139. THE VIKING AGE
DAWN OF HISTORY IN SCANDINAVIA
The Viking Age, with which historic times begin in northern Europe, extends from about 800 A.D. to the introduction of Christianity in the tenth and eleventh centuries. This was the period when the Northmen, or Vikings, realizing that the sea offered the quickest road to wealth and conquest, began to make long voyages to foreign lands. In part they went as traders and exchanged the furs, wool, and fish of Scandinavia for the clothing, ornaments, and other articles of luxury found in neighboring countries. But it was no far cry from merchant to freebooter, and, in fact, expeditions for the sake of plunder seem to have been even more popular with the Northmen than peaceful commerce.
THE NORTHMEN AS SAILORS
Whether the Northmen engaged in trade or in warfare, good ships and good seamanship were indispensable to them. They became the boldest sailors of the early Middle Ages. No longer hugging the coast, as timid mariners had always done before them, the Northmen pushed out into the uncharted main and steered their course only by observation of the sun and stars. In this way the Northmen were led to make those remarkable explorations in the Atlantic Ocean and the polar seas which added so greatly to geographical knowledge.
SHIPS OF THE NORTHMEN
It was not uncommon for a Viking chieftain, after his days of sea-roving had ended, to be buried in his ship, over which a grave chamber, covered with earth, would be erected. The discovery of several of these burial ships enables us to form a good idea of Viking vessels. The largest of them might reach a length of seventy feet and hold as many as one hundred and twenty men. A fleet of the Northmen, carrying several thousand warriors, mail-clad and armed with spears, swords, and battle-axes, was indeed formidable. During this period the Northmen were the masters of the sea, as far as western Europe was concerned. This fact largely explains their successful campaigns.
[Illustration: A VIKING SHIP The Gokstad vessel is of oak, twenty-eight feet long and sixteen feet broad in the center. It has seats for sixteen pairs of rowers, a mast for a single sail, and a rudder on the right or starboard side. The gunwale was decorated with a series of shields, painted alternately black and gold. This ship, which probably dates from about 900 A.D., was found on the shore of Christiania Fiord. A still larger ship, of about the same date, was taken in 1904 A.D. from the grave of a Norwegian queen at Oseberg. With the queen had been buried a four-wheeled wagon, three sleighs, three beds, two chests, a chair, a large loom, and various kitchen utensils, in fact everything needed for her comfort in the other world.]
THE SAGAS
A very important source of information for the Viking Age consists of the writings called sagas. [5] These narratives are in prose, but they were based, in many instances, on the songs which the minstrels (skalds) sang to appreciative audiences assembled at the banqueting board of a Viking chieftain. It was not until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the sagas were committed to writing. This was done chiefly in Iceland, and so it happens that we must look to that distant island for the beginnings of Scandinavian literature.
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE SAGAS
The sagas belong to different classes. The oldest of them relate the deeds of Viking heroes and their families. Others deal with the lives of Norwegian kings. Some of the most important sagas describe the explorations and settlements of the Northmen and hence possess considerable value as historical records.
THE NORTHMEN AS SEEN IN THE SAGAS
The sagas throw much light on the character of the Northmen. Love of adventure and contempt for the quiet joys of home comes out in the description of Viking chiefs, who "never sought refuge under a roof nor emptied their drinking-horns by a hearth." An immense love of fighting breathes in the accounts of Viking warriors, "who are glad when they have hopes of a battle; they will leap up in hot haste and ply the oars, snapping the oar-thongs and cracking the tholes." The undaunted spirit of Viking sailors, braving the storms of the northern ocean, expresses itself in their sea songs: "The force of the tempest assists the arms of our oarsmen; the hurricane is our servant, it drives us whithersoever we wish to go." The sagas also reveal other characteristics of the Northmen: a cruelty and faithlessness which made them a terror to their foes; an almost barbaric love of gay clothing and ornament; a strong sense of public order, giving rise to an elaborate legal system; and even a feeling for the romantic beauty of their northern home, with its snow-clad mountains, dark forests of pine, sparkling waterfalls, and deep, blue fiords.
EDDAIC POEMS
It is to the Viking Age also that we owe the composition of the poems going by the name of the Elder Edda. These poems, as well as the prose sagas, were collected and arranged in Iceland during the later Middle Ages. The Elder Edda is a storehouse of old Norse mythology. It forms our chief source of knowledge concerning Scandinavian heathenism before the introduction of Christianity.