The Vikings, pt. 1 -- In the Norsemen's World

done something that music is in the Hall of the King of the Mountain from the gate of peers Edvard Grieg's suite performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and published by Muse opens this is Sam bijetti from historians explaining a historian tells you why everything what you know is wrong and This is the first part of the Vikings in the

world

of the Norse, so I have been researching for some time for a series of lectures on the Vikings, either two or three, depending on exactly how much I have read tonight, but before talking about the Vikings and their exploits.

I first wanted to understand who the Vikings were and the

world

they really came from before they set out on their raiding and plundering missions. Now, in theory, it seems that the Vikings should need no introduction, since they have been seen. and once again, 1,000 times in novels, movies, and operas, they have become practically iconic, even cliché, as symbols of crude, primitive strength, much like the cowboys I talked about last month, and in some ways, They play a similar role as symbols of some kind. of raw masculinity, but the constant use and reuse of Vikings in art and popular entertainment over the centuries has led to the accumulation of popular myths and distortions again, as happened with cowboys, and even the word Viking itself has been so overused and understated, so exaggerated in its meanings that even academics have basically given up trying to maintain its original technical meaning, so what does it mean that Viking is not technically an ethnonym?

It is not at least originally the name of a people united by language or customs or common ant ancestry or even a common geographical region, rather Viking, it is a word for a quest or an activity, as some have said, is a working title, so the people of early medieval Scandinavia were Northmen and appears in different dialects as Norseman or Norsemen and in modern Scandinavian languages. The term is northerners born in the Norse countries and the correct way to refer to the language and religion of these people of the early medieval Scandinavian world is Norse, so technically speaking, it is incorrect to refer to Viking art or Viking mythology Society viking, etc., instead of a viking.

It is specifically a person who goes out by sea to explore and more specifically to attack and plunder. The original derivation of that word viking is unclear, but it is probably related to the word veak meaning bay along the coast and therefore some scholars have theorized that viking was originally simply a synonym for pirate, but this It is also questionable because the Vikings rarely attacked ships at sea, so they were not pirates in the sense that today we might think of classic pirates who preyed on ships in the Caribbean, but much more often the Vikings landed and they looted. cities and settlements on land, sometimes inland, they could be said to have been the elite amphibious attack troops of the Middle Ages and could attack, attack and invade in this way because their ships were specially designed to navigate coastal inlets and rivers and , therefore, it is much more Probably I would say that their Viking name derives from their ability to enter coastal bays and lands, so Norse is a word for the people or inhabitants of the far north of Europe, while the Vikings It was specifically these people who went out to raid, now it is understandable that people often confuse these terms in these categories like Norse and Viking because the main way other people in Europe encountered the Norse during the early Middle Ages was as raiders. , you know, being given a sword or a mace and the main thing that set them apart and What people remembered and recorded about the Norse was the chaos and destruction that they caused and that is still the main theme of the written sources and of this enduring popular memory of the Nordics.

To be fair, it is true that for several hundred years sea and raiding became a crucial, even central, pillar of Norse civilization and, for the Norse themselves, a great deal of status, power and wealth depended on who went out and looted what and where, and this Viking Law activity initially began from a small scale local sorting. among the Norse tribes and clans within Scandinavia, but over the course of the 700th century they began crossing from Scandinavia to explore, attack and plunder the rest of Europe and this activity peaked in the 800s and 900s and then slowly declined in the course of one. thousands until it basically ended around the year 1100.

And therefore, you can talk about a high Viking age of about 300 years or so from the mid 700s to the mid 1000s, when you could say that was the definitive quest of the Norse civilization , now you probably know. that these Vikings were for a time the terror of Europe from Ireland to Russia and are often perceived simply as greedy, bloodthirsty barbarians and thieves, which is quite natural, but in recent times, approximately the last 40 years, The Vikings have become more serious. Their treatment and examination by scholars is taken more seriously because of their sophisticated technology, complex art and especially literature, which was among the most prolific and creative in Europe at that time, and also because of the important impact they had. in creating new contacts and links. throughout Europe and even Eurasia, founding new cities and, in some cases, entirely new societies, from Ukraine to Normandy, Iceland and Greenland, and thus having a broad civilizational impact on all that was then known as Christendom, despite being pagans or pagans in sight. of the Christians and therefore, if we are to talk about the Vikings and understand them historically, we have to look back to the complex multi-layered civilization that emerged from the civilization of Scandinavia in the early or Northern Christian era, as They usually do it.

I called it that, what I want to try to convey here is the Dynamics and self-understanding of the Norse in their world and how they place themselves in it, so that's what I'm going to try to do in this first lecture before we start. then let us talk about their travels, their explorations, and their exploits of raids and conquests. So how can we begin to explain, understand and reconstruct this world of the Norse? Well, there's a pretty obvious and simple place to start. It centers on a tree, called iggdrasil, the world tree. the axis of the cosmos and it only makes sense that in the eyes of the Norse the center of their universe was this great tree Scandinavia is densely forested, the Norse seem to practice worship and divination in sacred groves, their entire built world, their homes, their barns.

Their bridges and temples were built entirely of wood, the ships they used to trade, explore, and plunder were made from wood taken from whole tree trunks, and according to records of their myths, they even believed that the first humans were created from tree trunks. It was now believed that igdrasil, this world tree was a huge ash tree with three roots that reached to deep wells in the underworld, the branches of the tree rose towards the Airy Realms and the heavens, this tree was evergreen, it fed constantly of creatures and monsters of various kinds, but always healed and regenerated, arranged around the roots of the tree, the trunk and the branches are the nine Cosmic Realms, the homes of various Gods, Monsters and Men, the Norse creation myth It is very complex and is described, although somewhat vaguely and confusingly, in two books called edas, which are collections of traditional Norse poetry that were collected and written in the year 1200 and the story The cosmogony of the Norse world begins with the chaos, as many creation myths do with so-called yawns. void or ginunga Gap in which all the elements of creation became confused in a violent disorder but, generally, the elements began to gather and freeze in different Realms around the different parts of the great tree.

The first two to form were niflame, a cold world of frozen water. and fog and secondly, the elk spell a world of fire. The first creatures appeared because an ice shelf spread from Niflama when the cold waters of that world flowed into the vast void, they froze into a large ice shelf which then spread and as it approached. to the fires of moospel he received the spark of life and came to life in the form of an ice giant named Emir Emir then gave birth to a whole race of giants who are called yotens, they are brutal and voracious in the appetite of those who they lived from the milk of the first primordial cow called althenbla and then, somewhat later, some smaller delicate frost crystals began to come to life and the first of them became the first god called Buri Buri, then he fathered a race of gods along to the giants and their descendants included Odin, who later became the great leader of the Gods, and his two brothers named Veely and Vay.

These three brothers banded together and killed the frost giant Emir. His blood flooded the frozen world killing most of the Giants. The Three Brothers then banished the remaining Giants to a distant location. They took the emir's body to the gnunga gap and molded pieces of him into a new kingdom. They made the Earth from Emira's flesh, the rocks from her bones, and the teeth from his blood. They made sea lakes and oceans with which they surrounded the lands of the Earth. a great Sea surrounding the skull of Amira they made the Sky that they suspended over the Earth held in its Four Corners to the northeast, southeast and west by dwarves they took Sparks of fire from the spell of the elks and scattered them within this Dome giving rise to the Stars and finally they took the eyebrows and eyelashes of the emir and wove them into a great fortifying rope or chain that they then ran around the earth surrounding it to protect it against the hostile and vengeful Giants whom they had banished and hence this new kingdom they created was called. .

Midgard, which means the middle enclosure, and finally they took two tree trunks that came to the seashore on this new Earth and animated them until they became the first man and woman who were called Ask and the emblem Ask means ash tree which seems to make echo of the great cosmic tree igdrasil. The name of the first embla woman does not have a clear meaning, but it could derive from the word Elm and, therefore, each of these first humans, the man and the woman, were created from a strong and durable wood, one of them being exceptionally rigid and the On the other hand, the elm was soft and flexible, so, according to this creation myth, humans themselves were made from trees and, furthermore, they were created by the gods to inhabit a kingdom which had been created through violence, but which was specially protected from these hostile and chaotic forces. the other six Kingdoms that are arranged around the axis of the great tree, first there are three lower worlds, these are Yutinheim, the home of the Giants, which is represented as a world of frozen mountains and forests, there is a hell, a cold underworld and Misty, that's destiny. of some spirits in the afterlife there is neither villier the kingdom of the dwarves who are the master craftsmen of the cosmos nor villier is a lunar world comprising tunnels of Minds and forges and underground workshops, above these are two higher celestial worlds suspended further up the trunk of the great tree and these are elpham, the world of the elves, which is a bright and vibrant forest world ruled by the goddess Freya, who is associated with prophecy and divination, and then there is Vanaheim, which is a mysterious world that is not described in any detail in any of the surviving poems, but is known to be the original birthplace of a clan of gods called the Vanir and this family of gods, the Vanira, includes Freya and her brother Freyr , who is associated with love, sex, fertility and prosperity and then.

Finally suspended high in the branches of the great tree is the highest realm in all of Asgard, the home of the High Gods, another clan of gods called the Essir. Asgard is described as a shining golden castle or fortress with halls where the various deities host great gatherings of each of the essir, these mythical gods who have their seat in Asgard, each have different stories and associations, but are not simple personifications of natural forces as one might describe, say, the Greek goddess Aphrodite as a personification of love. These Norse gods are much more. complicated and ambiguous include the aforementioned Odin, the god associated with governing authority, wisdom and language, who is called upon to inspire poets and said that he knew the secret meanings of the runes; then there is Thor, the god associated with strength and power and with If he is a caster of lightning and bolts, he is invoked for power in battle and for rain and good winds.

There is the goddess Frigg, Odin's wife, who is associatedwith marriage and family, and perhaps there is the strangest and most ambiguous of all, Loki. a trickster God associated with intelligence but also who fathers fearsome beasts such as the Cosmic Serpent and the giant wolf Fenrir, so it is significant that these two groups of gods, Acer and the Vanir, are distinct and appear to have different qualities. The Vanir are associated with prosperity and abundance being somewhat rooted in nature, unlike the Acer who are associated with human power and creativity embodied in language and military power, so they live in a castle, but, nevertheless, these two clans of gods are linked and united according to the surviving mythical poems in the ages that are quite confusing and unconnected, it seems that at some point in the past there was a war between these two families of gods, for which Freya, the Great Goddess of the Vanir, appears to have gone in disguise to Asgard and taught divination from the Essir God, but the Essir unmasked her and tried to kill her repeatedly by burning her but she continually survived and Rose From the Ashes this attempt to kill Freya unleashed a long war with much destruction between the two groups of gods and this war finally ended with a truce and the exchange of hostages between the two groups and thus the two clans became partially Incorporated and therefore the Vanir could appear. occasionally in Asgard and exercising the privileges of membership in In Acer there has now been much speculation and theorizing about the meaning of this myth of the essir vanir war, perhaps it could reflect the existence of two very ancient pantheons of gods who had previously been separate , maybe one of them Indo-European and the other pre-Indo-European may belong to some earlier indigenous people in Scandinavia before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans and after coming into conflict these two groups of gods integrated, that could be the case, but the fact That the story was transmitted and developed in this way suggests that it symbolized something more immediate, more relevant to the Norse, perhaps these two families of gods represent different aspects or parts of society, perhaps women and men, the vanir seemed to be more associated with fertility and the Acer more. with government and war perhaps they represent different classes or modes of society perhaps farming instead of going to war and raiding but none of these schematic explanations seem to work there is no definite pattern to the gender of the gods both Groups include male and female deities and both appear to have been revered and venerated in Scandinavia by both men and women and when it comes to agriculture and war, some important gods such as Thor were important to both and could be invoked for strength in battle. , as well as for the reign of the harvests.

So there is no easy and clear way to delineate what these two groups represent, but another possibility is that they may represent conflicting forces or impulses within Nordic society, even within individual personalities in the Nordic world, the conflicts between the warlike and peaceful, the desire to achieve wealth and power through force or through cultivation, and the two probably always existed in tension during the Viking Age. Scandinavia is a fertile, abundant and rich land both in terms of farmland and mineral resources, but it could also be violent and unstable, especially in times of scarcity. Up to this point some of you can probably see some points of comparison with other mythologies.

The story of the destruction of the frost giant Emir and the use of parts of his body to create the world they called Midgard is strikingly reminiscent, for example, of the story of the cosmic man Panku, spoken of in early Chinese myths, as well. There are many other stories from other mythologies about wars and overthrows between two sets of contending gods, such as the Titans who were overthrown by the Olympians in Greek mythology, there is also the existence of these various Afterlife Realms which may sound similar to Hades or the Elysian Fields, but in several ways this Norse mythology captured in the ages is scarier than either of these;

There is a great emphasis on the power and threat of enemies such as the Giants or Loki's fierce human-created creatures appear as very minor figures and emerge almost as an afterthought, not as the great Pinnacle of creation and specifically in the Midgard, the human Kingdom of Earth and Seas is presented as small and dwarf and surrounded by other terrifyingly large and mysterious Kingdoms there is a great emphasis on vulnerability, vulnerability to enemies, to the terrifying and inscrutable forces of heat, the cold and water, and this mythology is permeated with a sense of fear and inescapable Destiny.

An emphasis on the warlike power of the gods can be seen in this light. as an express expression of insecurity of human beings' need for constant protection and support against hostile forces and this omnipresent atmosphere of danger is summarized in the myth of Ragnarok, so the ages contain elaborate prophecies about the four ordered ends of the world and this aspect of the ages is extremely complex and detailed and I cannot address it in this lecture, but briefly, this prophesied future apocalypse begins first with a break in the human world with social decay, the loss of standards of honor, the breakdown of Law and Authority which is then followed by a natural decay represented by a long, deep winter that lasts three years without summer and the sun darkens as food runs out.

A passage from this prophecy in the poetic age says a quote. Brothers will fight and kill each other. The sisters, the children. desecrating kinship is hard in the world prostitution The age of axes and swords Shields are broken the age of the wind an age of the wolf before the world runs amok no man will have mercy on another, so this disorder and perversion of the world that begins in midgard then spreads to the other Kingdoms it is said that igdrasil trembles and groans, the cosmic serpent stirs stirring the great seas and the Giants in their kingdom awaken, take up arms and board a ship over the enormous waves that then pass through the gates to Midgard, the Giants.

Then they are joined by the enormous snakes and wolves that are The descendants of Loki The Watchers of Asgard Heimdall sounds the Great Horn of alarm The Acer gather to defend both Midgard and Asgard from this invasion Odin fights against the giant wolf Fenrir but He is defeated and devoured. other giant wolves swallow the Sun and the Moon the sky turns black Thor fights the giant Serpent and defeats it but then dies from its poisonous bite the Earth sinks into the sea only clouds and steam remain The surviving Gods rise to the heavens They come together later to pick up the pieces and make sense of what has happened and eventually a New Earth begins to rise again from the sea, the trees, birds and fish return and it is implied, at least possibly, that the cycle begins again with a new creation, so the story of Ragnarok, at least in the poetic era, ends on a possible final note of Hope, but nonetheless the overall story is dark and fatalistic, in some cases a mythology tragic and one is forced to wonder why, of course, there are obvious possible geographical reasons for the general precariousness of Life In the Far North the need for good crops in summer to survive the winter the fact that prosperity was possible by less under certain conditions but was still delicate and dependent on the vagaries of the weather and seasons, the description of the Kingdoms of Ice and Fire could be said to reflect the closeness of the Arctic and possibly also volcanoes, as seen in Iceland. and on the islands north of the Arctic Sea, but many other peoples in the world have lived in harsh conditions, possibly with regard to storm diseases. harsher than what people faced in Scandinavia, so geography may not be enough to explain what has happened here and there.

There is a theory of a historical reason for the particular form of Norse mythology and specifically the idea of ​​Ragnarok, and this theory holds that the mythology is rooted in the disastrous alteration of life that took place in Scandinavia in the 16th century, shortly before the beginning of the Viking Age, so recent archeology has shown that during the Roman era Scandinavia was intensively cultivated and fairly well populated with many large farms and settlements based around long houses very long dwellings that housed large groups or tribes of people and with sections set aside for humans and livestock to share the heat, but by the mid-16th century something had changed dramatically, there was a huge drop in population, perhaps as much as 50 percent.

With the abandonment of many farms and entire towns and in some places, such as on the island of Gotland, almost the entire population disappeared, the reasons for this catastrophe are not clear, but the current theory is that it is due to a series of huge eruptions volcanic eruptions in the 530s and In the 40s, the first one that took place in El Salvador in America in the year 539 was probably the largest volcanic eruption in human history and was followed a few years later by at least one more , perhaps two more, almost as large, and these eruptions led to massive eruptions.

Clouds of dust that surrounded the Earth and dimmed the sun, preventing the growth of trees and killing many crops. Famines were recorded in China and India and also the cold weather due to this decrease in sunlight probably also contributed to the outbreak of bubonic plague in the Mediterranean, which has been called the Plague of Justinian. plague and I have briefly mentioned this rolling disaster before in some other lectures, it is possibly linked to the legend or myth of the fall of King Arthur and the destruction of Camelot which some Medieval Chronicles specifically dated to this time in the 530s and there are other upheavals political and social events documented in other places in the world, such as wars and revolts, it is now logical that the impact of this climate event would have been especially severe in the far north because, as I said, there is a lot of fertile land in Scandinavia, but with a very short growing season and sunlight in summer is crucial, so during this event crops and natural food sources were likely devastated, even down to animals and fish in the seas, which would have caused a widespread famine, instability and probably fighting. on increasingly scarce resources, so some scholars such as Neil Price have argued that the depiction of the mythical Ragnarok may reflect the memory of this time of catastrophe and rupture, especially the references to the darkening sun and The Long Winter Now, for example. extension, in relation to this argument, history.

The part of the world that resurfaces and begins to renew itself after Ragnarok could also be an echo of the restabilization of society in Scandinavia after this disaster in the 600s and 700s, but nevertheless, despite this recovery, it seems that this event left a mark on the world. The new Norse society that reemerged was highly militarized with warrior elites and a new sense of vigilance against enemies and against the unpredictable and inscrutable forces of nature. Now, one last detail of this cosmic mythology that I have just described and that some have pointed out and What stands out as significant for understanding the Viking Age is a detail about the names of the nine Cosmic Kingdoms that exist around the great cosmic tree, for example. which most of these Kingdoms I mentioned contain the word hame at the end, which is basically a word for place. or abode is basically a neutral word, only two of the Realms instead are called guard and those, of course, are midgard and Asgard, the worlds of men and the world of the Higher Gods.

This suffix guard comes from the ancient Indo-European root meaning and close and this is also the root of our English word Garden, which originally just means a fenced enclosure that is cultivated. It is also the root of the word Court which means a closed place of order, law and authority, which is why both the Acer and the humans who in many mirror and resemble each other live in such closed Kingdoms, while the Vanir, The gods associated with fertility apparently come from a wilder, more open and mysterious realm called vanahame, in the same way that dwarves, elves, giants and these other strange beings also live in their realms.

The kingdoms called hame so midgard and asgard stand out as different and the ruling asir gods are said to dwell in a shining castle and the security of this castle is symbolized by a wall or chain surrounding it. Midgard is an inferior reflection of Asgard and is also an enclosure surrounded by a large fence and very similar to if we imagine a garden with a fence around it between forests or bushes, in the same way Midgard is also surrounded by wilder and more lost places, some of which threaten him and therefore this cosmology reflects the mentality and even the way of life of the Norse people their perception of themselvesThey overwhelmingly lived on small farms with houses and barns located among cleared fields surrounded by fences.

The villages in which some of them lived were simply groups of these farms with their fences linked together. The largest cities in Scandinavia were very few, but they were surrounded by large rampart walls and wooden palisades and its ports were also surrounded by ramparts and piles. Sometimes even entire kingdoms or kingdoms were delimited and separated from the outside world by rampart walls and their places of worship. and the meeting places were probably also surrounded with symbolic defensive chains like Asgard, for example, the Uppsala temple is said to have been surrounded by a huge golden chain, so the mythology of the creation and destruction of the world or the cosmos represents the self-image of farmers. subsisting in a largely wild and forested landscape and their struggle to protect the footholds of human life and civilization against nature and, even more broadly, one could say the natural attitude of the Nordic peoples towards the world at large beyond your own village or local settlement and even beyond Scandinavia. their attitude towards this wider world was one of wonder and curiosity, but also fear, a constant awareness of danger from outside the home and, I would say, the Viking Age is really defined by this mixture of terror and desire, okay, coming from myth to documentation. world the real world in quotes what was this landscape in which the Norse lived and survived well?

They lived basically in a group of countries in the far north of Europe that today we collectively call Scandinavia, but then was usually just called the North and these are rugged lands that had been covered by glaciers and therefore had a very fractured landscape. complex with many lakes, fjords and islands. The far north of Scandinavia experiences dramatic changes between the seasons with relatively mild summers and very deep winters. The natural vegetation is mainly evergreen forests with also some plains and marshes now to start from the south closer to the main body of Europe and move towards the north we start with Denmark the main body of Denmark is a small flat peninsula that extends towards north from Germany and is called Utland in honor of an ancient The Utes and Utland tribe separates the North Sea from a maritime channel called categat or cat gate which in turn empties into the Baltic Sea and east of the land of The Ute there is an archipelago of islands of various sizes, the largest of which is now called Zeeland, if one continues north or east and crosses these sea channels, one reaches the Scandinavian Peninsula, which is a much larger body extending from the category near Denmark to the Arctic Circle and near the North Pole, the eastern side of this Scandinavian peninsula is Sweden Sweden is mostly low and flat, much like Denmark and has mountainous forested lands in the south in the regions traditionally called skena and gerteland, then to the north there are large lowlands with many flat swamps and There are many lakes and rivers with islands in them and this region was traditionally called sviera after the tribe of spheres, from which Sweden originally got its name, further north.

Beyond this region is a subarctic area of ​​hills and forests that is now west of Sweden. Along the western side of the Scandinavian peninsula lies Norway, whose name originally just meant the way north. Norway is much more mountainous and rugged, with many snow-capped mountains and glaciers, as well as a complex coastline that is very irregular and cut by long narrow fjords, and at the head of these fjords there are many deep, flat valleys that are suitable for agriculture now. If one continues west towards the Atlantic Ocean there is also Iceland which comes onto the scene towards the end of the Viking Age and Iceland is a rugged volcanic island with some valleys and grassy plains, it was uninhabited in ancient times, the first Known people who landed there were Irish anchorite monks who had embarked on the sea without destination and landed in Iceland by chance, but shortly after Iceland was colonized at the end of the 20th century by the Scandinavians who emigrated from Norway and Iceland became over time in fertile ground for Norse life and especially literature and, therefore, if one wants to reconstruct the history of the Viking Age, one often has to look for history in Iceland, now in general.

Scandinavia as a whole is mainly made up of peninsulas and these peninsulas are connected to the rest of Europe by land links, but nevertheless the northern link at the top of the Scandinavian peninsula is in the subarctic and is therefore very far from the centers of European civilization and then to the south is Utland which connects directly by land with Germany, but it is a very narrow and easy to defend isthmus and it is not surprising that since the year 600 some of the Danes and the Nordic inhabitants of Denmark began to build a series of defensive walls and trenches along this, which they called dhanavirka, so considering the geography, climate, shape of the land and seas, it is not surprising that the region has been historically quite isolated from the rest. of Europe retains its own languages, customs and religion for much longer than most of continental Europe and, in fact, Scandinavia was the last part of Europe to become Christianized, except for some of the Baltic countries on the eastern side of the Baltic Sea, So if the Scandinavian landscape is so rugged and so harsh in many ways, how did the people of these countries survive and subsist while largely farming?

They grew some wheat in places where there was enough warm weather and sunlight, but mostly they grew cold-hardy grains. such as barley, oats and rye, as well as other crops such as beans, peas and various vegetables, they also raised a large number of livestock, such as pigs and chickens, including chickens, ducks and geese. Livestock were also very important in certain areas, such as in rocky terrain that was too difficult to plow, they did. Gathering wild foods such as honey and also a lot of hunting, especially in the far north and in some places, especially on the coast of Norway.

Sea fishing was very important, as well as freshwater fishing, mainly in the lakes and rivers of Sweden. Now, who were the Norse people in terms of language and ancestry? Well, the people of the three Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, were all Norse from very ancient times, as far as recorded history goes, so the Norse peoples are Indo-European and specifically Germanic in ancestry. They were in the far north of the Indo-European kingdom and sometimes encountered other groups, including a non-Indo-European people called the Sami, who lived in the Arctic, especially above the Arctic Circle, and the Sami had their own distinct language and traditions.

They were clearly distinct from the Norse, but there was also a lot of mixing, especially in the subarctic area, there was also some mixing and mixing with Germans and Slavs, especially along the Baltic coasts, their language belonged to its own Germanic branch of the north. of the Indo-European language family, the language they spoke we call today Old Norse because it is the ancestor of several modern languages, but at that time it was generally called simply Danish language and this may seem strange because only some of the Norse were Danish. , but it made sense because the Norse generally spoke the same language despite some different dialects and local accents, it was basically mutually understandable throughout Scandinavia, and therefore most of the time they didn't have to refer to their language.

It was not a matter that needed to be discussed or negotiated, they only had to refer to it when dealing with foreigners who did not speak the same language, such as Germans, Slavs or Frisians, and the Danes had by far the most extensive interaction with outsiders. with non-Scandinavians and therefore in those contexts it just seems to make more sense to refer to this as the Danish language now, as I said, despite some variations in dialect, the language was remarkably consistent, people all over Scandinavia They could converse and communicate and remarkably This is still true today, if you put a Norwegian, a Swede and a Dane together, basically they can all understand each other and get along, so despite some divergences over time, modern Scandinavian languages ​​are still extremely close to each other and are still extremely close. into Old Norse to the point that if one transcribes ancient rune inscriptions from a Viking settlement and puts them into a Latin alphabet, modern Scandinavians can generally understand them and this surprising degree of consistency both across geography and across time is probably is largely due to the very strong poetic tradition that has been passed down through the centuries and includes the memorization of verses.

Now, if the Norse had this remarkable consistency in their shared language, the question arises as to whether they had a collective identity or an ethnic self-awareness, well, it doesn't seem so, for the most part, the Norse identified themselves in local terms as members of a particular clan, village or regional tribe, such as the gertas or the sphere, they had no collective ethnonym apart from simply Nordic men or some variation of the Nordic people that is a The regional geographical identity is not an ancestral or racial identity, but it still seems that the regional identity was quite strong.

They saw themselves as having certain special qualities that differentiated them from foreigners and they saw the North as a distinctive social space, a world in itself limited by seas and political and even physical borders again like the dawn of yerca defending the far south. from Denmark. So how did your society or civilization work well? It is very complicated and misleading to try to reconstruct the Nordic world in terms of society and institutions and this. This is because the sources are very ambiguous and fragmentary, although it is not difficult to translate and identify the words of the Lexicon;

However, the content is very scattered and has huge gaps, so first and foremost, much of the Reconstruction of the Norse Society has to come from archeology and there are many important and revealing archaeological finds from the Viking Age. , although they tend to lean heavily towards the wealthy elite, so these are mainly hordes with buried gold artifacts and then, from later years, also coins and elaborate burials, such as the famous ship burial notes. in Norway and also the village cemeteries that are scattered throughout the different Scandinavian countries, as for the buildings, these were mostly built of wood and they all disappeared a long time ago, they have not survived, but nonetheless, you can obtain some information about buildings from excavations, especially to identify post holes where wood was planted in the ground and in recent years, again, knowledge of the Norse world has been growing due to the great improvement in archaeological technology and, specifically, when it comes to Scandinavia, the most relevant improvements have been the ground-penetrating radar, which is very powerful at finding the sites of buildings, towns and fortifications that no longer appear on the Earth's surface, dendrochronology that allows dating of wooden remains that could have been preserved such as in lakes and springs and metal detection that makes it easier to locate buried hordes and tombs now When it comes to documentary records that give us information about the Norse in the Viking Age, there are basically five types of surviving documents.

The first and the one that goes back further into the past are runic inscriptions, so runes are a writing system that were invented in Scandinavia, it seems that in the year 100 AD. probably inspired by Roman writing. Viking Age runes were slightly different from that original invention. They had been simplified and were written with a simple 16-character alphabet called futhark after the first five characters of this alphabet. The runes are very simple angular characters based on vertical stems and then diagonal crossbars added to those stems in various configurations. The runes were designed to be easy to carve into wood, basically cutting against the grain and making a clear, distinctive mark on the wood, and wood was the most commonly used medium for recording runes, paper, which was completely unknown at the time.

Viking and parchment was very rare and expensive, while wood was everywhere, so there have been many fine small rune staffs made of wood or sometimes also bone, and these rune staffs have several commercial accounts instructions diplomatic messages and some of them occasionally also use an encrypted code called uten villier that was used to encode private or personal messages and, for example, a wooden stick thatwas found in Sweden had a coded message that read kiss me but While some of these rune sticks have been found and it appears that again wood and bone were the most common medium at the time, the most common and abundant form of surviving runes that can still be found today are stone ones, so in the Viking Age.

It became common to erect stones with runic inscriptions that often commemorate deeds and events of people. Some of them were erected by important figures, such as kings, celebrating the achievements of their reigns, others were erected by relatively ordinary people in commemoration of family or friends, and sometimes they were also accompanied. by a few lines of Norse verse In later years, when large building projects became more common in Scandinavia, Rune Stones were sometimes erected to commemorate who had sponsored or built monumental works and, for example, next to a paved road that was excavated in Sweden, a Rune Stone was placed. found with the inscription quote yarlabanka had these stones raised in memory of himself during his life and made this bridge for his soul and he alone owned all tabi God help his soul now the second main type of documentary source that gives us stories and Information about the Vikings are foreign accounts of their activities, so there are many documents that describe the Viking raiders and also the traders in the eyes of the foreigners who encountered them, such as the Irish annals, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, there are also some direct descriptions and written eyewitness accounts. by travelers, diplomats or missionaries who went to Scandinavia or to the Viking colonies throughout Europe and these foreign sources often emphasize the brutality and barbarity of these people whom they saw as pagans and, of course, have shaped much of the modern image of the Norse as bloodthirsty thugs now this, of course, may seem incongruous, so if we consider that the next and probably the most abundant source of information about the Norse is their poetry, there was a very strong poetic tradition in Scandinavia and There are several types of surviving Norse poetry.

First, there is skaldic poetry, which were poems written by publicly performing poets called skalds, who were often asked to compose poems of praise or encomium for leaders, especially on public occasions such as weddings, war victories, coronations. , funerals and the main intention of much of this poetry is to commemorate great people and deeds and sometimes, in some cases, also deal with mythical themes such as the origin of the world, the gods and prophecies, such as the poems and prophecies of the poetic Eda which I quoted earlier talking about the origins of the universe and Ragnarok. The next great source of Norse poetry is the Edas and these are two collections of Old Norse poetry that mostly originate, it seems, in the Viking Age and were passed down for several hundred years and then written down and collected into books in the year 1200, so after the end of the Viking period and after the conversion to Christianity the first is the poetic era that was found in a single manuscript book in Iceland and which is anonymous and contains several collected poems and the other is Etta prose which is a book or manual for poets on the art of poetry containing many passages and some complete poems and which was reportedly compiled and edited by a scald named snorri sterlison who lived from the late 1100s to 1241 and was originally from Iceland.

He was the legal spokesperson for AL. or parliament of Iceland, so he was a respected orator and statesman. He was hired by the Norwegian royal family to go to Norway and write about its history and also advocate for the incorporation of Iceland into the kingdom of Norway, so he was a controversial figure in Iceland and eventually died in a political fight. , so snorri sterlison is really the most important known Norse writer who has transmitted to modern times the largest collection of writings and information about the northern world. Now, after poetry, there is the next one. type of documentary source which are the Norse sagas, these are long narratives, mainly in prose, that describe great deeds, leaders and events.

Most of them are originally Icelandic. Many of them are about specific towns, valleys or families in Iceland and their history often dates back to Norway or even further into ancient times. and mythical times, some of the sagas also deal with other places around Scandinavia and go back to ancient events and to events in the Viking Age and other Scandinavian countries. Most of these are anonymous, it is not certain where many of them were composed, but probably many of them. were also from Icelanders, it seems that the sagas were primarily an Icelandic art form and snorri sterlison, the poet and legal orator I mentioned before, while serving at the Norwegian court, compiled and edited Hames kringla, which is a massive chronicle of The ancestors of the kings of Norway trace their roots through the Viking Age and back to ancient times in Sweden and ultimately to the gods and finally the last major source that may have some historical value are the Latin chronicles that were written. by the Norsemen in the Christian Middle Ages, so even later than the epochs and sagas, these Latin chronicles may have been based in part on stories of real events, but their veracity is very confused and uncertain and the most significant of them It was probably written by saxophone. grammaticus a Danish employee of the Royal Court of Denmark in the early 13th century who wrote a chronicle in Latin called guesta danorum or deeds of the Danes and it is a huge Latin epic history of Denmark inspired by the Greco-Roman classics and probably also in English.

Chronicles like that of Jeffrey of Monmouth, this Chronicle is historically very dubious, but is famous today mainly because it contains in part the story of the Mad Prince Amleth, who was then the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, but leaving aside these later Latin chronicles as la gesta denorum, there are four basic types of documents that give us evidence about the Norse world and each of them is very uneven and incomplete in terms of what they reveal and what they exclude, they are often very ambiguous with a lot of context lost and their geographical scope is very uneven basically each of these four types is most strongly associated with a particular country the runic inscriptions are by far the most abundant in Sweden about 2,000 have been found in Sweden only about 200 in Denmark and about 50 in Norway when it comes to Foreign accounts about the Norse people overwhelmingly deal with Denmark, which was the Scandinavian country that had the closest and most intense interactions with the rest of Europe when it came to poetry, scalded poems, eddas , which arise mainly from Norway and the sagas they deal with.

Iceland is the most, so using this very complicated fragmentary and uneven evidence base, one has to reconstruct roughly how Scandinavian society functioned, what were its basic groupings and its basic elements, its basic norms and practices, and it seems that despite the inequality and gaps in the sources there. There seems to be a remarkable coherence throughout the north, so that among the basic social groups from which society emerged is, of course, first and foremost the household, which in Scandinavia was generally small compared to other parts of Europe and was centers on a married couple and their immediate family members were almost always less than a dozen people and usually lived on their own independent farm centered on a complex built with a dwelling, as the houses themselves, the typical Scandinavian house It was much smaller than the old Scandinavian longhouse that had preceded it, but it was still relatively large by medieval European standards, so the Scandinavian house did not have a single room like that usually seen in places like England and France, but rather three rooms, and this would include a main central hall with a central hearth surrounded by various niches and platforms for sitting, socializing and sleeping and then two gabled rooms at each end of the hall, an enclosed kitchen or workshop for women with a clay oven and at the other end what appears to be a men's workshop and this layout of the house.

It probably reflects a kind of gender symmetry or you could even say it's a parody between the kind of parallel worlds of men and women, so as far as gender is concerned, the status of women in Scandinavian society was relatively strong, as often happens in very martial and warlike societies, and this may seem counterintuitive, but it has a certain logic: if men are frequently at war, if many of them die in war, often women, wives , daughters and mothers were left in charge of the household and the functioning of civil society at home and could often rise to positions of power and respect in society.

In the Nordic world, marriage was understood as an equal partnership that united two people and their families, and either party, man or woman, could initiate a divorce. Wives customarily brought dowries to marriage with them. The size and wealth depends on the wealth and status of their family and they would continue to own and control this dowry property through marriage and could also acquire more properties of their own. Many women are specifically mentioned and named in runic inscriptions as important landowners. or as clan matriarchs, several women are specifically named in surviving literature as skalds or public poets and in some sagas and other documents there are references to female warriors who went out to fight and raid and who were called shieldmaidens and there has been much debate about whether or not this is true or accurate, if there really were women who went out to war and on plundering expeditions and if there were, they were probably very few, but this story of the Shield Maidens has been corroborated in recent times archaeologically, as for example through the excavation of The grave of what appears to be a female warrior with weapons and horses in the town of Birka in Sweden now beyond the house and the married couple were the larger groups of clans and tribes and these were based on kinship and in the geographical region to which they belonged. led by family group leaders or chieftains and in many areas there were also paramount chiefs and higher ranking war commanders who were called yarls, which is the root of the English word earl, now along with the clans and tribes there was also the phelog, which is the voluntary community of men who cooperated in joint ventures such as trade and also in mutual aid and defense, basically similar to the Germanic guild that was described in continental Europe and specifically there was a specific type or variety of phelog called live, which is the Marshall scholarship or warrior band. that centers on a chieftain or a yarl and they participated together in wars and attacks, so the society was very militaristic and often unstable, but to help maintain a degree of civil peace there was also the local council or meeting for debate of public affairs and the resolution of disputes and there were many of these throughout Scandinavia, in addition, the Norse settlers in Iceland created the so-called supreme or general council which evolved into the Icelandic Parliament and in that form still functions today and is commonly known as Considered the oldest continuously functioning parliament in the world, the Norse were united by these various intersecting and cross-cutting ties of kinship, companionship, and peacekeeping, but they were also organized in a stratified class hierarchy, so that most Norse people, it seemed, were legally free and that meant they had the right to travel to own property and, significantly, to speak and participate in things.

Many of the free people were also land-owning farmers who lived and farmed their own land, but some of them were also poor workers and servants without their own land and there seemed to be some legal stratification where the law recognized distinctions of wealth and status, e.g. There were laws that required the payment of fines and fees as compensation for killing or injuring other people and the fees and fines were higher depending on the status, wealth, rank of the person who had been injured and whether his or her family was a landowner. . Now, while most of the people of Scandinavia, as I said, were free, some were also slaves, these slaves included captives who were taken from foreign raids and then sold.

In Scandinavia, as well as their children and descendants, some were also enslaved for crimes, so not all were necessarily foreign captives and these slaves worked both in agricultural fields and in homes, they were subject to the power and discipline of their masters, although with some minor legal requirements. limits and protections many slaves became free over time; They could become free by earning wages and paying for theirfreedom or living in a community for a long time over several generations, after which they would eventually be recognized as free inhabitants and this reflects the kind of persistent underlying assumption that slavery was essentially a condition of foreigners without relatives now, as I said, the society was warlike and militaristic.

Warfare was quite frequent with many local wars and feuds and increasingly, after the 700th century, foreign raids as well, the Norse were infantry fighters, they were not. Cavalrymen had horses for travel and sometimes for field work, but they were not known for their horsemanship skills, possibly because much of the travel was by sea and transporting horses took up valuable space and resources. and critics on a ship, so they fought overwhelmingly on foot. Their weaponry included, first of all, swords, they were accomplished swordsmen, they tended to use large double-edged and very finely made swords, forged in Scandinavia, they also fought with other hand weapons such as axes and knives, and they wore chain mail armor and iron helmets, and in all these respects, they were not so different from most other fighters of medieval Europe.

The look of a Viking warrior would not have been so dramatically different from an Anglo-Saxon, a Gall, or a Lombard. Their hooves had no horns. This would have been very impractical to put large, heavy horns on top of your helmet. It would have made it precarious and made it very easy for your enemy to take off your helmet just by grabbing or hitting the horns, which is why they didn't have horns on their helmet, but rather there are a few. Surviving religious figurines of deities and also figures probably representing gods, particularly Odin, on woven tapestries and these figures have horned helmets, so this was a religious mythological image, it was not a representation of actual Viking fighters, but This image, however, became popular in popular art of the 19th century. and theater as a kind of visual code for the Vikings and you could say as a kind of reference to their almost animal nature, but actually the look of a Viking fighter's equipment was not that unusual in medieval Europe, which the distinguished more.

The tactics were not only their maritime and amphibious raids, but also their use of sneak attacks and their practice of going berserk, a kind of ritually induced battle frenzy, so if this was the basic fabric and structure of society, how Was one expected to behave in this world? They were the basic rules and ethics well, these were mainly it seems martial rules of courage loyalty honor and keeping oaths also generosity and hospitality being a good and generous host protecting the guests in addition to being a good guest there is a surviving poem from the era called havamal which contains stanzas of advice for a man who ventures into the world and begins by quoting the man who finds himself at a strange threshold must be careful before crossing it to look here and towards him who knows in advance what enemies may sit waiting for him at the room better equipment than good sense a traveler cannot carry a burden more tedious than too much drink a traveler cannot carry the discreet guest will leave early will not linger long begins to stink who overstays his welcome in a room that does not en The codes of relations between the guest and the host were really fundamental and supported this image of the good, honorable and respected man, and the general objective of these Rules, it seemed, was Fame, which is why the Norse were so obsessed with Fame like the modern ones.

It is attributed to different people with different qualities and for different reasons, so Nordic poetry always seems to emphasize that human beings and humanity itself are mortal, but anyway the fame lives on, tremendous importance is given to the future life, the idea of ​​rooms where the good, the just, the honest are. able to gather and celebrate each other and these halls in the afterlife include the most important: vonger, the Hall of Freya and Valhall, sometimes also called Valhalla, the Hall of Odin, and these are the type of two higher Realms of the beyond where warriors can feast and celebrate. and the main objective of both the sagas and the skaldic poems is, of course, to celebrate the great men and women so that they pass on their deeds and their personal qualities to future generations and even the majority of the Runestones, as I said, They were erected to further commemorate someone. and this is why we know many people by name and their actions and achievements, even if they are only fragments of their lives and these rune stones were placed in visible public places on roadsides and at crossroads, not hidden in cemeteries or burials. sites and although some of them talk about heroes and kings, many of them commemorate people simply for being a good farmer, a good spouse, a good father or mother and in general, I think the evidence shows that the Norse were obsessed with this idea of ​​immortalization. through Fame and Honor and another stanza of that same poem, The Hava Mall sums this up.

I think by saying, "cattle die." He said that Scandinavia was one of the last places in Europe to accept Christianity and rather religion in Scandinavia, if you want to call it that. It involved frequent offerings and invocations to various Norse deities asking for prosperity, health, safety, victory in battle, etc. ., and some details about how this works can be found in the accounts of IBN Fadlan, who was an Arab emissary from the Islamic Caliphate and traveling with an embassy and visited a Viking colony on the Volga in what is now Russia at the turn of the century XX and describes the merchants who made large offerings of food and milk to what he called idols or wooden posts with carvings on them to evoke different gods and brought this freshness. food to ask for success in trade and then also return with more offerings as expressions of gratitude if they were successful, so you could say a propitiatory practice and you could also say, in a sense, a transactional relationship with these deities, also to sometimes the Nordics.

Larger and more elaborate collective offerings were made and often this was called a blot or blood offering which involved blood sacrifices and took place in meeting rooms called Hoffs and it appears that most hofs were simply meeting rooms of chiefs which could later also function as temples for These blots and similar rituals in some places there appear to have also been complexes of larger buildings with Hoffs, as well as smaller adjoining buildings which may have been specifically ceremonial, so banquet functions and sacrifice were occasionally separated. The only known large building especially dedicated to the worship of northern deities was the Monumental Temple at Uppsala in Sweden, so it's a city in central eastern Sweden and we don't have much original information about it;

However, the Christian chronicler Adam of Bremen in the year 1000 wrote at a time when many Scandinavians had become Christians, but there was still pagan practice in Sweden. Adam of Bremen described a huge building with carved figures of the gods inside. Thor Odin and Freyr and this temple was a place of pilgrimage where people from all over came to visit the temple itself to make offerings, as well as the sacred grove of trees next to it and a sacred well, in addition to offerings and blots, there was also a complex practice of divination efforts to communicate with the gods and predict the future.

Often by placing a specially trained seer or prophet into a trance state, many of the important Norse cosmological and mythological poems, such as the poem describing Ragnarok that I cited above, were spoken especially by prophets and seers. They were very complex funeral practices. They could be a simple burial in a grave or sometimes a cremation and sometimes especially both. In the later Viking Age, it appears that many people were cremated and then their ashes buried in the ground. These funerary and burial practices were very elaborate and ceremonial, usually involving grave goods that could range from simply a knife for a low-status slave all the way to the end. up to entire ships and hoards with treasures of gold and silver and precious stones and these large elaborate burials often included food and clothing, weapons for men and household tools such as cooking vessels for women and also vehicles such as chariots, sleighs or horses or, as I said, even whole. ships, confirming the notion that the North, like many other Germanic peoples, believed that the spirits of the dead had to travel using their own goods and equipment from the world of the living to the afterlife, sometimes at burials elaborated by people of high human status.

Slaves or servants were also killed and buried with their masters. It is not clear exactly how or why this happened. You know that slaves were possessions like tools or vehicles, so there is a logic in that sense, but it's now unclear exactly how this developed. IBN Fodlan the Islamic The diplomat I mentioned above describes witnessing a funerary cremation in this Viking colony on the Volga and it included a human sacrifice, but IBN Fodlan claims that it was a voluntary sacrifice, so in his account the servants of a deceased chief who among them was willing to go with the master to the afterlife and a woman reportedly volunteered and was then treated with great courtesy and lived in luxury during the period of time pending the funeral while a ship was washed ashore and a funeral tent was erected on the ship.

The tent was then loaded with food and luxury goods and at the funeral itself the slave entered the tent. The warriors then followed her to her chamber and killed her and then set fire to the ship and burned the entire structure and contents of her. down in about an hour now it is likely that in addition to this practice of sacrificing slaves or servants to be buried with their masters, it is likely that some Human Sacrifice also took place as part of the worship of the Gods. So Adam Bremen, the Christian chronicler I mentioned earlier. who described the temple in Uppsala said that it was a place of sacrifice and that periodically, every few years, the worshipers killed nine males of eight different species of animals, including humans, and hung all the bodies in the sacred grove next to the temple .

I am not entirely sure if this is real and if this second-hand account from Adam of Bremen is completely accurate and reliable, but it seems that there may be some corroboration of this story about Uppsala. First, there is a tapestry that was found in an elaborate ship burial. in osabaric in Norway and the embroidery on this tapestry shows several men apparently hanging from the branches of a tree, so they could also be a representation of sacrifices and also before Adam of Bremen in the early 20th century, a German general named theatmar described ritual sacrifices. which takes place in the village of Lara in Zeeland, where it says that every nine years the villagers sacrificed 99 men and if this is true, it probably indicates that Lara, which is located in the center of this large island of Zeeland in Denmark, was also a place of pilgrimage and collective sacrificial offerings and it is also interesting that Adam of Bremen's account of Uppsala and Fitmar's description of Lara echo the number nine as of the nine Kingdoms of the cosmos, so perhaps these Sacrificed people and animals were seen as somehow offered to the powers that be. of the different cosmic realms now, in terms of art and aesthetics, the material world of the Vikings was very elaborately decorated, it seems that there was intricate decoration on buildings, on clothing and on tapestries, usually ornamentations very complex with stylized animal figures worked in vine work patterns and scroll work.

Decoration is also seen on weapons and many of the practical iron weapons carried by Norse warriors were inlaid with copper or gold horn. It also seems to have been seen on ships, so for many centuries until the 19th century it was assumed that Viking ships were simply practical and utilitarian like the gears that often sailed around the North Sea in the English Channel, but In more recent times we know that this was not true and this is due to the enormous ship burials that have been discovered at different times in Norway, mainly the Osiberg ship, which was a funerary ship for two rich women around the year 820, and the gokstad ship, which was the burial chamber of a male chieftain around the year 900.

These ships were by no means simple or utilitarian, but were carved with exquisite scroll designs and with ornamental figures of human animals and deities, especially snakes, so they are striking and beautiful, as well as fearsome and terrifying, and one might wonder if they were actually real sailing ships or simply ornamental boats created for the purposeto bury them, but you will remember IBN Fadlan in In his description of a funeral on the Volga, he states that the ship used as a funeral pyre was a real sailing ship that was washed from the river to the coast, so there is reason to suspect that this was the case actually what the Viking ships looked like when they set out on their voyages of exploration and plunder and focused on the people themselves, their clothing and personal adornments.

This is important to know regarding the Norse because they were apparently known to take pride in their personal appearance. They noticed their well-made clothes that they changed frequently and their elaborate jewelry. They dressed quite naturally in many layers. Men wore underwear and trousers and tunics over them, often with embroidered hems and edges. Women wore undergarments like shirts and then dresses over them which were wrapped around the body and then held up with straps over the shoulder which were attached to the dress with large oval brooches and these brooches have been found in Scandinavia in many different styles and a variety of materials, from simple metals to bronze, silver and gold their clothing The fabrics were most often locally produced wool, durable and warm, but there were also lighter garments made of linen or sometimes imported silk and heavier garments made of skins and, when it came to bathing and grooming, the Nordics were especially known for their care.

Trimmed beards and mustaches The Norse were known for their full, carefully trimmed beards and mustaches. An Arab visitor to the Nordic city of Hedibi said that both men and women wore eye makeup and it seems that the Nordics put a lot of care and attention into their hair. The women wore their long hair tied in elaborate knots and buns. Men wore many different hairstyles, often including long hair in the front, while they shaved the hair at the back of their heads to show off their necks. You could see it as a kind of upside down mullet.

Foreigners often complained that Norse men were too vain or too attractive to women and, for example, a medieval English chronicle from the Abbey of Saint Albans described battles and conflicts between Danes and Anglo-Saxons in England and the chronicle He was complaining about the famous quote the Danes made. They were too acceptable to English women for their elegant manners and care of their person, they combed their hair every day, bathed every Saturday and even changed their clothes, they often exalted themselves with many of these frivolous resources, in this way. way they laid siege to virtue. of married women and persuaded the daughters of even nobles to be his concubines end of the appointment, so this Chronicle is from many years later, it was not a direct account from an eyewitness and may be half in jest , but it is clear that the Norse did it regularly anyway. bathe every Saturday and this fact is confirmed on the one hand in their names for the days of the week, so their days of the week were based on the Roman week, so it begins with sunundag, which is simply Sunday, the day of the sun, then Manon dog for the moon like Monday Tuesday is Tuesday according to the Norse God Tour, then Wednesday is the dog of udin for Udin and then Thor's dog for Thursday is named after Thor, who is a god of thunder similar to the Roman god Jupiter Friday is friadag named after Frigg, a goddess associated with Love in the family is similar to the Roman Venus, but Saturday was not named after any god or body heavenly, but it was called Lao guardog, which is the Norse word for a hot spring where people went to bathe, so bathing on Saturdays was very essential.

Their lifestyle was probably ritual and ceremonial and probably involved more extensive grooming beyond simple bathing, so from the point of view of Western Europeans, the Scandinavians were remarkably meticulous about cleaning and grooming themselves, but the picture is different from the eastern point of view, there is more ambivalence because the Islamic East in particular had much higher standards of cleanliness than the Europeans and there is a very famous description of the Vikings again in IBN fodlan's travelogue, so who in his description of the Vikings in the Volga of the 920s, described on the On the one hand, the very impressive personal appearance of the Norseman and wrote a quote.

I have seen the Ruths when they came on their merchant voyages and camped by the Volga. I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy, each man has an axe, a sword and a knife, and he keeps them with him at all times. The swords are wide and grooved, of the Frankish type. Each man is tattooed from his fingernails to his neck with dark green or dark blue tree figures. Etc. Each woman wears on each breast a brooch made of iron, silver, copper or gold. The value of the brooch indicates the wealth of the husband.

Each brooch has a ring from which a knife hangs. Women wear gold and silver necklaces, one for every ten thousand hems that okay her husband some women have many end of the quote but on the other hand when IBN fodlan comes to their customs of bathing and cleaning, the image is not so attractive and writes a quote: they are the dirtiest creatures of God, they have no modesty neither defecate nor urinate, nor do they wash after contamination. of orgasm nor do they wash their hands after eating, they are like wild donkeys. Every day they must wash their faces and heads and they do it in the most dirty and filthy way possible, that is, every morning a girl's servant brings a large basin of water and offers him this. to his master and he washes his hands, face and hair, washes it and combs it with a comb in the water, then blows his nose and spits into the basin, when he finishes, the servant carries the basin to the next person who does the same She carries the basin around the house in turn and everyone blows their nose, spits and washes their face and hair in it end of the date, so you may see a tension here or even a contradiction between the Western and Eastern views of the Vikings and their personal habits and one can clearly see here, especially in IBN Fadlan's account, a clash of standards of purity and disgust.

Clearly, this whole scene and this whole process sounds incredibly disgusting to us, as it would to a Muslim or an Arab for whom IBN fadlan was writing. but, nevertheless, in defending the Vikings we must take into account some things, on the one hand, they came from a cold climate with very few diseases, there are no known epidemics that have broken out in the Viking era. Scandinavia had no cities, not even very large towns, nor mass diseases. and so it was Arguably not as big a threat for them to share germs through bodily fluids as it would be for people from other parts of Europe, the Mediterranean or the Middle East and hence the sense of disgust we feel at the thought of saliva and mucus.

Circling a home is culturally specific, and furthermore it seems that again the main point of this type of morning ablution ritual was personal care for personal appearance, not health. Now, as we heard, IBN Fadlan was also very impressed by the wealth and opulence of this place. The Viking colony on the Volga was a merchant colony, so it makes some sense, but it seems that over the course of the Viking Age society in Scandinavia also became quite wealthy and it wasn't just through raiding and plundering that there was exploitation. successful. also from trade, so how did trade work to increase the wealth of the Norse, while Scandinavia, as I said, is very rugged terrain, but trade and travel can be done by sea along the coasts and also by land through rivers, lakes and roads? and pedestrian paths, this type of travel was relatively difficult in summer due to mud and river flooding due to snowmelt.

The waters and also the dense forests and rocky terrain were very difficult to cross and this was especially challenging, apparently in Sweden, even though Sweden was flat. It was crossed by dense forests, lakes and marshes, so traveling through Scandinavia, including Sweden, was much easier in winter, which sounds counterintuitive, but in winter the lakes and rivers would freeze and the rocky terrain would become covered. of snow, which could then be crossed quite easily with sled skis and, on some surfaces, even skates, so important goods such as animal skins or fish could be traded and exchanged in Scandinavia and then on the sea routes, and then you could also export and obtain foreign goods, so what kind of goods could you export?

From the Nordic countries, obviously, there was wool and animal skins, also iron, there were great sources of iron that were extracted and exploited in both Sweden and Norway, and even today Sweden is one of the main suppliers of iron in the world, there were also special products. varieties of stone that could be valuable, such as slate, which was often turned into wet stones for export, soapstone that was used to make kitchen vessels, and rock crystal that could be cut for jewelry, religious sculpture, and vases. for drinking, very valuable export materials were also obtained. by hunters and fishermen in the far north and these include elk and reindeer antlers, some of which were obtained by hunting and others by trade with the Sami and, most especially, walrus tusks, which were the best ivory available in northern Europe and therefore the abundance of these resources.

Norse merchants were then able to trade abroad and import silver and gold, which were the most desired, and also other luxury goods such as wine and silk. Now, how was this foreign trade overwhelmingly carried out by sea, so the Norse settlements on the coast built and launched cargo ships that were made of carefully selected woods, with natural curves and shapes, which were then riveted together. These were sailing ships powered by square sails and were sometimes also supplemented with ore ports for human power and for maneuvering in small harbors and inlets. These sailing ships could travel quickly and easily across the Baltic and upriver to Eastern Europe, which was the main destination for trade goods from the Byzantine Empire, the Middle East, and even the Silk Road over the course of the era.

Viking, they also increasingly carried out Trade with Western Europe, as well as with Great Britain, France and Spain, the valuation in exchange for these goods was carried out mainly in seasonal markets that formed annually in meeting places. There were many of these in Sweden and they were celebrated especially in late winter when travelling. The easiest but largest in Scandinavia may have actually been cowpong on the southern coast of Norway, just south of what is now known as the Oslo Fjord. Very fine imported products, such as glassware and bronze work, from all over Europe were sold here.

How were these exchanges carried out? Well, it seems that the main medium of exchange was silver and gold, which could be transported and exchanged in raw nuggets or in small jewelry such as rings and earrings that could then be weighed on small portable scales and, over time, informal conventions emerged around regular size and quality. of gold rings which could then be easily counted and exchanged as a kind of unofficial currency or ring money, but gradually the medium of exchange shifted to coins and this began first with the infusions of large loads of coins brought from abroad, especially the Danish geld. which was being extorted from England and from this period more English coins have been found in Scandinavia than in Britain itself.

Eventually, some leaders and rulers in Scandinavia began to mint their own coins and this began with silver coins in Denmark in the early 19th century. but then became much more common in the late 20th century when peaceful overseas trade between Scandinavia and Christian Europe became increasingly common, so over the course of the Viking Age some of these seasonal market camps were established. became permanent cities, so cities were very rare in Scandinavia generally speaking and were not very large, the region was overwhelmed by a large agrarian and sparsely populated, not at all urbanized, but there were some important commercial cities, the largest and the most important was hedibi in Denmark.

Hadabi was located on the narrow isthmus connecting Youthland to Germany and was located just above the defensive wall of Donovirka. It had a fortified port on the Baltic and earthen walls protecting it and connecting to Dynavirka, so this was a very natural and obvious location for a trading city because it was the intersection of the land connection connecting Denmark to Germany and the rest of Europe and the sea routes where it had access to the Baltic to the east and then through a very narrow port to the North Sea and the west, so both trade and travel by sea and land intersected there and had to be, it seems to have grown quite early in the Viking Age untilbecoming a sizeable city of over a thousand people which for that time was impressive and included many Danish sailors, craftsmen, workers as well as foreign merchants, lazy people, Germans and other foreigners.

The next largest and most important city in Scandinavia was Birka in Sweden, which was located on an island in Lake Mileron, basically in the central east of Sweden, near Uppsala, and Birka was a similar commercial city, also with a defensive wall and a fortified port, was in this freshwater city. lake which, however, had a canal connecting it to the Baltic Sea and therefore had access to trade routes through the Baltic and to the East and appears to have been an important center of trade and exchange between Scandinavia and Europe of the East and the trade routes that ran to Asia and a clear marker of this is the Hellgo treasure that was found and excavated on the island of Helga, another nearby island in the same lake that had several exotic and fine goods, including a staff of bishop of Ireland, a northern bronze ladle.

Africa and, most famously, a bronze Buddha statuette that had been made in India, now, apart from hedibi and birka, which were by far the largest, most important and most vibrant, there were a handful from other important villages, such as some in Utland, which existed from early times, including Riba and Urhus, and then towards the end of the Viking Age, as trade increased, some new trading towns were founded such as Scara in Sweden and Trondheim in Norway. Now, besides these, there was a smaller city that I have mentioned. Before that, however, it was important socially and religiously, which is the religious pilgrimage city of Uppsala in Sweden, a short distance north of Birka, so these cities existed, you could say, as a kind of small islands of urban life in the midst of a great sea of ​​overwhelmingly agrarian agriculture and hunting. society-based life where society was again organized around clans, tribes and communities during the Viking Age, all Scandinavian countries were highly decentralized and decisions and disputes were resolved at the local level by local chiefs or by meetings of the thing However, there were a few.

Prominent leaders here and there who claimed a special title, the title of kuning, meaning some kind of ruler related to the German Koenig and the English king, it seems, according to some surviving documents, such as the kringla hymns, the chronicle of snorri sterlison that I mentioned before. that some of these Kunung leaders claimed to be of divine descent and therefore some kind of special cosmic or religious authority but nevertheless had very little concrete governmental power, most of them during the Viking Age had no royal administration or trained officials as administrators or tax collectors, they could only use their prestige or social status to try to achieve compliance from their supposed subjects in the form of tribute or military service or work on projects such as defensive walls;

There were also unclear and inconsistent rules of succession and when Akunung died there were often disputes over who would succeed him and these could be resolved through all sorts of unpredictable processes such as negotiation, sometimes joint kingship where a father and son or two brothers could claiming the title and having to rule cooperatively, sometimes dividing the kingdom into separate territories and sometimes battle, which would result in one or another contender being killed or fleeing into exile, so while it appears that there was some sort of king-like figures somewhere on the scene for much of the Viking Age, it was a very slow and messy process for them to gradually consolidate political power.

Over time, it appears that their power grew and there are several likely reasons for this: some rulers could use their Prestige to lead exploration, trade and plunder missions and recover wealth from these ventures and they could then distribute that wealth to various rulers. followers to accumulate and buy more support, thus creating a sort of continuous cycle of increasing influence and power. Furthermore, the population, it seems in general, saw certain advantages in political consolidation. Strong rulers could help protect land and sea routes around Scandinavia and abroad. They could curb endemic raids and disputes within their countries and allow for more peaceful trade and prosperity, and as the years went by and as grading became increasingly difficult and less profitable, this option became more attractive. instead of having a consolidated kingdom with limitations.

Conflicts and greater opportunities for travel and trade, in addition, the emergence of stronger and more centralized Royal Kingdoms in the rest of Europe to the south began to make unity and concerted defense seem more necessary and, particularly, in the course of the 20th century, the Nordic king began to build. The larger courts that received diplomats and visitors formed personal armies and began creating royal workshops and mints to mint coins and currency, and this process began primarily and earliest in Denmark, which again makes sense because Denmark was the closest and most exposed to large companies. The European kingdoms that threatened their security and also provided models of centralized royal administration, so Denmark during the Viking Age was repeatedly threatened from the south and even very early, as early as the year 600, they were threatened by Saxons and Slavs throughout of the Baltic and then in the year 700 they were threatened by Charlemagne, who conquered the Saxons and forced them to convert to Christianity and submit to his rule, so for all these reasons the Danes had to seek unity and concerted defense and they undertook projects such as the dawn of yerca along their borders.

On the southern border, then, in 900, they were threatened again by the resurgent kingdom of Germany, which in a sense rose from the ashes of the Frankish Empire and it seems that the Danes responded to this constant threat repeated from the south with much challenge. and the Frankish Chronicles of 800 record that the Danish kings whom they name, including one called Good Fred, who supposedly ruled in the early 800s, resisted this Frankish invasion and built and manned their defenses and resolutely repelled Christian missionaries. or the idea of ​​conversion, but after that time, for most of the rest of the 800s and 900s, there is very little reliable information about the kings within Denmark, perhaps they had quite little power in peacetime and were basically ceremonial figures who only exercised real power and leadership in times of external threat. but we do know that over time there arose powerful kings who are described in the surviving Norse records and the first of these is Gorm the Elder, who ruled in the mid-20th century and was reportedly the first to unite a large part of Denmark, mainly the mainland. called utland, he was then succeeded by his son named Harold Bluetooth, who succeeded gorm around the year 960. and Harold Bluetooth was significantly baptized and supported the introduction of Christianity in Denmark.

He also aggressively extended his power eastward, towards the Baltic Islands and as far as Scandinavia. Peninsula, so when he died, his kingdom included not only Youthland but also all the islands to the east and southern tip of what is now Sweden, including the provinces of Skena and Gutiland. He also claimed part of southern Norway, but this appears to have been tenuous and he was unable to hold it, so he had a very extensive kingdom unlike any previous Scandinavian ruler and he strove to secure it with large building projects, so he built roads. and bridges, including a huge one half a mile long.

Timber Bridge called Ravening Anga in South Utland. He also built a series of a network, you could say, of seven enormous circular earthwork fortresses around his various domains, five of them in what is now Denmark and two in Sweden, and some of these enormous fortresses that did not resemble nothing known. which were built earlier in Scandinavia, some of them are located in the C canals, but also some of them are inland, far from the coast, suggesting that they were not used to control sea routes or to launch expeditions abroad, Rather, they were most likely intended to house troops strategically around the kingdom in order to control the civilian population and suppress local resistance.

However, it appears that there were a series of rebellions of increasing size throughout Herald bluetooth's reign. and the last one was led by his son named Sven forkbeard and Sven defeated Harold who died in battle in 986. then Sven Forkbeard took the throne by force and united the country. It does not appear that he simply tried to repress and crush internal resistance, but that he brought together the various elites of the country for a great project that was an invasion of England and crossed the North. Sea, in a huge fleet that successfully landed in England, was proclaimed King by some of the parts and provinces of England, but he failed to capture London and died in this ongoing fight in England and, after his death, his dominions were They divided, so his eldest son named Harold regained the throne in Denmark, while his youngest son, Knute, claimed the throne of England and, in time, Knut was able to successfully assume rule in England and then subsequently, Also in Denmark and Norway, for a brief time in the early 1000s, Knute ruled. about a huge North Sea Empire that included much of Britain, Norway, Denmark and part of Sweden, but in some ways this success and the impressive extent of his kingdom were misleading.

Crowns in Scandinavia, including boots, were still quite weak and the rules of succession were still chaotic. and so Knutz's dominions fell apart shortly after his death, but nonetheless, the rise of Knute the Great and his ability to take advantage and capitalize on the reforms and efforts of his predecessors was still a turning point, so His rise to power in the early 1000s could be said to mark the beginning of a new era, a new era of growing royal power and centralization of increasing share in the rest of Europe, both facilitated by the emergence of Christianity, so Harold Bluetooth was not the only king in Scandinavia who saw Christianity. as advantageous as a way of overcoming and disguising regional and tribal differences and of refocusing prestige and authority around cities and around royal courts, and the joint emergence of modern anarchy and Christianity can be seen as a away from the Viking Age and towards integration into Christian civilization, but to understand why and how that is true, one has to understand how Viking raids actually worked and why the Norse undertook their raiding and plundering quests, and why That's the question of the rise and fall of the Vikings.

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