Vikings set out from the fjords of Norway striking fear across Europe 1,000 years ago. Yet today this topographically severe country is the home of the Nobel Peace Center; is a world center for conflict resolution; is the starting point for explorers and adventurers; and is one of the most eco-friendly countries on earth. How could such a progressive nation grown from such violent past? Is modern Norway a result of its Viking heritage or a reaction against it?
In the year 793, long ships with dragon-headed bows and square sails crossed the North Sea and landed on England’s shore. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “The ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindesfarne.” From that moment the name Viking has been synonymous with pirates, violence and terror. “Viking” originally meant someone from Viken, the area around what is today Oslo. It quickly evolved to encompass an entire culture, and for the next 300 years, the word struck horror in the hearts of anyone living within reach of their lightning-fast ships and their deadly sorties. A chronicler in France wrote after one raid: “There did not exist a road which was not littered with dead priests and laymen, women, children, and babies.”
So why does there seem such a discrepancy between the ancient stereotype of the marauding pirate and modern, civilized Norway? The Viking age ended a millennium ago, yet it still resonates today. Could it be a romantic revision of a grisly past … or something else altogether?
To find out, I flew 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle to Tromsø, home of the world’s most northerly university which offers, among other things, courses in international conflict resolution, and perhaps in a not unrelated way, it is the beer capital of Norway, with more bars per capita than anywhere else. It’s often called the Gateway to the Arctic, and the Paris of the North, (though the latter’s rationale eludes).
On June 18, 1928, Roald Amundsen flew out of Tromsø on a rescue mission for the survivors of the airship Italia. Amundsen was 55 years old and world-famous for being the first to traverse the Northwest Passage — not to mention beating Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole. Now he was on an undertaking to save the life of his friend and fellow explorer Umberto Nobile, the noted Italian aeronautical engineer. In 1926 Amundsen accompanied Nobile in the airship Norge, designed by Nobile, on the first air crossing of the Arctic. Some consider Amundsen to be the first person to reach both poles, since he flew with Nobile over the North Pole long before Cook and Peary made their claims.
While in Tromsø I was reminded of the ancient Greek’s concept of Thule. They thought it was a place “near the frozen sea in which there was no longer any proper land nor sea nor air, but a sort of mixture of all three of the consistency of a jellyfish in which one can neither walk nor sail.”
The Vikings talked of a similar place they called Ginnungagap. Before all of creation there was only a huge place of chaos. That was where Amundsen was headed.
The Airship Italia had reached the North Pole on May 24, but bad weather forced the crew to turn back. On May 25, in gale force winds the airship crashed, killing one crew member. Nine others, including Nobile, escaped the wreckage, but six were trapped in the airship’s still-drifting shell and were blown away and never found. The survivors were salvaged a radio and sent out SOS signals for help. Amundsen and an international crew flew out of Tromsø to save the survivors, but they never made it. Their plane apparently crashed in the fog and mist of the Barents Sea and they were never found. It took 49 days before the crew members of the Italia were finally rescued, and brought back to Tromo, the Paris of the North.
From Tromsø I boarded a big boat known as the Norwegian Coastal Express, the Hurtigruten — one in the fleet of the 115-year-old shipping company that regularly ferries passengers and freight up and down the most scenic coast in the world. The journey replicates in some ways the passages Vikings made en route to conquer the world.
Voyaging south, we pulled ashore at Harstad, on Norway’s largest island, where the Vikings were well established by the ninth century. Most of whom we now would call Vikings were actually farmers and fisherman and lived here in peace.
Godly, violent roots
Outside of Harstad is the oldest medieval stone church in Norway. The Vikings were the last European pagans converted to Christianity, and their old religion co-existed alongside Christianity for hundreds of years. The Vikings were polytheistic; the Christians were not and wouldn’t tolerate multiple gods in their cosmology.
The early Christian missionaries insisted that political power was bestowed by god to the king. The Vikings didn’t see it that way. For them political power was practiced through an assembly of equals called the Ting. In one instance a farmer spoke before the Ting and argued that those who followed the new faith of the king would turn into slaves. Some scholars speculate that some of the Viking raids were in reaction to the “aggressive” Christian kingdoms to their south.
The Vikings enjoyed an oral culture, and as such there are no written religious texts, though we know a bit about the religion from Sagas and poems preserved by Icelandic manuscripts in the 13th century.
From these manuscripts we know about Odin, the chief of the gods. Odin is the god of war, and demanded human sacrifices. His palace is in Valhalla where he feasts every evening with the spirits of slain Viking warriors. Odin is responsible for the Viking’s fierce fighting spirit. In German his name is Woden, and Woden’s day is our Wednesday.
His son is Thor, protector of humans from evil. During storms Thor rides across the sky in a chariot pulled by two goats throwing thunderbolts to earth. His mighty hammer, which returned to him after being thrown, was often used as a defiant symbol of the pagans against the new Christian religion. Thor’s weekday is Thursday.
Friday is named after Freya, the most beautiful of the goddesses and the wife of Odin. Many English words come from the Vikings … One of my favorites? “Berserk” — derived from the frenzied state Vikings would work themselves into before battle. They would take magic mushrooms and don bear skins, and head into battle going Berserk.
Near the fishing villages of Lofotr we got a glimpse back through time at the other side of the Viking Spirit. In 1983 archeologists discovered the remains of the largest Viking dwellings ever found. They were then able to reconstruct the Viking Chieftain’s house, which included living quarters, a barn that could hold as many as 50 cows, and a banquet hall the length of a football field.
Contrary to popular belief, a Viking’s life didn’t revolve around raiding, but instead family and farm. This was the center of their life and the center of their world. One problem was that the Vikings were too successful at farming and fishing. They were often more healthy then their contemporaries in Europe, and they had many children who lived to adulthood. There was not a lot of arable land between the mountains and the sea, so many of the younger sons took to a more adventurous life, setting out on raids that stretched through Europe and into the Middle East and Northern Africa.
The women stayed home, but there they had importance and power. Women could own property, could divorce and they ran the farms. There was a gender egalitarianism that didn’t exist in the rest of Europe, or in Christendom.
Next I boarded the MS Nordkapp, one of the flagships of the Hurtigruten line, and headed toward Trondheim.
To some the Hurtigruten line is for the birds. And we sailed by many, including at least two that were quite extraordinary and worthy of mention. The first was the white-tailed sea eagle, with its 8-foot wingspan and claws that can open up a can of tuna.
Europe’s largest predatory bird, capable of carrying off lambs and, legend says, small children, they once ranged from Greenland, across northern Europe to Siberia. But because of pesticides, pollution and hunting, their numbers steadily declined. The coast of Norway is now home to one of the last large populations of sea eagles — some 2,500 pair — and has been at the center of recovery efforts since 1980. Recently, 15 young eagles from this area were released in Ireland, where they had been extinct since the 1800s. Here though, while purling up a fjord, we saw a dozen sea eagles, who swooped down like F-16s and plucked fish from the water just a few feet from the railings. Mothers hid their children.
The end, and beginning
Our final stop on the Hurtigruten Line was the medieval city of Trondheim, where the second extraordinary bird was present, at least in spirit … nobody in this room has ever seen one: the blood eagle.
In the 10th century, the Viking kings didn’t have the authority and status we often attribute to royalty. Power depended upon the support of chieftains and petty kingdoms, and reigns were often marked by continuous wars and battles to stay in control. One of those battles was fought near Trondheim by King Olav the Second, Norway’s first Christian King. It was in that battle against the Christians that the Vikings used … the blood eagle. It’s not on anyone’s life list. The blood eagle was a method of torture and execution performed by cutting the ribs of the victim by the spine, and then breaking the ribs so they resembled blood-stained wings. It was a favorite ornithological operandi against the Christians, but it too was endangered.
By 1030 Christians were still a minority in Norway, but Olav’s bloody death galvanized the fledgling religion. A cult soon grew up around the fallen king, and he became Saint Olav, Patron Saint of Norway. St. Olav achieved what had no Viking King before him — the unification of Norway, and Christianity spread like spilled blood across the land.
And it was the beginning of the end of Viking era.
Yes, despite hardships and challenges the Vikings proved that a spirit can live long past the usual date of disintegration.
Back in Oslo I asked Geir Lundstad, chairman and secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, how the Viking Spirit transports to the Norway of today.
“I think what’s left of the Viking Spirit is we like to travel — we like to get out there. We have social democracy — and low church Christianity has been very strong in Norway and that has influenced our approach to the world. And we believe that the values we have internally will be those we pursue internationally — Democracy, social justice, development assistance, aversion to nuclear weapons … all those things. We have certain examples of institutions and persons in Norway who have strengthened this profile and I think the Nobel Committee and the Nobel Prize would be one element.”
Other elements today include a government and population committed to crossing the bridges from contention to concord — an architecture that seems to have been built from the foundation stones of Norway’s Viking history. What then were the qualities that arced through time and helped build a country with merits that the world might consider?
- The Vikings employed new technologies; the fast square-sailed ship for instance, which allowed them to push the geographic envelope.
- They were bold, tough, unafraid of the unknown, and insatiable in intellectual curiosity.
- They were great businessmen, setting up a global trade network that created interdependencies.
- They had an outward-looking view, and embraced different cultures and human constructs, and incorporated the best into their own.
- But most of all, through their travels, they came to understand the interconnectedness of all things, and the virtues and necessities of peaceful co-existence. That’s the Viking spirit, and it is very much alive today in Norway.
- There’s a fjord in your future!
Watch for the television special, “Richard Bangs’ Adventures with Purpose — Norway: Quest for the Viking Spirit,” airing now on PBS stations nationwide.
All photos by Laura Hubber. Author featured in second image.