The Vikings (49 page)

The expression of Heathen spirituality could take different forms. We have seen how Ingolf, the first settler, threw his high-seat pillars into the sea on sighting the coast of Iceland, vowed to build his home at the place where they came ashore, and kept his vow. Thorolf Mostrarskegg sanctified a mountain on his land and forbade anyone even to look it at with an unwashed face. In
Hrafnkels Saga
we met a chieftain so devout that he killed the boy who blasphemed against Frey by riding the horse as though it were just any stallion. Literary creations or historical beings, it is hard to imagine men of the stripe of Ingolf, Thorolf and Hrafnkel wandering away from the Lawrock after Thorgeir’s speech and calmly taking their place in a queue to be baptized in the Öxará river. By the summer of 999, Heathendom may have declined into something men were less willing to kill for, and not at all willing to die for.

These are all modern attempts at understanding that offer rational explanations of why Thorgeir’s decision was accepted. As such they have a natural attraction: when Thorgeir lay down in his booth and covered his head with his cloak, he was ‘thinking through’ the pros and cons of the decisions he had to take. With a little more concern for their personal comfort, this is the approach modern politicians might take when faced with an important decision. Rational theories to account for the enigma of Thorgeir’s decision have at times been supplemented by explanations that invoke the irrational. The Christian author of the
History of the Ancient Kings of Norway
, Theodoricus Monachus, believed that divine intervention had taken place at the
Althing
meeting and that god had touched Thorgeir’s mind.
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In more recent times the theory of divine intervention has been revived, though the divinity in question is not the god of the Christians. Scholars have noted the precision with which Ari tells us that the Lawspeaker lay down and covered his head with his cloak, though he does not explain why this was important. Taken with the clear implication that he then lay undisturbed, and presumably fasting, for the following twenty-four hours, the suggestion has been made that he was engaged in a religious act, that Thorgeir sent his spirit on a journey to discover the will of the gods in the matter. The great Icelandic scholar, Sigurdur Nordal, was among the first to raise the possibility, suggesting that Thorgeir’s deliberation was an exercise to gain divine strength.
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Comparisons have been drawn with scenes in saga literature which appear to describe the behaviour of poets engaged in the mystical act of seeking inspiration for a composition. The most familiar is from
Egil’s Saga
: ‘And as the autumn passed, Egil became very depressed, and often sat with his head down in his cloak. Arinbjørn spoke to him and asked among other things: “. . . What are you composing now? Let me hear it”.’ For the author of the saga the state of inspiration, whether in the mystical art of composing poetry or in divination, was associated with this covering of the head with the cloak.
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In the
Geirmundar tháttr
, the poet Bragi appears to use mystical techniques associated with composing poetry to acquire supernatural information concerning three children who are playing on the floor in front of him, at the conclusion of a scene in which he is described as sitting in a high-seat, playing with a stick in his hand and ‘mumbling into his cloak’. Ari does not tell us that Thorgeir mumbled or muttered, but the use of a cloak around the head or face to withdraw from the visible into the interior and invisible world seems to have been a part of the practices of both composition and divination. The shaman described in the
Historia Norwegie
seance covered himself with a cloth or cloak for the duration of his spirit journey to ensure that no living being, such as a fly, could disturb the trance with its presence.
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The suggestion that Thorgeir engaged in an oracular consultation of a shamanic nature provides a credible explanation of why the Heathen majority accepted his decision. It was because they knew how it had been taken. It was the way things were done, and they accepted the result of the process, whether they liked it or not. Odin was well known for his enigmatic and inscrutable ways and, while it may have disappointed them that the king of the gods should have solicited his own demise in this way, it may not entirely have surprised them. Indulging the further implications of this for a moment, it affords us the rare spectacle of an old god finally wearying of the demands of his position and with a sigh of relief handing over to a younger god with fresh ideas. Unlike the god of the Christian, Odin felt that he understood little of the world he had created, and an insatiable curiosity to know more about it was his outstanding characteristic. His resignation would leave him free to wander the world with his staff and his long coat, broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his one good eye, in pursuit of more knowledge and more understanding.

The perversity of fate was something with which Heathens were quite familiar. In his
Vita Anskarii
, Rimbert describes an episode that took place during the apostle’s early attempts to convert the Birka Swedes. Upon arriving in the town, Anskar discovered that King Bjørn had no personal objection to Anskar’s mission. However, the king continued:

on this account I have not the power, nor do I dare, to approve the objects of your mission until I can consult our gods by the casting of lots and until I can inquire the will of the people in regard to this matter. ( . . . ) It is our custom that the control of public business of every kind should rest with the whole people and not with the king.

Rimbert writes that, as soon as the chieftains were assembled, ‘the king began to discuss with them the mission on which our father had come. They determined that inquiry should be made by the casting of lots in order to discover what was the will of the gods.’
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The procedure followed was probably similar to that observed by Tacitus among the Danes.
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This involved cutting a branch from a fruit-bearing tree and dividing it up into a number of smaller sections on which markings were made. These were then tossed on to a cloth spread on the ground. Three were picked up, studied, and their oracle interpreted by the priest or soothsayer, who was then able to give a categorical answer to the question asked. Continuing his narrative, Rimbert writes that ‘the lot decided that it was the will of God that the Christian religion should be established there’. It did not surprise Anskar, who had been assured in a vision that the outcome would be favourable, but it did surprise almost everyone else. An elderly chieftain rose to address the ‘noise and confusion’ in the crowd. He referred to personal experience of the benefits of Christianity in peril on the sea and at times of crisis, and stressed that the power of Christ lay in his being above fate, in his being always reliable, always trustworthy, always helpful to his worshippers. ‘Consider carefully,’ he said in conclusion, ‘and do not cast away that which will be to your advantage. For, inasmuch as we cannot be sure that our gods will be favourably disposed, it is good for us to have the help of this God who is always and under all circumstances able and willing to succour those who cry to Him.’ Despite support like this, King Bjørn was unable to give Anskar permission to preach at Birka until he had put the matter to a second assembly, in the southern part of his territory. Those in attendance were told what had happened at Birka, and ‘by divine providence the hearts of all became as one, so that they adopted the resolution passed by the former assembly and declared that they too would give their entire and complete assent’.
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As we have seen, it proved a temporary triumph only for the Christian mission to the Swedes.

In both these cases, the decisive factor was unity. Whether the words he spoke were his own, or were dictated to him by Odin, there is no mistaking that this is what Thorgeir saw as the heart of what he had to say about the prospect of Iceland being divided along religious and legal lines: ‘let us all have one law and one religion. For this will turn out to be true, that if we rend asunder the laws we shall also rend the peace.’ From its beginnings in the 870s, Icelandic society, with its Heathens, its handful of Christians, its smattering of godless men who trusted only in their own might and main, and its syncretic gamblers who were happy enough to take out extra insurance against a bad harvest by adding Christ to their personal pantheon, had been what we would today call a pluralistic and multi-faith society. But when crisis threatened in 999 there was no doubt at all in the Lawspeaker’s mind: everyone should believe in the same god, or at least pretend to do so.

 

‘It was then proclaimed in the laws that all people should be Christian, and that those in this country who had not yet been baptised should receive baptism; but the old laws should stand as regards the exposure of children and the eating of horseflesh. People had the right to sacrifice in secret, if they wished, but it would be punishable by the lesser outlawry if witnesses were produced’:
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Ari reports the three exemptions almost as though they were afterthoughts rather than crucial concessions that removed what must have seemed, to the rank-and-file population, among the main objections to the adoption of Christianity.

Abortion as a method of birth-control enjoys the advantage that the unborn child remains unseen during the process. Viking Age societies faced a harsher reality where newly born children, in certain circumstances, could be left outside to die of exposure. The practice seems always to have been regarded as shameful. ‘In those days poor people were permitted to carry their children out to die. But it was always considered bad,’ says the author of the
Saga of Thorstein Oxfoot
. The same point is made in the
Saga of Gunnlaug Snaketongue
,
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though the example given there is not caused by poverty. An Icelander named Thorstein, a son of Egil Skallagrimsson, describes to a Norwegian friend skilled in the interpretation of dreams one in which two eagles on the roof of his house began a fight to the death for a lovely swan that belonged to him. The Norwegian told him it meant that his wife was pregnant with a daughter, and that the swan on the roof symbolized the child grown to a marriageable age. The eagles were two suitors who would both die in the fight for her hand. Like the Kievan prince Oleg, Thorstein attempted to outwit fate and told his wife that if she gave birth to a girl she must leave it outside to die. The author of the saga explains: ‘For when the land was still entirely Heathen, it was by way of being a custom that those men who had few means and many dependants would have their children left to die of exposure, though it was always considered a bad thing to do.’ His wife Jofrid rebuked him:

‘Your words are unworthy of a man of your standing. No one in your easy circumstances can see fit to let such a thing happen.’

‘You know my temper,’ Thorstein warned her. ‘There will be trouble if you disobey me.’

Jofrid disobeyed him and had the infant taken in secret to be brought up by her sister-in-law. Six years later, Thorstein learnt the truth. Understanding that fate cannot be avoided he tells Jofrid that he will not reproach her, because ‘for the most part, things turn out as they will’. The saga which then unfolds is a realization of the dream he had before his daughter was born.

Jofrid’s attempt to dissuade her husband from his decision is echoed by the wife of another affluent man in the
Finnboga Saga
. Here a husband who wished to punish his wife for having unwittingly married off an older daughter without his knowledge forces her to expose her newborn daughter. She protests in vain that only the very poor had the right to do such a thing, yet she agrees and asks only that the child be left out with a piece of meat in its mouth. The minimal chance of survival offered by this pays off, and the child is found by a couple who raise her as their own.
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Both stories indicate that the children left out to die in this way were normally females. Women, as the bearers of children, were regarded as a biological liability in times of famine; and in times of war, the numbers of men killed set a greater premium on replacing lost males. Another factor in the economic equation that sustained the practice may have been the financial burden among poor farmers of the bridal dowry. There were exceptions to the general rule, though we need to reach ahead into the Christian era to find them. In the Swedish
Dalalagen
law code, preserved in a manuscript from the middle of the fourteenth century, with its content dated to about a century earlier, a passage on the punishment for killing a bride set the compensation due to her husband for his unborn daughters at double the rate for his unborn sons. But that Viking society was male-oriented is beyond all doubt: on memorial rune-stones in the east-coast Swedish province of Södermanland the number of sons commemorated could be as many as five and was often more, while the number of daughters referred to never exceeded two.

Below infant girls on the scale of human values were children born with severe physical deformities. Even when we have nominally come to terms with the fact that different periods of time use the mind in very different ways, the credence of the most learned men of the early medieval period such as scholars Alcuin, Rimbert and Adam of Bremen, to whom cynicism, suspicion, doubt or downright disbelief of some fantastical story or claim seemed utterly foreign, is still remarkable to us. In Adam we may read of the dog-headed offspring of the inhabitants of the Baltic
terra feminarum
, whose heads are down in their chests and who communicate by barking; or of the Alaner or Albanere, men born with grey hair; or of an unusually long-lived race of pale green people - and presume these to be essentially confessions of ignorance, a literary version of ‘here be dragons’. But deformities suggestive of some of these descriptions are mentioned in Viking Age law codes: children with their faces twisted down on to their chests; or with toes where their heels should be; or having skin like a dog. On, into the age of the written law code, it remained the law that such children could not be baptized but must be left outside to die of hunger or cold.
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