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The Contemporary Image of the Vikings

By Tiago João Queimada e Silva

Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University of Latvia

Introduction
This paper´s main focus is the concept of “Viking” in contemporary epoch, and
how it was, and still is, reinvented and used in day to day life, whether in the cinema,
music, politics, publicity or other contemporary activity.

In fact, the concept of “Viking” is a nebulous one. Along the years, being a
Viking meant several different things: they were pirates, pillagers, raiders, kings and
statesmen, a cultural entity, democrats, poets, explorers, etc. It’s a relatively recent
concept, originally only used to describe piracy-related activities, somewhat barbaric,
and then evolved in a way that it started to refer to a whole people and culture, and a
chronological label, as well. Of course, it has a different meaning for different epochs,
consisting of different things in 10th century Scandinavia, 15th Iceland, 19th century
England or early 20th century Germany. Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that the
contemporary usage of the term “Viking” owes more to recent reinventions than it´s
original context and reality. Such reinventions were constructed mainly during the
Victorian “Viking-mania”, when there was a boom regarding Viking-related books and
translations of the Icelandic sagas. Nevertheless, we must thank the Victorian writers
and historians for raising the interest in Scandinavian early history, for we should
remember that before these times there wasn’t almost any interest in it, and its
knowledge was practically non-existent, excepting maybe the late 18th century, when the
Vikings were regarded as “noble savages”, but not from a historical viewpoint.

In recent years, archaeological studies grew, and so did the criticism about the
Vikings and who/what they were. Even in the field of arts there are now, sometimes,
attempts of giving a more “scientific” view of the Vikings, as we shall see. Nowadays,
the interest for the Vikings, its expansion, history and culture remains present
worldwide, reflecting its presence in various fields: cinema, music and other types of
art, as well as in the business and political world. The Vikings are popular also in
scientific circle, with some works on the Viking age being published and in the
museological field, especially in the places where the Scandinavian presence has been
felt in ancient times. In fact, the Viking-theme is one of the main attractors of people to
museums and reenactments, as we shall see.

1) Creation and development of the contemporary image of


the Vikings (19th - early 20th century)

As was said before, “Viking” was not a commonly established term in the 9th or
19th century: the raiders who usually assaulted the English coasts were also called
“Danes”, “Norsemen”, or simply “robbers” or “pirates.
So, as we can see, in ancient times, the usage of the concept of Viking was not
universal, and it began to be only in the contemporary age. In the 16th century,
almost nothing was known about early medieval Scandinavian history, and, in fact,
there wasn’t much interest, for such times were seen as an epoch of barbarism and
paganism, not having much to do with the neo-classical ideology of that time. As an
example, Ole Worm’s (1588-1655) catalogue of Danish monuments, Danicorum
Monumentorum, didn’t pay any attention to the Viking past of Denmark, at the time
being the classical civilizations much more interesting to scholars. In the 18th
century, Vikings began being regarded by some scholar’s, but not in a cultural or
historical approach. In fact, they were used as “noble savages” examples by writers
such as Rousseau.
In the ninth century, after the bombarding of Copenhagen, the Russian subduing
of Finland, and the humiliating defeat of the Scandinavian countries in the
Napoleonic wars, the interest in their Viking past began to arise. As in many other
European countries, in post-Napoleonic wars, Scandinavian national romanticism
emerged and, besides its nationalistic bias, this movement was of great value to
medieval historiography. In Denmark and Sweden, the Viking past began to seen as
a motive of pride and power by the educated classes. In some sense permitted the
maintenance of a national identity and self-esteem, after the recent stabs in their
national pride. We could give several examples of such movement: in 1808, Nikolai
Grundtvig (1783 – 1872) published “Northern Mythology”, in Denmark, while
campaigning to infuse the national education system with a “Viking spirit”, i.e., to
infuse the hearts of children with pride for their ancestors, who had been able to
conquer the whole North Sea, and build a strong empire. In this work, Grundtvig
retold the Scandinavian pagan myths, trying to establish Scandinavia as a
respectable European medieval civilization.
In 1811, the Gothic Society was founded, in Sweden, consisting on an all-male
group which celebrated the “gothic” past of Sweden, namely Götaland, former
centre of the early medieval Swedish realm. It seemed not to be a proper historically
concerned group, but instead laying more on the romantic/idealized view of
Swedish Viking past. As an example, we should recall its anthem which said that “in
ancient times, Goths drank from horns”. So, it gives us reasons to think that it led a
romanticized / aesthetic approach to the Viking past of ancient times. However,
prominent members of early 19th century Swedish society attended to the meetings
and dinners of this group. For instance, Erik Gustaf Geijer, author of the poem The
Viking, where he describes an ideal society, within which the interests of farmers
and high kings was completely harmonized. Also Esaias Tegnér, who wrote the
poetic romance Frithiof´s Saga, was a member of this society.
Besides the general interest raised in early medieval Scandinavian history, other
positive feature of the 19th century Scandinavian “Viking-mania” was the
development of archaeological studies: the burial mounds in Jelling (1820 and
1861), the three burial mounds at Upsala (1846/47 and 1874), the excavation of the
Borre ship burial (in 1852), and between1873 and 1895, over 1000 graves were
excavated, near the ancient trade-post of Birka, by Hjalmar Stolpe. Gradually, the
concept of a homogenous Scandinavian Viking Age culture emerged, comprising of
the period between 800 and 1050 AD. Influenced by the Darwinian perspective, the
Viking Age was seen as one more step in the evolutionary ladder. In the beginning
of the 20th century, due the rising nationalistic sentiment, especially in Norway,
where independence from Sweden was recently attained, the Viking Age became
one more of the “great civilizations” of the past, side by side with Greece, Rome or
the Carolingian Empire.
Outside Scandinavia, the Viking Age was initially seen as just another pre-
classical barbarian culture, but the prestige of this particular chronological epoch
was raised by the 19th century romantic appeal of the Sagas, allied with the renewed
interest in northern culture and the search for the “primitive” ancestors of central
and northern European countries. In 19th century Britain, occurred the ultimate
reinvention of the idea of “Viking”, which is still one of the main influences on the
contemporary view of the Viking Age. This reinvention dates back to the Victorian
epoch, and the Victorian values are dominant in it: the notions of race, valor and
enterprise. This vision brought with it some comparisons between the “Viking
spirit” and the enterprising spirit of Victorian England. English writers and painters
also were influenced by this approach, for instance, the pre-Raphaelite movement,
which gradually turned away from classical themes to Norse heroes and legends. In
1892, it was founded the Viking Society for Northern Research, which began to
publish the periodical Sagabook, the first one totally devoted to the study of the
Vikings. Its thematic scope of studies covered mainly the links between Germanic
myth and Christian religion, and it encouraged the study of Anglo-Norse sculpture,
especially the “warrior crosses” of northern England, which depicted images of
northern pagan myths alongside with Christian scenes.
At this time, several children´s books were published: in 1869, Robert Michael
Ballantyne published Erling, the Bold and in 1890, Reverend Sabine Baring Gould
published Grettir, the Outlaw. As we can notice by the titles, both of the books
stressed the courageous and wild spirit of the Vikings. Not only children´s books
were edited, but academic ones as well: in 1841, Thomas Carlyle published On
Heroes, Hero - Worship and the Heroic in History, where Odin was seen as a good
example of a strong, vigorous leader and symbol of strong leadership. In 1875, this
same author produced The Early Kings of Norway.
Generally speaking, 19th century British historians saw the Vikings as
barbarians, being the “others”, while the Anglo-Saxons were the “us”. However, we
must say that sometimes they were portrayed as worthy adversaries, and although
barbaric, they represented, somehow, the spirit of freedom. In fact, they were several
times defined as pioneers of democracy, namely in the Isle of Man and in Iceland.
Unfortunately, the Norse settlers in Britain failed to produce their own history and
accounts of reality, leaving us only the Western Saxon texts as sources of our study.
Probably, the composer and artist that most influenced the contemporary image
of the Vikings was the renowned Richard Wagner (1813-1883). During 1869 - 1879,
he composed the masterpiece The Ring of the Nibelung, which consists on a mixture
of Germanic and Scandinavian mythology, based on accounts of both the Ragnarök
(the twilight of the gods, in Scandinavian pagan mythology) and the tale of Sigurd,
an ancient Scandinavian legend. This musical play popularized the horned helmets,
the most well established feature of the Viking stereotype. Later, the horned helmet
were only associated with the valkyries, but in the original play, these women
warriors wore winged helmets, not horned ones. It has been proposed that the idea
of the horned helmets was borrowed from the costumes used in plays about the pre-
Viking Germanic peoples or from pre-historic Scandinavian art.
Whatever its origin, the horned and winged helmets became one of the
characteristic features of the 19th century representations of the Vikings, when
romantic artists began to explore pre-Christian Norse mythology, using a mixture of
Germanic, Celtic and Classical themes. As an example, in an 1820´s edition of
Frithiof´s Saga, Gustav Malmström gave horns to the Viking illustrations. In fact, in
the tapestry found at the Oseberg ship burial, there are depictions of horned figures,
but they are shamanic ones, represented as being on some kind of ceremonial
procession. Adding to this, there was found a horned helmet, dredged from the
Thames River in the 1860´s, but it proceeds from the Iron Age, not the Viking Age
at all. Being so, we have good reasons to assume that the horned helmets, the most
profoundly established feature of the Viking stereotype in the 19th and 20th century,
has its origins on depictions of warriors and shamans from other chronological
spheres, earlier than the Viking Age.
When we analyze the creation and development of the image of the Vikings in
the 19th century, we must refer to two more individuals. First of them, William
Morris (1834-1896) a renowned designer, author and revolutionary socialist, whose
passion for the Viking Age grew while studying at Oxford. Morris learnt Icelandic
and translated a number of sagas, together with Eiríkr Magnússon. He travelled to
Iceland in the 1870´s and also wrote Sigurd, the Volsung, during that decade. The
most interesting characteristic of this author is that he regarded the Vikings as some
kind of “socialists”. Morris was on the epicenter of the political unrest of 1886-87 in
Britain, being at the time an organizer of the Socialist League, which gave him the
opportunity to meet influential figures in the worldwide socialist movement. The
second individual that we should refer is William Collingwood (1854 - 1932), who,
inspired by the Norse legends and the landscapes of the Lake District (Cumbria,
northern England), wrote influential works such as Thorstein of the Mere, in 1895,
and Bondwoman, in 1896. In 1897, he travelled to Iceland, later publishing, together
with Jon Stefanson, Pilgrimage to the Sagasteads of Iceland. Collingwood was also
the president of the Viking Club, and dedicated to drawing and cataloguing the
Anglo-Norse stone pictures, permitting him to publish Northumbrian Crosses of the
Pre-Norman Age in 1927, perhaps his most important work, and still influential
today.

2) Vikings and National - Socialism

Originally, the NSDAP (National Socialist Party of the German Workers) was
not any kind of religious-influenced party. It consisted of an ultra-nationalist far-
right movement, which emerged in response to the growth of the Marxist-Leninist
parties worldwide, in a time when the working class fought to surpass such a
contradictory and oppressing economical system, as the industrial capitalism is.
After the defeat of the German Empire in the 1st World War and the rise of Adolph
Hitler to the leadership of the party, it became increasingly influenced by Wagnerian
mystique and a somewhat disturbed way of interpreting Nietzsche´s philosophy.
Gradually, such ideology became the official politics of the party, the Germans were
the Herrenwolk (master race) in Europe and they should extol the northern ancestry
of the German race. If we take in account such ideology, allied to the bellicose
sentiment surrounding NSDAP politics at this time, it´s not surprising that the
Vikings were used as role-models and racial forebears of the proud German people.
After the NSDAP/Hitler rise to power, they immediately commenced a crusade
against the so-called “decadent” culture, which should be replaced by the “aryan”
culture. The imagery of the Vikings, Old Norse language, northern mythology,
Wagner and peasant culture were, obviously, part of this new “aryan” order. It´s a
classical case of appropriation of history or established historical stereotypes for the
sake of political propaganda. In fact, to support its views, the Nazi regime
encouraged various excavations and archaeological researches worldwide. One of
them took place in Hedeby´s, the ancient trading-port in Denmark. The Nazis tried
to emphasize a union between the German people and the Scandinavians, and this,
undoubtedly, is connected with the later invasion of Scandinavia, serving the
scientific researches and the manipulation of history as the ideological factor of
legitimization of the military incursion. These ideas were also used by the
Scandinavian national - socialist movements. For instance, the Norwegian national -
socialist party always used as the barrow cemetery at Borre as the scenery for the
party´s meetings. Still today, some neo - Nazi movements in Scandinavia and other
countries of central/northern Europe use and pervert certain aspects of the pre-
Christian belief systems, as well as ancient Viking sites, as a way to justify
intellectually their political positions on race and other matters concerning national
identity.

4) The end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st


century

During the second half of the 20th century, and still nowadays, the Vikings
continue to fascinate and arise the interest of large sectors of the population. They
continue to sell books, serving as inspiration for movies and TV cartoons, they
advertise commodities and services such as beer or travelling companies, and they
lead thousands of people to museums and reenactments.
Serving as an example, we could point out the case of the Jorvik Viking Centre
(York), founded in 1984 and which welcomed 800.000 visitants in the first year of
activity. After 25 years, the Jorvik Viking Centre was visited by over 15 million
people. This centre contains a complete reenactment of the Viking town inside, with
the Viking Age streets and the possibility to be face-to-face with a real Viking. In
fact, you can add Eric Bloodaxe, the last Scandinavian king of York, as your friend
in internet-based social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter. There are Viking
Age reenactments in other parts of Europe, such as Scandinavia or the Baltic
countries, and also in North America. The reenactment groups enlarged their scope
of vision and are no longer centered on the “raider” or “pirate” stereotype. Actually
there are reenacted Viking camps where the trading components of Norse culture are
pictured, besides the human or familiar aspects (appearance of Norse women and
children).
The Viking concept also thrives in the artistic milieu, like in the cinematographic
or musical industry. Concerning the American movie industry, we should point out
two movies: the first is the 1958 movie The Vikings, directed by Richard Fleischer,
and featuring renowned actors like Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. In this movie, we
can see that the Victorian stereotype of the Viking as the fierce barbaric warrior,
though somehow noble, still subsists. This movie is the tale of Einar and Eric, two
half-brothers, one being a Viking prince and the other a slave, the latter turning out
to be the rightful heir to the throne of an early medieval English small kingdom.
Although not having the stereotypical horned helmets, this movie perpetuates the
Victorian image of the Vikings, heathen warriors who are capable of committing
atrocities, and yet lovers of freedom and even able to fall in love with a gorgeous
welsh princess.
Secondly, we should refer the movie The 13th Warrior (1999), directed by John
McTiernan, and based on a novel written by Michael Crichton (Eaters of the Dead).
Just like the original novel, this movie was intended to be historically more accurate,
reflecting the general concern about the veracity of Vikings descriptions, in the end
of the 20th century. In fact, they even use the name of a real historical person for the
main movie character: Ibn Fadlan, an arab who witnessed the life of the Rus, and
left valuable reports, where he described the habits of this people. In this movie, the
director attempts to portray the entire Viking way of life and culture. The Vikings
aren’t just blood lusty warriors, who want to raid and plunder, they are also humans,
with an organized society, with rules and codes of honor. Even the life a poor
defenseless community in the barbaric Norse homeland is portrayed, with all its
weaknesses and facing the perils of annihilation.
Not only in the cinematographic industry had the Vikings played an important
role, but also in the musical milieu. Especially in the Heavy Metal scene, they
served as inspiration for many bands. We should say that there are several different
sub-genres in the Heavy Metal world, and some of them are even called Viking
Metal or Viking/Pagan Metal, due to their main source of inspiration and thematic
approaches: the Viking Age, Viking culture, myths and beliefs. Bands like
Bathory,Burzum, Falkenbach, Graveland or Týr could be appointed as references.
This kind of bands usually use some stereotypical aspects of the concept of Viking,
but they also try to base their music and lyrics on real accounts of the ancient Norse
culture, such as the sagas or the components of the ancient Scandinavian myths that
are known to us. Nevertheless, we must assume that the “warrior” character of the
Vikings is the main theme of these bands, besides their heathen or pagan beliefs.
Actually, the “pagan” theme was appropriated by the actors of one of the most
curious movements that emerged amidst the underground extreme metal milieu.
With the appearance of the so-called Black Metal, in the early 90’s Norway, some
criminal events started to occur, like the well known burning of churches, murders
and all the sorts of arsoning, performed by the young musicians of this new sub-
genre of Metal music. These acts were motivated, in the beginning, by pure
pleasure, and justified by “Satanism” and the will to destroy the “decadent” Judeo-
Christian society. A few years later, and after some of the participants of the crimes
being jailed, some of the perpetrators justified the church burnings as part of a war
against Christianity, who destroyed the ancient Norse heathen culture. And of
course, his actions were motivated by this supposed newly declared war. Such is the
case of Varg Vikernes, who burned the Fantoft Church, an ancient Norwegian
church, built in the 12th century. Nevertheless, such negative features aren’t absolute
and some positive approaches in the Black Metal scene to the ancient Norse culture
have been done.
As we can see, the Vikings still live, as a historical phenomenon, but also in our
dreams and recreations of the past. To conclude, we should quote a clever remark
made by Jonathan Clements, in his book A brief history of the Vikings:
“The empire of the Vikings has faded, but their influence lives on – they are
fictional creations today, the creatures of movies and figures of fun or lurid horror”.

Bibliography

Clements, J., 2005, A brief history of the Vikings, Constable & Robinson

Helle, K., et al, 2008, The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Cambridge


Histories Online, Cambridge University Press

Richards, J.D., 2005, The Vikings: A very short introduction, Oxford University Press

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