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What would a Viking, transported forward in time, think about today’s events?

“What, you invaded Iraq and you didn’t take the oil?”

The Sagas of the Icelanders is a thick, Penguin paperback with a Preface by Jane Smiley, who wrote a novel some years ago called The Greenlanders, another in a long list of books that take their brooding tone from the original sagas.

Sagas includes the major works from Iceland, prose histories that sometimes dip into fantasy.  Histories of specific families and people, their feuds, their loves, their alliances, their travels and adventures.

There are plenty of battles and a poem or two:

Like bees, arrows flew

from his drawn bow of yew.

Eirik fed flesh

to the wolf afresh.

Or, if you aren’t into battle, perhaps a little daily, self-help advice:

The wielder of iron must rise

early to earn wealth from his bellows . . .

I let my hammer ring down . . .

on precious metal of fire.

Reading the prose parts, one gets a keen sense of the network of friendship, loyalty, alliances, gift-giving, conflict, rivalry and sometimes outright feuding that made up Icelandic society.  There was no king.  There was no sheriff.  If a person felt wronged, he could take his case to the Althing, a yearly gathering to make laws and try cases.  Winning depended as much upon points of law as it did upon collecting allies to enhance your position.

One also gets a sense of how hard these folks worked, when they were not off doing the hard work of raiding.  They were farmers and herders and fishermen, and their conflicts were not over magic rings, but over the grazing field that sat between two estates or one guy roughing up another’s hired help.

I count sixteen tales:  Egil’s Saga, The Saga of the People of Vatnsdal, The Saga of the People of Laxardal, Bolli Bollason’s Tale, The Saga of Hrafnkel Frey’s Godi, The Saga of the Confederates, Gisli Sursson’s Saga, The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue, The Saga of Ref the Sly, The Saga of the Greenlanders, Eirik the Red’s Saga, The Saga of Thorstein Staff-struck, The Tale of Halldor Snorrason II, The Tale of Sarcastic Halli, The Tale of Thorstein Shiver, The Tale of Audun from the West Fjords and The Stale of the Story-wise Icelander.

ISBN 0141000031

Jan Kiergard of DeKalb, Illinois died a few years ago.  He had the Viking spirit, maybe too much for this day and age. 

I shed some tears when I learned that he was gone.

Jan was tall, with dark hair, wide mouth, low voice, deep intellect and teutonic outlook on life.  He loved to fish in the border regions up north.  Rumor had it that he’d get in a fight every now and then, which I can believe, though I never saw it.  He certainly cultivated a manly presence, and like the ancestors, he loved his beer. 

He once told me, after we examined at a photograph of him, that he had the kind of look that demanded a bronze age helmet on his head.  He was right.  He looked barbaric.  Yet, he was an intellectual, working for years at Northern Illinois University’s English Department.

Long ago, when I was single and Jan was married, he said, “Mark, I’m damned sure that if I was single I’d enjoy it a heck of a lot more than you are.”  He was right, of course.  He had a live hard, enjoy life outlook that demanded good steaks, being outdoors, smoking good cigarettes, and drinking fine spirits. 

My favorite memory of Jan is on the golf course.  When a ball hits a green it makes a dent, and most golfers know the etiquette.  They take a tee and drive it into the dent and pull up here and there until the green is flat again.  I remember the first time that we golfed, I made my shot and looked up to see Jan performing surgery on the green with his gigantic folding knife, carefully wiping it clean on the green, and putting it back in its little leather holder on his belt.

That’s the kind of detail that was typical of Jan and drew me into his company time and time again.

I hope that you think of me now and then, Jan, up there in the Hall.  I hope they’ll at least let me pay you a visit there when it is all over.

Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe:  Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions by H. R. Ellis Davidson is that rare animal, a truly fascinating and scholarly work.  Just about every claim made is backed up with a reference to archaeological or literary primary sources.  Not only can you learn about valkyries, for example, but you can learn how we know anything at all about them, the poetic references, the ancient art works showing them, etc.  Davidson shows the often close parallels between Norse and Celtic religion, and isn’t afraid to note what we do not know.

Welcome to Norse Wisdom, where we discuss the religion, the pragmatic outlook, the history and the spirit of Scandinavian Europe.

We have so much from this period, and yet so little.  Much of the material is enigmatic.  Much of it is foreign to the 21st Century.  But that is what I find so attractive about it.  As the last people to accept Christianity, for example, the Vikings stand at the dividing point between the pagan and the Christian, the barbarian and the civilized, the mysterious and the familiar. There they stand, holding out their hands to us, and when we reach out to take them, they recede.

Some of my relatives lived in these areas.  When I read the histories I can almost see their faces, but you do not have to be Danish or Swedish or Norwegian or Icelandic to feel that.

Please leave a post and come back to the site.  I will be writing very short essays about the Vikings and those who came before them, and I will be reviewing books on the subject.  Feel free to introduce a new topic.