Iceland review - 2015, Síða 40

38 ICELAND REVIEW
English-language publisher is being sought. “I’m anticipating
mixed reactions because I’m stirring up the accepted history,”
he says. “Most Vikings were peaceful, unlike the bandits who
raided convents. But not just British and Irish annals have pro-
moted that image, also Norse sources. It’s important to moder-
ate that image. … They weren’t just killers.” Geirmundur was
a resourceful businessman, Bergsveinn reasons, but he was also
a master of slaves and may even have had a harem. While this
was accepted practice at the time, it upset the image of Iceland
having been settled by free men who founded a classless society,
as the documenters of history would have it two centuries later.
RISE AND FALL OF AN EMPIRE
Bergsveinn isn’t the only one who asked himself how
Geirmundur had come by the wealth he was attributed to. The
first historians writing in the Middle Ages said he possessed
huge herds of livestock. “Árni Óla wrote in 1970 of his theory
that Geirmundur had taken advantage of these livestock left
behind by the original Irish settlers. However, later genealogical
testing determined that Icelandic farm animals come from the
Nordic countries,” Bergsveinn explains. Another theory-buster
was the fact that livestock cannot be kept in the most rugged
territories where Geirmundur’s supposed ‘farms’ were located.
“You can’t keep a lot of cows in Hornstrandir,” he points out of
the West Fjords’ northernmost region.
One day, after placing pins in locations connected with
Geirmundur on a map of the West Fjords, Bergsveinn real-
ized that they were situated around known transport routes,
leading from Hornstrandir to Breiðafjörður. This indicated the
transport of valuable resources, he figured, perhaps valuable
enough to have attracted Geirmundur to Iceland in the first
place, around the year 870. While Iceland’s official first settler,
Ingólfur Arnarson, is said to have arrived in 874, some archaeol-
ogists posit that remains of human settlement in the country are
actually much older. Bergsveinn believes Iceland may have been
settled seasonally by hunters to begin with and that walruses
determined where Geirmundur decided to settle. Scientists
disagree on whether walruses existed in Iceland at the time of
the settlement, arguing that the climate was too warm for the
Arctic animals, but there’s no doubt in Bergsveinn’s mind. “I’m
not afraid of my theories being contradicted. As I mentioned in
my book, I can’t always draw the right conclusions. But my basic
theory stands.” Bergsveinn refers to the transport routes and
Geirmundur’s wealth. If it wasn’t walruses he hunted, it must
have been some other large marine mammals, he maintains.
Not cows, at least.
Apart from the lack of plains for grazing animals
in Hornstrandir, he sites findings of walrus bones around
Breiðafjörður and the West Fjords and place names indicat-
ing the presence of walrus colonies near what he believes
were Geirmundur’s hunting lodges. The labor-intensive work
required a large number of slaves and armed men to maintain
order. Walrus products were sought-after at the markets in
Dublin—the skin for making rope for ships, blubber for making
oil, which was important for the maritime culture, and walrus
ivory—and eventually, Geirmundur gave up on sustainable hunt-
ing methods. As the animals gradually retreated from the hunt-
ers, Geirmundur’s men had to follow them further to the north
until they abandoned the country altogether. In about three
decades the resource had been overexploited and consequently,
Geirmundur’s empire collapsed. This is also what happened in
Greenland and Siberia later on, Bergsveinn points out.
“Greed is a recurrence in history. When I started working on
the book after 2008, I felt inspired by the situation in Iceland,”
Bergsveinn states. He drew comparisons between the banking
collapse, caused by modern-day ‘business Vikings’ and the old
Vikings. “A few men wiped everything clean.” Similar to how the
‘banksters’ faced the nation’s wrath in 2008, Geirmundur’s con-
temporaries were outraged at his behavior, he argues, turning his
land into public territory (Icelandic: almenningar) after his death,
otherwise unheard of in Icelandic history. Bergsveinn defends his
ancestor. “Geirmundur isn’t at fault. He has to feed 200 people
among his own and hundreds of slaves. He can’t stop.”
FAR AND WIDE
Geirmundur took over his father Hjör’s walrus business and
learnt hunting and processing techniques from his mother’s
family, Bergsveinn writes in his book. According to sources,
Geirmundur’s mother, Ljúfvina, came from Bjarmaland, which is
what the Vikings called northwestern Russia. Hjör traveled from
his farm at Avaldsnes in Rogaland, Southwest Norway, north-
wards along the entire coastline and to the White Sea where he
came into contact with a tribe of hunters. Disagreeing with the
documenters of Hjör’s story, Bergsveinn reasons that the king
had traded peacefully with these people instead of going there
on a raid and that Ljúfvina had not been a booty, but rather their
marriage was a means to strengthen business relations. “It’s an
intercultural society. [The Vikings] go where they have to go.
Viking ships are examples of incredible technology. This is where
Norsemen were superior,” Bergsveinn maintains. He believes
walruses were the reason for Hjör’s long and risky expeditions to
Bjarmaland. In support of his theory, he cites a source written in
England in the 9th century mentioning that Norsemen acquired
walrus products at the White Sea. The natives hunted and pro-
cessed walruses and instead received iron products, including
harpoons. Then Hjör shipped the goods to the market in Dublin.
To further secure the alliance with the hunters, Hjör married
Geirmundur to a native girl, while his other son Hámundur was
supposed to take over his kingdom at Avaldsnes, Bergsveinn
speculates. “There are strong indications that Geirmundur and
HISTORY