The Vikings Reimagined

Reception, Recovery, Engagement

Tom Birkett, Roderick Dale, Tom Birkett, Roderick Dale

• Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781501513640
• Subtopic: Museum Administration
• Index: History

The Vikings Reimagined explores the changing perception of Norse and Viking cultures across different cultural forms, and the complex legacy of the Vikings in the present day. Bringing together experts in literature, history and heritage engagement, this highly interdisciplinary collection aims to reconsider the impact of the discipline of Old Norse Viking Studies outside the academy and to broaden our understanding of the ways in which the material and textual remains of the Viking Age are given new meanings in the present. The diverse collection draws attention to the many roles that the Vikings play across contemporary culture: from the importance of Viking tourism, to the role of Norse sub-cultures in the formation of local and international identities. Together these collected essays challenge the academy to rethink its engagement with popular reiterations of the Vikings and to reassess the position afforded to 'reception' within the discipline.

1 Vikings!

M. J. Driscoll

University of Copenhagen

Nearly 40 years ago, in 1980, the British-Icelandic television personality Magnus Magnusson scripted and presented a series for the BBC called Vikings!, which was accompanied by a large coffee-table-style book of the same name. The exclamation point was telling: Vikings were exciting in a way that few other actors in history could be: one somehow cannot imagine a major BBC series called Monks! or Ironmongers!

The series and accompanying book were typical of a new trend in the popular perception of the Vikings, a trend which had begun perhaps a decade earlier. On the very first page of Vikings!, Magnusson states that the received image of the Vikings as “merciless barbarians who plundered and burned their way across the known world” was in the process of being replaced by “a fuller and rounder” one, where there was “less emphasis on the raiding, more on trading; less on the pillage, more on the poetry and artistry; less on the terror, more on the technology of these determined and dynamic people from the northlands of Denmark, Norway and Sweden and the positive impact they had on the countries they affected.”¹

Interest in the Vikings continued, with publication after publication, and major exhibitions such as “Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga” at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C. in 2000 and another, a collaboration between Denmark’s Nationalmuseet, the British Museum in London, and the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin, held sequentially in all three cities in the years 2013–2014. This Viking frenzy has perhaps now reached its culmination with another TV series with almost the same name as Magnusson’s, History channel’s Vikings, which began in 2013 and at time of writing is in its fifth season. Vikings are everywhere.

The Word “Viking”

Although the word “Viking” is attested in early written sources, both Old Norse and Old English, its origin is disputed.² A word’s etymology is of course not the same as its meaning. The origin of the word “dog” (canis familiaris) is also unknown, and, in the words of the OED, “all attempted etymological explanations are extremely speculative,”³ but there is no uncertainty whatsoever as to what it means.

So it is with “Viking.” Its attestations in Old Norse (and Old English, on which see below) indicate clearly that it refers almost exclusively to men, predominantly Scandinavians, who practiced piracy at sea. It is also clear that it was primarily something one did, rather than something one was.

There are two separate words. One, a feminine abstract noun, víking, was used to refer to the practice of voyaging to foreign parts to engage in plundering there, “að fara í víking(u)” (to go a-viking) or “að vera í víking(u)” (to be a-viking).⁴ Those who went west, to the British Isles, Ireland, and Northern France, “fóru í vestrvíking,” while those who went east, to the Baltic and into the land of the Rus, “fóru í víking í austrveg.” As explained in Cleasby-Vigfusson: “In heathen days it was usual for young men of distinction, before settling down, to make a warlike expedition to foreign parts; this voyage was called ‘víking,’ and was part of a man’s education like the grand tour in modern times.”⁵

The other word, víkingr (pl. víkingar), a masculine noun, is simply one who engaged in such activities, a pirate, in short. It is used principally in the plural to refer to bands of pirates, but is certainly not unknown in the singular – phrases such as “hann var víkingr mikill” (he was a great Viking) abound in the sagas – and is even found as a personal name or cognomen on rune-stones from the early eleventh century. Its use in the sources indicates that it was not an occupational designation, however. While a shoemaker might be so described even when not actively engaged in making shoes, a Viking was only a Viking when out a-Viking. So Ragnar’s wife Áslaug, in response to the question “What does your husband do for living, Mrs. Loðbrók?” is unlikely to have replied “He’s a Viking.” Though if asked “Where is your husband, Mrs. Loðbrók? she might well have replied, “He’s gone Viking.”

There is no consensus regarding the origin of either of these words, although it is assumed that they are related – that is, that one derives from the other. Although most attempts at determining their origin focus on the masculine noun víkingr, it is for various linguistic reasons the feminine noun which is more likely to have come first.⁶

One of the most popular theories, or at least one of the most persistent, for the word’s origin derives it from vík (a bay, creek, or inlet), allegedly owing to the Vikings’ predilection for using such bays and creeks as places from which to launch their attacks. Some would even have it refer specifically to Vík – used generally with the definite article, Víkin – the name for the large fjord in southern Norway on which the city of Oslo now lies. There are various problems with this explanation, however. Firstly, Vikings do not in fact seem to have frequented bays and inlets, preferring small islands or headlands, where they could more easily defend themselves from attack by land. Nor did a particularly significant proportion of Vikings come from Víkin. Secondly, although the masculine noun víkingr (víkingur in modern Icelandic) is the ordinary term for inhabitants of settlements whose names end in –vík, such as Reykjavík or Húsavík, the inhabitants of which are known to this day as Reykvíkingar and Húsvíkingar respectively, there are no instances of its use other than in cases of such composite place names – and indeed, the inhabitants of Vík(in) are known as víkverjar (sing. víkverji), not víkingar. Given all of this, derivation from vík would not seem to have much going for it. It is, however, corroborated, seemingly, in the Irish (Gaelic) name for Scandinavia, and specifically Norway, Lochlann (place of lochs – that is, fjords), an inhabitant of which is referred to as Lochlannach, a word also used of marauders generally.⁷

A rival theory derives the word víkingr from the Old English wīc (a camp or temporary settlement),⁸ itself a loanword from Latin vicus, the formation of such temporary encampments being a feature of Viking raids. Instances of the word wīcing (pl. wīcingas) are found in a variety of Old English sources, sometimes glossed with the Latin pirata. A derived verb, wīcian, to make such a camp, would be the origin of the feminine noun víking.⁹ According to this theory the Old Norse words are in fact borrowings from Old English, or, given their apparent age, from Anglo-Frisian. It is interesting, and undeniable, that these Old English attestations predate the earliest instances in Old Norse by several centuries, and indeed predate the so-called Viking Age.

Old English wīc can also have the sense “harbor, trading place, or town.” Derivation from this began to be stressed in connection with the rebranding of the Vikings as merchants and traders. This is in no way supported in the actual sources, unfortunately, where a clear distinction is maintained between víking and kaupferðir; the following sentence, from Egils saga Skallagrímssonar, is typical: “Bjǫrn var farmaðr mikill; var stundum í víking en stundum í kaupferðum” (Bjǫrn was a great seaman, sometimes raiding, sometimes on trading voyages).¹⁰

Other possibilities have been proposed – for example, that the term derives from víkja, a verb meaning “to turn (away) or move,” according to some at least with reference to the way in which the Vikings, cat-like, turned suddenly to pounce upon their prey, and/or having so pounced, were quickly gone again. A slightly less fanciful explanation takes víkja in the sense of “departing, leaving home.” This i...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction Vikings in the Public Eye
• 1 Vikings!
• 2 My Vikings and Real Vikings: Drama, Documentary, and Historical Consultancy
• 3 (Re)discovering the Vikings in Poland: From Nineteenth-Century Romantics to Contemporary Warriors
• 4 Women in Viking Reenactment
• 5 Who’s Afraid of an Electric Torch? Reimagining Gender and the Viking World in Contemporary Picturebooks
• 6 The Terrible Njorl’s Saga: Comedic Reimaginings of the Íslendingasögur from the Victorians to the Present Day
• 7 The One that Got Away in Old Norse Myth, Moby-Dick, and the Work of Hugh MacDiarmid
• 8 Death ere the Afternoon: Jómsvíkinga saga and a Scene in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls
• 9 “(No More) Reaving, Roving, Raiding, or Raping”: The Ironborn in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones
• 10 A Saga King in a Finnish Beijing Opera
• 11 “Pick up Rune”: The Use of Runes in Digital Games
• 12 From Barbarian to Brand: The Vikings as a Marketing Tool
• 13 Raiding the Vikings: How Does Ireland Consume Its Viking Heritage?
• 14 The Great Viking Fake-Off: The Cultural Legacy of Norse Voyages to North America
• Afterword: Tell These Stories Yourself
• Index