Ibn Fadlán [2] a sophisticated Moslem who had encountered a group of Swedish Vikings in Russia in the tenth century, opined that they were the filthiest people he had ever seen: they all washed themselves in the same tub of water, and they made no attempt to seek privacy when they lay with their female slaves. The Anglo-Saxon chroniclers denounced the Danes for their cleanliness:. the Northmen bathed every day, combed their hair, put on fine raiment, and then tried to seduce the maids and matrons of England. Movies today portray the Vikings as piratical barbarians who spent most of their time harrying and looting the "settled" and "peaceful" Christian peoples of Europe. And popular history books describe the Northmen as one of the several barbarian peoples who "delayed" the cultural development of western Europe by their attacks and depredations.
But though the Old Scandinavians of the Viking Age idealized their ferocious warriors and saw fighting as an enjoyable way of gaining fame and fortune, each man probably defined himself not as dirty or clean, warlike or anti-Christian, nor even as a Viking, farmer, or trader, but as an individual member of a particular, property-owning, bilateral family. The family might be influential and own a great deal of land, or it might be poor and ordinary and own but a hut and a few sheep. In any case, the family and its land were managed and defended by the most competent male member, with the aid and assistance of the kin and dependents who resided with him. Younger brothers and sons strove to increase their personal wealth through trading, fishing, raiding, or taking service with kings who needed fighting men. Poor families or those of modest means attached themselves to, or took sides with, the influential man who gave them the best deal. Indeed, a major criterion of the status of a landed man was the number of free men whom he could get to follow and support him in defense of his property, in a legal dispute at the general assembly, or on a raiding expedition.
Defending one's rights, one's property, and the good repute of one's kinfolk was an essential part of being a man, and in this sense every free man was a potential fighter. Raiding or harrying nearby farms or districts was a common way of paying back a grudge or insult, and this meant, of course, that every farm or estate had to be manned. Raiding was seen as an honorable, exciting, and profitable adventure undertaken during the summer by a spontaneously formed group of men from the same community. If they could perpetrate a successful raid on the folk of a nearby district, so much the better. But if they could get more loot with less risk by venturing farther, they would make a longer expedition. The life of the professional warrior had a special glamour, and a young man who particularly liked to fight might spend his youth in the service of a king or earl and participate in the forays, raids, and occasional battles by which the kings sought to defend or expand their lands and power. If he were lucky such a young man would return with wealth and renown, settle down with or near his kin, and marry. All men did not have the skill or the inclination to go a-Viking or become professional warriors and a young man might prefer to stay at home and help his father or uncle defend and run the family property. But in this case he still had to be willing and able to fight, both to keep what he had and to be regarded as a man.
Recent archaeological investigations suggest that just prior to the first Viking raids on Christian Europe the inhabitants of Scandinavia were increasing not only in numbers but in general prosperity and cultural complexity. For several centuries the Vikings-to-be had followed a diversified economy, supplementing cattle raising with agriculture, hunting, fishing, and energetic and enterprising trading. Along with these pursuits they had also become competent iron workers and had developed a hitherto unparalleled skill in ship building and navigation. It appears likely, therefore, that they took to raiding the outlanders not out of dire need but because they tried it and found it very profitable. Besides, they were feeling their oats.
When climatic conditions permitted, they grew not one but many cereals, and, where possible, they raised cows, dairy cattle, horses, oxen, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs, and cats. Some even caught and trained polar bear cubs. They constructed different types of ships and buried their dead in many different ways. This flexibility is especially striking when, as a conscientious anthropologist, one tries to describe their dwellings. In the Scandinavian homeland they built great rectangular "long houses" with central fireplace and roof supported by freestanding inner posts. These long houses appear before and during the Viking age and they were, very probably, the imposing farmhouses of chieftains. On the British Isles, Iceland, and in Greenland they built houses of whatever material was available—grass-sod, turf, or even lava. In Greenland they changed the form of their dwelling many times, from a long hall to a hall with various annexes to a kind of passage house and finally to large central houses. In general, the common form of settlement was the isolated farm or homestead, though villages, trading towns, and finally, large military camps or barracks appeared in Scandinavia proper during the late Viking Age.
In some respects the early Vikings seem more like certain of the frontiersmen who settled the Appalachian sections of what is now the United States than they were like their contemporaries in Medieval Europe. Most men lived on their own land, farmed it as they chose, raised some livestock, hunted, and fished. In the spring they might organize or join a trading or raiding expedition. Heavy work, like peat digging, fence laying, and manuring the fields, was done by thralls or bondmen. The holdings of a free man might be modest, but he saw himself as his own master and took his rights for granted. Men of humble origin could and did gain wealth, prestige, and power, although the fact that they were not of high birth would not be forgotten by their neighbors. Those of high birth were expected by nature to be brave, proud, ambitious, and generous toward followers or dependents; if they did not live up to these expectations, they might end by having no followers at all.
A free man had social obligations to his kin, his king (if he had one), his local community, his district chieftain, and his friends, whether human or divine. He was, of course, expected to support and protect his dependents. The kinship system was bilateral, and though poems and sagas speak of cases of warm love and loyalty between husband and wife, law and custom indicate that the individual's fundamental loyalty was first to his father's and then to his mother's kin. Ill feeling or violence between groups of kindred was controlled by the blood feud and by an elaborate system of fines or wergeld, so that the man who killed or injured the member of another kindred might in turn be killed or, alternatively, find himself and his kin out of pocket. This system of keeping the peace seems to have been somewhat disrupted by immigration and expansion, for a powerful chieftain, with many hired followers, could risk killing a man who had no relatives or friends nearby to avenge him.
A free man's relationship to his local chieftain or to the head of an expedition was regulated by contract rather than by inherited status. Whether of high or modest family, he was, theoretically at least, expected to select the leader under whose protection he wished to live. If he did not get on with a local chieftain he might shift allegiance or move to another area.[3] The same principle applied to trading or raiding voyages. Such contracts might be entered into for the duration of an expedition, or, in the case of a landowner or hired warrior, for many years. They could be terminated without rancor by either party and ambitious or restless young men might serve under several leaders. The relationship between a king, earl, or war chief and his housecarls or "hired men" was likewise personal and not familial or tribal. A young man would enter the services of a war lord with the understanding (ceremonially recognized in an elaborate oath) that he would repay the generosity of the lord by fighting for him to the death. Celebrated instances of these fighting corps standing and dying to the last man are too numerous to mention. (This system of obligations between chieftain and warrior is one of the most enduring in north Europe. It is described by Tacitus in the first century and it continued in much the same basic form until long after the conversion to Christianity. After the conversion, however, the idea appeared that the claims of a lord were superior to those of the kin—Whitelock 1952: 29-47.) However, the hierarchical system of lord and servant was not the essential feature, for during the late Viking Age, a group of well-born freebooters set up a self-governing warrior society in Wendland (modern Prussia) calling themselves the Jómsvíkings (Hollander 1965). Indeed, the deep and enduring friendships between men who were partners in war or peace were very important, and such friendships are often celebrated in the literature of the time.
Cases at law, new legislation, the selection of kings, and other weighty matters, were taken up at the district meeting or Thing. This peculiarly vigorous institution, which in its primitive form impressed Tacitus in 100 B.C., still flourishes today in Iceland. In altered and elaborated form it persists in the procedures followed by the Parliaments of Britain, the Congress of the United States, the United Nations, and other governmental bodies. But during the pre-Viking and Viking Age the Thing also functioned as a district meeting at which all manner of social activities—trade, gossip, marriage contracts—might be carried on in addition to the legal settlement of disputes. In early Viking times, when the Northern lands were divided into many districts inhabited by loosely associated extended families, a king was nominated by the most powerful and influential men. But the king's powers were drastically limited by the Thing, and, as Brønsted (1956:241) remarks: "it was difficult, virtually impossible, for the king to take a decision in opposition to the Thing or chieftains, who were his equal in all but name." But though the Things limited the powers of the kings, they were parliaments rather than open meetings. Real power lay in the hands of the district leaders or representatives, accompanied and supported by their tenants or hired men. A poor person of little influence could not get a case heard unless he obtained the support of a chieftain.
The status of women in Old Scandinavia seems to have been extraordinarily high. This is suggested by the laws, which took women's rights as a matter of course. For example, "If a man slays a woman he shall be outlawed just as if he has slain a man. If a woman slays a man, she shall be outlawed, and her kinsmen shall remove her from the land" (Larson 1935:132). While one suspects that women's status and influence in any society is never easily assessed by an outsider, one is impressed by the fact that the Old Scandinavian poets and prose writers consistently treat their female characters like persons and not like clay figures. Sexual distinctions are accepted as part of the order of the universe, but admirable qualities like loyalty, courage, competence, or integrity, or vices like cowardice, stinginess, or stupidity, are not consigned to either sex. Harassed male characters of the sagas sometimes remark that "Women's counsel is cruel," but this is probably a statement of blunt fact rather than an expression of denigration. On the other hand, men seem to have had more sexual freedom than women. Kings and jarls (earls) might have several wives and concubinage was common. Bondwomen were at the services of their masters, though decent men were expected to acknowledge and rear their offspring. (For an interesting discussion of women of Viking times see Oxenstierna 1955:190-213.)
Most people envisage the Old Scandinavians as reckless warriors who raided Europe and the British Isles sometime in the Middle Ages and reached the New World before Columbus. Their less publicized activities are even more impressive.
Northmen from what is now Norway established colonies in the British Isles—in the Orkneys, Hebrides, Shetlands, and Man. From Norway and the islands they proceeded to Iceland and Greenland, where they established a sizeable colony and reached the coast of North America. [4] In Ireland they set up raiding bases. From what is now Sweden they established themselves in Novgorod and Kiev and, via the great rivers, traded and raided as far as Byzantium, Baghdad, and Baku. In the eight-forties, Vikings raided the coastal towns of Spain and, when the Moors proved to be able fighters, they went on to assault cities on the coast of North Africa and Italy. Above all else, the Vikings (Bloch 1964: 1, 17) excelled in the navigation of rivers, being experts not only with sail and oar, but in towing and portaging.
Though no one doubts that the Northmen were brave and formidable warriors, it is a historical fact that they raided and traded in a hardheaded and calculating fashion. If a town or district put up a strong resistance or was difficult to reach, it was passed by for richer or more convenient areas. Thus, for a long time, the Franks and the Saxons, being closest and richest, bore the brunt of the raids. The Frankish nobles conceived the convenient device of king the peasantry to raise the Danegeld. If the Vikings appeared, they were bribed to go away; if not, the nobles kept the tax. The sums paid were very large. Thirteen Danegelds were levied on the Franks between 845 and 926; the seven whose figures are known total 39,700 pounds of silver. This does not include the foodstuffs, wine or slaves, that might be demanded or appropriated in addition to the Danegeld. The Anglo-Saxons, led by Alfred, put up a shrewd and exasperating resistance. Nonetheless, many of the invaders settled in England, and left an indelible impression on the English language (Jesperson 1905: 61-86). Others settled along the coastal regions of France, and in 911 Charles the Simple gave Normandy to a Norse chieftain called Ranulf (Rollo).
By the end of the tenth century raiding took on a grander and more broadly organized aspect, with the kings and jarls of Norway and Denmark organizing large expeditions. In 991 Ó1afr Tryggvason raided England with ninety-three ships. The English, too, paid Danegeld: 10,000 pounds in 991; 16,000 pounds in 994; 24,000 pounds in 1002; 36,000 pounds in 1007; and 48,000 pounds in 1012. In 1013 King Svein of Denmark put a stop to this piratical inflation by invading England and settling there. In 1016, Canute, Svein's son, was chosen king by the English. Sixty years later, in 1066, England was again invaded by a Norwegian army under King Harald Hardruler. The English defeated King Harald, but within a few weeks, were forced to face Duke William of Normandy at Hastings.
Iceland was settled during the period 870 to 930 by independent Norwegian farmers who, according to tradition, were unwilling to submit to the demands of King Harald Fairhair. The story is that Harald, who "unified" Norway by forcing neighboring kings to recognize him as their superior, attempted to deprive the independent farmers or tract owners of rights to their hereditary lands (Gaythorne-Hardy 1925). Rather than submit, some organized expeditions of kinfolk and followers, and emigrated—first to the Shetlands, Orkneys, or Hebrides, from where they went a-viking, and later to Iceland, where they occupied extensive sections of land and apportioned them among their dependents. While the settlers had other important motivations, the fact that they and their descendants chose to emphasize their traditional independence from any central authority is significant. Also significant is the fact that from the time of the settlement until their submission to Norway in 1261-64, these settlers levied no tax on themselves except for small contributions to maintain the temples.
For some two hundred years, the energies of the Icelanders seem to have been expended largely in the labors of settlement. They raised stock, exploited their rich fishing grounds, traded, and, on occasion, fought as mercenaries abroad. Egils saga (Eddison 56-60) gives us an excellent description of how Skallagíim, on emigrating to Iceland. cared for his cattle and sheep, built ships, set men to fishing, sealing, and egg-taking, and even built a forge; thus, as the saga puts it, he "set his estate on many feet." Enterprising young men became the greatest globetrotters of their time, visiting the British Isles and the Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Irish, and English courts. They went to Russia and Byzantium, and some Icelanders even served as Varangians, bodyguards to the emperor (Einersson 1957:12). If they were lucky, they returned to Iceland wealthy men. In 982 Eric the Red was outlawed for three years and used his period of banishment to organize an expedition and explore Greenland.
The fact that the Icelanders established a Parliament in the year 930 A.D. is sometimes taken as evidence that they were the first folk to develop a popular form of government. But anyone familiar with the political and legal systems of the relatively sophisticated tribal peoples, Africans, Asians, or North American Indians, is more likely to see the Icelandic Parliament or Althing as an attempt to maintain and formalize an ancient and traditional form of legal control in a new situation. One might say that the Icelanders brought the idea of a general assembly to Iceland, clung to it through the stress of changing situations, refined it, and gave it a formal expression. The Icelanders were, moreover, the first people in Northern Europe to leave us a detailed record of their energetic attempts to maintain their indigenous political system, both against the trend for centralization of power under a king and against the bureaucratic demands of the Christian church.
Since the problems of keeping the peace are basic to any world view, and since many of the noted Icelandic sagas are as much legal case histories as they are anything else, we will here give a brief description of the Icelandic system.
The only genuine administrative unit of Iceland was the goðorð, the office and domain of a goði, the man who was both the ceremonial leader and the chieftain of the goðorð. [5] The power of a goði depended on the number and quality of men he could attract as followers or thingmen. Thingmen were expected to stand with and support their goði in matters affecting the goðorð, and the goði, on his part, was expected to aid and protect his thingmen.
At the time of the settlement, a prominent man who wished to be recognized as goði customarily built a temple on his land where, thereafter, he functioned as a ceremonial leader. He and the subsequent goðar maintained the temple at their own expense, though all thingmen were supposed to pay a small temple tax. The relationship between goði and thingmen rested on the consent of both parties. A goði could accept whomever he wished into his Thing, and a thingman could sever his relationship with one goði and enter the Thing of another. Though the goðorðwas hereditary, it could be sold, temporarily transferred, or divided and held in partnership (Hallberg 1962:9-10). A goði did not have much opportunity to exploit his thingmen. As Einarsson (1957:10) puts it: "he had to be content to be primus inter pares, working or living off his own land like everyone else." Instead of the old "peace-family" of their ancestors, the small farmers of Iceland organized hreppar, roughly corresponding to American "townships," which held pasture and fishing rights in common, took care of the poor and infirm, and gave some mutual insurance against losses by fire.
The Althing, the Icelandic General Assembly, was established in June of 930. It seems to have been a great annual get-together, during which the participants camped in canvas-roofed shelters and transacted all manner of social and economic business, settling debts, arranging marriages or voyages, relating news and stories, playing games, and giving beer parties for friends. The most serious, and perhaps the most exciting and entertaining function of the Althing was the settling of legal disputes and the making of laws. Legislative powers were vested in the lögrétta, which consisted of thirty-six and later forty-eight goðar. Judicial powers were vested in a court of thirty-six members. In time this court became too cumbersome and it was divided into four district courts. The presiding officer of the lögrétta was called the Law Speaker. Elected for a term of three years, he was required to know the body of the law from memory and recite all of it before the Althing during his term of office. There was no executive body, because a successful litigant was himself responsible for carrying out a judgment on the unsuccessful party. This was not as inefficient as it first sounds, because a man (or woman) who wished to begin a suit first attempted to get the support of as many relatives and friends as he could. If he were poor and powerless, he would try to get the support of his goði or other men of influence. If a man did not get sufficient backing, he would usually not begin his suit. But if, on the other hand, he went to the Thing with a large following and won his case, his backers would help him carry out the judgment. Skill in sharp legal practice was greatly admired. Cumbersome or inefficient practices might be changed. For example, the decisions of the District Courts were supposed to be unanimous but since this left many cases unsettled, a Fifth or High Court was set up which, on appeal, could decide a case by a majority ruling.
The first settlers followed various and mixed religious traditions. [6] Some were heathen when they arrived; others had become Christians during their sojourn on the British islands. Some were nominally Christians but called on heathen deities in specific or difficult situations. Still others seem to have been indifferent to deities or cults "trusting neither in the White Christ nor the Red Thór, but in their own might and main" (Jones 1935:140). One thing is quite clear: a man might practice what rites he pleased so long as he did not give offense to others.
The formal adoption of Christianity by the Althing was a considered affair of convenience, in which the General Assembly decided that all Icelanders should submit to baptism—with certain reservations —in order to placate the over-zealous and ambitious King of Norway. The account of the conversion is so characteristically Icelandic that it might be well to present it here. [7] For a hundred years, the settlers —heathen, Christian, eclectic, or sceptic —had lived in relative amity. But in the last decade of the tenth century, Ólafr Tryggvason, the King of Norway, an ex-Viking and fanatic Christian convert, sent a personal missionary to Iceland. This man promptly got into trouble with the Icelanders and killed some of them. He returned to Norway with the report that the Icelanders were hostile to Christianity. Thereupon Ólafr arrested and imprisoned the sons of those prominent Icelanders who happened to be in Norway and threatened to kill some and maim others. Two prominent Icelanders who were already Christians interceded with the king and promised to try their hand at getting their countrymen to accept Christianity. The next summer the matter was taken up at the Althing and Christian and heathen factions almost came to blows.
"One man after another began to call witness, and declare himself out of law with the others, the Christians and the heathen... Then came a man running and saying that earth-fire (a volcanic explosion) was coming up in Aulfus [Oelfus] and that it would overrun the homestead of Thorod goði. Then the heathen men began to say, 'It is no wonder that the gods are enraged at such speeches.' Then Snorri goði [8]: 'About what were the gods angry then when the lava burned the ground on which we now stand?'"
Then the people left the Rock of Laws.
Thereupon the Christians asked one of their number to speak a law for Christians to follow, but he turned over this responsibility to the Lawspeaker, Thorgeir Ljósvetningagoði, who was himself a heathen. Thorgeir went to his booth, and lay down in silence for a day and a night, never speaking a word. The next morning, he assembled the folk and and spoke, pointing out that men would fall into assaults and batteries and throw the land into great disorder if all did not have one law.
"And now this seems to me the best counsel, that we do not let their will prevail who are most eager against each other, but let us so umpire the cases between the two sides, so that each side may win part of his case, and let us all have one law and one faith. For this may be truly said: if we split the law, we will break the peace."
Each side then agreed that there should be one law and that Thorgeir should now declare it.
"Then it was made law that all men should be Christians, and they should take baptism that were yet unbaptized here in the land; but that as to the exposure of children the old laws should stand, and also as to the eating of horse-flesh. Men might sacrifice secretly (to the old gods) if they wished, but they should be under the lesser outlawry if witnesses could be brought forward thereto."
As Hallberg (1962:13-14) remarks:
"A provision such as that relating to pagan sacrifice, to be sure, reveals very little of the spirit of Christianity. The point of view is conventional and social; one was not to give offense to others by his heathen practices. the entire manner in which Christianity was introduced seems to indicate that religion was regarded essentially as a community affair rather than a matter of personal conviction. The indifference toward religion takes on an almost comical aspect in the description of the collective baptism following the conclusion of the General Assembly. Kristni saga relates that the thingmen from the North and South Quarters were baptized in the warm spring Reykjalaud in Laugardalr on their way home from the Assembly because they did not want to go into the cold water at Thingvellir."
During the two hundred years that followed their formal acceptance of Christianity, the Icelanders developed their church primarily on an indigenous social framework. Instead of building, maintaining, and conducting services within his privately owned heathen temple, a goði now might build and maintain a Christian church and have himself ordained as priest. Indeed, at one period there were more churches than clerks to serve them (Turville-Petre 1953:71). Other chieftains built their churches and hired their priests as they might hire a servant; or they trained a young man for the priesthood, after which the trainee was legally bound to the church like a thrall. Clergy were as subject to the secular law as anyone else, and a proposed change in ecclesiastical practice had to be submitted to the secular legislature, the lögrettá. In the eleventh and twelfth century, episcopal sees were established and the Icelandic bishops began to develop schools and monasteries, importing teachers from the mainland to instruct the young men, and, occasionally, young women, in Latin, music, and poetic composition. Both teachers and pupils must have been intelligent and enthusiastic, for the scholastic works produced by men trained in these centers of learning were, all things considered, quite remarkable. (They are discussed in the next section.) Some young men of the "better families" were sent to the university at Paris for instruction. Whatever else may be said for this period during which sacred and secular responsibility and power continued to he viewed as undifferentiated phenomena, it was one of relatively positive and peaceful development.
But around the middle of the twelfth century, conflict broke out on a number of levels. Church authorities in Norway and on the continent began to exert themselves to bring about a separation between spiritual and temporal systems of authority. Norwegian bishops scolded the Icelandic laity for unchastity, adultery, and mistreatment of the clergy. Those chieftains ordained as priests were reproached for their contentiousness, forbidden to carry arms, and forbidden to engage in lawsuits on their own behalf. The ancient custom of church ownership by the chieftain was denounced as contrary to God's law. In 1190 the holders of goðorðs were forbidden to take holy orders and in 1196 the Pope expressly forbade the "abominable practice of lay jurisdiction over ecclesiastical matters" (Sveinsson 1953:114). The Icelanders did not hasten to comply with these directives. When a particularly zealous bishop forbade the secular court to pass judgment on a priest, the chieftains defied him, complaining that the bishop "respected neither men nor the law of the land." Nevertheless, in the end, the dictates of the church prevailed and, as the years passed, many ordained goðar gave up their secular powers (Sveinsson 1953: 112-117)
I am not able here to review the various economic, political, and climatic developments in Iceland and on the continent which may have played a part in the difficulties experienced by the Commonwealth. Suffice it to say that the balance of power between goðar had been disturbed and secular authority came more and more to be concentrated in a few influential and ambitious persons, who, with the help of kin and other followers, took over control of large sections of the country. This process was accelerated as more and more of the ordained chieftains resigned their authority to lay relatives. Not content with their gains, the great families began to fight each other. The rich became richer, and the poor, poorer. Ordinary farmers—the thingmen —grew tired of the incessant conflict and sometimes refused the call to fight for their chieftains. According to contemporary accounts by participants, the restraints of older times were abandoned, or at least weakened: men took oaths only to break them, slew their relatives, maimed the wounded and butchered the dead. Simultaneously, they preserved and produced one of the world's notable literatures. Eventually, the warring family factions appealed to the King of Norway for support in their internal disputes and in the sixth decade of the thirteenth century Iceland became a tributary to the Norwegian crown.
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Last Modified 28 April 2000
Comments to Manny Olds, oldsma@pobox.com