THE VIKING MIND (VÍKINGAHUGR)OR

IN PURSUIT OF THE VIKING
BY ANTHONY FAULKESHISTORIANS AND ARCHAEOLOGISTS over the last two generations have changed
our perceptions of the Viking Age and have drawn people’s attention to less destructive
and more creative activities of the Vikings than rape and pillage, such as their trading andsettlements both in new countries like Iceland and in already settled countries like Britain
and France, where they had a great effect on the culture, organisation, law and languageof the local populations, an effect that was not always deleterious and may in many
respects be seen as having been beneficial. The Viking exhibitions that were held by
various museums in the second half of the twentieth century emphasised the peaceful sideof the Vikings, as traders, craftsmen, shipbuilders; and archaeologists and anthropologists
have radically changed our understanding of what Vikings were like, showing us that
their culture was not just destructive and chaotic, but ordered and creative. Vikings arenow seen as having made a positive and valuable contribution to the development ofwestern civilisation. This view is encapsulated particularly in the title of Peter Foote andDavid Wilson’s book, The Viking Achievement (1970).
Literary historians and theorists have also changed our perceptions of the Viking Age.
Archaeology can only show us the objects and artefacts made and used by Vikings, andilluminating though these objects are for a proper understanding of the nature of theVikings, it is to literary sources that we must go to find a representation of what went onin their minds. The interpretation of literary sources about the Vikings is, however,problematic; they conflict with each other and all contain various kinds of bias, so thatthe truth about the Vikings is difficult, probably impossible, to recover. Indeed
structuralists and other literary and historical theorists warn us that there may not be asimple truth to discover about the past and about the meaning of literary sources.
Definition
There is a problem about the definition of the Viking. The word itself seems not to havebeen used in modern English prose before the nineteenth century, when one of its first
appearances is in Scott’s novel The Pirate (Scott 1821, 319: ‘Vi-king’; see Fell 1987,
117). Originally the word meant a member of a raiding force travelling by sea. It is foundas a personal name in Old High German and in the early Old English poem about the
Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, sæwicingas is used of the tribe of Reuben crossing
the Red Sea (Exodus 1977, line 333). In scaldic verse it is used of Scandinavians engagedin warfare, often with no pejorative force, as in Sighvatr’s Víkingarvísur (ÍF XXVII 11,
18, 23), and in an Eddic poem of Sigur›r Fáfnisbani (PE 221). As late as c. 1140 it isused in a complimentary sense of Sigur›r Slembi (Ívarr Ingimundarson, Sigur›arbálkr st.
43, in Skj A I 502, B I 475). But it never seems to refer to a regular army and comes more
and more to be associated with hostile attacks of freebooters, and becomes more andmore pejorative, often being used by foreigners to mean ‘Scandinavian pagans’—though
the Viking Age in fact continues into the Christian period, when most Vikings were
Christians (thus it is customary to think of the Vikings as heathens and of the Viking
religion as worship of the Æsir, even though many Vikings adopted Christianity quite

2early on). Víking (f.) is actually a term describing an activity, that is raiding by sea, andvikingr m. is one who goes a-viking. Modern historians have widened the term and use it
to refer to Scandinavians in general in the Viking Age, whatever activity they were
engaged on, so that the term has ceased to be a mere activity word and has become
almost an ethnic term. Thus Foote and Wilson’s The Viking Achievement (1970) has the
sub-title The society and culture of early medieval Scandinavia. Hence the concern toemphasise that Vikings in this sense were not just violent plunderers, though to describe
the settlers of Iceland in general as Vikings is really a contradiction in terms: in the
narrowest sense of the word, as soon as they became settlers they stopped being Vikings.
But it is the in the broader sense that I am going to be using the word, so as to consider
the way that Scandinavians in general, including Icelanders, were regarded both in theirown time and in later centuries. I am concerned with representations of Vikings inliterature from the Middle Ages to the present day. One might therefore begin by pointing
out that most of the characters in Njáls saga would not have called themselves Vikings,
and nor would the inhabitants of Jórvík, though historians now describe them as such.
It is also evident that writers in the Middle Ages did not have a concept of the Viking
Age as we do. They were not aware of a new age beginning towards the end of the eighth
century, though they were perhaps aware of important changes that took place in theeleventh century, when the Viking expansion came to an end. Thus in Eddic poetry andfornaldarsögur no distinction is made between heroes of the Viking Age and those ofearlier times, for instance the period now still often referred to as the Migration Age fromthe second to fifth centuries AD. Atli, Jƒrmunrekkr, Hrólfr kraki appear side by side with
Ragnarr lo›brók and Ívarr beinlausi in defiance of chronology without any clear
distinction being made between Viking heroes and those who lived before the beginningof the Viking Age.
Contemporary historians
There are contemporary accounts of the Vikings by English, Irish and other chroniclers.
These, being written by monks and priests whose institutions had suffered much from
Viking raids, cannot be expected to be sympathetic or even fair to the Vikings. One thing
to note is the various animals with which the Vikings are compared. Characteristic is
Alcuin, a monk writing near the end of the eighth century, who saw the Viking raids as
god’s judgement on sinful Christians: ‘Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers
have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such terror appeared in Britain
as we have now suffered from a pagan race . . . foxes pillage the chosen vine’ (EHD
842–43). The Welsh bishop Asser in King Alfred’s reign says that ‘the pagans, acting
like foxes, secretly broke out of camp by night, tore the agreement [they had made] toshreds, rejected the offer of money (for they knew they would get hold of more from lootthan by peace) and devastated the whole region of eastern Kent’ (Page 1987, 10). The
poet of The Battle of Maldon, at the end of the tenth century, describes the Vikings aswælwulfas ‘wolves of slaughter’ and says ongunnon lytegian fla la›e gystas ‘the hatefulstrangers betook themselves to guile’ (ASPR VI 9, EHD 321). Byrhtfer› of Ramsey in thesame period wrote of ‘the abominable Danes glorying in flashing blades and poisoned
arrows’ (EHD 916). The Anglo-Saxon chronicler writes in the year 1011 (ASC I 141,
EHD 244): flonne hi mæst to yfele gedon hæfdon. flonne nam man gri›. 7 fri› wi› hi. 7na›e læs for eallum flisum gri›e 7 fri›e 7 gafole. hi ferdon æghwider folcmælum. 7

3
hergodon. 7 ure earme folc ræpton 7 slogon ‘when they had done most to our injury,
peace and truce were made with them; and for all this truce and tribute they journeyednone the less in bands everywhere, and harried our wretched people and plundered andkilled them’. Later (1012) he describes how they martyred the archbishop of Canterbury
in London: wæron hi eac swy›e druncene. forflam flær wæs gebroht win su›an. genamon
fla flone biscop . . . hine fla flær oftorfodon mid banum. 7 mid hry›ere heafdum. 7 sloh
hine fla an heora mid anre æxe yre on flet heafod. flet he mid flam dynte ni›er asah. 7 his
halige blod on fla eor›an feoll. 7 his fla haligan sawle to Godes rice asende. ‘They werealso very drunk, for wine from the south had been brought there. They seized the bishop .
. . they pelted him with bones and with ox-heads, and one of them struck him on the headwith the back of an axe, that he sank down with the blow, and his holy blood fell on the
ground, and so he sent his holy soul to God’s kingdom’ (ASC I 142, EHD 245). It isinteresting that the Vikings’ habit of throwing bones about when they ate is confirmed in
Snorri’s account of fiórr’s journey to Útgar›aloki (Snorri Sturluson 2005, 37) and in
Hrólfs saga kraka (NION II, 4–12). When the same event in London is described byThietmar of Merseburg, the Viking leader is described as ‘the voracious Charybdis ofthieving magpies’, but the bishop is described as a lamb (EHD 349). Vikings in thesesources are characteristically depicted as violent, heathen and unreliable—using deceit
and failing to keep their promises. The latter may be true: the cult of Ó›inn, which may
have been adhered to by many of the Viking attackers of Britain, seems to have actuallycelebrated Ó›inn as being an oath-breaker. Thus Hávamál (110, 91; though this part ofthe poem may well reflect post-Viking-Age views about the cult of Ó›inn): Baugei›Ó›inn hygg ek at unnit hafi, hvat skal hans tryg›um trúa? ‘A ring-oath I believe Ó›inn
has sworn, how can his word be believed?’ and flá vér fegrst mælum er vér flást hyggjum‘when we speak most fair, then our thoughts are falsest’. What more natural when being
required to swear oaths by their highest god than that the Vikings should imitate Ó›inn
and break them? The attitude of medieva1 English writers to the Vikings can be summed
up in Ray Page’s translation of the words of the Englishman Æ›elweard from the latetenth century (Page 1987, 3; Campbell 1962, 42, 44): ‘A most vile people . . . that filthy
race’ (plebs spurcissima . . . plebs immunda).
A rather different picture emerges from contemporary accounts from the Arab world.
Here there is emphasis on the peculiar rituals indulged in by the Vikings, and on their
unusual sexual habits (rape is not mentioned) and lack of hygiene. The Arab traveller Ibn
Fadlan wrote of Vikings in Russia in 922 (Brøndsted 1965, 265):
They are the filthiest of god’s creatures. They do not wash after discharging theirnatural functions, neither do they wash their hands after meals. They are as straydonkeys . . . Ten or twenty of them may live together in one house, and each of themhas a couch of his own where he sits and diverts himself with the pretty slave-girls
whom he has brought along to offer for sale. He will make love with one of them inthe presence of his comrades, sometimes this develops into a communal orgy, and, if acustomer should turn up to buy a girl, the Rus will not let her go till he has finishedwith her.
The rituals described in connection with funerals are very strange indeed; we in fact lackreliable accounts of such things in Scandinavian sources, but the unexpected nature of therituals described by Ibn Fadlan has suggested that the Vikings had acquired some strange

4
habits from the outlandish people they had been associating with east of the Baltic. They
include accounts of ritual prostitution, suttee and odd things done to cockerels. Somethings in this account, such as the practice of suttee, do correspond, not with historicalaccounts from Scandinavia, but with elements of early legends in Eddic poems, such as
the death of Brynhildr, and there is also support from the evidence of archaeology, for insome ancient burials a woman is found buried alongside a man (or, in some cases,
another woman, as at Oseberg).
A third contemporary source is the runic inscriptions, particularly those from Sweden.
Here one is surprised to find quite often an emphasis on the Christianity of the Vikings,
as well as confirmation that they often died by violence far from home—as victims rather
than perpetrators—and that their motive was often just monetary gain. fieir fóru drængila
fiarri at gulli ok austarla ærni gafu. Dou sunnarla a Særkland ‘They fared like men far
after gold and in the east gave the eagle food. They died southward in Serkland’; Brø›rvaru flæir bæstra manna a landi ok i li›i uti. Heldu sina huskarla vel. Hann fioll i orrustu
austr i Gar›um, li›s forungi, landmanna bæstr ‘The brothers were best among men on
land and out in the levy. They held their house-men well. He fell in action east in
Gardarike, the levy’s captain, of the land’s men the best.’; Gu› hialpi sial flæira vel. Enflæir liggia i Lundunum ‘May God help their souls well. And they lie in London’;Ragnælfr let gærva bro flessi æftir Anund, sun sinn go›an. Gu› hialpi hans and ok salubætr flæn hann gær›i til ‘Ragnälv had this causeway made in memory of Anund, hergood son. May God help his spirit and soul better than he deserved’; Sar haf›i go›a tro
til Gu›s ‘He had good faith in God’ (Jansson 1952, 41, 38, 51, 96–97, 99). The tone issometimes heroic: Hann var manna mestr oni›ingr. Er a Ænglandi aldri tyn›i ‘He wasamong men the most “un-dastard”. He in England lost his life’ reads one; Sar flo eigi at
Upsalum en va me› hann vapn haf›i ‘He fled not at Uppsala but fought while he had
weapons’ another; sometimes other virtues are celebrated: Mildan vi› sinna ok matargo›an, i or›lofi allra miklu ‘Gentle with his folk and generous with food, in great esteemwith all people’ (Jansson 1952, 115, 65, 114). Epitaphs are notoriously unreliable, yetthey do at least show what qualities were admired at the time, whether these individuals
had them or not, and runic inscriptions do reveal a welcome human side to the Vikings
which strongly contrasts with the view of them one gains from the chroniclers. King
Alfred, too, unexpectedly gives an account of one Viking—or a man we should identify
as being a Viking—who visited his court towards the end of the ninth century (Sweet
1967, 17–20; cf. Jones 1984, 138–39):
Ohtere sæde his hlaforde, Ælfrede cyninge, flæt he ealra Nor›monna norflmest bude.
He cwæ› flæt he bude on flæm lande norflweardum wifl fla Westsæ . . . He sæde flæthe æt sumum cirre wolde fandian hu longe flæt land norflryhte læge . . . for henorflryhte be flæm lande . . . Swiflost he for ›ider, toeacan flæs landes sceawunge, forflæm horshwælum . . . He wæs swy›e spedig man on flæm æhtum fle heora speda on
beo›, flæt is, on wildrum. He hæfde fla gyt, ›a he flone cyninge sohte, tamra deora
unbebohtra syx hund . . . He wæs mid flæm fyrstum mannum on flæm lande: næfde hefleah ma ›onne twentig hry›era, and twentig sceapa, and twentig swyna; and flæt lytleflæt he erede, he erede mid horsan.
Ohthere told his lord, King Alfred, that he lived furthest north of all the northmen. He
said that he lived in the northern part of the land facing the Atlantic . . . He said that heon one occasion wanted to find out how far the land extended to the north . . . He5travelled northwards along the coast . . . He went there chiefly, besides for explorationof the land, for the walrus . . . He was a very wealthy man in the property that theirwealth consists in, that is in reindeer. He had still, when he visited the king, six
hundred tame animals unsold . . . He was among the first men in the land, though heowned no more than twenty cattle and twenty sheep and twenty swine; and the little
that he ploughed he ploughed with horses.
If Ohthere was indeed the historical ¯rvar-Oddr as R. C. Boer has argued (1892,
102–05), what a different picture from the one given of him in ¯rvar-Odds saga!
Poems
But one might argue that the most important contemporary sources about the Vikings are
the poems they themselves composed that have survived. Many of the poems of the Elder
Edda are believed to have been composed by Vikings, anonymous though they are. The
subjects of the heroic lays are in many cases people who would have lived, insofar as
they are historical, before the Viking age—Ham›ir and Sƒrli, Gunnarr and Hƒgni,Sigur›r Fáfnisbani. But it is not clear that at the time poets really distinguished the heroesof the Viking Age from those of the Migration Age as modern historians do, and it may
be justifiable to see the heroes of Eddic poems as embodying either the Viking poet’s
views of himself or his ideal. It is in these poems that one finds the picture of the Viking
laughing as he dies—Hló flá Hƒgni, er til hjarta skáru kvikvan kumblasmi›, kløkva hannsízt hug›i ‘Then Hƒgni laughed when they cut the living wound-maker to the heart, thelast thing he thought of doing was crying’ (Atlakvi›a 24)—demanding to see his
brother’s heart on a plate so that he can die happy, knowing that the secret of his gold
will be kept: Hér hefi ek hjarta Hƒgna ins frœkna . . . er litt bifask er á bjó›i liggr, bif›isk
svági mjƒk flá er í brjósti lá ‘Here I have the heart of Hƒgni the brave . . . which trembles
little as it lies on the plate, it trembled not even as much when it lay in his breast(Atlakvi›a 25)—making cups from the skulls of his dead enemies (like Vƒlundr inVƒlundarkvi›a 24: en flær skálar er und skƒrum váru sveip hann útan silfri, seldi Ní›a›i‘and the bowls which had been under the hair he covered all over with silver, gave themto Ní›a›r’) and committing other terrible acts of revenge. At the end of Ham›ismál (30)Ham›ir says: Vel hƒfum vi› vegit, stƒndum á val Gotna, ofan eggmó› sem ernir á kvisti;
gó›s hƒfum tírar fengit flótt skylim nú e›a í gær deyja, kveld lifir ma›r ekki eptir kvi›
norna ‘Well have we fought, we stand on the corpses of Goths, above, wearied by swordedges, like eagles on a bough; we have gained good fame whether we must die now oranother day, no man lives for one evening beyond the decree of the norns’. One must
always bear in mind, however, that the heroes of Eddic poems are not ‘real’ Vikings inany sense of the term; they are a legend created by poets.
More reliable, one might think, is the picture from scaldic verse. Though this has
mostly survived only as quotations in thirteenth-century prose texts, much of it is thought
to be the genuine work of Viking poets, passed down orally until the age of writing. It has
the great advantage over Eddic verse that it is often about Vikings as well as being by
Vikings, and the subject matter is often contemporary with the poet; and not only is it notanonymous, but it characteristically contains a great deal of self-reference and evaluationof the people and events mentioned in it. It is clear from it that the values Viking poets
most liked to celebrate, at any rate publicly in kings and heroes, were valour andgenerosity. Arnórr praises King Magnús (Skj B I 315): Ungr skjƒldungr stígr aldri

6jafnmildr á vi› skildan ‘As generous a young prince will never step onto ship’s deck’;Sighvatr says (S k j B I 234): Vask me› gram fleims gumnum goll bau›drottinhollum—nafn fekk hann—en hrƒfnum hræ fless konungs ævi ‘I was with the ruler
throughout the king’s life who offered loyal followers gold—he gained renown—andgave ravens carrion’; Egill Skalla-Grímssson in his Hƒfu›lausn 9, 17 and 18 (ÍF I
185–92) praised Eiríkr bló›øx chiefly for these two virtues: fiar var eggja at ok odda
gnat; or›stir of gat Eiríkr at flat . . . gla›ar flotna fjƒl vi› Fró›a mjƒl . . . hjƒrleiks hvati,hann er fljó›skati ‘There was conflict of edges and clashing of points; Eiríkr gained glory
from that . . . he makes multitudes of men happy with Fró›i’s meal [gold] . . . theinstigator of battle, he is a most generous man’. Snorri Sturluson (ÍF XXVI 5) argued thatscaldic verse that is well preserved and which was recited in the presence of the kings
whose exploits it celebrates must be true, because to praise men to their face for deeds
they had not performed would be há› en eigi lof ‘mockery and not praise’. I think Snorri
underestimated kings’ appetites for flattery and their facility in self-deception. Scaldic
verse is largely propaganda, much of it self-propaganda, and though it is valuable inshowing us how Vikings wanted the world to see them, it cannot be taken at its face value
as representing the truth about them. If, as the kings of England found, there was no
reason to trust Vikings when they swore oaths on the sacred ring, how much less should
one trust them to give a true account of themselves in their poetry? But perhaps the mostsignificant fact about the Vikings that emerges from their poetry is their love of poetry
itself. One of the most characteristic things about the Vikings seems to be this love of
poetry and the high value they placed on poets. It is this aspect of them that is the best
antidote to the partial view of them as vandals and men of violence; but it is this aspect ofthem that is most difficult to convey in an exhibition in a museum: the only way toappreciate Viking poetry is to learn to read it in the original language. It cannot bepresented in a glass case. It is also this aspect of them that has been one of the major
formative influences on the development of the twentieth century Icelanders’ view ofthemselves as a poetic and cultured nation: it was founded by poets.
Sagas
Many of the Icelandic sagas are about Vikings. Written in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, they are an attempt to recreate the Vikings from a distance of several hundredyears. The picture they give is different in different kinds of sagas—there isromanticisation in many of the fornaldarsögur, together with emphasis on sensationaland grotesque activities such as exotic battles, voyages and encounters with thesupernatural. There is a different kind of romanticisation in the Sagas of Icelanders:characters like Gunnarr of Hlí›arendi and Kári and Flosi in Njáls saga have considerable
glamour that may owe something to European concepts of chivalry. Other characters are
idealised as striving to be upright and moral in a corrupt world, like Gísli Súrsson andHƒskuldr hvítanessgo›i in Njáls saga. Others, strong men like Skarphe›inn, Grettir,fiorgeirr Hávarsson and Egill Skallagrímsson have grotesque qualities (the latter not freefrom what one might identify as poetic temperament) that express themselves in bloodyminded non-cooperation and determined rejection of civilised restraint which has to us acertain attraction as indicating independence of mind and individuality and refusal tocompromise. Yet others, like Njáll himself, or Hallr of Sí›a, who renounced
compensation for his own son in order to achieve reconciliation (cf. Andersson 1970), are7given qualities of wisdom and kindness, even before Christianity had had much time tohave an effect on Icelandic morals, that are a clear attempt on the part of the thirteenthcentury authors to demonstrate that Christianity did not have a monopoly of moral
elevation in the Middle Ages. Njáls saga compares the morality of the Christian burnersof Njáll unfavourably with that of the heathen attackers of Gunnarr in his house (ÍF XII
362). The way in which Christianity is depicted as being adopted by Vikings such as
Kjartan in Laxdœla saga is also designed to show that Vikings were morally upright andamenable both to civilisation and to ethical teaching. Kjartan admits he has planned toburn the king in his house, and when the king forgives him he says (ÍF V 121–22):‘fiakka vilju vér y›r, konungr, er flér gefi› oss gó›an fri›, ok flannig máttu oss mest
teygja at taka vi› trúnni, at gefa oss upp stórsakar.’ . . . Konungr . . . kvazk flat hyggja atmargir myndi fleir kristnir er eigi myndi fleir jafnháttagó›ir sem Kjartan e›a sveit
hans,—‘ok skal slíkra manna lengi bí›a.’ ‘“We wish to thank you, king, for having
granted us kind pardon, and in this way you can best entice us to accept the faith, bypardoning us for great offences.” . . . The king said he thought there must be many
Christians who would not be as well-conducted as Kjartan and his company, —“and one
must be patient with such men.”’ Later Kjartan says: Svá leizt mér vel á konung it fyrsta
sinn, er ek sá hann, at ek fekk flat flegar skilt at hann var inn mesti ágætisma›r . . . ok ƒllætla ek oss flar vi› liggja vár málskipti, at vér trúim flann vera sannan gu› sem konungrb‡›r ‘I was so impressed by the king the first time I saw him, that I immediately realisedthat he was a very excellent person . . . and I think our best interests lie in our believingthat that is the true God whom the king is preaching’.
There are other depictions of Vikings by Icelandic authors of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. A number of poems were written as imaginative monologues or dialogues andattributed to legendary Vikings, in some cases as laments uttered at the point of death,such as Krákumál (Skj B I 652–56):Hjƒggum vér me› hjƒrvi.
We hewed with sword.
Heldum Lakkar tjƒldum
We held our shields
hátt at hildar leikihigh in the warfare
fyr Hja›ningavági;
by Hja›ningavágr;
sjá knáttu flá seggir,men could see there
es sundru›um skjƒldu
when we split shields
at hræsildar hjaldri,in the tumult of spears,
hjalm slitna›an gotna;
men’s torn helmets
vasat sem bjarta brú›i
it was not like laying beside one
í bing hjá sér leggia . . .
a bright bride in bed . . .
Hjoggum vér me› hjƒrvi.
We hewed with sword.
Hví sé drengr at feigri,
Why should warrior be more doomed
at hann í odda éli
because in the storm of spearsƒndur›r látinn ver›i?
he be placed in the van?
Opt s‡tir sá ævi,He often bemoans his life
es aldrigi nistir
whom never tears(ilt kve›a, argan eggja)(it is bad, they say, to goad a coward)ƒrn at sver›a leiki;
eagle in sword-play;
hugblau›um kømr hvergi
for a cowardly one never8
hjarta sitt at gagni . . .
does his heart any good . . .
Hjoggum vér me› hjƒrvi.
We hewed with sword.
Hitt s‡nisk mér raunar,
This indeed seems to me rightat forlƒgum fylgjum,
that we submit to fate.
fár gengr of skƒp norna . . .
few withstand the decree of the norns . . .
F‡sumk hins at hætta,I am eager to venture beyond,heim bjó›a mér dísir,the spirit-maids call me home,flær’s frá Herjans hƒllu
they who Ó›inn has sent me
hefr Ó›inn mér sendar;from war-god’s hall;gla›r skalk ƒl me› Ásumjoyful shall I with Æsirí ƒndvegi drekka;
drink ale on the seat of honour;lífs eru li›nar vánir,all hope of life is gone,læjandi skalk deyja.
laughing shall I die.
and Hjálmarskvi›a (Tolkien 1960, 8–9):
Sár hefk sextán,
Wounds have I sixteen
slitna brynju,
slit is my corselet,
svart er mér fyr sjónum,my sight is darkened.
séka ganga;
I see not my way;hneit mér vi› hjarta
to my heart pierced me,hjƒrr Angant‡s,poison-hardened,hvass bló›refill,
Angant‡r’s blade—her›r í eitri . . .
bitter the point was . . .
Hvarfk frá fƒgrum
I went from delightfljó›a sƒngva
of women’s singing
ótrau›r gamans
for joy eager
austr vi› Sóta;
east with Sóti;
fƒr skunda›ak
sped my journey
ok fórk í li›
to join the hosthinzta sinni
left for the last time
frá hollvinum.
loyal companions.
These introduce a note of elegiac wistfulness at the same time as they emphasise thegruesome nature of the exploits attributed to legendary heroes. Some of these poems are
adopted into the narratives of fornaldarsögur, which similarly emphasise themelodramatic aspects of legends about the Vikings and depict them as rather simplified
and indeed to us uninteresting bloodthirsty characters. As Gwyn Jones has put it, they
have an ‘implacable imbecility beloved of Saxo and the more strenuous Fornaldar Sögur’(Jones 1972, 47).
Seventeenth to eighteenth centuries
It is curious that it is such sagas and poems that seem to have appealed most to the early
scholars of Old Icelandic literature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Amongthe earliest Icelandic prose narratives to be printed were Gautreks saga (1664) andHervarar saga (1672), two of the most sensational of the fornaldarsögur, and Snorra
Edda (1665) with its emphasis on the grotesque mythology and religion of the Vikings;
more sober accounts of the Vikings followed towards the end of the century,9Landnámabók (1688) and Heimskringla (1697, though a version in Danish had appeared
as early as 1594). The first Sagas of Icelanders had to wait until 1756 for publication. The
conception of the Vikings that was thus established in the first texts that became available
after the Renaissance dwelled on the sensational and melodramatic possibilities of the
tradition, and one of the most influential early descriptions of them was in Bartholin’s
Antiquitates Danicæ de causis contemptæ a Danis adhuc gentilibus mortis (1689), whichemphasised the supposed imperviousness to pain and indifference to death of thelegendary Viking. This work quotes a good deal of eddic poetry (including Baldrs
draumar) and sagas, including quite a lot of skaldic verse and parts of the poems
Krákumál, Bjarkamál, Hakonarmál, Darra›arljó› and the whole of Ásbjarnarkvi›a fromOrms fláttr, all with Latin translations and great emphasis on the heroically fighting anddying Viking. Non-Scandinavian readers were also much influenced by the publicationsof Thomas Percy, a characteristic product of the Romantic Age in his interest in early
traditions of all kinds and his glorification of the primitiveness, as he saw it, of past ages.
He published a great deal of early English poetry, including many ballads, in his Reliquesof Ancient English Poetry (1765). He introduced English readers to Scandinavian
mythology in his English version of Johan Gøransson’s edition of Gylfaginning (1746)
along with his translation of P. H. Mallet’s L’Introduction à l’histoire de Dannemarc(1770). Even more influential, however, was his Five Pieces of Runic Poetry (1763)
which included prose versions in English of Hervararkvi›a and Krákumál. The former
reads (in the edition of 1809, 297–98): ‘Are the sons of Andgrym, who delighted inmischief, now become dust and ashes? Can none of Eyvor’s sons now speak with me outof the habitations of the dead?’ Not very accurate, but exciting. Hervararkvi›a had
already appeared with an English prose translation in Hickes’ Thesaurus (1705), which
was where Percy got it from, and in Dryden’s Miscellany Poems VI (1716; this volume
was published after Dryden’s death, and he probably would not have approved). Thomas
Gray also popularised the ‘Gothic Ode’ in his poems The fatal sisters and The descent ofOdin, which were versions of Darra›arljó› and Baldrs draumar (1761). The former
begins (Gray 1966, 29):
Now the storm begins to lower,(Haste, the loom of hell prepare)
Iron sleet of arrowy shower
Hurtles in the darken’d air.
Glitt’ring lances are the loom,
Where the dusky warp we strain,
Weaving many a Soldier’s doom,
Orkney’s woe, & Randver’s bane.
See the griesly texture grow,(’Tis of human entrails made)And the weights, that play below
Each a gasping Warriour’s head.
Gray is a skilful versifier, though the effect is different from that of the original. The
terms Runic and Gothic are frequently used of Norse literature in this period, with acharacteristic Romantic Age contempt for historical precision (cf. Gentleman’s Magazine
1790, 844 (Gothic); Lewis 1801 (Runic)). It is notable that in versions of Norse poems of
the eighteenth century, not only is it the more sensational (and less historical) texts that10
are selected for translation, but writers are driven to improve on the originals toemphasise some of the more melodramatic aspects of Viking legend that they feel ought
to be there but which are not expressed clearly enough for them in the originals. As
Christopher Tolkien writes (1960, xxxiv), ‘There was a spate of Gothic Odes and Runic
Odes . . . by poets who were quite unconstrained by any understanding of the original.’
Thomas James Mathias first published his Runic odes imitated from the Norse tongue inthe manner of Mr Gray in 1781. In his version of Hervararkvi›a the heroine, approaching
the graves of her father and uncles, asks (Mathias 1798, 22):
Where are the sons of Angrim fled?
Mingled with the valiant dead.
From under twisted roots of oak,
Blasted by the thunder’s stroke,
Arise, arise, ye men of blood,
Ye who prepared the Vulture’s food;
Give me the sword, and studded belt;
Armies whole their force have felt:
Or grant my pray’r, or mould’ring rot,
Your name, your deeds alike forgot.
It is interesting that many of these authors associate the Norse poetry they are translating
or adapting with early Celtic literature (Gray accompanies his Norse Odes by ones basedon Welsh poems, and Mathias bases some of his poetry on Ossian; compare the title ofMallet’s second volume (1756), mostly devoted to the Prose Edda and some Eddic
poems: Monumens de la mythologie et de la poésie des Celtes). Welsh and Irish havealways been seen by English people as a source of grotesque, over-imaginative andabsurd poetry.
Anna Seward, a popular poetess in her time, known as the swan of Lichfield, whose
works were edited by Walter Scott, made a version of Hervararkvi›a, published in 1796
in Llangollen Vale, with other poems, which as she says, ‘is a bold Paraphrase, not a
Translation.’ She complains that ‘the expressions in Dr Hicks’ prose, have a vulgar
familiarity, injurious to the sublimity of the original conception’ (one wonders how she
knows what the original conception was). Her version begins (Seward 1810, III 90–91):
Argantyr, wake!—to thee I call,
Hear from thy dark sepulchral hall!
’Mid the forest’s inmost gloom,
Thy daughter, circling thrice thy tomb,
With mystic rites of thrilling power
Disturbs thee at this midnight hour.
Even more indicative of the way in which Icelandic poetry was seen by the Romantic
Age is the fact that M. G. Lewis, populariser of the so-called Gothic Novel (he wrote The
Monk, Castle Spectre and other sensational stories) included versions of Icelandic poems
among his Tales of Wonder (1801). The original of his Sword of Angantyr is described asrunic, and as Lewis states (1801, I 35), he has taken ‘great liberties’ with it, and thecatastrophe is his own invention. Angantyr says (Lewis 1801, I 43–47):
Hark! what horrid voices ringThrough the mansions of the dead!
’Tis the Valkyries who sing,11
While they spin the fatal thread.
—‘Angantyr!’ I hear them say,
Sitting by their magic loom,—‘Yield the sword, no more delay,
Let the sorceress meet her doom!’ . . .
I obey! the magic glaive
Thirty warriors’ blood hath spilt;
Lo! I reach it from my grave,
Death is in the sheath and hilt!
HERVOR.
Rest in peace; lamented shade!
Be thy slumbers soft and sweet,
While, obtain’d the wond’rous blade,Home I bend my gladsome feet.
But from out the gory steel
Streams of fire their radiance dart!
Mercy! mercy! oh! I feelBurning pangs invade my heart!
Flames amid my ringlets play,
Blazing torrents dim my sight!
Fatal weapon, hence away!
Woe be to thy blasting might!
Woe be to the night and time,
When the magic sword was given!
Woe be to the Runic rhyme,
which reversed the laws of Heaven! . . .
ANGANTYR.
’Tis in vain your shrieks resound,
Hapless prey of strange despair!
’Tis in vain you beat the ground,
While you rend your raven hair!
They who dare the dead to wake,still too late the crime deplore:
None shall now my silence break,Now I sleep to wake no more!
HERVOR.
Curses! Curses! Oh! what pain!
How my melting eyeballs glow!
Curses! curses! through each vein
How do boiling torrents flow!
Scorching flames my heart devour!
Nought can cool them but the grave!
Hela! I obey thy power,
Hela! take thy willing slave.

12
Not all readers of ‘runic’ poems in this period gave them unqualified admiration. Thomas
Love Peacock in his Melincourt (1817, 387–88), has a dialogue about the Romantic
attitude to the wild North. Mr. Forester begins with a quotation from Southey:
MR. FORESTER.
Let us look back to former days, to the mountains of the North:‘Wild the Runic faith,
And wild the realms where Scandinavian chiefs
And Scalds arose, and hence the Scald’s strong verse
Partook the savage wildness. And methinks,
Amid such scenes as these the poet’s soulMight best attain full growth.’
MR FAX.
As to the ‘Scald’s strong verse,’ I must say I have never seen any specimens of it, that
I did not think mere trash. It is little more than a rhapsody of rejoicing in carnage, aringing of the changes on the biting sword and the flowing of blood and the feast of
the raven and the vulture, and fulsome flattery of the chieftain, of whom the said Scald
was the abject slave, vassal, parasite, and laureat, interspersed with continual hints that
he ought to be well paid for his lying panegyrics.
MR. FORESTER.
There is some justice in your observations: nevertheless, I must still contend that those
who seek the mountains in a proper frame of feeling, will find in them images ofenergy and liberty, harmonizing most aptly with the loftiness of an unprejudiced mind,
and nerving the arm of resistance to every variety of oppression and imposture, thatwinds the chains of power round the free-born spirit of man.
The interpretation of Icelandic poetry and of the figures described in it is indicated asmuch in the choice of material and the way in which it is translated as in actual comments
about it. It is clear that the usual perception of Vikings as men of violence owes as muchto the Romantic Age’s selection of the more sensational Icelandic accounts of them as tothe medieval chroniclers’ presentation of them as plunderers of churches.
One of the first translators who really tried to keep close to the original, and who took
the trouble to learn something of the original language, was William Herbert, whose
Select Icelandic Poetry was published in 1804–06. His translations are well done, buteven he has inevitably the attitudes of his time to the originals. ‘For me,’ he writes(Herbert 1804–06, I viii), ‘the energetic harmony of these old poems has great charms:
the most ancient are the simplest and most beautiful; for the Icelandic poetry degenerated
into affectation of impenetrable obscurity and extravagant metaphors.’ He evidently
thought scaldic poetry later both than eddic poetry and than eddica minora like
Hervararkvi›a. ‘I conceive,’ he continues (1804–06, I ix), ‘that much of the value ofthese relicks consists in their peculiarities, and in the light, they throw on the singularmanners and persuasions of the northern nations.’ He still thinks of these peculiarities interms of the accounts of their deaths (1804–06, I 57–58): ‘Singular as this may now
appear, it was a common affectation amongst the warriors of the North [i. e. to recite
poetry as they died] whose greatest pride was to display indifference at the hour of death,and to smile and jest in their last agonies.’ He then goes on to compare the dying Viking
with Red Indians of North America, ‘who uttered their death-song with calm intrepidity
in the midst of torments too horrid to relate, recounted the exploits of their youth, boastedof their own cruelties, and suggested even to their enemies “more exquisite methods of13
torture, and more sensible parts of the body to be afflicted”’. Herbert, however, didappreciate the significance of the Vikings’ love of poetry in indicating their intellectual
achievement, but saw even this in a remarkably romantic light (1804–06, I 58): ‘Skill in
poetry was an accomplishment almost indispensable to a northern warrior; and although
the rules of their metre were strict and various, they were habituated to speak in verse on
every important incident; and the whole of their life was like a tragic opera.’ He draws
attention, though, to some respects in which medieval Iceland seemed more civilised thanother parts of Europe, and gives as an example the making of duels to settle disputes
illegal, as is reported in Gunnlaugs saga (Herbert 1804–06, I 65): ‘at the very time whenthe enlightened Icelanders cast aside this superstitious and barbarous custom, in the restof Europe it was in its meridian glory.’ He was, however, fascinated by the accounts ofberserks (1804–06, I 86–87): ‘Many of then are described, as mild and affable in theirgeneral demeanor, unless suddenly thwarted or contradicted. It appears to me’, he says,‘that this temporary madness was merely the violent eruption of a savage disposition,
amongst men undisciplined and untamed; whose limbs had been invigorated by thepractice of every corporeal exertion; who from their habits of life and their religion wereentirely devoid of fear, from earliest youth had been accustomed to constant warfare andpillage, and had known no controul, but their own will, no bound to their desires, but theimpossibility of gratifying them.’
Some of the attitudes of the eighteenth century to the Vikings were the result ofstraightforward misunderstanding of the original texts. The rendering of a kenning for
drinking-horn in Krákumál as referring to the practice of drinking from the skulls of deadenemies was in fact due to the misunderstanding of the Icelandic interpreter MagnúsÓlafsson of Laufás in his version made in 1632 and printed by Ole Worm in Literaturarunica in 1636 (Gordon 1957, lxix–lxx); there is some excuse for this myth in the factthat Vƒlundarkvi›a does relate that Vƒlundr made the skulls of the sons of his enemyNí›u›r into bowls when he had killed them, and archaeologists claim to have foundworkshops in the Scythian area for making such bowls out of skulls, though it is notcertain that the people concerned were of a Germanic race (they were certainly not
Vikings; cf. von See et al. 2000, 216–18). Involuntary cannibalism is mentioned in
Atlakvi›a. Another misunderstanding of a line in Krákumál gave rise to the splendid ideathat the pleasure of battle to the Vikings ‘was like having a fair virgin placed beside one
in the bed . . . like kissing a young widow at the highest seat of the table’ (Percy’s version(1763), based on Magnús Ólafsson’s mistake; see Gordon 1957, lxix–lxx). William
Herbert (1804–06, I 116–17) is ironically scathing about this mistake, which was theresult of failing to realise that in Old Norse a suffixed -at made a verb negative, so that
Ragnarr lo›brók was simply saying that battle was not like kissing.
Herbert’s perception of scaldic poetry as being degenerate, while he admired the older
and simpler style of eddic poetry as indicating the nobility of the Vikings, is interesting.
Not many modern readers like scaldic poetry as much as eddic poetry, but I see it as
having the sort of complexity that reflects intellectual sophistication rather than barbarity,
though it does strike some as barbaric. It can be compared to the complexity of early Irish
and Welsh poetry, or that of the troubadours in medieval France and Germany, or eventhat of Aeschylus. All these styles have been seen by some as having barbaric adornment
rather than the overdeveloped sophistication of the baroque.
The result of the limited range of sources that were available to readers in theeighteenth century, and of the repeated selection of the most melodramatic that were14
known, was a characteristic interpretation of the Viking as having ‘rude nobility’. Walter
Savage Landor (Letter to Southey, 1811, quoted Gordon 1957, lxxii) wrote: ‘What apeople were the Icelanders! What divine poets! . . . Except Pindar’s, no other odes are sohigh-toned. [After quoting Krákumál:] Few poets could have expressed this natural andnoble sentiment.’ Many nineteenth-century works of literature based on the Vikings seemin fact to us rather sentimental. Carlyle in the 1840s described Odin as a type of Viking
hero; he speaks of ‘strong sons of Nature; and here was not only a wild captain andFighter; discerning with his wild flashing eyes what to do, with his wild lion-heart daring
and doing it; but a Poet too, and all that we mean by a Poet, Prophet, great devout
Thinker and Inventor, as the truly Great Man ever is . . . A Hero, . . . in his own rudemanner; a wise, gifted, noble-hearted man . . . A great thought in the wild deep heart ofhim! . . . In the old Sea-kings, too, what an indomitable rugged energy! Silent, withclosed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially brave; defying the wild
ocean with its monsters, and all men and all things;—progenitors of our own Blakes andNelsons . . . There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts’(Carlyle 1841; quoted from the 1908 edition, 34–35, 38, 42).
Nineteenth century
But in the nineteenth century, as a wider range of Norse texts became known to scholars,
including some of the Sagas of Icelanders and Heimskringla, other aspects of the Vikingscame to be emphasised. Independence and love of freedom came to be identified ascharacteristics of the Viking; and the societies they founded, particularly that in Iceland,
were seen as foreshadowing romantic nationalism (e.g. in the nineteenth-century
movements in Germany and Iceland towards national unity in the one and independence
in the other), socialism and even communism. This view of Iceland is particularly
associated with the writings of William Morris. This perception has led to the myth about
Iceland always having had a classless society (based partly on the fact that one of themost striking provisions of the law of the Old Icelandic Commonwealth, and one that
distinguished it from all other early Germanic law codes, was that the standard weregild
for all free men was the same). This idea too has ancient roots. There are some anecdotesthat attribute to Vikings in other countries an organisation which did not recognise
differences of status. Two illustrations of this myth about the Vikings are quoted by Peter
Foote and David Wilson in The Viking Achievement (1970, 79): Dudo of S. Quentin, wellknown creator of myths about the Norsemen, writing in the early eleventh century,
depicted a group of Danes replying to an emissary of the Franks whom they claimed tohave come to conquer when he asked them ‘Under what name does your leader act?’ withthe statement ‘Under none, for we are all of equal authority’. When asked ‘Will you bow
the neck to Charles, king of France, and turn to his service and receive from him all
possible favours?’ they reply ‘We shall never submit to anyone at all, nor ever cleave to
any servitude, nor accept favours from anyone. That favour pleases us best which we win
for ourselves with arms and toil of battles.’ When they did in fact come to pay homage tothe king of the Franks, Rollo ‘put his hands between the king’s hands, which not his
father nor his grandfather nor his great-grandfather had ever done to anybody.’ The
episode continues: ‘Then the bishops said, “Anyone who receives such a gift ought tobend down and kiss the king's foot.” But Rollo said: “Never will I bend my knees toanyone’s knees, nor will I kiss anyone’s foot.” But impelled by the entreaties of theFranks he ordered a certain soldier to kiss the king’s foot; and he immediately took hold15of the king’s foot, lifted it up to his mouth and, still standing, kissed it, thus toppling theking over’ (Davis 1976, 54). This account is reminiscent of some in the Sagas of
Icelanders about men who were reluctant to submit to kings and rulers. A number of thesagas claim that the main reason for the settlement of Iceland was desire to be
independent of the Norwegian throne. It is likely that many Vikings had political views,
if not quite as coherent as some people have liked to imagine; desire for independence
must have been one of the factors that led to the settlement of Iceland and Greenland,though economic factors are likely also to have been significant. It is also clear, however,from many of the sagas, as well as from Landnámabók, that there was in medieval
Iceland a distinct aristocratic attitude, a valuing of noble descent and a pride in class andstatus. The medieval Icelandic commonwealth was an oligarchy, not a democracy. The
Eddic poem Rígsflula embodies a belief in the unalterable distinction between slaves andfree, commoners and nobles; the three classes of mankind are there descended fromHeimdallr, but through three quite different classes of woman progenitors.
Twentieth century
In the twentieth century it is the personal qualities of some of the heroes of the Sagas of
Icelanders that have particularly attracted the attention of many scholars in Britain andAmerica. One of the sagas that has been most read in these countries, is Hrafnkels saga,
mainly because, being a short saga and easily accessible, it has featured as a central
element in most university syllabuses. Hrafnkell has been perceived as a pragmatist and arealist, and the qualities that enabled him to be successful at the end of the saga have been
identified as moderation, restraint and patience. The saga-writer uses such proverbs as sá
er svinnr er sik kann, skƒmm er óhófs ævi ‘he is wise who knows himself’, ‘short is thelife of immoderation’ (ÍF XI 106, 122), which have been taken to encapsulate themessage of the saga. Restraint, moderation and self-control do seem to be qualities
admired by saga-writers as well as by the poet of Hávamál, and are part of the way inwhich they idealised their Viking ancestors; there is no certainty that historically Vikings
really possessed these virtues, although of course some of them may have done so, or thatmany of them would have admired them. A sense of humour, even under difficult
circumstances, is also sometimes celebrated, such as the grim humour of Skarphe›inn or
the irony expressed by many a saga character at the point of death. One of the best
examples of this is the reply of the mortally wounded Norwegian who had been sent to
spy out if Gunnarr was at home in Njáls saga: ‘Viti› flér flat, en hitt vissa ek at atgeirrhans var heima.’ Sí›an fell hann ni›r dau›r ‘“You find that out, but this I do know, that
his thrusting-spear was at home”. Then he fell down dead’ (ÍF XII 187). Another is Helgi
Droplaugarson’s comment when he received a wound to his face: Aldri var ek fagrleitr,
en lítit hefir flú um bœtt ‘I was never handsome in the face, and you have not improved it
much’ (ÍF XI 164). Imperturbability and refusal to indulge in emotional outbursts iscelebrated in many episodes. Halldórr Snorrason is described as a man who sízt bryg›ivi› váveifliga hluti; hvárt sem at hƒndum bar mannháska e›a fagna›artí›endi, flá var
hann hvárki at gla›ari né ógla›ari; eigi neytti hann matar e›a drakk e›a svaf meira né
minna en van›i hans var til, hvárt sem hann mœtti blí›u e›a strí›u ‘least of all was taken
aback by unexpected things; whether he was faced with deadly danger or welcome news,
he was neither the more nor the less cheerful; he did not enjoy food or drink or sleep
either more or less than his custom was, whether he met with pleasantness or adversity’16(ÍF V 276). There appears to be the influence here of ideals associated with stoicism.
This sort of character appeals to an age which has lost interest in emotionalism and sees it
as weakness. It is a far cry from the characters celebrated in eighteenth-century poetry.
Similarly imperturbable is fiorgeirr Hávarsson in Fóstbrœ›ra saga (ÍF VI 127–28):
Er fiorgeirr spur›i víg fƒ›ur síns, flá brá honum ekki vi› flá tí›enda sƒgn. Eigi ro›na›ihann, flví at eigi rann honum rei›i í hƒrund; eigi blikna›i hann, flví at honum lag›i eigi
heipt í brjóst; eigi blána›i hann, flví at honum rann eigi í bein rei›i, heldr brá hann sér
engan veg vi› tí›enda sƒgnina, flví at eigi var hjarta hans sem fóarn í fugli; eigi var flatbló›fullt, svá at flat skylfi af hræzlu.
When fiorgeirr heard of the killing of his father, he was not disturbed by the report ofthe event. He did not go red, for there ran no anger in his flesh; he did not turn pale,
for there lay no hatred in his breast; he did not go livid, for there ran in his bones noanger, rather he was in no way disturbed by the report of the event, for his heart was
not like the gizzard in a bird; it was not full of blood so that it would quiver with fear.
This excessive self-control and imperturbability to the point where the hero seems to lacknatural human feeling was successfully satirised by Halldór Kiljan Laxness in Gerpla,but it has nevertheless been admired by many readers.
In the twentieth century there are various characteristic themes that recur in discussionsof the sagas and the figures they portray. As with earlier accounts, it is by carefulselection of the material that it is possible to demonstrate the existence of these themes
and their importance. One is that of the noble heathen who has a natural morality but
stands outside the Christian church (cf. particularly Lönnroth 1969; Schach 1984, ØØØ).
Medieval Christians liked to construct pictures of their heathen forebears whichemphasised their natural virtues and the fact that even heathens could behave nobly andhave a sense of decency and honour. The concept of the ‘noble heathen’ does seem tounderlie the saga-writers’ depiction of characters like Gunnarr and Njáll (before his
conversion), as indeed it does in the literature of other countries—e.g. Beowulf in AngloSaxon England, Cuchullain in Ireland. Some saga-writers created characters in heathen
times who had a ‘natural’ morality and were more virtuous than many Christians. Thus
Arnórr kerlinganef was depicted as speaking out against the idea of letting old people diein times of famine (Flateyjarbók 1944–45, I 486). Áskell in Reykdœla saga similarly
argues against exposing children and killing old people in times of hardship (ÍF X
169–71). Such ‘righteous heathens’ are in the sagas often depicted as being devoted tohim who made heaven and earth (ÍF VI 247), all things (ÍF XXIX 368) or the sun (ÍFVIII 62, 97–98, 125, ÍF I 46, 47), and thus are free from superstition and harmful
pagandom. There are a number of examples of this sort of agnostic religion, akin to theidea of devotion to the unknown god in Acts 17:23, for instance fiorsteinn gamli in
Vatnsdœla saga (ÍF VIII 62, 97–98, 125) and fiorkell máni (ÍF I 46, 47, Flateyjarbók
1944–45, I 291), who einn hei›inna manna hefir bezt verit si›a›r, at flví er menn vitudœmi til. Hann lét sik bera í sólargeisla í banasótt sinni ok fal sik í hendi fleim gu›i, er
sólina haf›i skapat; haf›i hann ok lifat svá hreinliga sem fleir kristnir menn, er bezt eru
si›a›ir ‘alone of heathen people has been most splendid in conduct, as far as people haveknowledge of precedents for it. He had himself carried into the sunshine in his final
sickness and committed himself into the hands of the God who had created the sun; he
had also lived as pure a life as those Christians whose conduct is finest’. Other similar
examples are Finnr Sveinsson in Flateyjarbók 1944–45, I 430–37 and Haraldr hárfagri in17
Heimskringla (ÍF XXVI 97; note his dislike of necromancers, ÍF XXVI 138) and in Óláfr
Tryggvason’s account of him in Flateyjarbók 1944–45, I 357–58. Further favourable
accounts of Haraldr hárfagri’s religion and morals are found in Fagrskinna (ÍF XXIX
368–69) and Kjalnesinga saga (ÍF XIV 27, 28). The motive of the virtuous heathen isused ironically of Gríma (wife of Gamli) in Fóstbrœ›ra saga (ÍF VI 247; Schach 1984,116). It is said of Hallfre›r (ÍF VIII 156–57), who is depicted as rather reluctantly
adopting Christianity, that he lasta›i ekki go›in, fló at a›rir menn hallmælti fleim, kva›
eigi flurfa at ámæla fleim, fló at menn vildi eigi trúa á flau ‘did not speak ill of the gods,
though other men condemned them, said there was no need to blame them, even if people
would not believe in them’ (i.e. like Haraldr hárfagri he is against blaspheming anygods).
Snorri echoes this depiction of the heathen religion as deistic in Gylfaginning (Snorri
Sturluson 2005, 8) where Hár, Jafnhár and firi›i (High, Equally high and Third) claim
belief in an Alfƒ›r (All-father) who created heaven and earth (though he had many
names). The concept of the nameless ruler of the heavens is not a native one; it is clearlybased on the European commonplace of ‘him who rules all the world’ (sá er öllum heimiræ›r, Fornsögur Su›rlanda 1884, 197) that appears often in translated romances, where
it is usually a description of ‘Maumet’ (see Fornsögur Su›rlanda 1884, xxvi; there are 7
cases—3 in Flóvents saga I, a further 1 in Flóvents saga II, 1 in Karlamagnus saga, 2 inElis saga—and in six of these the god ruling the world is named as ‘Maumet’ orsomething similar). The belief that heathen Icelanders had a morality akin to Christianity
is expressed already by Adam of Bremen (1961, IV 36): ante susceptam fidem naturali
quadam lege non adeo discordabant a nostra religione ‘even before adopting the Faith,by a kind of natural law they did not differ very much from our religion’ (cf. Weber
1981, 477 n.; Schomerus 1936, passim). Comparisons between the morality of heathens
and Christians are sometimes made in the sagas, with the former being shown as in somecases equal to, if not superior to, the latter (Njáls saga, ÍF XII 326, 328, cf. 188; Laxdœla
saga, ÍF V 42–43).
It is characteristic of many of these accounts of ‘noble heathens’ (which are often set in
the period of the conversion and in connection with stories about Óláfr Tryggvason) thatthey are depicted as being well-disposed to Christianity and welcoming it, like Njáll in
Njáls saga (see Schach 1984, 109). Other examples are the prophetess fiorbjƒrg in Eiríks
saga rau›a (ÍF IV 195–237), Helgi magri in Landnámabók (ÍF I 250–53), Bár›r infiorvalds fláttr tasalda (ÍF IX, 119–26), Eindri›i ilbrei›r in Flateyjarbók 1944–45, I
507–16, Sigmundr Brestisson in Færeyinga saga, Ko›rán in fiorvalds fláttr ví›fƒrla (ÍFXV 51–89), Finnbogi in Finnboga saga (ÍF XIV 253–40; ch. 20); cf. also Rimberti Vita
Anskarii 1961, 90–93 (ch. 27) and Grœnlendinga saga ch. 6 (ÍF X 259–60).
One particular aspect of this manner of idealising heathens or half-heathens has been
particularly attractive to the twentieth century, and that is the cliché of the reply such
Vikings are often said to have made when asked what they believed in: ek trúi á máttminn ok megin (or á sjálfan mik) ‘I believe in my might and main (or in my own self)’(Finnboga saga, ÍF XIV 253–40, ch. 19; also found in Romance sagas such as Bærings
saga, Mírmanns saga; see Fornsögur Su›rlanda 1884, xii). This may be associated withthe assertion ek vil engis manns nau›ungarma›r vera ‘I will not be pushed about byanyone’. Gerd Weber (1981, 496) compares Beowulf 669–70 truwode modgan magnes,
metodes hyldo which he translates as ‘glaubt an sich und sein Glück’, though the true

18
meaning there is ‘he trusted in courageous strength, God’s grace’; but Beowulf and other
Old English texts do stress trust in one’s might and main (Weber 1981, 489–93). The
cliché ek flarf engis nau›ungarma›r at vera/engis manns nau›ungarma›r vil ek vera is
attributed to Eindri›i ilbrei›r (Flateyjarbók 1944–45, I 511) and Kjartan (Laxdœla saga,ÍF V 119), in both cases in the context of conversion to Christianity as put forward byÓláfr Tryggvason; it seems that as in Íslendingabók, it was important to Icelanders in the
Middle Ages to make clear that conversion had been voluntary, not imposed (Weber
1981, 497–503). It may be that eventually most of these independently-minded heroes
give in to Óláfr Tryggvason’s persuasions and become Christians, often good Christians;
but the idea of the Viking who trusts only in his own ability and is not going to be pushed
around by anyone appealed to the secular freedom-loving twentieth-century reader, andthe figure is not so common in the Middle Ages outside Norse literature.
The same attitude is idealised in Gunnarr Hámundarson of Hlí›arendi in Njáls saga,
however, where conversion is not in question. The refusal to compromise in his case isexpressed in the verse supposed to have been recited by him from the grave, in which hecelebrates the attitude of the hero who kvazk heldr vilja deyja hjálmi faldinn en vægja
‘said he would rather die with his helmet on than yield’ (ÍF XII 193). Modern readers
tend to see this as the real reason why Gunnarr refused to go abroad, but chose to stay todie when his enemies attacked, rather than his love of the Icelandic landscape. The
refusal to give way even in the face of insurmountable odds has appealed to twentiethcentury critics, and is embodied also in some myths about the Æsir. W. P. Ker in amemorable remark in 1904 (Ker 1955, 58) said of the Norse gods that ‘they are on theright side, though it is not the side that wins . . . the gods, who are defeated, think that
defeat is not refutation’. Though the idea of the Viking free from ties of religion andnationality is attractive to us, it was not of course the intention of the medieval writers tosuggest that agnosticism or deism was superior to Christianity as well as to paganism.
The strong man, whether restrained or passionate, can be seen as the basis of theidealisation of many saga-characters, for instance Egill Skalla-Grímsson, Gísli Súrsson
and Grettir Ásmundarson as well as fiorgeirr Hávarsson (Fóstbrœ›ra saga)—all men
who do not let anyone push them around. This freedom motive has of course been
invoked particularly in support of the myth of the Icelandic character as embodying
independence of spirit and in support of arguments about modern political independence(as already by Snorri Sturluson in Heimskringla, in the speech of Einarr fiveræingr (ÍFXXVI 216). It has also unfortunately been used in support of less attractive ideologies
such as Nazism, and has been to some extent appropriated by the National Front; see
Auden and Macneice 1937, 134.
Similarly, the concept of the Viking who refuses to sacrifice to the heathen gods can be
related to medieval hagiography which idealised those who refused to sacrifice at pagan
altars in the early Christian period (Weber 1981, 486). The figure is found widely in
Norse literature. A striking example is ¯rvar-Oddr: Aldri vildi Oddr blóta; trú›i hann ámátt sinn ok megin; herfiligt kvezk honum flykkja at hokra flar fyrir stokkum e›a steinum‘Never would Oddr perform heathen acts of worship; he believed in his own might andmain; he thought it was contemptible to crouch down there in front of stocks or stones’(Weber 1981, 480). There is also a whole series of men in Landnámabók among thesettlers of Iceland who are said to have been go›lauss ‘godless’. This is part of the mythof Iceland having never been subject to superstitious religion (Weber 1981, 484–85).

19
The fact that many Vikings clearly were subservient to kings and that to attributeagnosticism or deism to them is probably an anachronism, does not prevent many from
responding positively to the saga-writers’ construction of them as such. It is historicallyimplausible that Vikings could have been so free from the prevailing culture of their time.
Writers only have available the categories that their culture and education provides themwith. Medieval Christianity developed the two categories of Christian and heathen but
added to them the intermediate one of the agnostic who had renounced heathendom but
not yet embraced Christianity. The reform of Hrafnkell’s character seems to involve this;his rejection of heathen worship seems to herald his success at the end of the saga.
Moreover the medieval perception of heathendom even in Iceland was clearly primarily
derived from the Bible’s accounts of non-Jewish cults in both Old and New Testaments(including the religion of Eindri›i ilbrei›r; see Weber 1981, 488–91). We actually learn
rather little about real European heathendom from thirteenth-century Icelandic writings.
The idea of ‘natural’ goodness and the possibility of moral uprightness outside
Christianity owes much to St Paul’s account in Romans 2: 14–27: ‘When Gentiles who
do not possess the law carry out its precepts by the light of nature, then, although they
have no law, they are their own law, for they display the effect of the law inscribed on
their hearts . . . If an uncircumcised man keeps the precepts of the law, will he not countas circumcised?’
Another aspect of the idealisation of the heathen Viking is the idea that in his natural
nobility he is the equal of kings and noblemen. This is particularly prominent infornaldarsögur. ¯rvar-Oddr is represented as being accepted as equal by kings becauseof his nobility of character (Weber 1981, 482). King Sveinn forkbeard says of fiorvaldr
ví›fƒrli (ÍF XV 59): Finna mun ek flann útlendan bóndason, at einn hefir me› sér, ef réttvir›ing er á hƒf›, í engan sta› minna gƒfugleik ok sómasem› en vér allir flrír konungar .
. . fiessi ma›r, er ek tala hér til, er svá vitr sem spƒkum konungi hœf›i at vera, styrkr okhugdjarfr sem enn øruggasti berserkr, svá si›ugr ok gó›hátta›r sem enn si›ugasti
spekingr ‘I can find you a son of a foreign peasant who has in his own self, if it isregarded in the right way, by no means less honour and nobility than all we three kings
put together . . . This man that I am speaking of, is as sensible as it behoves a wise king tobe, strong and bold as the most trusty berserk, as well conducted and of as fine morals as
the best conducted philosopher.’ Fri›fljófr is another example of the heathen who refuses
to sacrifice to heathen gods, and is said to be as noble as a king, though he refuses higher
honour than that of jarl. This is an extension of the myth of equality to embrace the ideaof natural equality based on moral uprightness. The implication of Kjartan’s competing
physically with Óláfr Tryggvason on equal terms and refusing to be cowed by him, while
the king develops great respect for him in return, is another example of the noble heathen
being made the equal of a king. Much has also been made in recent times of the episodein Eiríks saga rau›a of the death of Bjarni Grímólfsson as a sacrifice to egalitarianism(ÍF 234–35; cf. Foote 2004, 44–51) which seems to support the idea that the Vikings had
egalitarian principles, also reflected in their law code in Iceland, an idea close to the heartof Icelanders who want to see continuity between the ideals of Icelandic society in the
Middle Ages and those of the present.
The Vikings are not often depicted as thinkers (though Carlyle (1908 [first published1841], 42) says ‘they seem to have seen, these brave old Northemen, what Meditation has
taught all men in all ages, That this world is after all but a show,—a phenomenon orappearance, no real thing. All deep souls see into that,—the Hindoo, Mythologist, the20German Philosopher,—the Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker wherever he may be)’.
Occasionally in the sagas the troubled mind is indicated by a description of the behaviourof one of the characters, but we are rarely allowed to see what goes on in their minds(Njáll, fiorgeirr lƒgsƒguma›r (in Íslendingabók), Egill). Finnur Jónsson towards the endof his great literary history has a section headed ‘Filosofi’ which is almost as short as thecelebrated chapter lxxii ‘Concerning Snakes’ in Horrebow’s The Natural History of
Iceland (1758, 91): ‘No snakes of any kind are to be met with throughout the wholeisland.’ Finnur begins his section (1920–24, II 945): ‘Hvad filosofi angår, ecksisterer den
overhovedet slet ikke i den gamle litteratur’ (As regards philosophy, on the whole it justdidn’t exist in the old literature). He goes on to claim that the early Scandinavian attitudes
to life could be found in the proverbial expressions found in both prose and verse inmedieval literature. But evidence of thought may also be said to be found in the earlyparts of Hávamál and in Egill’s Sonatorrek. Snorri depicts the cult of Ó›inn as closely
connected with the cult of wisdom. Moreover Ó›inn’s gift of the mead of inspiration
enables one to become not only a poet but also a scholar (frœ›ama›r) according to
Skáldskaparmál (Snorri Sturluson 1998, 3/23). The idea of the thinking Viking is one thatmany modern readers like to contemplate. A twentieth-century Icelandic farmer isreputed to have claimed that solutions to all the problems of the world can be found in
Njáls saga.
It is interesting that some of Snorri’s idealised characters are notable for theirrationalism as well as independence of mind, for instance Einarr fiveræingr in Óláfs saga
helga (ÍF XXVI 216). Another kind of idealisation is seen in the figure of the wise oldman, like Njáll, or Gestr Oddleifsson in Laxdœla and other sagas (who looks forward to
the introduction of Christianity as a future blessing for Iceland; cf. Schach 1984, ØØØ);and wisdom is also an important concept in eddic poems like Vƒluspá, Hávamál,
Sigrdrífumál and Fáfnismál. Compare also Arnkell go›i in Eyrbyggja saga (ÍF IV 103):
hann hefir verit allra manna bezt at sér um alla hluti í fornum si› ok manna vitrastr, velskapi farinn, hjartaprú›r ok hverjum manni djarfari, einar›r ok allvel stilltr ‘he has beenof all men the best endowed in all respects in the old religion, and the wisest of men, offine character, stouthearted and bolder than anyone, reliable and truly moderate.’ The
ideal type who exemplifies wisdom and valour (sapientia et fortitudo) is clearly derived
from classical ideology (see Gerd Weber 1981, 479); that has formed the basis of themedieval Christian concept of the perfect knight, and this has in turn obviously
influenced Icelandic presentation of heroes like Hrólfr kraki, whom Snorri gives as an
example of mildi ok frœknleik ok litillæti ‘generosity and valour and humility (Snorri
Sturluson 1998, 58/5).
The current desire to emphasise the morality of the Vikings and also to connect theliterature about them with European literature seems to arise from a need to portray Old
Icelandic narratives as developed literary works rather than just as historical sources orfolklore. We want to justify the placing of Icelandic literature in a world class of writings,
to make them comparable with the great books of other countries.
Snorri Sturluson in his Edda and Ynglinga saga writes about the earlier inhabitants ofScandinavia as ancestors of his contemporaries in Scandinavia including Iceland without
indicating any break at the beginning of the Viking Age; the break for him is simply
between the historical period and pre-history, and the break is in the ninth century at thetime of the settlement of Iceland in the reign of Haraldr hárfagri. It seems therefore

21
permissible to include his representation of pre-historic Scandinavians in a discussion of
the various representations of the Vikings, even though he was not describing Vikings as
we now think of them, but rather the people from whom the Vikings originated. His
description of his heathen ancestors in the prologue to his Edda presents them as naturalphilosophers, contemplating the phenomena of the universe and working out a religion tointerpret it to themselves by means of their innate reason. These men are not superstitious
though they lack the benefit of divine revelation (Snorri Sturluson 2005, 3):
fiat hugsu›u fleir ok undru›usk hverju flat mundi gegna at jƒr›in ok d‡rin ok fuglarnirhƒf›u saman e›li í sumum hlutum ok var fló ólíkt at hætti . . . Bjƒrg ok steina fl‡ddu
fleir á móti tƒnnum ok beinum kvikvenda. Af flessu skil›u fleir at jƒr›in væri kyk ok
hef›i líf me› nƒkkurum hætti . . . fiat sama spur›u fleir af gƒmlum frændum sínum at
sí›an er tali› váru mƒrg hundru› vetra flá var in sama jƒr›, sól ok himintungl . . . Af
flvílikum hlutum gruna›i flá at nƒkkurr mundi vera stjórnari himintunglanna sá er stilla
mundi gƒng fleira at vilia sinum . . . alla hluti skil›u fleir jar›ligri skilningu flvíat fleim
var eigi gefin andlig spek›in. Svá skil›u fleir at allir hlutir væri smí›a›ir af nƒkkuru
efni.
They pondered and were amazed at what it could mean that the earth and animals andbirds had common characteristics in some things, though there was a difference inquality . . . Rocks and stones they thought of as equivalent to teeth and bones of living
creatures. From this they reasoned that the earth was alive and had life after a certain
fashion . . . Similarly they learned from their elderly relatives that after many hundredsof years had been reckoned there was the same earth, sun and heavenly bodies . . .
From such things they thought it likely that there must be some controller of theheavenly bodies who must be regulating their courses in accordance with his will . . .
they understood everything with earthly understanding for they were not granted
spiritual wisdom. Thus they reasoned that everything was created out of somematerial.
This conception of the Viking as free-thinking natural philosopher, working things out
for himself without owing allegiance to any religious or philosophical system is of course
analogous to the descriptions in the sagas of the agnostic noble heathens who committed
their souls into the hands of him who made the sun. But Snorri’s attractive picture of theViking philosopher also has a good deal in common with the picture that emerges fromthe earlier part of Hávamál. The lonely wanderer there is shown as lacking strong
personal beliefs, sceptical and wary, trying to cope with a hostile universe with the help
only of his own reason and personal skills, and without the support of a reliable ideology
or religion or social organisation—i.e. an existentialist. It is also not unlike the picturethat emerges of Egill Skalla-Grímsson from Sonatorrek (which probably is actually by
Egill, and so represents genuinely pre-Christian philosophising), where the poet tries tocope with personal grief by means of argument in his own mind about the nature of life
and the function of the gods. The questioning of religion that can be seen in Sonatorrek
gives Egill an intellectual aspect that links him with depictions of the irreligious Viking
like Víga-Glúmr or the agnostic Viking such as Hrafnkell becomes or Gísli Súrsson in
Beatrice Barmby’s depiction of him in her drama Gísli Súrsson (1900, 24–25, 40–41):
VÉSTEINN.
Oh, he that braves the Gods is overbrave.
GÍSLI.

22
I know not. Is there aught to brave at all?
VÉSTEINN.
That’s blasphemy!
GÍSLI.
If there be Gods, my doubt—
Blasphemy if you will it—harms them not;But he who prays to his own shadow proves
Nothing but his own fear.
.....................
God, God, if there be Gods—! There are none such,
For who should see the blameless man cast down,
The shadow of unjust prosperity,
And all the needless miseries of the world,
And make no sign? But we send out our cries
Through the blank night and catch their echo back,And call the nothing something. We look down,
Like children in a pool, into our souls,
And see our eyes look back, and cry out—God.
The lonely unattached philosopher Viking may have been a rather rare figure in reality,
but there are several literary depictions of him. The attraction of this conception to thetwentieth (or twenty-first) century is that many people nowadays move during their lives
from the place where they were born, many are confused by all the different religions andphilosophies of the world and are sceptical about them all, many people feel lacking inroots and identity. The Vikings seem to be people who learned to cope with such asituation in the Middle Ages, going to new homes and creating from nothing a life thatsuited then according to their own philosophy and values, with no settled allegiance. The
consequence of relativist ideology for many people is that they feel themselves to lackboth ideology and identity and the world seems confused and without order.
The significance of different critical attitudes
Though there is a clear historical development of attitudes towards the Vikings, there arealso examples of individuals holding views seemingly quite unrelated to those current
around them. W. H. Auden, in his Letters from Iceland (1937) wrote (edition of 1967,
117): ‘I love the sagas, but what a rotten society they describe, a society with only thegangster virtues.’ Similarly in 1738, Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík described the subjectmatter of the Icelandic sagas as Bændur flugust á ‘Peasants having a scrap’ (Sverrir
Tómasson 2003, 325–26). There is no objective ‘truth’ about the Vikings and no
objective meaning in the sources that describe them. All depictions of them are selective
and partial. In another part of Letters from Iceland (1967, 210), Auden reports Uno von
Troil’s sardonic expression of how different people see different things in Iceland,suggesting it was like the ‘clergyman and [a] fine lady who together observed the spots inthe moon, which the former took for church steeples and the latter for a pair of happy
lovers. I know [said von Troil] that we frequently imagine to have really found what wemost think of, or most wish for.’ Thus I believe that all criticism and commentary tells us
about the critic or historian, not about the texts they analyse, just as the sagas themselves
tell us more about the culture and values of thirteenth-century Iceland when they were23
written than about the Viking Age. Criticism and commentary tell us about the culture of
the critic and historian, not about the culture of the writers whose works they describe or
about the culture depicted by those writers. If this happens more obviously in the case ofaccounts of the Vikings than with other topics, it may be because descriptions of theVikings in the sagas are virtually ideologically indeterminate (or can appear to be), andlack authorial guidance and commentary as to how we are to perceive saga-characters.
All readers then read their own ideology into the sagas and reflect themselves in theiraccounts of them. Biblical criticism and exposition (not to speak of Shakespeare
criticism) has of course taken the same path.
Thus each age recreates or reconstructs its perception of the Vikings and creates a newmyth about them, selecting different texts to justify their interpretations. It is astonishingwhat different pictures can be created out of the same set of sources about the same
people. These reconstructions or readings of the sources are determined by the values andpreoccupations of those who read the sources in each period. The Vikings themselves
needed to justify themselves and represented themselves as heroic and generous.
Thirteenth-century Icelanders wanted to see themselves as descended from honourable
ancestors and represented the Vikings as independent lovers of freedom and justicebuilding a community free from the tyranny of kings and without superstition or servility.
In the romantic period, when Europeans constructed a vision of human nature that
included the opposites of reason and emotion, mind and spirit, they wanted to seethemselves as having attained a state of reason from a former barbarity, but having
retained the nobility of mind and spirit of the noble savages from whom they believed
themselves to be descended. The nineteenth century, as Europe became industrialised,wanted to idealise pre-industrial society as having had an organisation that valued justiceand freedom and natural virtue. In the twentieth century people who see themselves as
having escaped from the intellectual tyranny of organised religion and as having to carveout for themselves values and principles in an unfriendly and confusing universe, findfellow-feeling with a Viking who rejected organised religion and held to his personal
principles in a world that was continually urging conflicting claims both political andideological on him, such as when the papal legate Cardinal William of Sabena declared in
1247 that it was unreasonable (ósannligt) that Iceland should not have a king like allother countries in the world (Hákonar saga 1887, 252; ch. 257). Each age’s perception of
the Vikings and the literature about them is created out of its own historical situation. We
cannot claim to be getting closer and closer to the truth about the Vikings. What we haveis a succession of varying myths about the Viking created out of the needs and ideologies
of successive ages. Each age constructs the Vikings in its own way; though ourconstruction may be based on a larger body of evidence than was available in thenineteenth century, it is not necessarily superior to any of the preceding ones, to which it
is not necessary to be patronising as if the Romantics had weak minds. Our perceptions
are different but not necessarily more correct. They will be superseded by those of later
generations. We also are historically bound, our perceptions are historically determined.
Objectivity is not a possibility. Our definition of the past is part of the way we define
ourselves. In order to construct ourselves as civilised and cultured and rational we need todefine other cultures, such as that of the Vikings, from whom we are all partly descended,
as uncivilised, uncultured and irrational; hence the emphasis on the excessive emotion of,for instance, berserks, contrasted with the restraint of characters like Hrafnkell or Njáll(who were rejected by their contemporaries) and seem to have been ahead of their time.

24
There seems also to be a need in the twentieth century to stress the positive aspects ofpeople like the Vikings in order to demonstrate that in a violent world (which we now
acknowledge we still have) people can still be civilised. Thus Haraldr har›rá›i, under arough exterior and in spite of doing some terrible deeds, was a sensitive literary critic andpoet (cf. ÍF XXVIII 188; Finnur Jónsson, 1920–24, 461–62, 616–17). There is noobjective truth about the Vikings, only different representations based partly on
concentrating on different selections of quotations from different kinds ofsource—fornaldarsögur, Eddic poems, Eddica minora, Sagas of Icelanders—and partly
on misunderstandings of the texts; but mainly from reading into the texts what we want tosee. Then, by a kind of analytical synecdoche, various particular features of the chosen
texts are taken to give an insight into the whole culture. The different interpretations of
the Vikings actually tell us more about the historians who interpret them than about theVikings themselves. People not only see what they want to see in the Vikings, they also
reconstruct the Vikings in their own image. Historians both now and in the past havecreated a series of myths about the past which correspond to their own needs.
Certainly one of the attractions of the Viking to twentieth-century readers has been
what Peter Foote has called the ‘existential neutrality’ of the saga accounts of him which
many people transfer to the Vikings themselves. This secular and neutral way of talking
about them, whether they were Christian or heathen, of course reflects the presentation ofmany of them as realists and not concerned with ideology; but it tends to be with thesaga-writers’ attitudes that we now identify, rather than with the Vikings themselves. The
disillusion with religion, or at any rate with the church, that seems to have been rife in thelate twelfth and thirteenth century (for instance in Jón Loptsson’s opposition to Bishop
fiorlákr’s authority, ÍF XVI 166–68, 177–80), is also transferred to the Vikings and finds
a welcoming echo in twentieth-century attitudes. To quote Peter Foote (1984, 55):
May we not believe that the audiences of the Sagas of Icelanders in that age heard
those serious and exciting stories with a kind of relief? The men and women in themact with hardly any reference to politics or religion; they are not confused by loyalties
other than those naturally imposed by kinship, friendship and the free contract they
freely make; they give small thought to life in the next world, the hope of heaven or
the fear of hell. The people of the Sagas of Icelanders appear free and responsible in a
way that the audiences of those sagas could not be. Given our knowledge of thetemper of the times, we can understand something of what led the audiences todemand the presentation of a past which appeared as real as the present but which wasat the same time a past ideally simplified by a reduction to individual, all human,existential terms. The first literary success of the Sagas of Icelanders depended on that.
And perhaps their last.
Die romantik herrscht ‘Romance rules’, as Gerd Weber (1981, 493) said).
One can see here the influence of modern relativism on our perception of the Viking: heis perceived as lacking social and community values because he is uprooted from his
community and his native soil and consequently has total detachment from any ideology
or value system. All that is left him is the pragmatism of Hávamál. We thus tend to
attribute our own relativism to the Viking, and imagine that he himself was value-free, as
the saga descriptions of him sometimes appear to be. This kind of hero is attractive to anage of dissolution of values caught in the dilemma of relativism and seems to anticipate

25
modern angst, summed up for many people already in the nineteenth century in Matthew
Arnold’s poem ‘Dover Beach’.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full,and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d
But now I only hearIts melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down to the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
The tendency of readers to create from saga-characters figures for themselves to fulfil
their own needs is exemplified in William Morris’s poem about Grettir (1900, ii):
Nay, with the dead I deal not; this man lives,
And that which carried him through good and ill,
Stern against fate while his voice echoed still
From rock to rock, now he lies silent, strives
With wasting time, and through its long lapse gives
Another friend to me, life’s void to fill.
Like all such depictions of the Viking, my preferred reconstruction is based on a selectionof the evidence and is not likely to correspond to the reality, whatever it was, any morethan any other, though it is possible that it reflects the nature of one or two real people inthe Viking Age. I do not claim truth for it; but I find it more interesting than most. It isbased largely on selected verses from Hávamál, which are taken to correspond to certain
kinds of depiction in Sagas of Icelanders. It is of a person who does not bother himself
unduly about the opinion of other people: Hinn er sæll er sér um getr lof ok líknstafi;ódælla er vi› flat er ma›r eiga skal annars brjóstum í ‘That one is lucky who gets forhimself praise and warm regard; it is more troublesome to deal with what he has that has
to be dependent on what is in another’s breast’, or ‘It is a source of pleasure to have agood reputation and be popular, but a bad thing when one’s well-being is dependent on
someone else’s opinion’ (8). A man who values wisdom and common sense: Byr›i betri
berrat ma›r brautu at en sé mannvit mikit ‘A better burden bears no man on the road thana load of common sense’ (10) . . . Me›alsnotr skyli manna hverr, æva til snotr sé; fleim er
fyr›a fegrst at lifa er vel mart vitu ‘Moderately wise should a man be, he should never beover-wise; life is happiest for those who know just the right amount’ (54). A man
thoughtful and sparing of words, but always cheerful and enjoying good ale inmoderation: fiagalt ok hagalt skyli fljó›ans barn ok vígdjarft vera; gla›r ok reifr skyli
gumna hverr, unz sinn bí›r bana ‘Reserved and thoughtful should a ruler’s child be, andbold in battle; merry and cheerful should every man be until he meets his death’ (15) . . .
Heima gla›r gumi ok vi› gesti reifr, svi›r skal um sik vera, minnigr ok málugr ef hannvill margfró›r vera; opt skal gó›s geta ‘At home a man should be merry and cheerful
towards guests, shrewd in his behaviour, mindful and affable if he wishes to beknowledgeable about many things; he should often speak of what is good’ (103). A man
wary of making judgements: At kveldi skal dag leyfa, konu er brend er, mæki er reyndr
er, mey er gefin er, ís er yfir kemr, ƒl er drukkit er ‘The day shall be praised at evening, awoman when she is cremated, a sword when it has been put to the test, a maiden after her

26
marriage, ice once you are across it, ale when it has been drunk’ (81). A man preferring
independence even though it means having to put up with few possessions: Bú er betra
flótt lítit sé, halr er heima hverr; bló›ugt er hjarta fleim er bi›ja skal sér í mál hvert
matar ‘It is better to have a home, even if it is small, eveyone is a fine fellow at home;
bloody is the heart of one who has to beg for food at every meal’ (37) . . . Eldr er beztrme› ‡ta sonum ok sólar s‡n, heilyndi sitt ef ma›r hafa náir, án vi› lƒst at lifa ‘A fire is
the best thing for the sons of men, and the sight of the sun, his health if a man manages tokeep it without living with a blemish’ (68). A man who is decent in appearance, but notover-concerned about externals: fiveginn ok mettr rí›i ma›r flingi at, flótt hann sét væddr
til vel; skúa ok bróka skammisk engi ma›r né hests in heldr, flótt hann hafit gó›an‘Washed and fed should a man ride to an assembly, even if he is not clothed too well; letno man be ashamed of shoes or breeches, or of his horse either, even if he does not have agood one’ (61). A man without unreasonable ambition: Ríki sitt skyli rá›snotra hverr íhófi hafa; flá hann flat finnr er me› frœknum kemr at engi er einna hvatastr ‘Every
prudent man should keep his power within bounds; he will find when he comes among
the valiant that no one is the ablest of all’ (64). A man who knows how to make friends:
Vin sínum skal ma›r vinr vera ok gjalda gjƒf vi› gjƒf ‘A man should be a friend to his
friend and repay gift with gift’ (42) . . . Veiztu er flú vin átt flann er flú vel trúir ok vill flú
af honum gott geta, ge›i skaltu vi› flann blanda ok gjƒfum skipta, fara at finna opt‘Know that when you have a friend whom you trust well and you want to get good fromhim, you must share your mind with him and exchange gifts, go to see him often’ (44) . . .
Vin sinum skal ma›r vin vera, fleim ok fless vin ‘A man should be a friend to his friend, tohim and to his friend’ (43) . . . Ungr var ek for›um, fór ek einn saman, flá var› ek villr
vega; au›igr flóttumsk er ek annan fann, ma›r er manns gaman ‘Young was I once, I
travelled alone, then I went wild ways; I thought myself rich when I found another, man
is man’s delight’ (47) . . . Mikit eitt skala manni gefa, opt kaupir sér í litlu lof; me›hálfum hleif ok me› hƒllu keri fekk ek mér félaga ‘A man should not only give great gifts,
often one purchases love with something small; with half a loaf and a tilted jug I got
myself a comrade’ (52) . . . veiztu ef flú vin átt, flanns flú vel trúir, far›u at finna opt;
flvíat hrísi vex ok hávu grasi vegr er vætki tre›r ‘Know that if you have friend whom you
trust well, go to see him often; for a way that no one treads get overgrown withbrushwood and tall grass’ (119). It is of a person who identifies with no nationality or
religion, a wanderer without home or family, who bends the knee to neither god nor man,and bows down before neither priest nor king. He is afraid of nothing including death,has few possessions and no false hopes or unattainable desires either for this world or the
next, unaffected by any concepts of a future life or any expectation of it. He believes onlyin his own might and main, though he knows its limitations and that it will only last him alimited time. He refuses to be pushed around by anyone. He enjoys life to the full, its
pleasures and excitements, without sentimentality, and values most of all his friendships;
happiness is talking with his friends accompanied by the drinking of good ale.
Bibliography and abbreviations
Atlakvi›a: PE 240–47.
Adam of Bremen 1961. Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, ed. W. Trillmich
and R. Buchner.

27
Andersson, T. M. 1970. ‘The Displacement of the Heroic Ideal in the Family Sagas’,Speculum 45, 575–93.
ASC = Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel 1892–99. Ed. Charles Plummer.
ASPR VI = The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems 1942. Ed. Elliott van Kirk Dobbie. (The
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records VI)
Auden, W. H. and Louis MacNeice 1937. Letters from Iceland. Repr. 1967.
Barmby, Beatrice Helen 1900. Gísli Súrsson: A Drama.
Bartholin, Thomas 1689 Antiquitatum Danicarum de causis contemptæ a Danis adhuc
gentilibus mortis libri tres.
Boer. R. C. 1892. ‘Über die ¯rvar-Odds saga’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi VIII, 97–139.
Brøndsted, Johannes 1965. The Vikings.
Campbell, A., ed., 1962. The Chronicle of Æthelweard.
Carlyle, Thomas 1908. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. [First
published in 1841]
Davis, R. H. C. 1976. The Normans and their Myth.
Dryden, John 1716. Miscellany Poems VI.
EHD = English Historical Documents c. 500–1042 1970. Ed. Dorothy Whitelock.
Exodus 1977. Ed. Peter J. Lucas.
Fell, Christine 1987. ‘Modern English Viking’, in Studies in Honour of Kenneth
Cameron. Leeds Studies in English, New Series XVIIII, 111–22.
Finnur Jónsson 1920–24. Den Oldnorske og Oldislandske Litteraturs Historie.
Flateyjarbók 1944–45. Ed. Sigur›ur Nordal.
Foote, Peter 1984. ‘The audience and vogue of the Sagas of Icelanders – some talking
points’, in Aurvandilstá, 47–55.
Foote, Peter and David M. Wilson 1970. The Viking Achievement. The society andculture of early medieval Scandinavia.
Foote, Peter 2004. Kreddur.
Fornsögur Su›rlanda 1884. Ed. Gustav Cederschiöld.
Færeyinga saga 1987. Ed. Ólafur Halldórsson.
Gentleman’s Magazine, The LX 1790.
Gordon, E. V. 1957. An Introduction to Old Norse. Rev. A. R. Taylor.
Gray, Thomas 1966. The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray. Ed. H. W. Starr and J. R.
Hendrickson.
Gøransson, Johann, ed., 1746. De Yfverborna Atlingars, eller, Sviogötars ok
Nordmänners, Edda . . .
Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar 1887, in Icelandic Sagas II. Ed. Gudbrand Vigfusson [Rolls
series].
Ham›ismál: PE 269–74.
Hávamál: PE 17–44.
Herbert, William 1804–06. Select Icelandic Poetry.
Hickes, George 1705. Linguarum vett. septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-criticus etarchæologicus.
Horrebow, Niels 1758. The Natural History of Iceland.
ÍF = Íslenzk fornrit 1933– (in progress).
Jansson, Sven B. F. 1962. The Runes of Sweden.

28
Jones, Gwyn 1972. Kings, Beasts and Heroes.
Jones, Gwyn 1984. A History of the Vikings.
Ker W. P. 1955. The Dark Ages.
Lewis, M. G. 1801. Tales of Wonder. Second Edition.
Lönnroth, Lars 1969. ‘The Noble heathen. A theme in the sagas’, Scandinavian Studies
41, 1–29.
Mallet, P. H. 1755. L’Introduction à l’histoire de Dannemarc.
Mallet, P. H. 1756. Monumens de la mythologie et de la poésie des Celtes.
Mathias, Thomas James 1798. Odes, English and Latin.
Morris, William 1900. The Story of Grettir the Strong.
Page, R. I. 1987. ‘A Most Vile People’: Early English Historians on the Vikings.
PE = Edda. Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern 1962. Ed.
Gustav Neckel, rev. Hans Kuhn.
Peacock, Thomas Love 1817. Melincourt.
Percy, Thomas 1763. Five Pieces of Runic Poetry. Repr. 1809.
Percy, Thomas 1765. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
Rimberti Vita Anskarii 1961. Ed. and trans. W. Trillmich, in Quellen des 9. und 11.
Jahrhunderts zur Geschichte der Hamburgischen Kirche und des Reiches. Ed. Rudolf
Buchner.
Schach, Paul 1984. The Icelandic Sagas.
Schomerus, Rudolf 1936. Die Religion der Nordgermanen im Spiegel Christlicher
Darstellung.
Scott, Walter 1821. The Pirate.
Seward, Anna 1796. Llangollen Vale, with other poems.
Seward, Anna 1810. Works. Ed. W. Scott.
See, Klaus von, Beatrice La Farge, Eve Picard, Katja Schulz 2000. Kommentar zu den
Liedern der Edda III: Götterlieder.
Skj = Den norsk-islandske Skjaldedigtning A I–II, B I–II 1912–15. Ed. Finnur Jónsson.
Snorri Sturluson 1998. Edda. Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes.
Snorri Sturluson 2005. Edda. Prologue and Gylfaginning. Ed. Anthony Faulkes.
Sverrir Tómasson 2003. ‘Bændur flugust á’, Gripla XIV, 325–26.
Sweet, Henry 1967. Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse. Rev. Dorothy Whitelock.
Tolkien, Christopher, ed. and trans. 1960. The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise.
Vƒlundarkvi›a: PE 116–23.
Weber, Gerd Wolfgang 1981. ‘Irreligiosität und Heldenzeitalter. Zum Mythencharakter
der altisländischen Literatur’, in Speculum Norroenum, ed. Ursula Dronke et al.,474–505.
Worm, Ole 1636. Runir seu Danica literatura antiquissima.

29

NB Schach, Paul 1984. The Icelandic Sagas, 109, 116 (NB Grœnl. fl.?) [pp. 16–17, 20]
SH Germanic 5th floor XYE Sch; Taylorian ICE 2.D. SAGA.A.29.