Tag: Norse

Seed of Yggdrasil — a review

Of any book in my personal library, Maria Kvilhaug’s Seed of Yggdrasil is the most breathtaking in its depth, scope and insight. A graduate of the University of Oslo and a long time scholar of Germanic culture and myths as well as a scholar of the Norse language, Ms. Kvilhaug presents a  fascinating foray into the Norse myths as you have never seen them. I found myself murmuring as I read this book “Well that makes sense!” as she explored the myths from the perspective of an open-minded scientist and historian. When you see the myths, not as stories but as allegories, things begin to click into place. When you begin to see evolutionary flow in the stories, you then realize that all of it was intended to be allegory, as any religion founded in Nature, is.

She also writes of spiritual allegory. “When one realizes that a Viking prince has to fight a giant called Hatred, another called Rage and must be reborn in order to win a battle he lost in his previous life, the Battle of the Rock of Greed, in order to restore the Peace of Wisdom and gain entry into the divine afterlife, what at first sight appears to be just another heroic legend of a tough guy who fights giants, become s a spiritual parable. In fact, the moment I started to apply my translated names to the old texts, a whole new world unraveled itself, a world of spiritual concerns, ageless wisdom and metaphysical and philosophical speculation; speculation that is sometimes almost compatible with modern scientific theories.”

Even if you have only a casual interest in the subject of Norse mythology, The Seed of Yggdrasil makes the myths much easier to understand. Furthermore, since the author is a Norse scholar, she is qualified to make judgement calls on translations of certain words, to which she adds her explanation as to why she does. Not only did I gain greater insight into the stories and the all probable likelihood of their place on, I gained greater insight into how the people of the Norse Culture saw their world.

Easy to read and understand, The Seed of Yggdrasil takes on an almost meditative, spiritual experience. Her deeply delving understanding of the Old Norse texts and her unwillingness to take anything previous scholars have written at mere face value without holding it up to the light of in-depth research, her a highly qualified writer on the subject. Because of her extensive studies in Old Norse, she is not simply regurgitating anything that has already been written. She writes about translating a passage from Konungsbók (The Book of the King, written around 1200 CE) while at the University of Oslo and remembers doing a double take at a passage that read “The Earth is as round as a globe.” Clearly the early medieval people comprehended much more than we give them credit for. As any reader of this book will see, Kvilhaug delves extensively into the cosmic myths of the Norse and when seen under her lens, they are seen with fresh insight. It is truly a remarkable experience.

My only pique with this book was not the price, though it was considerable. I paid over fifty dollars for it on Amazon, yet considered it immensely worth it. My issue stems from the fact it does not contain an index. I bought it for research purposes and I found the lack of an index somewhat debilitating. However, I was not adverse to reading such a book cover to cover merely for enjoyment. At well over six hundred pages, it is not a quick read, but certainly a memorable one.

Landvættir — Guardians of the Land

 

Modern Icelandic coin showing the four landvaettir such as drove away the warlock

The landvættir in Norse belief were guardians of the land. Among the Anglo Saxons they were called landwights. In Iceland they were the hulduófolk (the hidden people). Among the Irish and Scots they were the pixies, brownies and fairies, who like the landvættir inhabited barrows, mounds and stone circles. They were universally venerated among the Norse and the dragon prows on Viking ships were designed to frighten the landvættir on foreign shores where ever they might approach. The prows were removed when approaching their home shore however, so as not frighten their own vættir. Many a housewife would place a bowl of milk or porridge out for these land spirits as an offering, both for protection and as a thank you. Many still continue this tradition, both those who identify as heathen or neo-pagan or those older folk in the old country who still identify with their ancestral beliefs.

There is a story told in the Icelandic Saga of King Olaf Tryggvason of a warlock who was sent from Denmark to spy out the defenses of the coast of Iceland. The warlock took the shape of a whale and encountered many landvættir:

King Harald told a warlock to hie to Iceland in some altered
shape, and to try what he could learn there to tell him: and he
set out in the shape of a whale. And when he came near to the
land he went to the west side of Iceland, north around the land,
where he saw all the mountains and hills full of guardian-
spirits, some great, some small. When he came to Vapnafjord he
went in towards the land, intending to go on shore; but a huge
dragon rushed down the dale against him with a train of serpents,
paddocks, and toads, that blew poison towards him. Then he
turned to go westward around the land as far as Eyjafjord, and he
went into the fjord. Then a bird flew against him, which was so
great that its wings stretched over the mountains on either side
of the fjord, and many birds, great and small, with it. Then he
swam farther west, and then south into Breidafjord. When he came
into the fjord a large grey bull ran against him, wading into the
sea, and bellowing fearfully, and he was followed by a crowd of
land-spirits. From thence he went round by Reykjanes, and wanted
to land at Vikarsskeid, but there came down a hill-giant against
him with an iron staff in his hands. He was a head higher than
the mountains, and many other giants followed him.

The warlock soon discovered that Iceland was well fortified with landvættir! According to a poll taken in the recently, as many as fifty percent of Icelanders still believe in the possibility of the landvættir! Iceland, is one of the few nations that still holds to a fairly homogeneous way of thinking and relating to their ancestral land. Much of this has been lost in her sister Scandinavian countries and in countries such as England, Germany, the Netherlands, et al, areas where the old beliefs of the land spirits once held sway.

In Iceland the huldufólk are sometimes attributed as alfar (elves) and are said to dwell in mounds. The concept of them is so strong, that in 2004 the international aluminum producer Alcoa had to have a government official certify that the area in which they desired to build a smelting plant was free of archaeological mounds and artifacts, particularly those pertaining to the huldufólk . In addition, roads have had to be rerouted so as not to offend these landvættir.

In The Plague Casket, Ulf and Sophia have a conversation about the Norse-descended Ulf who is an Úlfhéðinn. and mistaken by a band of Bedouins for a djinn. Ulf compares the desert djinn to the land spirits of his own ancestral homelands.

Finally he said, “Among my people I am called Úlfhéðinn. Yet I am nothing ghostly like a djinn. I am flesh and blood like you.” He glanced sideways at her. “You who even questioned your own icons, are you superstitious like the Bedouin and the Sabians?”
“Even the churchmen in Constantinople might question if you are possessed of evil spirits.”
He laughed. “So I am possessed by an evil spirit now? Among my people, the being the Hagarenes call ‘al-jinn’ would be called the Huldufólk – the hidden people.”
“Why are they hidden?”
“They are landvættir. They are part of the land, the rocks, the trees. They are only hidden from those who do not know what they are seeing.”

Many cultures have traditions of various spirits. As I have already discussed, these spirits have evolved with the time. The hulduófolk still maintain their presence among their people, shunning Christian crosses and modern conventions such as electricity. In an age where our planet is under constant assault from pollution, trash and a general sense of wastefulness, perhaps we would all do better to honor the traditions of the hulduófolk.

Checkmate! Games and Gaming in Tenth Century Byzantium and Beyond

I have had to take a break from the blog because of family obligations. Now I am back with a series about games and entertainment.

In the second book of The Varangian Chronicles, the courtesan Cyra is rescued by an Antiochene court eunuch named Arpad after she has her tongue cut out. To alleviate the interminable boredom from which she suffers while hidden away in his quarters in the deepest part of the paláti (the palace in the center of Antioch) he brings her a game that he calls shantranj. She is both puzzled and delighted by this game.

From a Persian miniature depicting two shantranj players circa 1430

Over the past few days, Arpad had come and gone, each time bringing her things, usually flagons of broth. On the fifth day, he judged her mouth healed well enough that he brought her millet porridge, sweetened with honey and cardamom. She could only eat it in the tiniest spoonfuls, leaving her hungry and unsatisfied. With it, he had brought her an elegantly carved game. Each piece was made out of either ivory or ebony. The board was square and consisted of a pattern of dark and light wood blocks, arranged in an alternating pattern. She had seen one before. Once an official from Baghdad had brought such a marvel. He had called it shatranj al-muddawara. Arpad taught her how to play, moving the various pieces across the board. She was a lousy player and he won every time. She failed to see how a lowly pawn could prove the undoing of a king. Were not kings always more powerful than common soldiers? When had she gained anything from whispering simmering lust in the ear of a lowly spearman? It had been a marvelous distraction at first. She moved people across her board in a far different manner. Often Arpad’s duties kept him away all day and shantranj proved to be a welcome diversion when he returned.

Shatranj is a game from which our modern chess is derived. The rules and board have not changed drastically,though Arab manuscripts describe numerous variations and the roles and moves of the Queen and Bishop were different than they are today. Nancy Marie Brown in her book Ivory Vikings tells us that “The Arabic word for chess, shantranj, comes from the Persian chantrang, itself from the Sanskrit chanturanga. Chess seems to have arrived in Persia from India in the mid-500s. By 728 an Arabic poet wrote, ‘I keep you from your inheritance and from the holy crown so that, hindered by my arm, you remain a pawn among the pawns.’”

Nikephoros I, a ninth century Byzantine Emperor, sent word to the Abbasid Caliph, Hurun al-Rashid refusing to pay tribute according to a treaty agreed to by his predecessor Irene of Athens. He writes of Irene, that she must have “considered you as a rook and herself as a pawn.” This tells us that not only was shantranj very well known among the Byzantines at this time, but that the rules of the game had made its way into the vernacular.

 Some say that the game spread to Europe through the Islamic conquest of Spain, but there is a legend that Harun al-Rashid sent a set as a gift to Charlemagne. A set survives at the National Library of Paris that is Norman in origin. An incredibly valuable and beautiful version survives, though the collection is split between the National Museum of Scotland and the British Museum in London. They were found on the Scottish island of Lewis. Archaeologists think they were made in Trondheim, Norway. For more about the history behind these pieces, please read Nancy Maria Brown’s wonderful book, Ivory Vikings. However it got to Europe, it proved to be very popular and is now our most well known board game with chess champions the world over competing against one another.

Berserker from the Lewis Chessmen British Museum

The Arabs and the Byzantines in the East were not the only ones to have board games, nor are the chess pieces carved at Trondheim the only surviving example of gaming in Iron Age Scandinavia. Among the artifacts discovered on the Gokstad ship in Sweden was a taflborð with markings on it played like Nine Men’s Morris.

Dice have also played in almost every culture imaginable, though sometimes the knuckle bones of pigs were used. They were sometimes used for divination purposes, as even the runes are to this day.

Next time we will have a look at some of the more physical forms of games and entertainment that would have been enjoyed by the people in The Varangian Chronicles.

For further reading see:

Ivory Vikings by Nancy Marie Brown

A World of Chess; Its Development and Variations through Centuries and Civilization by Jean-Louis Cazaux, Rick Knowlton

Give me our thoughts below. I love hearing from you!

 

A Gathering of Ravens by Scott Oden: a review by Gretchen Brown

As the ways of the old gods fades to twilight and the religion of the White Christ sweeps Britain, we are brought into the dark cold world of A Gathering of Ravens, a beautiful compilation of both historical fiction and fantasy genres. Scott Oden’s writing is easily readable, yet hauntingly poetic and evocative in style of the Eddas or even the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf itself. The author gives us a theme with characters sharing a little of each side of the yawning chasm of morality with themselves and the readers. Ultimately, morality is defined for us as honor, to oneself and to those to whom one has sworn allegiance, a basic and ancient code integral to the Norse culture.

We follow a young Christian Anglo-Saxon monastic Etain who travels in the company of a Christian Dane, Njall. After the apparent death of Njall, she becomes the unwilling travel companion of the monstrous Grimnir, a creature who can best be described as kinsman to Grendel an orcneas, or orc. Grimnir is Corpse-maker and Life-quencher, the Bringer of Night, the Son of the Wolf and Brother of the Serpent. Like his namesake the Norse god Odin, Grimnir comes with many names, is complex, not always easily understandable and hardly predictable. Bent on cold revenge for an ancient slight, Grimnir is an unlikely protagonist, not at all likable, yet we are always rooting for him. His reasons for doing things are not always clear, perhaps not even to himself. He is a faithful follower of Odin, while spewing contempt on the humans, particularly any who follow the White Christ. Etain must walk in his world while remaining true to her own beliefs.  While doing so, it gives her an opportunity to feel compassion and loyalty for the prickly-natured Grimnir.

Their journey takes us from Anglo Saxon England and culminates in Ireland with a lineup of Irish kings and sorcerers, Norse warlords and Danish refugees who clash outside the walls of Norse-occupied Dubhlinn. They become separated, face many dangers, together and apart, yet curiously, Etain continues to be loyal to her captor, to see something in him others cannot.

Some readers more used to a modern writing style may find the Edda-like poetic passages that the author interspersed into the main body of the narrative, off-putting. I thoroughly enjoyed them for the authentic mood they conveyed. It may also be an easier read to those who more familiar with the historical period and the manner of speaking. He includes many italicized words perhaps not familiar to the average reader, though this is not meant to be a criticism as I felt he placed them in enough context, which the “uninitiated” as it were, could keep up. That said, this is not “fluff” fiction.

The only thing that confused me and took me out of the story was the strange time travel via the World Tree Yggdrasil.

Ultimately, A Gathering of Ravens will have you turning the pages, surprised by the twists and captivated by the moving quality of the author’s use of language. His characters are neither flat, nor one-dimensional, but will stay with you long after you have reached the end, hungering for more.

Click here to be taken to the details page on Amazon.com

Cleanliness and Hygiene Among the Norse

Ibrahim Al-Tartushi, a tenth-century Arab traveler and merchant visited the Norse town of Hedeby in 950AD. He wrote “there is also an artificial make-up for the eyes, when they use it beauty never fades, on the contrary it increases in men and women as well.” One might well question whether this liner might not have been used in the manner of a football player’s eye black to shield the eyes from the intense sun especially seeing that Hedeby was a coastal town and many of them spent time on the water. Ibrahim ibn Yacoub seems insistent on the idea that it was used for cosmetic purposes, leaving us with an image of tenth century Viking men à la Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. They are depicted using kohl in this way in History Channel’s Vikings.

Constantinople had a very cosmopolitan environment, with people of many nations passing through and living there. Among those more exotic to the native Byzantines were the Varangians, people of Scandinavian or Scandinavian-descended Russian heritage. They brought many trade goods, including amber, honey and furs. According to The Russian Primary Chronicle, the Rus invaded Constantinople in 907 and as part of the payoff agreement, the use of the public baths was agreed upon.

The Norse made extensive use of saunas. Among the Rus, their bathhouses were called banyas. An Old East Slavic illuminated manuscript, the Radzivill Chronicle mentions the banya in the in the story of Princess Olga’s revenge for the murder of her husband, Prince Igor, by the Drevlians in 945 AD. When an emissary from the Drevlians came to Olga with an offer of marriage, “… Olga commanded that a bath should be made ready for them and said, ‘Wash yourselves and come to me.’ The bath-house was heated and the unsuspecting Drevlians entered and began to wash themselves. [Olga’s] men closed the bath-house behind them and Olga gave orders to set it on fire from the doors, so that the Drevlians were all burned to death” Incidentally, Olga was the grandmother of the Prince Vladimir who was given Basil II’s sister Ann in marriage in exchange for six thousand Varangian troops and a promise of conversion to Christianity. While the Varangian inhabitants of Constantinople and indeed most of the common native people as well, were unlikely to make use of the extensive cosmetics that highborn women such as Theophana would use, cleanliness was nevertheless highly valued, weakening the popular image of the medieval Scandinavian as dirty and unwashed.

The Abbot of St. Albans write with no little chagrin of the Danes who settled in England that “thanks to their habit of combing their hair every day, of bathing every Saturday and regularly changing their clothes, were able to undermine the virtue of married women and even seduce the daughters of nobles to be their mistresses.” Apparently even Anglo-Saxon women were crazy about a sharp dressed (Danish) man.

In The Serpentine Key, Freydis washes her hair in water scented with lavender flowers and this is a scent that Sven always associates with her:

Freydis placed the basket she had been carrying on the table. It was filled with meadow rue. There was almost little enough room for them both in the small space and she pushed past him, her hair smelling of lavender. If he had not known better, he might have thought he had never left Rodnya. A feeling like longing overcame him, drowning his senses in memories, threatening to make him forget why he was here.

Then as now, cleanliness was appreciated and enjoyed and we see that those who came before us, were perhaps not as smelly as we may have supposed.

Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 794-1241 by John Haywood

Face Paint: The Story of Makeup by Lisa Elridge

Cleanliness and Hygiene Among the Byzantines

Despite the Byzantine Orthodoxy that sought to minimize the Classical emphasis on grooming and beauty, citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire enjoyed primping. Certainly, the wealthy and noble women of the empire were concerned with their looks and Christianity cast no pall on the baths nor the sale of cosmetics and perfumes. Indeed, law in Constantinople decreed that the perfumers must set up their shops near the Great Palace so that the Emperor and his family might not have their olfactory senses assaulted by the common smells of the streets.

Furthermore, sweet-smelling scents was not merely the province of the elite. Because of the belief that health was made of a unique balance of humors, a sort of aromatherapy was engaged in which humors could be balanced by the smells of certain aromatic oils. Byzantine gardens, therefore, had areas set aside for aromatic flowers from which could be distilled some of the more fragrant oils.

Mirrors, tweezers and similar hygiene equipment would have been commonplace in a not only a Byzantine home, but a Varangian one as well. Numerous excavations have revealed hygiene implements from Viking-era graves including ear spoons, tweezers and dental cleaning tools.

To a certain degree my character Theophana is based on Basil II’s niece , the Empress Zoe, who was obsessed with beauty, even into her old age. In The Well of Urd, Theophana’s habits are described:

No longer young, she was still vain. She spent enough on costly unguents and cosmetics. She had royal jelly and saffron imported from Egypt at great expense to her husband. She also insisted on bathing once a month in wine, a habit he greatly detested. He did not know if it was the cosmetics or the way she had with those unearthly eyes, but men still managed to find her attractive and enthralling.

Michael Psellos wrote that Zoe turned her chambers into cosmetics laboratory in which she created cosmetics and ointments to preserve her beauty well into old age. Also in common with the fictional Theophana, Zoe was known for her numerous infidelities. Eventually, her husband, Romanos was drowned in his bath by assassins. Both historians John Skylitzes and Michael Psellos agree that Zoe was complicit in his death. Byzantine women did not use as heavy cosmetics as their earlier Roman counterparts. This was a good thing. A common cosmetic of Western Rome was white lead, used to make skin appear fashionably pale. It is also very toxic. For eye liner and darkening eye brows and lashes, kohl was very popular. Kohl was a dark-colored powder made of crushed antimony,(Stibnite. Unfortunately it is lead-derived and toxic) burnt almonds, lead, oxidized copper, ochre, ash, malachite and chrysocolla. Stibnite is initially gray, but turns black when it oxidizes. It was mixed into a fat base and applied with a rounded stick.

High born Byzantine women would keep their cosmetics in little jars called pyxides. These could be of pottery, glass or ivory, sometimes sumptuously carved as this example shows.

590px-Byzantine_-_Circular_Pyxis_-_Walters_7164_-_View_D
Byzantine pyxis Walters Art Museum [Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

Resources:

Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium AD 527-1204 By Lynda Garland

Imperial Women in Byzantium 1025-1204: Power, Patronage and Ideology by Barbara Hill

 

Daily Life in the Byzantine Empire by Marcus Rautman

 

 

The Varangian Guard Part Two

It didn’t happen any too soon. Bardas Phokas, the chief of the rebels and a one time trusted general of Basils’ was closing in on the imperial city. Or rather, one of his next in command, Kalyokyros Delphinas, who took charge of storming Chrysopolis, a city across the Golden Horn from Constantinople. It took a quite a long time for negotiations to take place, but once they did, either in late 988 or early 999, numerous long ships could be seen on the horizon and with them six thousand Norsemen. They soundly defeated Delphinas’ men. Delphinas himself went on to meet a nasty death of impalement. The Varangians then went on to Abydos where they were again victorious, albeit helped out some by Bardas Phokas inexplicably keeling over on the battlefield. Stroke? Heart attack? Poison? We can’t be sure.
Of these six thousand men, Basil selected the best to be his personal guard. They were fierce fighters. Wherever Basil went, they went. Basil continued his campaign in Bulgaria, fighting on for around twenty more years before seeing victory. No doubt the Varangian Guard were there at the infamous Kleidion where who knows how many Bulgarians were blinded and sent home. In Syria, they are remembered for stripping the lead and copper from the Monastery of Constantine and setting fire to it.
They had the distinct honor of being able to go to the imperial vaults and being allowed to take away whatever they could carry when an emperor died. Their oath was to the emperor alone and not to the empire. They were also the best paid of the military. In fact, it was so hard to get into the Guard, yuu had to not only prove yourself, but pay the equivalent of three pounds of gold as an entry fee. Many guardsmen went home to Scandinavia, wealthy men. After England came under the control of William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066, many disgruntled and disenfranchised Englishmen left to become guardsman.
The result of the marriage of Anna to Vladimir? Eventually Russia. Her grand onion domes, Cyrillic alphabet, eastern orthodox religion and many customs, were all distinctively Byzantine. But her name Russia, is because of the Rus, the Norse traders who came down to what is now the Ukraine to do business.
Later, Harold Hadrada would make the Varangian Guard famous with his innovative battle tactics, before returning to Norway to be king. He died at Stamford Bridge in 1066, in a failed bid for the throne of Northumbria. before the Saxon king, also named Harold, marched down to Hastings to meet his own defeat at Hastings at he hands of the William, the bastard Duke of Normandy.
The Varangian Guard survived in some form or other until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. By this time they no longer had the same awe-inspiring reputation, nor were they a Scandinavian unit. However, the memory of them is still renowned, as one of the most fearsome foreign units in history.

The Varangian Guard Part One

In The Serpentine Key, Sven Thorvaldson serves as emissary to Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, from Basil II, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, bringing in the Norsemen who would eventually become the Varangian Guard.

Varangian was a term used by the Byzantines to denote anyone from the area we now call the Ukraine, as well as Scandinavia.
In 986 Basil II was in a difficult situation. His nobles were rebelling against him, he had a shortage of military, he had just been catastrophically ambushed at Trajan’s Gate by the Bulgarians and he no one he could really trust. It was not for nothing that the Byzantines were known for political intrigue. In fact the name came to mean political intrigue in later centuries.
Basil had a sister who was yet unmarried and in 988 he came to a decision that was to change the course of history. He sent a proposition to Vladimir, prince of Kiev who was then making himself all too well at home in one of Basil’s Cities, Cherson in the Crimea. If Vladimir would convert to Christianity and send six thousand of his finest warriors, Vladimir could then have the coveted hand of his sister, the Porphyrogenita in marriage.

Ann’s title, the Porphyrogenita, meant literally “Purple Born: she had been born in the chambers made of porphyry, a kind of purple stone and that meant her place in the imperial family as was her brother’s a high status one. One simply did not go marrying one’s imperial sister off to a pagan barbarian war lord who already had eight wives and numerous concubines. There was an uproar in the city. It was the scandal of the century.
What was in this for Vladimir besides the hand of the most eligible bachelorette in all Christendom?

By marrying Anna, Vladimir could ally himself with a very powerful neighbor, one with whom the Rus had long been at odds with. Furthermore, Vladimir had already been religion shopping. He had rejected Judaism and Islam and western Christianity, but the the reports of the high-domed Hagia Sophia– now that he liked. Eastern Orthodox Christianity it would be for him.  The six thousand warriors, Vladimir had amassed to take down his brother Yaropolk were getting a tad bit restless. Many of these were mercenaries who had been sent by Vladimir’s kinsman, the king of Norway, to aid Vladimir during his tempestuous little civil war with his brother for control of the land left by their father Sviatoslav. It was said that they told Vladimir when he had no money to pay them as promised, “Show us then, the way to the King of the Greeks!” For before this time, it was not unheard of for Scandinavians to be mercenaries in Byzantine forces, for which the Byzantines paid very well.

So in this way, Vladimir got out of a potentially sticky situation, got the girl (though he had to send away all the extra ladies, of course) and got a new religion with which to bind his divided kingdom of Norse and Slavs together. Basil married off his sister and got some of the most feared fighting forces in the world at the time. One cannot but wonder if some of them were not the legendary Jomsvikings, but that is a subject for another time.

 

Berserkers, Men or Myth? Part Two

But really, who were the berserkers? They were not merely stories made up to frighten children, because there were laws passed in medieval Christianized Iceland against them. You don’t enact laws against men who are only the stuff of stories.

“His men went without mailcoats or shields and were as frantic as dogs or wolves; they bit their shields and were as strong as bears or boars; they slew men but neither fire nor iron hurt them. This is known as ‘running berserk’” Ynglinga Saga

Theories abound, including the abuse of alcohol and Amanita muscaria or fly agaric mushroom. Alcohol has a very weak connection. First off, a man who is drunk enough to fly into a blind rage would be almost worse than useless in battle. His efforts would be uncoordinated and he certainly would not be unaffected by fire or iron as the saga suggests. Alcohol thins the blood. They are far more likely to bleed out from the horrific wounds inflicted in medieval battle.

A case has been made for the fly agaric mushroom. Despite the fact that this red fungus, speckled with white shows up in almost every European fairy tale picture book you ever read as a child, it grew in Europe in only isolated areas. It certainly does not grow in Iceland where there is much mention of the berserkers. Furthermore, the effects of the mushroom, unless used very carefully, are more likely to produce real illness than the desired level of hallucination in those who ingest it. The potency of the mushroom is affected by many things: the time of the year it is harvested, where it has been harvested and how it is collected. There is not enough uniformity to produce the desired outcome.

Some have suggested the use of the bog myrtle, a plant frequently used in place of hops for ale in Scandinavia. However there is little evidence to support this being the medium by which certain Norsemen went berserk. Many more men would have gone berserk, women as well and that does not seem to be the case from what we read in the sagas.

Men such as Kvedulf (Evening Wolf) who left to be alone in the evening away from his family to deal with his berserker tendencies, may have found it difficult to live in organized society and often found themselves exiled from it.

One of the things that set the berserkers apart is that though they had an incredible ability to fight during the gangr or berserker rage which lasted at best only thirty to forty minutes. After that, they became weak and unable to fight. This fits with IED in which shares much with those who self identify as berserkers. The altered awareness, hearing voices and echos, increased strength, duration of outbursts, tingling sensation, tension and mood changed prior to an outburst, violent reactions to stressors and a dissociative state are some of the symptoms of IED. Much of this sounds like Dr. Shay’s list comparing the berserker behavior to that of Vietnam vets with PTSD.

Jonathan Shay, a clinical psychiatrist makes the case for the hyperarousal of post traumatic stress disorder in his book Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. It is true that as long as soldiers have gone into battle and witnessed the horrors of war, there have been those affected with PTSD, but this is not a strong enough connection to apply to all those who were affected with the berserker rage. He does make a convincing argument in his list of berserker-like characteristics: “…beastlike; godlike; socially disconnected; crazy, mad, insane; enraged; cruel without restraint or discrimination; insatiable, devoid of fear, inattentive to own safety; distractable, indiscriminate; reckless, feeling invulnerable; exalted, intoxicated, frenzied; cold, indifferent; insensible to pain; and suspicious of friends.”

It sounds like a laundry list for the berserker distinguishing features if I ever heard one. But it does not take into consideration that the sagas mentioned that the berserkers run in families, which would indicate a genetic component, something that PTSD would not be a result of. It is possible however that PTSD aggravates an already present condition. I reference the berserker Egil Skallagrimson of the

Icelandic Egil’s Saga whose father Skallagrim was a berserker and the son of Kveldulf Bjalfson or Evening Wolf, also a berserker. This very much indicates the condition was genetic and places some weight on its being something like IED which we have today.

The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs estimates that 11% to 20% of military veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are afflicted with the condition. How much this percentage would change for those who had experienced medieval combat can only remain speculation.

The most convincing argument I have yet seen is that it was a genetic condition that we still have today: Intermittent Militant Disorder or Intermittent Explosive Disorder, otherwise IED. However, far from being viewed as mentally ill, these men would have been perceived as being gifted by the god Odin. They were considered sons of Odin and both feared and respected. As elite warriors, they were both at the top of society and also cast out of it. There is evidence that such a “disorder” far from being seen as debilitating, opened up neural pathways in the mind not available to others not born to it. And while these natural abilities may have been enhanced by such psychoactive substances such as henbane or hempr (cannabis), much of what they did was probably innate.

The subject of the berserker is an extensive one and more than can not be covered in the scope of a blog post.

Sources:

Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character by Jonathan Shay M.D. Ph.D

There is little written scientifically on the modern berserker. There is however an excellent book written by Wayland Skallagrimson Putting on the Wolf Skin: The Berserker and Other Forms of Somafera.

See also his website:  http://www.uppsalaonline.com/uppsala/somafera/

 

 

Mythical Characters as Archetypes

Delving into mythology always brings one to discover interesting archetypes. In The Serpentine Key, Odin plays a minor, yet pivotal role in helping my main character discover something about himself. Odin is a study in contradictions, a multifaceted being who seems to shift and change, perhaps as he is interpreted. But putting such a mythical being in fiction is hardly new.

J.R.R. Tolkein was an English author noted primarily for his Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as its prequel, The Hobbit. He had been known to lament that England had no myth of her own, so Middle Earth was created, based extensively on The Ring of the Nibelung cycle as well as the Norse and Anglo Saxon myths that left them indelibly printed on Tolkien’s native soil.
It was natural to find the Germanic stories wending themselves in the work of an English author. Much of Celtic lore had been repressed by four hundred years of Roman occupation and Norse and Saxon tales were England’s most recent arrivals.

Many character archetypes can be found in Tolkien’s writing, most notably Gandalf known as the “wanderer” as was Odin himself. Like Odin, he wore a broad brimmed hat and wandered the earth with a staff. It is a hallmark of such a god that when he comes to your door such as he did Bilbo Baggins’ you must heed the call. He is not easily driven away. Like Gandalf, sometimes Odin’s messages to us seem keenly like warning when we are inclined to feel to sorry for ourselves and or too smug or simply too comfortable in our own personal status quo and we need a spiritual lesson taught.

Perhaps this “Consciousness” as Jung taught has come down to other authors, such as J.K. Rowling, also English, who depicted Hagrid, a man who comes knocking at your door and cannot be ignored. Like Odin, he is born of giants, large, bearded and closely associated with the natural world. Like Odin and Gandalf, he comes to Harry Potter’s door with a mission and won’t take no for an answer. Also he is associated with the natural world like Odin,

Odin shows up in long loved childrens’ tales such as Jack and the Beanstalk. To me, as a child, highly imbued with the old tales, the beanstalk seemed to represent the “world tree”, Yggdrasil, reaching up into the cosmos and yet the cosmos itself. At the top was a giant who possessed various magical articles that Jack was to try to obtain. Odin himself was born of giants and could easily have crept into such tales. As Christianity came to the British Isles, many of the old stories went underground, cloaked in mystery as much as the Old Man himself. He never entirely went away though, only cloaking himself in the tales. He comes to us still as Santa Claus. Before that, he was Father Christmas, a bearded, hooded figure, surprisingly benevolent. In the old tales, Odin was said to leave gifts to children in their shoes, taking the proffered hay for his eight legged horse, Sleipneir. To this day, Dutch children put out shoes for Sinterklaass, who rides a gray horse and who has two black faced helpers, listening at the chimneys to see who has been naughty or nice” who perhaps evolved from Odin’s two raven messengers, Huggin and Munnin, “Thought” and “Memory”. Over time, Odin, like all the old gods was made more palatable for the Christians of Europe by making him a saint and he comes down to us as Santa Claus or Saint Nick.

The gods received a heavy handed veneer by the coming of Christianity, never completely annihilated, but woven into the fabric of Old Europe. Our own planet Earth was named for the mother of Thor, a goddess named Jorth, one of Odin’s lovers. Most of the days of the week were named for the old gods. Even customs like “knock on wood” which almost everyone has heard, may go back to the custom of touching wood and calling on the god of the woods, the Saxon “Woden”, the spirit of all things wooden and a deity closely related to the Norse Odin.

I always found the “Old Ones” of Europe’s Iron Age cultures to be captivating fodder for character archetypes. They reveal something about the people who revered them, aspects of their daily lives that even archaeology sometimes has a difficult time revealing. They reveal stories of their own and forge a path that any writer can enjoy.  Let me know your thoughts below!