Lögberg-Heimskringla - 15.02.2019, Síða 11

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Lögberg-Heimskringla • 15. febrúar 2019 • 11
Our clearest window on
the Vikings appears
in the early writings
of Iceland – primarily the
sagas, the greatest vernacular
literature of medieval Europe.
These stories of kings and
common heroes help bring that
age to life in our imagination.
The swan-breasted and
swan-necked Viking longship
fueled the Viking age from
800 to 1066. An engineering
marvel, these ships would carry
merciless and relentless sea
rovers from Norway west to the
Orkneys, Iceland, Greenland,
and to L’Anse aux Meadows
in Newfoundland in the year
1000. The Viking craftsmen
built the hull first, overlapping
the planks in what is termed the
clinker-built or lapstrake style,
and the internal cross beams
were often tied to the ribs
near the keel to provide added
elasticity. They were the stealth
bombers of the day.
Skimming over the rough
waves of the North Atlantic
by sail, or rowed up a river,
these versatile and sleek swans
took the adventurous and
warlike Norse to lands more
promising than their own, and
they hungered in time for new
homes in sunnier climes with
more fertile earth. According to
the sagas, the unifying efforts
of Haraldur Fairhair, the first
King of Norway, forced many
freedom-loving Norwegians to
set sail west, and some of them
transplanted their democratic
and literary heritage and habits
in Iceland, a fortress of Norse
culture.
The best poets of the period
were Icelanders, and some
even served in the court of
English kings, so similar were
the related Gothonic languages.
These poems often provide the
skeleton on which the narrative
of the sagas hang and the
intricate nature of these poetic
compositions ensure that seeds
of history abide in them. Viking
poets used elaborate metaphors
or kennings so that the “whale
road” was the ocean and the
“fish of the forest” a dragon.
The greatest of these poets,
Egill Skallagrímsson, stood
head and shoulders above his
Viking peers. Using science
to credibly illuminate the past,
Jesse Byock suggests that this
ugly and massive man suffered
from an ailment called Paget’s
disease that deformed and
thickened his bones. Egill also
lived the Viking life and wrote
of it with eloquence.
Shipwrecked on the coast
of England at the mouth of
the Humber, Egill and his
men find themselves near
York, then ruled by his enemy
Eiríkur Bloodaxe, the son of
Haraldur Fairhair. Viewing it
shameful to flee, he marches
fully armed into the hall of
Eiríkur. The strong-willed
Queen Gunnhildur suggests
that they kill him outright, but
it being night that was viewed
as a crime, so Eiríkur bids
Egill goodnight; tomorrow he
will die. A common friend,
Arinbjörn, provides an unlikely
way out: in the night Egill must
compose a poem of praise
about his enemy Eiríkur, a
head-ransom poem.
The next morning, Egill
recites his poem in a clear, strong
voice. The entire head-ransom
poem appears in chapter sixty-
three of Egils saga, a poem of
twenty stanzas. Although Egill
has killed kinsmen of the king
and queen, he is set free, and
this gets to something crucial
about the minds of these men.
The Vikings prized a
matrix of four interconnected
virtues above all: courage,
honour, generosity, and
loyalty. A curious blend of
fearlessness and fatalism
guided them to face inevitable
death with stoic fortitude,
an idea captured in the poem
Hávamál, (The Sayings of
the High One): “Cattle die,
wealth dies, kinsmen die, you
yourself must one day die but
word-fame never dies for him
who achieves it well.” The
poem promises immortality
to Eiríkur, so he frees the
killer of his own son, an act of
incredible generosity.
To the east, the longships
took the Swedish Rus along
rivers to build Novgorod and
Kiev, the first towns in the
country that would take their
name, Russia. But the most
highly contested prize was
south, and in the Viking Age
Norwegians and Danes shocked
the shores of Ireland, the United
Kingdom and France, a hammer
from the North.
The Norwegians created the
first towns in Ireland, including
Dublin, and the great Dane
Canute (Knútur in Icelandic), the
most capable king of medieval
England, also ruled Norway and
Denmark. The Norse Normans
took England with William the
Conqueror in 1066 to end the
Viking age and to seed English
with French and Latin words.
But one more significant
contribution remains. The
eagerness of Vikings in the
Danelaw to communicate with
their southern Anglo-Saxon
neighbors produced a friction
that led to the erosion of the
complicated inflectional word-
endings, so that the English
language increased in simplicity,
clarity, directness, and strength.
As Simeon Potter concluded,
“It was, after all, a salutary
influence. The gain was greater
than the loss.” This Viking-
bred English dispensed from
the north, insatiable in seeking
distant shores, has a hoard now
of about one million words.
Finally, the Vikings turned
swords into plowshares, and
like all good immigrants, they
quickly assimilated.
What made the Vikings tick?
Kevin Jon Johnson
Sakai, Japan
IMAGE: MORRIS M. WILLIAMS
King Canute with Earl Úlfur in the background
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