"No man should stir one step from where his weapons are, for he can never know when he might have use of them." So cautioned an ancient poem. In the violent Viking age a prudent man kept his weapons at hand, whether he was a farmer wary of a blood feud, a trader anxious about robbers, or a slave owner in fear of his chattel.
Although the Norsemen used bows and arrows in battle, they preferred spears, swords and axes. Spears were deadly at both long and short range, and the sagas memorialize feats of spearmanship. A Christianized warrior named Tryggvi won everlasting fame when, after being mocked as a priest’s son, he hurled a shower of spears at his pagan foes, using both hands and roaring. “That is how my father taught me to say Mass!"
But the Vikings’ greatest weapons were their heavy swords and trusty battle-axes that could crash through shields and armor and slay a man in one blow. Though Viking armorers produced steel, the finest blades were forged by craftsmen of Germany and France, and were treasured items of plunder and trade. Such weapons acquired their own personalities with names like "Leg-biter," the “Fierce" and “Long-and-sharp," and were lovingly handed down from father to son.
Viking iveapons ranged from a functional wooden shield and an iron spearhead to an elaborate tunic of chain mail and an ornamental battle-ax inlaid with a silver design o/ a sinuous beast.
BATTLE-AX HEAD
Of Herlaug’s brother Hrollaug, going on their knees to Harald. Then, the tale continues, the King called for his scissors and comb, had his long yellow locks cut off—and emerged from the barber as Harald Fairhair.
For all its fanciful detail, the lively tale reflects the historical fact that some time around 872—almost 100 years after the raid on Lindis-farne—Harald Fairhair established the first centralized rule over the disparate settlements scattered throughout the hills and valleys of Norway. wresting from dozens of chieftains their lands and their time-honored independent rule over local provinces. In the near century that had elapsed since the plundering of Lindisfarne, the wide-ranging Viking ships had brought home more than booty from their expeditions abroad; together with silver and gold came Christian fashions of cropped hair and centralized rule.
The saga does not end there. It only begins. Some of the nobles, too proud to bow to Harald. loving life too much to resort to the funeral mound, found another way of evading Harald’s unwelcome aspirations. They loaded their ships with their wives, children, followers, cattle, slaves and household goods, sailed across the sea, and settled on new land. And indeed, archeologists can date the appearance of Viking colonies on the Shetlands, the Orkneys and Iceland to the last third of the Ninth Century—the very time when Harald Fairhair was consolidating his power as king of Norway.
Typical of the bondi who raided, invaded and colonized abroad was one Egil Skallagrimsson, the 10th Century hero of a popular saga. His raiding expeditions were carried out pitilessly: the saga is a series of gleeful accounts of triumph over the weak and the gullible.
Egil was “exceeding ugly and like his father, black of hair,” says the saga. Notwithstanding that disclaimer, the eye of the Viking beheld him as a thing of beauty. He was a fearless fighter, a loyal friend, a colossal toper who could empty one oxhorn full of ale after another without passing out, and a daredevil who could keep his wits about him in the worst of predicaments.
Right from the start he showed promise. He quaffed when he was three and committed manslaughter at seven. In a tiff over a ball game with a youngster named Grim, “Egil became wroth and heaved up the bat and smote Grim,” killing his playmate, according to the saga. Servants and relatives came up with loud cries, and before the fracas was over, seven men were dead. Egil’s mother, clearly the proper helpmeet for a Viking male, pronounced her son to be “of Viking stuff” and said that, “as soon as he had age thereto,” the family should fit him out with “fleet keel and fair oars to fare abroad with Vikings” and “hew a man or twain.”
He was only 12 when the wish of his mother’s heart was granted. In due course he was to be found leading Viking expeditions across the far seas. Coming ashore with a dozen followers in a region known as Kurland, in modern Latvia, Egil scoured the countryside, slaying hither and yon and filling his ships with spectacular hauls of treasure. But an ad-v'enture would be no adventure at all without narrow escapes, and Egil had plenty of those.
In a clash one night with a Kurland farmer and a troop of followers, Egil and his comrades were overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers
And taken prisoner. The farmer wanted to execute them all on the spot, hut his son, a bloodthirsty lad, argued that it would be more pleasant to wait till morning when they could see the expression on the faces of the men as they were being tortured. The farmer agreed, and the prisoners were fettered and thrown into an outbuilding while the Kurlanders went off to a victory feast.
Scowling menacingly, the legendary Viking warrior hero Egil Skallogrimssan brandishes his sivord in this fanciful 17th Century Icelandic painting, which shows him dressed in the dandified garb af a much later era. Egil was a poet af note os well, and once wrote o 25-stanza ade, lamenting the drawning af his son.
Egil’s giant hulk had impressed his captors, and they had bound him hand and foot to a thick upright pole. But as soon as he and his friends were left unguarded, he used his strength to twist and tug at the pole until he was able to yank it out of the ground and could work his way free from it. He untied the ropes on his hands with his teeth, and then unshackled his feet and freed his companions. They began to explore the property. In another building they heard cries from under their feet, pried loose some boards and discovered three Danish Vikings who had been taken prisoner during a raiding expedition the year before and had been kept as slaves on the farm. With these new recruits to guide them, Egil and his men found their way to the Kurlanders’ treasure room and stripped it bare.
The men thought they had had enough adventure and profit for one day’s foray, but Egil objected that it was not warrior-like to slip away in the dark: “We have stolen the farmer’s property and he does not know it. Let us return to the farmstead and tell people what has been going on.’’ The others refused to listen to him and went back to their ship.
Egil returned alone. Coming upon a fire, he picked up one of the logs, carried it to the hall where the Kurlanders were carousing, and thrust it under the eaves of the roof. The roof caught fire, and brands began falling on the banquet table. As the building burned, most of the befuddled Kurlanders died where they sat; those who tried to push their way out the door fell under Egil’s ax. When they were all dead, Egil marched back to the ship and claimed, and got, the lion’s share of the booty.
He then moved on, making additional and always profitable raids along the way on the coasts of Denmark, Holland,.England, Sweden and Norway. Finally, as the years passed, even Egil began to feel old and tired and returned to a farm in Iceland, where he took up the life of a wealthy bondi on his land.
He lived on to be a feeble, crippled, blind old man, huddling by the fire, ignored by his kinfolk, scolded by cooks and servant girls for getting in their way. But the Viking fires burned on in Egil to the end. He went out riding one day with two slaves and his chests of silver. He came back alone and never said a word of what had become of the slaves or the silver: presumably he had buried the lot.
Later that year Egil died and was buried with his weapons. Generations passed, and some outsized human bones were dug up and were generally believed to be Egil’s. The skull was remarkably large and heavy. It was set on a churchyard wall, and someone decided to test its hardness by swinging at it with the reverse side of his ax. “But the skull neither dented nor split,’’ relates the saga. “It only turned white, and from that anybody could guess that that skull would not have been easily injured by the blows of small fry when it still had skin and flesh on it.’’
Such was the stuff of the Vikings.
World History
