, of text and reality, as one and thesame. I shall be optimistic and reckon that there is a fair prospect that we shall beable to benefit from saga literature both as literary art and as a valid introduction
to the early Nordic past. To realise that prospect will require collaboration inscholarly effort and a fusion of the experience gained in branches too long
divided: philology, literary study, history and anthropology. And we need thesympathetic insight and the sovereign view—and the courage—which will allow
us to attempt syntheses in the manner of earlier philologists, such as W. P. Ker,
Vilhelm Grønbech, Sigur›ur Nordal—only our syntheses will be built on all the
new knowledge and understanding that have come into being since their day. It isa work which might nicely fill most of the next hundred years.

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NOTE
1 The phrase quoted is from E. Paul Durrenberger (1992, 46). His article is an exampleof the failure to heed Grønbech’s warning. He concludes, ‘The sagas are neither art nor
history, but articulation of what Lévi-Strauss (1973) calls a “totemic operator” . . .’ This
looks like a misunderstanding both of sagas and of Lévi-Strauss; cf. what Lévi-Strauss(1962, 307–08) has to say on the conflict between history and totemistic classification.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bagge, Sverre. 1986. ‘Borgerkrig og statsutvikling i Norge i middelalderen’, [Norwegian]Historisk Tidskrift, 145–97.
Bagge, Sverre. 1991a. Society and politics in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla.
Bagge, Sverre. 1991b. ‘Ideology and propaganda in Sverris saga’, The audience of thesagas. Preprints of the Eighth International Saga Conference . . . Gothenburg University,
32–42.
Bagge, Sverre. 1991c. ‘Propaganda, ideology and political power in Old Norse and European historiography: a comparative view’, L’Historiographie médiévale en Europe (ed.
Jean-Philippe Genet), 199–208.
Bagge, Sverre. 1992. ‘From sagas to society: the case of Heimskringla’, From sagas tosociety. Comparative approaches to early Iceland (ed. Gísli Pálsson), 61–75.
Bugge, Alexander. 1910. ‘Sandhed og Digt om Olav Tryggvason’, Aarbøger for nordisk
Oldkyndighed og Historie, 2nd series 25, 21–28.
Durrenberger, E. Paul. 1992. ‘Law and literature in medieval Iceland’, Ethnos 57, 31–47.
Grønbech, Vilhelm. 1955. Vor folkeæt i oldtiden. 2nd ed. (First published 1909–12.)
Hastrup, Kirsten. 1985. Culture and history in medieval Iceland. An anthropologicalanalysis of structure and change.
Hastrup, Kirsten. 1990. Island of anthropology. Studies in past and present Iceland.
Hauch, Carsten. 1855. Afhandlinger og æsthetiske Betragtninger.
Isidore. 1911. Isidori . . . etymologiarum . . . libri XX (ed. W. M. Lindsay).
Jesch, Judith. 1991. Women in the Viking Age.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1962. La Pensée sauvage.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1973. The savage mind.
Lönnroth, Erik. 1977. The Scandinavians: selected historical essays.
Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben. 1993. Fortælling og ære. Studier i islændingesagaerne.
Miller, William Ian. 1983. ‘Justifying Skarphé›inn: of pretext in the Icelandic bloodfeud’,
Scandinavian studies 55, 316–44.
Miller, William Ian. 1986. ‘Gift, sale, payment, raid: case studies in the negotiation andclassification of exchange in medieval Iceland’, Speculum 61, 18–50.
Miller, William Ian. 1990. Bloodtaking and peacemaking. Feud, law and society in saga
Iceland.
Petersen, N. M. 1966. Bidrag til den oldnordiske litteraturs historie. (First published in
Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie 1861, issued 1865.)
Steinsland, Gro. 1991. Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi. En analyse av Hierogamimyten i Skírnismál, Ynglingatal, Háleygjatal og Hyndluljó›.
Weibull, Lauritz. 1911. Kritiska undersökningar i Nordens historia omkring år 1000.

BJØRN MYHRE

THE BEGINNING OF THE VIKING AGE—SOMECURRENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

Introduction
HIS year we are celebrating the centenary of the Viking Society. Next year
it will be 1200 years since Alcuin wrote his letters to King Æthelred ofNorthumbria in 793. His description of a sudden attack by heathen barbarians,
ignorant of the Christian belief and culture, is still, I feel, influential in our imageof the Vikings.
In this paper I shall look for a different picture. I shall briefly present sometentative ideas I am working on about the economic and political organization ofsouthern Norwegian societies at the beginning of the Viking Period, about theearliest contact between Norway and the British Isles and about the problem ofwhen and why the Viking Period actually started. Some of these ideas have an
empirical basis, while others are only working models that are to be refined or, if
necessary, rejected.1

T

The Borre research project
The ideas presented in this paper have grown out of my participation in the reseachproject at Borre in Vestfold. We have studied the history of the well-known
cemetery with its nine very large barrows. We have tried to locate possible
settlement sites, to study the contemporary agricultural landscape and to set thepolitical centre of Borre into a regional and north European context (Myhre 1992).
One of the large barrows was plundered and levelled in 1852, with the destruction of the famous Borre ship-burial from about AD 900. Only a few objects andship’s nails are still preserved, but this must have been a princely burial of aquality similar to the Oseberg and Gokstad graves (Brøgger 1916). Only minor
archaeological investigations have been carried out at Borre since 1852.
Our investigations so far have discovered that the oldest of the nine large
barrows at the site is from the late 6th or the early 7th century, and that thecemetery was used for at least 300 years. A contemporary settlement site withbuildings has been located, but has so far only been excavated in trial trenches.
From about AD 600, cultivation and settlement in the area was intensified; at thesame time—according to our hypothesis—as Borre developed into a politicalcentre for this part of eastern Norway.
In earlier work, I have argued that chiefdoms or petty kingdoms may haveexisted along the coast of southern and western Norway during the 5th and 6th
centuries AD (Myhre 1987). Their centres were strategically placed in good agricul-

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183

tural areas with a dense population, along the fjords or at the mouths of large rivervalleys. Various goods could have been transported to such centres from different
ecological zones of the neighbouring territory, and it would also have beenpossible to exercise some control over the important communication and trading
route along the coast from these strongholds. Chieftains could use valuables andcommodities collected through a redistributive economic system to further theirown prestige and authority through gift-exchange, feasts and controlled trade(Odner 1972 and 1974; Christophersen 1989, 121). Craftsmen and artists may
have worked at these centres (Ramqvist 1991a and b).
The archaeological finds from southern and western Norway are of a similar
kind as those from Denmark, Anglo-Saxon England and northern Germany. This
does not mean that political organization was necessarily of a similar kind in all
regions around the North Sea during the Migration Period, but I think it is fruitful
to use other early Germanic kingdoms or political entities as working models foranalysing the organization of polities in southern Norway.
This model has been adjusted to eastern Norway of the 6th to 8th centuries, thedate of the Borre cemetery and of similar sites with large barrows or rich finds.
Such sites are found along the main river valleys and Oslo fjord at places where
valuables and commodities from the mountains and the forests could be collected:
goods like iron, soapstone, furs, antler, hones and so on. Borre has an especiallystrategic location by a narrow part of the fjord from which it was possible tocontrol the route from the hinterland to the North Sea area. At Borre itself we havefound pieces of two claw beakers that may have been manufactured in southern
England (Evison 1982a; Näsman 1986, 68–71). Numerous Insular objects andsome sherds of claw beakers have been found at the nearby trading site of
Kaupang, albeit mostly from the 9th century (Blindheim 1976). Most of the glass
sherds at Kaupang are probably of Frankish origin (Hougen 1969).
The first barrows at Borre were built at an important stage in economic andpolitical development in northern Europe. On both sides of the English Channel
the first emporia or market sites had been established by the early 7th century;
shortly after 700 at Ribe in Jutland (Bencard and Bender Jørgensen 1990a, 130–
48; 1990b; Jensen 1991a, 79; 1991b). Ulf Näsman has argued that luxury articles
and prestige goods like glass and jewellery were distributed between these centres,
as part of controlled trade as well as gift-exchange between political leaders(Näsman 1986; see also Hedeager 1992). Richard Hodges has suggested a stepwise development of exchange and trade around the southern coasts of the North
Sea. For the late 7th and early 8th centuries he finds indications that not only
prestigious goods were exchanged but also commodities produced by craftsmen
in the emporia, as well as natural resources from the districts (1989, 162–64; seealso Steuer 1987; Näsman 1990, 105; Jensen 1990, 132).

184BJØRN MYHRE

I would place Borre and the district of Vestfold during the late 7th and the 8th
centuries in a large-scale system of communication and exchange such as this.
I propose the hypothesis that the petty kings in Vestfold participated in a socialand economic network of alliances and warfare between royal courts in Scandinavia and along the southern shores of the North Sea. In addition to commodities,
there was probably also an exchange of ideas, ideologies and knowledge.

Archaeology and the Viking Period
Ideas and models emerging from the Borre project, together with recent reseachin Denmark into economic and political developments during the 7th and 8th
centuries, have led me further to reconsider the prevailing hypotheses about
political organization in western Norway during this period. The chronology ofthe 7th and 8th centuries has to be reconsidered, as well as the date and thecharacter of early contacts between western Norway and the British Isles.
The study of this period has to take account of relevant written sources. We are,however, faced with a general problem in that interpretations of written texts, even
if they are fragmentary or questionable, tend to have too much influence onarchaeological research. I feel that, generally speaking, the archaeology of theViking Period is overdependent on interpretations made by historians, especiallywhen it comes to problems concerning religion, social and political organizationand the first contacts between Scandinavia and Britain. Archaeologists havemainly concerned themselves with problems of chronology, art, technology,
settlements, graves and so on.
During the last three decades, Scandinavian archaeology has made progress inthree main fields of relevance to the study of the early Middle Ages. I would note
first the very large body of data which has been brought to light from settlements,
graves and trading sites, not least the many finds indicating large-scale exploitationof inland and mountain resources for iron, furs, antler, soapstone, hones and so on.
Secondly, I would emphasize the cooperation of archaeologists and naturalscientists with respect to vegetation history, osteology, physical anthropology anddating methods like radiocarbon chronology and dendrochronology. New datingsof sites and a new picture of the development of the human environment haveforced archaeology to reassess its hypotheses.
Last but not least, I would note the theoretical debate within archaeology ofrecent decades. Since the 1960s, archaeology has come out of the systems theoryof primarily functionalistic thinking to apply structuralist and post-processual
theories that also emphasize the symbolic and ideological aspects of material
culture (Hodder 1991; Myhre 1991). This new approach has brought the so-called
New Archaeology of the 1970s back into closer cooperation with other humandisciplines.

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185

Generally speaking, I feel that the archaeologist is now better equipped to meetwith historians and other scholars in the study of the Viking Period. In Denmarkin particular we have recently seen how the cooperation of different disciplines
can produce impressive new results and understandings of this important transitional phase between prehistory and historical times (Mortensen and Rasmussen
1988 and 1991). There, it is particularly the archaeologists who have discovered
important data which show that social and political organization was more developed during the 7th and 8th centuries than was previously thought. The evidence
for strong political authorities in southern Scandinavia in the 8th century is anotherfoundation-stone in a real understanding of when and why the Viking Age began.

The problem of chronology
Recent archaeological investigations and absolute dating methods like radiocarbon chronology and dendrochronology have led many archaeologists to question
the current absolute and relative chronologies of the late pre-Viking2 and Viking
Periods (Näsman 1989, 160). We are faced with the general problem of phasing
together results based on archaeological methods like typology, stylistic analysis
and stratigraphy with the absolute chronology obtained by methods based in thenatural sciences. We also, of course, have the problem of correlating dated
historical events with archaeological material and phases.
It has been shown that the traditional Viking-Period styles, like the Oseberg,
Borre, Jelling and Mammen styles, do not form a simple chronological sequence.
Instead they seem to overlap (Näsman 1989, 172). The definition of different
styles has also been discussed (Fuglesang 1982; 1987; 1991).
For my work, the transition between the Vendel styles III/E and the Oseberg
style is of special interest. Linked with this problem is the question of the start of
the Viking Period, archaeologically speaking, in terms of both relative and absolute chronology.
Recent work on the Merovingian Period on the Continent seems to support
Hermann Ament’s phasing of it into an Early and a Late Period, each with subperiods I, II and III. Absolute datings are based on the evidence of coins,dendrochronology, historical events and radiocarbon dates. The Early Merovingian
Period starts with the establishment of the Merovingian dynasty by Childeric andends when the first mayors of the palace come to power and the Carolingian
Period begins. Ament suggests two possible final dates: 719 when Charles Martel
nominally came to power, or 751, when Pepin III was crowned. From an archaeological point of view, he prefers the date of AD 719, which is closer to the end of
the period of the ‘Reihengräbersitte’ (1977).
Studies by Birgit Arrhenius, Ulla Lund Hansen and Karen Høilund Nielsen on
Scandinavian material, compared with Ament’s chronological system as well as186BJØRN MYHRE

recent dendrochronological dates of important Merovingian graves on the Continent, indicate that the Vendel styles III/B–E should be dated earlier than previously thought (Arrhenius 1983; Lund Hansen 1988; Høilund Nielsen 1987; 1991).
The transition between the Migration and the Vendel Period may be placed as
early as shortly before AD 550, and style III/E probably occurs as early as phase
JM (‘jüngere Merowingerzeit’) III: that is between AD 680 and 720. The date ofstyle F is a crucial problem in this discussion. It must have appeared at least before
768–88, when the Tassilo-chalice was probably made (Haseloff 1951, 1).
Ulla Lund Hansen poses the question in this way: ‘The problem now is withwhat kind of material are we to fill up the second half of the 8th century? Is it tobe material identical with what we previously called Early Viking Period, or withparts of that material?’ (1988, 33; my translation).
Karen Høilund Nielsen has recently studied Vendel-style elements by means ofcorrespondence analysis, leading to a new division of the Vendel Period into welldefined phases: first into phases 1A–D and 2A–C (1987; based mainly on Bornholm
material); later into phases VII:A–D (1991, 130–46; based on Danish and Swedish
material). It is important to note that traditionally Early Viking Period objects
occur as early as her phase 2B–C or VII:D, i.e. the so-called Berdal oval brooches(Petersen’s types 11–24) and objects decorated with gripping beasts, style III/E,
style F and the Broa style. Archaeologically speaking, such styles and objects
should then be earlier than AD 800, perhaps even predating the last quarter of the
8th century (Høilund Nielsen 1987, 69).
In his study of the oval brooches from Birka in Sweden, Ingmar Jansson cameto a similar conclusion. He found that the Broa style (Early Oseberg style),
gripping beasts and style III/E-elements occur together during the late 8th century.
In his opinion the beginning of the ‘archaeological Viking Period’ is closely
connected to the beginning of the Birka period. He places the transition rather
vaguely in the last quarter of the century (1985, 176–95).
The recent excavations in Ribe, Jutland, have proved to be extremely importantin this respect. Moulds of early Berdal brooches have been found in stratified
layers together with sceattas of the Wodan/Monster and Porcupine types, probably
made some time between 720 and 755 (Bendixen 1984). The dating of some ofthese layers is confirmed by dendrochronology (Christensen 1990). There areproblems in that the sceattas may have remained in circulation until the late 8th
century, and there is a possibility of the layers having been disturbed (Bencard and
Bender Jørgensen 1990a, 130–48).
Mogens Bencard’s conclusion (1990) that these early Berdal brooches weremade during the middle part of the 8th century is, however, disputed (see Frandsen
and Jensen 1988 and 1990). I find it persuasive that Bencard’s dates based on thematerial from Ribe fit very well with the conclusions drawn by Høilund Nielsen,

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Ulla Lund Hansen and Ingemar Jansson, even if these authors are much influenced
by interpretations of the Ribe finds.
Discussion of the Ribe finds continues, but all in all it seems that the circumstantial evidence for dating the Broa style, the earliest occurrence of the gripping
beast motif and the early Berdal brooches (P 11–22) to the middle or late part of
the 8th century is convincing (see Fuglesang 1987, 12). The Oseberg style and thedeveloped oval brooches P 25 and 27, should, accordingly, be placed at the endof the 8th century, with early oval brooches (P 37) appearing shortly after AD 800(Jansson 1985).
I have re-examined a series of Norwegian graves that have traditionally beenplaced in the early 9th century in the light of this conclusion (see Figs 1–9 and note3). The absolute chronology of the early Viking Period in Norway has been basedon the so-called ‘Shetelig axiom’ that the period started after the Lindisfarne raidof 793, and that, accordingly, most Insular objects of an ecclesiastical charactercame to Norway after that incident, even if they were made in the British Isles
during the 7th or 8th centuries (Shetelig 1927; 1933, 166; Bakka 1963; 1973, 11;1982, 33; Geber 1991; Jansson 1985, 177). Many of these Insular objects were reused as dress-ornaments in Norway. They have been described as having beensavagely torn from their original context and reused by barbarians who wereignorant of their sacral character (Henry 1967; Wamers 1985, 40, 64, 85–86).
The late Egil Bakka saw the connection between objects with ornaments in style
III/D–F and Insular artefacts very clearly, and the chronological problem that the
combination of this fact with the Lindisfarne axiom posed. His solution to the
problem was to date style III/E–F to as late as about 800; to the beginning of theViking Period according to his chronological system (1973; 1982, 32, 53).
It is a fact that many of the Insular objects in Norwegian graves must originallyhave been made during the 8th or even the 7th centuries. This fact has been
explained away by postulating old material that was still in use in churches andmonasteries in the British Isles around and after 793. The new chronology indicates, however, that graves with Insular objects could be dated to the middle andlate parts, maybe even the early parts, of the 8th century.3 This shift brings the dateof the Insular objects and the local Norwegian artefacts into line, and in myopinion it brings order to the Norwegian chronology. It also shows that Shetelig’s
axiom was incorrect.
The Insular imports include not only ecclesiastical objects but also glassware,
brooches, pins, buckles, a hanging bowl, beads and scales with weights. It does notappear to me that most of the ecclesiastical objects were carelessly ripped fromtheir original context; rather that they have often been cut up neatly and made intofine ornaments. A suprisingly large number of objects have not been modified(Fuglesang 1989, 259; see also Blindheim 1978, 173; Wamers 1985, 41; Geber 1991).

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The objects belonging to the 8th century do not differ in type from those thatcan be dated after 800, so that the objects in themselves do not indicate any
different kind of contact or exchange on either side of the Lindisfarne plundering.
In Ireland there seems to be no doubt that churches and monasteries were alreadybeing plundered during the 7th and 8th centuries by the Irish themselves (Lucas
1967; Morris 1979, 180). Charlotte Blindheim has suggested that ecclesiasticalobjects could have been traded and exchanged like other Insular commodities, andthat some of them could even have been used as gifts or bribes in connection withconversion or missionary activity abroad (1978, 173–76). If it is correct that such
Insular objects came to Norway already during the early 8th century, her hypothesis becomes even more interesting, and should be the subject of renewed discussion.
It is of special interest that we find so many Insular objects in graves along thecoast of western Norway, all the way up to Vesterålen in northern Norway. One
possibility is that they were distributed via Denmark and the Continent in the same
way as the artefacts of Continental make. It is, however, striking that very few
Insular objects have been found in southern Scandinavia outside Hedeby (Wamers
1985, 45–49, Karte 2–4). A more likely proposition is that even 7th- and 8thcentury objects came to western Norway along the direct route via Scotland andthe Northern Isles.

Contact between Norway and the British Isles before 793
In many publications John Hines has argued for a direct line of communication
between England and Norway across the North Sea in the Migration Period (1984;
1992; forthcoming). He has also presented arguments for the continuation of adirect connection during the Vendel Period down to the Viking Period. He alludes
to Insular objects found in Norwegian graves, and to written sources like Bede’s
Historia and the poems Widsith and Beowulf which include comments that may
indicate a general knowledge of Norway amongst English writers.
Most important, in my opinion, is the passage quoted from Alcuin’s letter to KingÆthelred of Northumbria after the plundering of Lindisfarne. Usually only one of
Alcuin’s sentences is quoted: ‘. . . never before has such a terror appeared in Britain
as we have just suffered from a pagan people, nor was it thought possible that anavigium of this kind could be made’. In a later passage in the same letter, however,
Alcuin writes about these pagan people: ‘Consider the dress, the hairstyle, and theluxurious habits of the princes and people. Look at the hairstyle, how you havewished to imitate the pagans in your beards and hair. Does not the terror now threatenof those whose hairstyle you wished to have?’ (Hines 1984, 293–94). I agree withJohn Hines that it seems that Alcuin and the people of Northumbria must have
known these pagans relatively well before the Lindisfarne raid.

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Much of the discussion about early contact across the North Sea has run into
problems connected with the technology of shipbuilding. Most scholars haveargued that regular crossings were not possible before more advanced ships, witha sail, had been constructed, and therefore the dating of the first known real Viking
ship, the Oseberg ship from about 800, has become a terminus post quem. Ole
Crumlin-Pedersen has recently indicated that sailing-ships may have been used in
Scandinavia as early as the 7th century (1990, 111), and, like Martin Carver(1990), I find it difficult to accept that large ships like the ones from Sutton Hooor Kvalsund could not have been used on the open sea, even if they were rowed.
What changed with the Lindisfarne incident, according to John Hines, was that
the Scandinavians no longer ‘acted only as traders but also as raiders’. Hisargument is that Lindisfarne and later attacks cannot be explained simply on thebasis of a new shipbuilding technology but rather as the result of a ‘cultural change
in Scandinavia, a change in the attitudes and ambitions of the Scandinavians
relative to the North Sea area’ (1984, 300–01). It is my intention to search forindications of such a change in attitude.
When John Hines wrote his thesis, the new chronology of the 8th century was
not well developed, and the number of artefacts or graves that supported his view
was small. New studies by Vera Evison (1982a and b) and Ulf Näsman (1986) of
Vendel Period glass enlarged the number of Insular finds in Scandinavia. But
these and other early Insular objects found in Norway could easily have been
traded along the southern shores of the North Sea, as for instance Bakka (1971),
Vierck (1970; 1978), Näsman (1986) and Müller-Wille (1985) argued.
If it is correct that as many Insular objects as I have suggested ended up in
western and northern Norwegian graves during the 8th century, it is a substantial
point in favour of Hines’s hypothesis.3 It is also appropriate to mention here
Mogens Ørsnes’s arguments for Insular influence on Scandinavian styles III/C–D,
and his hypothesis that Scandinavia lay within the Anglo-Irish missionary area
during the 8th century. Style III/D in particular, he suggested, was influenced bydirect communication between Scandinavia and northern England (1966, 227;
1970, 108).
The best evidence for such contacts would be to find graves or settlements ofa Norse character in the Northern Isles. During the 1930s, Haakon Shetelig andA. W. Brøgger suggested that some of the Norse finds in Orkney, Shetland and theHebrides indicated a Norwegian settlement as early as the 8th century. Brøgger
was the most categorical, concluding that ‘colonization commenced long before
the year 800’ (1930, 282), while Shetelig disregarded some of Brøgger’s datingsand made a more modest declaration: ‘Archaeologically the conclusion appears
unavoidable that at least some stray colonists were established there from the timeabout 750 AD, but the one isolated find scarcely affords satisfactory evidence to190BJØRN MYHRE

settle the first Viking invasion in the Hebrides’ (1954, 102; see also Shetelig 1933,84). Such a conclusion was in line with his general opinion of contact between the
British Isles and western Norway.
In her book Scandinavian Scotland, Barbara Crawford has cautiously suggested
that the early raids ‘on the English coast indicate a possible establishment of pirate
bases in the Scottish Isles by the late eighth century. This is not to say, however,that these early raids were a by-product of settlement in the north’ (1987, 40).
Peter Sawyer, on the other hand, once suggested that the Norse had settled
peacefully on the islands some time before raiding started (1971, 206). Arguments
for an early phase of integration or coexistence between Picts and Norse haverecently been advanced among other possible hypotheses (Ritchie 1974; Morris1991). Some British archaeologists have, however, questioned the evidence evenfor early 9th-century Norse settlement on the British Isles (Graham-Campbell
1980; forthcoming), while others keep this possibility open, pointing out how
inadequate our knowledge is (Wilson 1976, 95; Ritchie 1977, 189; Morris 1985,
221 and 241; 1989, 287). All scholars agree, however, that further investigations
are needed before it is possible to reach firmer conclusions.
One way of attacking the problem is to study the earliest grave-finds in the lightof the new chronology of the 8th century. I would draw particular attention to thefollowing finds:
Oronsay, Hebrides
Kilmainham, Dublin
Barra, Hebrides
Sanday, Orkneys
Arran, Hebrides

Berdal brooch. Similar to P 14.
Berdal brooch. Similar to P 11.
Oval brooch. P 27.
Oval brooch. P 25.
Single-edged sword.

Brøgger 1930, 216.
Bøe 1940, 40.
Brøgger 1930, 233.
Brøgger 1930, 172.
Brøgger 1930, 205.

These brooches may belong to phase VII:D (earlier 2B–C) of Høilund Nielsen’s
Vendel Period, in the 8th century. The Kilmainham Berdal brooch is of a type of
which moulds have been found in 8th-century layers at Ribe (Fig. 11; Brinch
Madsen 1984, 67). According to Norwegian chronology, single-edged swords likethe one from Arran should be dated before 800 (Helgen 1982, 67). Grave-finds
like these, however, are always difficult to date accurately (Wilson 1976, 100).
There is always the possibility that early objects remained in use for more than one
generation, and some of them could have been heirlooms deposited in later gravesas, for example, a pair of Berdal brooches found in a grave at Clibberswick, Unst,
Shetland together with a mid-Viking-Period trefoil brooch (Graham-Campbell
forthcoming, 8; Brøgger 1930, 157). But the argument becomes special pleadingwhen all early objects are explained away in this manner.
I wish also to draw attention to a number of finds in which developed oval
brooches of early Petersen type 37 appear. It is now time to reconsider the
possibility that some of these finds too may be dated to about AD 800, or at least
to the beginning of the 9th century (Petersen 1928, 33–44):

THE BEGINNING OF THE VIKING AGE
Unst, Shetland
Lewis, Hebrides
N. Ronaldsay, Orkneys
Westness, Orkneys
Islandbridge, Ireland
Ballyholme, Ireland(with a bronze bowl)(with Insular objects)(with a pennanular brooch)(with an 8th-century Celtic pin)

191

Brøgger 1930, 159.
Brøgger 1930, 236.
Brøgger 1930, 165.
Kaland 1973, 95.
Bøe 1940, 39.
Bøe 1940, 75.

It should also be mentioned that the graves from Kilmainham, Dublin, produced
a number of single-edged swords of Petersen’s types C and H that should be dated
to the beginning of the Viking Period (Petersen 1919, 66, 89; Bøe 1940, 12–25;
Coffey and Armstrong 1910). But as the weapon-chronology at the moment is notwell adjusted to the new chronology of styles and brooches, it is not possible toput an accurate absolute date to these. Some of these graves may, however, bemuch earlier than 841, when, according to the written sources, Dublin was established by the Vikings (see also Shetelig 1933, 86).
These few finds are not definite evidence of an early Norse settlement in the
Northern Isles. The new chronology of the 8th century is still uncertain, and it is
not known whether it can be applied to the whole of the northern area. I do,
however, consider it very significant that there are Norwegian graves that put
early oval brooches, style III/D–E, and Insular objects in the same context; graves
that now should be from the middle part of the 8th century.3 Contact with Britain,and even with Ireland, may therefore have been established by that time.
This conclusion is supported by recent analysis of combs from the late Iron Ageand the early Norse Period from Orkney. Combs of both traditonally Pictish andNorse types found on settlement sites in stratified layers have been shown to bemade of reindeer antler, most probably from Norway. The earliest so-called
Pictish combs of reindeer antler may be of the 7th century onwards (Smith
forthcoming). Antler may represent trade, or at least some form of continuous
contact, between Norway and Shetland/Orkney since that time (Weber forthcoming).
There are also other indications of early colonization in the Western Isles during
the 7th and 8th centuries. I have in mind above all the many early radiocarbon
dates from settlement sites in Iceland. At Herjólfsdalur on the Vestmannaeyjar,
Margrét Hermanns-Au›ardóttir has excavated a farm site with several buildings,
some of which in a western Norwegian context could as easily be dated to the preViking as to the Viking Period. At least three radiocarbon dates from goodcontexts may be pre-800 AD (1989, 46–53). The excavations in Reykjavík by Else
Nordahl have also produced several early radiocarbon dates (1988, 113). At the
moment a vigorous debate is going on over the use of radiocarbon dating in
Iceland, and we are still waiting for more decisive proof of such early settlementon the island (Margrét Hermanns-Au›ardóttir 1991 with comments by Sigrid
Kaland, Barbara Crawford, Ditlev Mahler and Christopher Morris; see also Vilhjálmur
Örn Vilhjálmsson 1990 and Gu›rún Sveinbjarnardóttir 1990).

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On the Faroes too, radiocarbon-dated pollen analysis indicates pre-Viking husbandry, perhaps as early as the 7th century. Johannes Johansen interprets thesefinds as a reflection of an early Celtic or Scandinavian settlement (1985). His
early-dated pollen diagram has not, however, been supported by archaeologicalfinds, and further investigations need to be made (Arge 1986, 14–16; Krogh1986). These conclusions are to a great extent in conflict with the preserved
written sources. I feel that it is time to sit down and examine both the written texts
and the archeological material with a mind both open and critical, while remembering that both types of source are biased.
Many hypotheses have been produced to explain the first Viking raids on the
coasts of the British Isles and the Continent. Amongst these we find arguments ofoverpopulation at home, a search for new land to settle, advances in ship technology, and a more or less casual discovery of an easy way to get rich.
Peter Sawyer has recently presented a hypothesis that I find most stimulating,
and which I would like to develop further: ‘It was the western European demand
for northern products and the parallel Scandinavian demand for western goods,that caused close contacts between the two areas, and encouraged Scandinavians
to search for new supplies in the far north or east of the Baltic. This trade enhanced
the power of some Scandinavian rulers, by increasing their wealth. Others who
were less successful or even exiled could resort to piracy first in the Baltic andlater in the west, an extension that was facilitated by the adoption of the sail’(1982, 7). I would also stress the evidence for trading and the development ofstrong political authority in Scandinavia during the centuries before 800, but while
Sawyer credits all the Viking attacks to ‘the unsuccessful and the exiled’, I would
suggest that many of the assaults were deliberately planned by Scandinavian
leaders or petty kings as a response to growing political and ideological pressure
from Frankish or Anglo-Saxon powers like Charlemagne and Offa. I would stressthe possibility of there having been a long period of trade, exchange and morepeaceful contact between powers on all sides of the North Sea before the raiding
started.
The Viking attacks would therefore be a result of economic, ideological andpolitical developments all around the North Sea, and they tell us just as muchabout the strength and complexity of the 8th-century polities in Denmark andsouthern Norway as about those in the British Isles and on the Continent.

Archaeological theory, ethnicity and ideology
During the 1960s and 1970s, archaeological theory was dominated by the positivist and functionalist New Archaeology. System theory in particular came to be themain explanatory tool, with an emphasis on economic, ecological, technologicaland demographic factors and on social systems.

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In the 1980s, archaeological theory turned to structuralism and semiotics, critical theory and poststructuralism, led by Cambridge archaeologists like Ian Hodder
and Christopher Tilley. It has now been generally accepted that the symbolic andideological elements of material culture have to be taken just as seriously as
functional aspects. Objects have form and substance, but also a meaning; they may
be used for communication between people, and for the expression of values andfeelings.
Material culture can be studied as a form of text. It has to be produced or written,
as well as interpreted or read. Like text, material culture is produced to have asocial effect, and cultural traditions may be manipulated in relation to social ends.
Material culture is normally individually produced, but is so in a social context
where not only may this context influence production; production itself may havethe aim of changing the context. Material culture is thus used in social negotiations, and may accordingly be manipulated and used either to uphold or to change
society (Hodder 1989; Tilley 1989).
One important consequence is that material culture cannot simply be interpreted
as a mirror of society, or a window to look through into the past (Tilley 1989, 188).
It is, as Ian Hodder has put it, a structured transformation of reality. As archaeologists, we face similar problems when trying to understand the meaning of material
things to those historians or literary scholars face when interpreting written texts.
Symbolic and structuralist theory has inspired the study of prehistoric ethnic
groups. Most archaeologists have followed Fredrik Barth’s definition of an ethnic
group as ‘a collection of people who in their interaction confirm and maintain an
identity vis-à-vis another collection of people with a different tradition’. Barthfurther states that ‘the cultural contents of ethnic dichotomies would seem, analytically, to be of two orders: (i) overt signals or signs—the diacritical features thatpeople look for and exhibit to show identity, often such features as dress, language,
house-form or general style of life; and (ii) basic value orientations—the standardsof morality and excellence by which performance is judged’ (1969, 10–14).
It is important to note that ethnic identity is generated by interaction between
groups, and that the symbolic emphasis of interacting groups will often be mostactive and contrastive during periods of stress and competition or when collaboration between groups is desirable (Hodder 1982, 185). The implication of sucha definition is that in some periods ethnic differences may be difficult to observein material culture, while during other periods such symbolic communication may
be marked. Ethnic symbols may also be manipulated or actively used by individuals or groups of people for personal advantage, and it is possible to change ethnic
identity. Consequently ethnicity is not a static phenomenon; rather it is part of acomplex and changing system. Archaeologically, changing ethnic symbolic expression can be studied by focusing on special ethnic markers like house-form,

194BJØRN MYHRE

dress, ornament, graves and so on, but such traits are not necessarily a straightforward mirror of reality. We have to take into consideration their specific socialand historical context (Odner 1983 and 1985; Olsen 1985).
The theoretical basis of ethnic categorization should be reconsidered in the lightof the discussion referred to above, with regard to archaeological material fromthe Northern Isles of the early Middle Ages. I believe that distinctions between
Picts, Celts and Norse are sometimes made rather mechanically, perhaps only on
the basis of a few ordinary, domestic objects found on settlement sites. A priori
arguments are sometimes found: for instance that sites radiocarbon-dated earlier
than AD 800 must be Pictish or Celtic (see Morris 1989, 279–95). Anne Ritchie,
however, has argued that ‘there was a greater degree of overlap between nativeand Norse culture in the Northern Isles in the 9th century AD than has hitherto beensuspected. The colonists adopted native artefacts and other aspects of material
culture such as grave-enclosures, and their farms display the same mixture ofdispersed and nucleated settlement patterns and the same basic economy as thoseof the native population. All this points to considerable integration, which wasundoubtedly aided by the basic similarities between the life-styles and culturaldevelopment of the two peoples’ (1974, 34). She therefore advises us to be carefulwhen giving ethnic labels to settlement sites.
The new chronology of the 7th to 9th centuries, recent excavations in Orkneyreferred to above and post-processual archaeological theory make it necessary forarchaeologists to take another look at the ethnic interpretations of the material
culture of the Northern Isles along the lines suggested by Anna Ritchie in 1974.
In this paper I wish to propose the hypothesis that the ethnic symbolic expressionof the natives and the Norse is difficult to recognize in the material culture of the
7th and 8th centuries. When we notice a change in the ethnic expression of theNorse during the 8th century, it is mainly in burial customs and the objects
deposited in graves; a new development that has to be seen in the light of a change
in the general economic, political and ideological situation in the North Sea area.
Moral values, ideologies and religious allegiances may also be symbolically
expressed in material culture. Different opinions have been expressed on thecharacter of the change of religion in the Nordic countries during the Viking
Period. Hypotheses suggesting an evolutionary process, in which an old andweakening religion lost its grip and was gradually superseded by a superior
religion, Christianity, have been challenged by scholars who argue that we should
see the situation as one of conflict between two strong and vital religions (Steinsland
1990; Mundal 1990). Others argue for quite a long transitional period of coexistence between the two religions, at some times quite peaceful, at others with moreantagonistic situations occurring, depending on the social and political situationin each region (Brink 1990, 17–67).

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Most scholars agree that large-scale changes of religion were motivated by theupper strata of the society and are often closely connected with political powerstruggles. In pre-Christian Scandinavia, religion was part of social organization, andwas so closely connected with law, ideology, mythology and the political system thata change in religion could not appear without changing society itself (Steinsland
1990; see also Meulengracht Sørensen 1991). The religious issue might, however,also have been used by competing petty kings as an instrument with which to
challenge the power of their neighbours. Christian and heathen symbols like ecclesiastical objects or heathen cult-objects could themselves have played a role in suchconflicts.
Early missionary activity amongst heathen Scandinavians may be seen as an
attack on the existing social and political system. Christianity, for instance, was
not accepted in Norway before the unification of the country in the late Viking
Period when the leading king could use religion as part of his strategy of power.
Before that time we should expect hostility to missionary activity just as much as
we would expect a violent response to a military threat. It is obvious that Carolingian
expansionism and the eventual conquest of the Saxon and Frisian territories
during the 8th century was correlated to missionary activities. The same strategy
seems to have used by Charlemagne from 777 onwards, when the Danish kingdom
was threatened.
The so-called Missionary style—the Tassilo chalice style—and the Carolingianstyle are symbolic expressions of the new ideology and main concepts ofChristianity (Haseloff 1951, 64–75). We might expect the Danes and probably
other Scandinavian peoples too to have feared Merovingian and Carolingian
expansion and to have acted against the military and ideological pressure it
involved. If so, some of the changes we can observe in the material culture of the
Scandinavians during the 8th and early 9th centuries may be interpreted as
expressions of a reaction to this outer pressure. The population of Scandinavia
may have used building-forms, costume, ornament, special artefacts, burial practice, religious cults and sacrificial offerings and styles or style-elements to express
their ethnic identity and to strengthen their religious and political orientation.

A hypothetical scenario of the North Sea area during the 8th century
Let me end by presenting an alternative view of the political and ideologicalsituation in southern Norway during the 8th century and of the possibility of early
contact and interaction between Norway and the British Isles. This is offered asa series of hypotheses that need further investigation but which might wellstimulate discussion of the archaeology and history of the important century
between 700 and 800 where the origins of the Viking Period must be sought.

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A large-scale economic and political network developed around the southernshores of the North Sea about 700 (Wood 1983; Hodges 1989). Market-sites or
emporia were established by political leaders and contact between royal dynasties
can be assumed to have been more intensive than before. Both commodities andideas were exchanged. A strong Danish kingdom with a centre in Jutland, maybe
at Ribe, developed after 700, which gradually grew even to rival the Carolingian
Empire (see also Näsman 1991). In my model, Borre and Vestfold were part of thisnetwork, mainly because of the area’s control over important inland resources ofeastern Norway, like fur, antler, iron, soapstone and hones. During the 8th century
and throughout the Viking Period Danish kings tried to take control over Vestfold
and Viken, with intermittent success (first documented in 813; Sawyer 1988, 57).
During the 8th century a strong west Norwegian polity developed also in southwestern Norway, maybe with a centre at Avaldsnes in Rogaland. At this strategic
location on the main sailing-route along the coast there are large barrows, with atleast two rich ship burials, which may be dated to the end of the 8th century(Magnus and Myhre 1986, 411). Avaldsnes continued to be the political centre of
the leading Norwegian kings for most of the Viking Period. At some stages theysuccessfully competed with the petty kings of eastern Norway, and even with theDanish kingdom, for power over Vestfold and Viken.
The political élite in both eastern and western Norway were well informed about
the kingdoms of the British Isles and the Continent during the 8th century. They
lay within the range of Insular missionary activities (see Ørsnes 1966, 227; 1970,108), and since the 7th century some form of contact and trade between chieftains
or petty kings in western Norway, the Northern Isles, Scotland and Northumbria
had been established. Some Norse farmers may have settled on the islands,
perhaps even in the Faroes and Iceland. In the beginning of this period therelationships between Picts, Celts and Norse were relaxed and peaceful, and there
was no need for the Norse population to demonstrate or express their ethnic
identity through material culture. It is possible, for instance, that the first
Scandinavian settlers and traders assimilated peacefully to the local population and their material culture.
During the 8th century the situation changed. Insular missionary activities on
the Continent intensified, perhaps too among Norse settlers and in Scandinavia.
Some time between 695 and 714 the missionary Willibrord travelled to the Danes,
maybe to Ribe, to meet ‘King Ongendus, a man more gruesome than a wild beastand harder than a stone,’ as Alcuin wrote (Skovgaard-Petersen 1981, 21; Bencard
and Bender Jørgensen 1990a, 147). South of the Danish border neighbouring
kingdoms were acting in a threatening way, and the Danevirke was strengthened
in 737. The Carolingians expanded northwards with sword and cross. A militaryand ideological conflict developed between Scandinavian kingdoms and the ChristianTHE BEGINNING OF THE VIKING AGE

197

powers of the Continent and the British Isles, although there were also periods ofpeaceful interaction and trade. Control over economic and strategic resources, andover trade, not only from the Baltic but also from the Norwegian mountains andnorthern Norway, may have been important for the Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon
rulers.
Alcuin’s letters about the Lindisfarne raid should be interpreted in such apolitical and religious context. He was one of Europe’s most learned men at theturn of the century; he had studied in York, travelled widely in Europe, and had
had meetings with Church leaders as well as kings. He was called to the court ofCharlemagne in 781 to assist him in his educational and cultural reforms, and hestayed with Charlemagne until 796, when he acquired the abbacy of Tours. He wassent to visit the mighty King Offa of Mercia and was an important link between
Anglo-Saxon and Continental scholarship (Duckett 1965; Godman 1982). Also atCharlemagne’s court from 781 to 785 was the learned scholar Paul the Deacon,
who was preparing the Historia Langobardorum. Both Paul and Alcuin knew the
works of Jordanes, Bede, Gregory of Tours, Isidore of Seville and Fredegar, andother written sources on the histories of different Germanic tribes. Alcuin was
therefore well informed of the current ideas concerning the Scandinavian homeland of many of these tribes (Goffart 1988, 3, 333, 382, 432).
When Alcuin wrote the Lindisfarne letters from the Frankish court in 793,
Charlemagne was in conflict with the Danish king. In 800 Alcuin further described
his countryman Willibrord’s missionary visit to the Danish king Ogendus of about
700. He should, therefore, have known the Danish people quite well, and he musthave been aware of the Scandinavian kingdoms and of Scandinavian involvementin the north of the British Isles. Alcuin’s letters cannot be treated as separate fromthe political strategy of the Church or from that of Charlemagne and the AngloSaxon kings. Probably they all had a common interest in a presentation of the
Scandinavians as frightening barbarians who ought to be Christianized as well as
conquered.
I would suggest, then, that Alcuin’s letters are not to be regarded as objective
descriptions of the situation but rather as arguments in a political and ideologicalconflict.
I would further suggest that the archaeological material too should be analysed
and interpreted in the light of this growing interaction and competition between
political powers around the North Sea. Only during the stressed and competitive
phase of the 8th century was a distinct ethnic identity symbolically expressed by
the Norse on the islands, principally in burial practice, costume, jewellery and artstyles. As the Scandinavians gradually took political control in the North thesituation reversed, and many of the local population adjusted their material culture
to the Norse, symbolically becoming Norse.

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I would also suggest that the Scandinavians were well aware of the ideologicalconflict, so that the chieftains and petty kings in particular must have felt Christianity as a threat to their power. One symbolic counteraction would be to destroy
ecclesiastical objects by cutting them up and reshaping them into daily artefacts
such as dress-ornaments. Another move could be to use Christian style-elementsin their own styles or mythology. A third possibility was to use violence, todestroy centres of missionary activity like Lindisfarne and Iona, just as the
Carolingians plundered heathen temples of the Saxons, Frisians and Slavs (Reuter
1985, 77).
According to this view, many of the Viking actions were deliberately plannedby Scandinavian chieftains and petty kings. They were not ignorant barbarians;
they knew very well the military and ideological pressure they were facing. Someof their responses can be read in their material culture. But of course there werealso entrepreneurs and pirates who took advantage of the unstable situation andacted outside the chieftain’s control. Historians and writers since Alcuin’s days
have made the mistake of portraying the Vikings in the image of pirates like this,forgetting that plundering, even of churches, was common in all countries aroundthe North Sea during these centuries (Reuter 1985, 78; Lucas 1967). They havealso underestimated the complexity and strength of authority and kingship insouthern Scandinavian polities during the 8th century (see also Wormald 1982,
144). Organized plundering may have been an important source of income for the
Scandinavian kings, just as it was for the Merovingian and early Carolingian kings(Reuter 1985).
My main hypothesis is that the archaeological material from the 8th and 9th
centuries should be read and interpreted as a corpus of symbolic expressions of
economic, ideological and political negotiation. We have tended to treat thismaterial as functional and thus as an objective source that could be used to state
quite directly what the Viking Period involved.
If the material culture of the Northern Isles developed and changed in thecontext of a gradual and continuous contact across the North Sea, the startingpoint of the Viking Period could be fixed at any of several points along a timescalerunning from AD 700 to 800, depending on the criteria chosen.
One possibility is to follow the Continental periodization, with its Merovingian
and Carolingian periods, and like Herman Ament date the change from the
Merovingian to the Viking Period to either 720 or 750, that is primarily on thebasis of political events documented by written sources. Another possibility
would be to base the periods on archaeological material like dress, jewellery,weapons or styles. Like Karen Høilund Nielsen and Ingmar Jansson we could datethe start of the Viking Period by developed oval brooches (about 775–800), or we
could use the gripping-beast motif and the Broa phase as our criteria and draw theTHE BEGINNING OF THE VIKING AGE

199

line about 750 (depending on what the earliest dates prove to be). Alternatively,
if we give priority to economic and political developments around the North Sea,
we could, like Richard Hodges, put special emphasis on the establishment oftrading-sites such as his type B emporia, with their specialization in production
and trade in utilitarian as well as prestigious objects, a development that he dates
to about AD 700 (1989, 162). Such a date would be in line with recent suggestions
by Klavs Randsborg (1990), Lotte Hedeager and Henrik Tvarnø (1991, 309) and
Lise Bender Jørgensen and Palle Eriksen (forthcoming).
NOTES

My sincere thanks to Lise Bender Jørgensen, Charlotte Blindheim, Stefan Brink,
Martin Carver, Signe Horn Fuglesang, Karen Høilund Nielsen, Ulla Lund Hansen,
Christian Keller, Egil Mikkelsen, Ulf Näsman and Birthe Weber who made valuablecomments on various drafts of this manuscript. I am grateful to Øystein Geber who let meuse his unpublished thesis on imported objects in Viking graves in west Norway (1991).
Especially I want to thank John Hines for correcting my English and for commenting
constructively on my text. All faults are my own.
2 The pre-Viking Period (Montelius period VII) has been given different names in the
Scandinavian countries, in Sweden ‘Vendeltid’, in Denmark ‘Yngre Germansk Jernalder’,in Norway ‘Merovingertid’. In this article the name ‘Vendel Period’ is used to avoid
confusion with the Continental ‘Merovingian Period’.
3 A list of Norwegian grave finds with Insular objects from about AD 800 or earlier has
been compiled but would have taken up too much space if it had been included here. The
finds are arranged in five groups:
1. Early/middle 8th century. Find contexts with small, thin-bodied and zoomorphic oval
brooches, and objects decorated in style III/D–E.
2. Middle/late 8th century. Find contexts with Berdal brooches like P 11–22.
3. Late 8th century. Find contexts with oval brooches like P 25 and 27 (R. 650 and R. 648).
4. Early 9th century. Find contexts with oval brooches like early P 37 (R. 647).
5. Other Insular objects from the 7th and 8th centuries, in context.
6. Other Insular objects from the 7th and 8th centuries with no context.
1

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Fig. 1. Major sites and market-places around the North Sea during the 7th to 9th centuries.

Fig. 2. Ament’s chronological scheme of the Merovingian Period on the Continent(Ament 1977, 135, fig.1).

Fig. 3. Brooches and arm-rings from the Vendel Period phase 2A–C and Early Viking Period, from Karen Høilund Nielsen’s studyof Bornholm (1987, fig. 10). Note that zoomorphic oval brooches occur in phase 2A, Berdal brooches and oval brooches similar to
P 27 in phase 2B–C and oval brooches similar to P 37 in the Early Viking Period. Karen Høilund Nielsen has correlated her phaseswith Ament’s scheme (over).

Fig 3a. Høilund Nielsen’s chronological scheme correlated with Ament’s.

Fig. 4. Objects from a female grave at Fosse, Meland, Hordaland, western Norway:
two thin-bodied oval brooches and one gilt bronze Insular mount, reused as a brooch(B. 12012; Bakka 1973).

Fig. 5. Gilt bronze Insular mount found in a female grave at Store Kongsvik, Tysnes, Hordaland, western Norway together with
two thin-bodied oval brooches like P 4 (B. 7639; Bakka 1973, fig. 12).

Fig. 6. Zoomorphic oval brooches from Vangsnes, Balestrand (above) and Skjervum,
Vik (below), both in Sogn og Fjordane, western Norway. Both were found in female
graves with gilt bronze Insular mounts (B. 700; Blindheim 1949, fig. 6 and B. 6700;
Bakka 1973, fig. 13).

Fig. 7. Oval brooch and gilt bronze Insular mount from a female grave at Svennevik,
Hommedal, Aust-Agder, southern Norway (C. 1970; Bakka 1973, figs 9 and 11).

Fig. 8. Gilt bronze Insular mount from Bjørke, Ørsta, Møre og Romsdal, western
Norway found in a female grave with two thin-bodied oval brooches, similar to P 4(B. 8256; Bakka 1963, fig. 8; Bakka 1973, 12).

Fig. 9. Animal ornament on a bronze gilt Insular mount from Fure, Askvoll, Sogn og Fjordane, western Norway found in afemale grave with a disc-on-bow brooch (B. 4969; Bakka 1963, fig. 54; 1973, 10).

Fig. 10. A Berdal oval brooch from a female grave at Oronsay, the Hebrides (Brøgger 1930, fig. 126).

Fig. 11. A Berdal oval brooch from a female grave at Kilmainham, Dublin (above).
Mould impression of an oval brooch of the same type, found in an 8th-century layer at
Ribe, Jutland (below; the white part) (Brinch Madsen 1984, figs 105, 107).