The Vikings (27 page)

To a modern reader, a striking feature of the Icelandic Family Sagas is the almost complete absence of any expression of wonder or curiosity about the new environment, certain features of which must have struck the settlers as very different from anything familiar to them in the old country: erupting volcanoes; lava fields that glowed in the night; sea-water washing across black sands; hot thermal springs, spouting geysers and steaming solfataras. Perhaps the novelty of it had worn off by the time the sagas were written down. The best-known exception to this apparent indifference to natural beauty is a scene in
Njals Saga
in which Gunnar of Hlidarendi rides down to the ship that will take him away from Iceland after he has been sentenced to three years in exile as an outlaw. He is accompanied by his brother Kolskeggur, who has received the same sentence:

They rode down to Wood River. There Gunnar’s horse stumbled and he leaped from the saddle. Glancing up toward the slope and his farm at Hlidarendi he said: ‘How beautiful the slope is! It has never seemed so beautiful before, with its ripening grain and new-mown hay. I am going to ride back home and not go abroad.’

Kolskeggur goes on alone to the waiting ship, but Gunnar rides back home. Shortly afterwards, he meets his death. One of many possible interpretations of the scene might be that an aesthetic appreciation of the landscape was not only a luxury but a dangerous luxury. For the first settlers the land was something to be cleared and used. The landscape was a route to be forced and conquered, not a subject for contemplation. The description in
Hrafnkels Saga
of Eyvind’s flight across Flotsdal moor, with Hrafnkel in pursuit, vividly conveys its harsh and refractory nature.
⁵²
In a brief section on the topography of Iceland in the
Historia Norwegie
, from the second half of the twelfth century, the author notes how wool or cloth that has been left in the waters of certain springs will turn to ‘stone’ overnight; and he includes a dramatic account of an underwater volcanic eruption. But it is not until the thirteenth century, and the Norwegian
Konungs skuggsjá
(
King’s Mirror
), a didactic work in the form of a dialogue between a father and son, that we get an extended insight into how the medieval mind regarded phenomena such as volcanoes, glaciers, the aurora borealis and the thermal springs. As late as the source is, it comes well before the spread of scientific rationalism and probably sounds an echo of past wonderment more accurately than it predicts future explanations:

Son: What do you think of the extraordinary fire which rages constantly in that country? Does it rise out of some natural peculiarity of the land, or can it be that it has its origin in the spirit world? And what do you think about those terrifying earthquakes that can occur there, or those marvellous lakes, or the ice which covers all the higher levels?

Father: As to the ice that is found in Iceland, I am inclined to believe that it is a penalty which the land suffers for lying so close to Greenland; for it is to be expected that severe cold would come thence, since Greenland is ice-clad beyond all other lands. Now since Iceland gets so much cold from that side and receives but little heat from the sun, it necessarily has an over-abundance of ice on the mountain ridges. But concerning the extraordinary fires which burn there, I scarcely know what to say, for they possess a strange nature. [ . . . ]

I am also disposed to believe that certain bodies of water in Iceland must be of the same dead nature as the fire that we have described. For there are springs which boil furiously all the time both winter and summer. At times the boiling is so violent that the heated water is thrown high into the air. But whatever is laid near the spring at the time of spouting, whether it be cloth or wood or anything else that the water may touch when it falls down again, will turn to stone. This seems to lead to the conclusion that this water must be dead, seeing that it gives a dead character to whatever it sprinkles and moistens; for the nature of stone is dead. But if the fire should not be dead but have its origin in some peculiarity of the country, the most reasonable theory as to the formation of the land seems to be that there must be many veins, empty passages, and wide cavities in its foundations. At times it may happen that these passages and cavities will be so completely packed with air, either by the winds or by the power of the roaring breakers, that the pressure of the blast cannot be confined, and this may be the origin of those great earthquakes that occur in that country. Now if this should seem a reasonable or plausible explanation, it may be that the great and powerful activity of the air within the foundations of the earth also causes those great fires to be lit and to appear, which burst forth in various parts of the land. [ . . . ]

Father: I have no doubt that there are places of torment in Iceland even in places where there is no burning; for in that country the power of frost and ice is as boundless as that of fire. There are those springs of boiling water which we have mentioned earlier. There are also ice-cold streams which flow out of the glaciers with such violence that the earth and the neighbouring mountains tremble; for when water flows with such a swift and furious current, mountains will shake because of its vast mass and overpowering strength. And no men can go out upon those river banks to view them unless they bring long ropes to be tied around those who wish to explore, while farther away others sit holding fast the rope, so that they may be ready and able to pull them back if the turbulence of the current should make them dizzy.

Later the father attempts to satisfy his son’s curiosity on the subject of the aurora borealis, another phenomenon of nature we might expect to find referred to frequently in the saga literature but in fact do not find at all:

Father: But these northern lights have this peculiar nature, that the darker the night is, the brighter they seem; and they always appear at night but never by day, most frequently in the densest darkness and rarely by moonlight. In appearance they resemble a vast flame of fire viewed from a great distance. It also looks as if sharp points were shot from this flame up into the sky; these are of uneven height and in constant motion, now one, now another darting highest; and the light appears to blaze like a living flame. While these rays are at their highest and brightest, they give forth so much light that people out of doors can easily find their way about and can even go hunting, if need be. Where people sit in houses that have windows, it is so light inside that all within the room can see each other’s faces. The light is very changeable. Sometimes it appears to grow dim, as if a black smoke or a dark fog were blown up among the rays; and then it looks very much as if the light were overcome by this smoke and about to be quenched. But as soon as the smoke begins to grow thinner, the light begins to brighten again; and it happens at times that people think they see large sparks shooting out of it as from glowing iron which has just been taken from the forge. But as night declines and day approaches, the light begins to fade; and when daylight appears, it seems to vanish entirely.

Finally the father describes the mineral-rich ‘ale-springs’:

Father: . . . There is still another marvel that men wonder at. It is reported that in Iceland there are springs which men call ale-springs. They are so called because the water that runs from them smells more like ale than water; and when one drinks of it, it does not fill as other water does, but is easily digested and goes into the system like ale. There are several springs in that country that are called ale-springs; but one is the best and most famous of all; this one is found in the valley called Hitardal. It is told about this spring, or the water flowing from it, that it tastes exactly like ale and is very abundant. It is also said that if drunk to excess, it goes into one’s head. If a house is built over the spring it will turn aside from the building and break forth somewhere outside. It is further held that people may drink as much as they like at the spring; but if they carry the water away, it will soon lose its virtue and is then no better than other water, or not so good. Now we have discussed many and even trifling things, because in that country they are thought marvellous; and I cannot recall anything else in Iceland that is worth mentioning.
⁵³

The rapidity of the colonization of Iceland owed much to the fact that there were no natives to subdue. Apart from the arctic fox there were no indigenous wild animals for the settlers to compete with either. Everywhere else the Scandinavians of the Viking Age gained a foothold - in Ireland, in England, in the Scottish islands, in Normandy, and later in Greenland and Vinland - they had to fight for it. Their own courage and willingness to adapt played a large part in the success of the venture. So did the elevation of law among them to an almost spiritual prominence, which kept the temptations of indiscipline at bay. The Icelanders were proud of their law. Iceland was as much
vár log
- ‘the domain of our law’ - as it was a location in the remote North Atlantic.
⁵⁴
An enduring peculiarity of this pride was that they did not complement the legislative and judiciary powers they had awarded themselves with administrative or executive authority. A verdict handed down in a court of law left the implementation of it to the successful litigant. The practical result was that might rather than right remained the deciding factor. The omission, if such it was, of an executive structure is in contrast to the formalism and sophistication of the legal procedures and has sometimes been seen as containing within itself, even at this early stage in its development, the seeds of the eventual collapse of the Icelandic free state over 300 years later.
⁵⁵

9

Rollo and the Norman colony

A glance at the Frankish annals recording events over the years since 820, when the first small fleet of thirteen Viking ships raided around the mouth of the Seine, shows how persistently the raiders used the great river to penetrate the territories of the Frankish empire. In the 840s, fleets under the commands of Asgeir and Ragnar sailed as far as Paris, looting and burning as they went. Rouen was captured and burnt by Asgeir in 841, and when he returned to the Seine in 851 Rouen served as a base from which to raid on foot in the region of Beauvais. A permanent camp was established on the fluvial island of Jeufosse, from which successive generations of Viking leaders were able to exercise control over access to the Seine. The Norwegian Sigtrygg, who spent time in both Ireland and Francia, joined forces with a leader named Bjørn to raid along the Seine as far as Chartres until beaten back in a rare military triumph for Charles the Bald. In 857 the two armies attacked Paris and captured and sacked Chartres. Bjørn was joined by Hasting early in 858 and the attacks from the Seine valley continued. As we saw in an earlier chapter, the power struggle that followed the death of Louis the Pious made things much easier for the Vikings.

Carolingian efforts to preserve order within the divided empire were made more difficult by a development in the system of royal administration whereby those royal officials like the counts, who had formerly been peripatetic and derived their authority from their position within the Carolingian hierarchy, claimed an increasing autonomy that turned them into magnates with local, geographically determined power bases. Dynasties developed, several of which established themselves in the region around what would later become Normandy, known as the Breton or Neustrian march. In the days of Charlemagne it extended from Calais to the borders of Brittany and its military role within the empire was to prevent the incursions of the notoriously independent Bretons from the west. Fifty troubled years after Charlemagne’s death it was clear that the region could not be defended and in 867 the Cotentin and the Avranchin were ceded to the Bretons. Chronic instability in the region persisted as they continued to push eastward without ever establishing themselves as the dominant power in the region.

At the same time the Carolingian churches and monasteries were abusing their privileges of royal immunity to the point at which they more or less rejected any obligations at all to central government. Having neither money, lands nor reliable armies, the Carolingian monarchy was reduced to issuing ineffectual decrees and ordinances. Lawlessness and theft were combated by decrees advising that violators be ‘admonished with Christian love to repent’; punishment was to be meted out to the guilty ‘as far as the local officials could remember them’. One forlorn decree even required royal officials to swear on oath not to become highway robbers themselves.
¹

To this brew of royal intrigue and looming anarchy Viking raiders added their own particular form of terror. Hasting and Bjørn raided again and again in the Cotentin and Avranchin and turned them into deserted wastelands. In 865 the crews of some fifty ships built a new camp on the Seine at Pîtres, and in 876 another fleet of about 100 ships sailed up the Seine and were bought off in the following year for 5,000 livres by Charles the Bald. Just as it had done in England, Viking terror devastated and demoralized the Christian Church. Bishops were killed at Noyon, Beauvais and Bayeux, and the record of bishops at Avranches ceases after 862, at Bayeux after 876 and at Sées after 910.

The policy of a sometimes well-meaning appeasement had been practised by Frankish rulers for almost a century prior to the agreement made in 912 between Charles the Simple, king of the Western Franks, and a Viking leader named Rollo. Usually these deals involved Frisia, from Rüstringen in the north to Antwerp in the south, and the beneficiaries were Danes. Hemming was given the harbour of Dorestad on the Waal, a tributary of the Rhine, in 807; Louis the Pious gave it to Klak-Harald in 829, between 855 and 873 it was in the hands of Rorik, and in 882 Godfrid took it over.
²
None of these episodes turned into a full-scale attempt to settle in Frisia and the archaeological record of the Viking presence there is sparse, but the story of Godfrid’s agreement of 882 with Charles the Fat, in which he was given ‘land to live on’ and a royal bride named Gisla, makes an interesting overture to Rollo’s establishment of the colony in Normandy.