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 THE VIKING AGE

READINGS IN MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATIONS AND CULTURES: XIV

series editor: Paul Edward Dutton
The Gokstad Ship, built c. 890. Later used for a burial. Now in the Viking Ship Museum,
Oslo.

Source: Paul B. du Chaillu, The Viking Age, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899),
vol. 1, frontispiece.
 THE VIKING AGE

A READER

third edition

edited by

ANGUS A. SOMERVILLE
and R. ANDREW MCDONALD

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS

Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2020
Toronto Buffalo London
utorontopress.com
Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-4875-7048-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4875-7049-1 (ePUB)

ISBN 978-1-4875-7047-7 (paper) ISBN 978-1-4875-7050-7 (PDF)

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a
retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying, a
licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of
the copyright law.

library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

Title: The Viking age : a reader / edited by Angus A. Somerville and R. Andrew McDonald.
Names: McDonald, R. Andrew (Russell Andrew), 1965–, editor. | Somerville, Angus A.,
1943–, editor.
Description:Third edition. | Series statement: Readings in medieval civilizations and c­ ultures ; XIV |
Translated from the Old Norse and the Old English. | Includes bibliographical ­references
and indexes.
Identifiers: Canadiana 2019018163X | ISBN 9781487570484 (cloth) | ISBN 9781487570477 (paper)
Subjects: LCSH:Vikings—Sources. | LCSH: Civilization,Viking—Sources. |
LCSH: Northmen—Sources.
Classification: LCC DL65 .V54 2019 | DDC 948/.022—dc23

We welcome comments and suggestions regarding any aspect of our publications—please feel free
to contact us at news@utorontopress.com or visit us at utorontopress.com.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders; in the event of an error or omission,
please notify the publisher.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of
the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of
Ontario.

Funded by the Financé par le

Government gouvernement
of Canada du Canada
 For

Barbara, Anna, and Clare

Jacqueline, Emma, and Colin

MAP OF THE VIKING WORLD
 CON T E N T S

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS  •  xv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  
•  
xvii

•  
INTRODUCTION   xix

CHAPTER ONE: THE SCANDINAVIAN HOMELANDS  • 1

1. The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan  •  2
2. Description of the Islands of the North  •  6

CHAPTER TWO: SCANDINAVIAN SOCIETY  • 17

3. The Lay of Rig (Rígsþula)    •  18
4. Politics in Harald Finehair’s Norway  •  28
5. Hoskuld Buys a Slave  •  38
6. Slave Revolts   •   39
(a) Hjorleif ’s Slaves Revolt  •  39
(b) A Slave Revolt in Egil’s Saga  •  
41
7. How the Hersir Erling Treated His Slaves  •  41

CHAPTER THREE: EARLY RELIGION AND BELIEF  • 43

8. The Norse Creation Myth  •  44
9. Ragnarok: The Doom of the Gods  •  53
10. Odin Welcomes Eirik Bloodax to Valhalla  •  58
11. Odin Hangs on Yggdrasil  •  60
12. Odin and Human Sacrifice  •  62
(a) The Death of King Vikar  •  62
(b) The Deaths of Domaldi and Olaf Tretelgja  •  64
13. Sigurd, the Earl of Lade, Sacrifices to the Gods  •  65
14. The Temple at Uppsala  •  66
15. A Temple in Iceland  •  67
16. Norse Funeral Practices  •  69
(a) Snorri’s History of Burial Practices  •  69
(b) Odin Orders Cremation and Becomes a God  •  70
(c) The Death of Baldur the Good  •  71
(d) Gunnar’s Burial Mound  •  73
17. The Living Dead  •  74
(a) Gunnar’s Posthumous Poem  •  74
(b) Grettir’s Fight with Glam  •  75

vii
 the viking age: a reade r

CHAPTER FOUR: GENDER IN THE VIKING AGE  • 85

18. Manly Men   •   86
(a) Gunnar Weeps   •   86
(b) The Death of Gunnar  •  87
(c) Egil and Armod   •   90
19. Unmanly Men   •   91
(a) Deadly Insults from Grágás   •   91
(b) A Flyting between Sinfjotli and Gudmund  •  91
(c) Egil in Old Age  •  94
20. Strong Women   •   96
(a) Unn the Deep-­Minded Takes Control of Her Life  •  96
(b) The Goading of Hildigunn  •  100
(c) The Prowess of Freydis, Daughter of Eirik the Red  •  102
21. Mothers and Sons  •  104
(a) Gudrun Drives Her Sons to Take Revenge  •  104
(b) Gudrun Osvifrsdottir’s Incitement of Her Sons  •  109
22. Making and Breaking Marriages  •  111
(a) Betrothals from the Sagas  •  111
(i) The Betrothal of Olaf Hoskuldsson  •  111
(ii) How Unn Mordsdottir Found Herself Betrothed  •  113
(b) Divorces from the Sagas  •  115
(i) How Gudrun Divorced Thorvald  •  115
(ii) Vigdis Divorces Thord Goddi  •  116
23. Women’s Work   •   120
(a) Housework in Laxdale Saga   •   120
(b) Magical Women   •   121
(i) The Greenland Prophetess  •  121
(ii) A Phallic Ritual: Passing the Penis  
•  
123
24. Men and Women Behaving Badly  •  125
(a) Queen Gunnhild Has Her Way with Hrut  •  125
(b) Gisli Sursson Defends the Family Honor  •  129
(c) On the Penalties for Poetry  •  130
(d) Hallfred the Troublesome Poet and Kolfinna  •  130
(e) Grettir the Strong Puts a Woman in Her Place  •  131
25. Same-Sex Encounters   •   132
(a) Penitential of Saint Thorlak  •  132
(b) Civil Penalties in Early Norwegian Law  •  133
(c) Njal Gives a Garment to Flosi  •  133
(d) King Harald Gormsson and the Land-­Spirits  •  134
(e) Gisli Sursson Fights Skeggi the Berserk  •  136

viii
 conte nts

26. Gender Instability: Trans-­Gender and Gender-Shifting  •  138

(a) From Gulathing Law: On Seriously Insulting Speech  •  138
(b) Odin’s Wisdom and Arts   •   138
(c) From Loki’s Flyting (Lokasenna)    •  
140
(d) Loki and Svadilfari: Loki’s Adventure as a Mare  •  141
27. Cross-­
Dressing   •   143
(a) Thor as a Bride  •  143
(b) How Aud Dealt with Her Humiliating Divorce  •  151

CHAPTER FIVE: VIKING WARRIORS AND THEIR

WEAPONS  • 155
28. The Accomplishments of a Viking Warrior  •  156
(a) Earl Rognvald Kali on Being a Gentleman  •  156
(b) Gunnar Hamundarson, the Ideal Warrior  •  156
(c) Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway  •  157
29. Warrior Women   •  158
(a) A Warrior Woman  •  158
(b) The Waking of Angantýr (The Lay of Hervor, Hervararkviða)   
•  
159
30. Valkyries   •  
166
(a) Helgi and Sigrun I  •  166
(b) Helgi and Sigrun II  •  167
(c) Brynhild’s Helride   •   169
31. Berserkers and the Berserk Rage  •  173
(a) Odin’s Berserks   •   173
(b) Egil Skallagrimsson Fights a Berserk  •  173
32. Weapons   •  
177
(a) King Magnus Barelegs Dresses to Kill  •  177
(b) The Sword Skofnung  •  178
(i) Hrolf Kraki and Skofnung  •  178
(ii) Skeggi and Skofnung  •  179
(iii) Kormak and Skofnung  •  180
(iv) Thorkel Eyolfsson and Skofnung  •  182
(v) Gellir Thorkelsson and Skofnung  •  185
(c) Saint Olaf ’s Sword, Hneitir  •  185

CHAPTER SIX: FJORD-­S ERPENTS: VIKING SHIPS  • 187

33. King Olaf Tryggvason Builds the Long Serpent   •   188
34. Harald Sigurdarson’s Splendid Ship  •  189
35. Animal Heads on the Prows of Ships  •  191
36. A Sea-­Battle from the Sagas: Olaf Tryggvason at the Battle of Svold  •  191

ix
 the viking age: a reade r

CHAPTER SEVEN: “SUDDEN AND UNFORESEEN ATTACKS

OF NORTHMEN”  • 203
37. On the Causes of the Viking Expansion  •  204
38. Viking Raids on England, 789–850/1   •   206
39. Alcuin’s Letter to King Athelred, 793   •   208
40. An English Gospel Book Ransomed from the Vikings  •  210
41. Viking Raids on Ireland, 795–842   •  211
42. The Martyrdom of Blathmac, 825   •  216
43. The Life of Saint Findan  •  218
44. Irish Resistance to the Norsemen  •  221
45. Franks and Vikings, 800–829   •  224
46. The Northmen in France, 843–865   •  231
47. An Account of the Siege of Paris, 885–886   •  239
48. Vikings in the Iberian Peninsula  •  242
(a) Ibn al-­Kutia.Year 230 (17 September 844–
1 October 845)    •   242
(b) Ibn Adhari.Year 229 (30 September 843–
17 September 844)    •   243

CHAPTER EIGHT: “THE HEATHENS STAYED”: FROM

RAIDING TO SETTLEMENT  • 245
49. Viking Activities in England, 851–900   •   246
50. The Martyrdom of Saint Edmund  •  253
51. The Vikings in Ireland, 845–917   •  256
52. Ketil Flatnose and His Descendants in the Hebrides  •  263
53. Earl Sigurd and the Establishment of the Earldom of Orkney  •  265
54. Runic Inscriptions from Maes Howe, Mainland, Orkney  •  266
55. Runic Inscriptions from the Isle of Man  •  267
56. Rollo Obtains Normandy from the King of the Franks  •  268

CHAPTER NINE: AUSTRVEG: THE VIKING ROAD TO

THE EAST  • 275
57. The Rūs   •   277
58. The Rūs Attack Constantinople   •  
277
59. On the Arrival of the Varangians  •  282
60. A Muslim Diplomat Meets Rūs Merchants on the Volga
River  •   289
61. River Routes to Constantinople  •  294
62. A Norwegian Soldier of Fortune in the East  •  296
63. Rūs Expeditions to the Middle East  •  301
64. The Yngvar Runestones   •   302

x
 conte nts

CHAPTER TEN: INTO THE WESTERN OCEAN: THE

FAEROES, ICELAND, GREENLAND, AND VINLAND  • 305
65. The Islands in the Northern Ocean, c. 825   •   306
66. Sailing Directions and Distances in the North Atlantic  •  307
67. The Western Ocean   •   307
68. Adam of Bremen on Iceland  •  310
69. Icelandic Accounts of the Discovery and Settlement of Iceland  •  311
(a) The Book of the Icelanders  
•   311
(b) The Book of Settlements   •  313
70. Skallagrim’s Land-Take in Iceland  •  316
71. The Settlement of Greenland  •  319
(a) The Book of the Icelanders  
•   319
(b) The Book of Settlements   •  320
72. The King’s Mirror on Greenland  •  321
73. Adam of Bremen on Vinland  •  322
74. The Norse Discovery of Vinland  •  323
75. Thorfin Karlsefni in Vinland  •  328

CHAPTER ELEVEN: VIKING LIFE AND DEATH  • 331

76. Advice for Sailors and Merchants  •  332
77. Svein Asleifarson’s Viking Life  •  334
78. Children   •   337
(a) Young Grettir Helps around the Farm  •  337
(b) Children Mimic Adults   •  339
(c) The Child Is Mother of the Woman  •  340
(d) Young Egil Plays for Keeps  •  341
79. Games and Entertainment  •  342
(a) A Horse-­Fight from Njal’s Saga   •  342
(b) Skallagrim’s Rough Play  •  344
(c) Ball Games and Scraper-­Games at Sand from Hord’s Saga   •  345
(d) Entertainment at a Wedding Feast at Reykjaholar from The Saga of
Thorgils and Haflidi   •  346
(e) Mock Lawsuits from The Saga of the People of Ljosavatn  
•  348
80. The Jomsvikings Meet Their End  •  349
81. The Burning of Njal  •  356

CHAPTER TWELVE: FROM ODIN TO CHRIST  • 367

82. Early Missions to the North: The Life of Saint Anskar  •  368
83. The Conversion of the Danes under Harald Bluetooth  •  379
84. Olaf Tryggvason and the Conversion of Norway  •  382
85. A Poet Abandons the Old Gods  •  389

xi
 the viking age: a reade r

86. The Christianization of Norway under Saint Olaf  •  390

87. The Conversion of the Icelanders  •  398
88. The Conversion of Greenland  •  400
89. The Conversion of Orkney  •  401
90. Christianity in Sweden  •  402
91. Christianity and the Church in Norway  •  403
92. The Travels of King Sigurd, Jerusalem-­Farer  •  404
93. The Journey of Abbot Nikolas Bergsson from Iceland to
Jerusalem   •   412

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: STATE-­B UILDING AT HOME

AND ABROAD  • 419
94. Harald Finehair and the Unification of Norway  •  420
95. Denmark: The Jelling Stone  •  425
96. State-­Making in Denmark: Unification and Expansion  •  427
97. The Martyrdom of Alfeah (Saint Alphege)   •  429
98. Knut the Great and the North Sea Empire  •  431
99. The England Runestones  •  444
100. The Earldom of Orkney at Its Zenith  •  445

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE END OF THE

VIKING AGE  • 451
101. The Battle of Clontarf, 1014  •   452
102. The Battle of Stamford Bridge, 1066   •  
459
103. The Battle of Largs, 1263   •  467

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: REAWAKENING ANGANTÝR, OR

VIKING REVIVALS  • 471
104. The First Revival  •  472
(a) Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) and Norse Poetics  •  472
(b) Saxo Grammaticus and Icelandic Sources  •  472
105. Romantic Vikings   •   473
(a) The Fatal Sisters: An Ode, from the Norse Tongue   •   474
(b) The Vegtam’s [Odin’s] Kvitha [poem]; or The Descent of Odin: An
Ode, from the Norse Tongue  •  476
106. Operatic Vikings: Richard Wagner (1818–1883), from Das Rheingold,
Scene Two   •  480
107. Aryan Anthropology: Vikings in Politics  •  484
(a) Halfdan Bryn: Methodology  •  485
(b) Hans F.K. Günther on Nordic Man  •  485

xii
 conte nts

(c) Alfred Rosenberg: Creative Men and Beautiful, Motherly

Women   •   487
108. The Gods Reborn  •  488
(a) Carl Jung: “Wotanism”  •  488
(b) Odin Lives   •   491
(c) Odinism in America   •  491
(d) Versions of Ásatrú  •  492
(i) The Icelandic Ásatrú Fellowship  •  492
(ii) Foreningen Forn Sed Norge / The Society of the Ancient
Faith in Norway  •  493
109. Plundering the Vikings, from The Irish Times  
•   495
110. The Vikings in the Courtroom of History: Terrorists, Tourists,
Others   •   498
(a) Savage Warriors   •  499
(b) Piracy and Commerce  •  500
(c) Intruders of a Recognizable Type?   •  502
(d) Revising the Revisionists  •  504
(e) The Viking Diaspora   •  506

EPILOGUE  • 509
111. Advice from Odin  •  509

SOURCES  
•  
513

INDEX OF TOPICS  
•  
517

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND SOURCES  • 521

xiii
This page intentionally left blank
 I L LUS T R AT IONS

FIGURES

The Gokstad Ship, built c. 890  •  ii

3.1 A pendant representing Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir  •  43
3.2 Bildsten (Picture Stone) Stora Hammars 1   •  62
3.3 Reconstruction of the temple at Uppåkra in Sweden  •  69
3.4 A ship burial at Salme  •  71
4.1 (a) Copper alloy pendant showing two women embracing;
(b) Gold pendant showing two men embracing  •  137
5.1 Ax from a grave in Mammen, Denmark  •  155
5.2 The Hårby figurine  •  158
5.3 A warrior woman’s grave at Birka  •  165
8.1 The remains of a Viking Age farmhouse at Jarlshof  •  245
9.1 A runic inscription from Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, Byzantium,
Constantinople, Mikligard   •  276
9.2 An Yngvar runestone (Södermanland 179)   •  303
13.1 The Jelling Stone  •  426
15.1 William Blake’s title page designed for Gray’s Descent of Odin  
•  
480
15.2 Recruiting poster for the Waffen-­SS in Norway  •  490

MAPS

Map of the Viking world  •  vi

1.1 Scandinavia   •  1
7.1 Expansion in the North Sea and Atlantic  •  203
9.1 The road to the East  •  275

xv
This page intentionally left blank
 AC K NOW L E DGM E N T S

Our first debt of gratitude is to the many students who have taken our courses
over the years and who have provided us with the impetus to produce this
book.
We would also like to thank Cathy Bouwers, Erin Hodson, and Trudy
Tattersall for their assistance with the preparation of some of the texts;
Dr. Behnaz Mirzai for assistance with Arabic texts; and Loris Gasparotto
for producing the maps.
We are grateful to the Humanities Research Institute at Brock University
for providing funds in support of this project.
At University of Toronto Press we thank Paul Dutton for helpful comments
and suggestions, and Natalie Fingerhut for expert editorial assistance.
We are grateful to University of Toronto Press for the opportunity to pre-
pare a third edition of the reader, and we would like to thank all those who
have offered suggestions for its improvement. In particular, we have benefited
greatly from the many helpful suggestions we have received from students and
colleagues who have utilized the text in the classroom, as well as from the
anonymous reviewers of the proposal for UTP.
Unquestionably, however, our biggest debt is to our respective families, who
have had to put up with the Vikings for many years. This book is for them:
Barbara, Anna, and Clare; Jacqueline, Emma, and Colin.

xvii
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 I N T RODUC T ION

This book provides a comprehensive and accessible one-­volume collection of

primary documents that will be of use to instructors and students as well as
to the general reader interested in the Viking Age. In assembling, translat-
ing, and arranging the materials presented here, we have been guided by the
principle of providing as much breadth as possible, both in the types of sources
presented and in the geographic and chronological coverage of the work. Of
course, the vast amount of material available means that it is impossible to
include everything, and we are conscious of omissions. Nevertheless, we hope
that the documents presented here will encourage readers to delve further into
primary texts dealing with the Vikings and the Viking Age.
While the second edition of The Viking Age: A Reader (2014) largely preserved
both the structure and content of the first edition with the addition of some
new texts to extend its coverage of the material, the third edition represents a
much more substantial revision. Notably, the chapter concerning women in the
Viking Age from the first and second editions has been transformed to deal more
broadly with gender. A completely new final chapter adds material on percep-
tions, interpretations, and uses of the Vikings after the Viking Age, from the
thirteenth century to the twenty-­first. Some material from the early twentieth
century is controversial. In particular, the Aryan anthropology of Rosenberg
and Günther constitutes a disturbing appropriation of Norse myth and litera-
ture. Neither writer is much read now, but they influenced their European
contemporaries, and their racial determinism underlies certain ideologies of the
modern world. The final chapter ends with a brief sampling of some scholarly
interpretations of the Vikings from the late twentieth and early twenty-­fi rst
centuries. We hope that this scholarly material will be useful in stimulating
debate on the significance and impact of the Vikings in early medieval Europe
while highlighting some important methodological points in Viking studies.
Many of the changes in this new edition arise from suggestions offered by
users of the text, and from an invaluable focus-­g roup discussion with students
from Andrew McDonald’s course on the Viking Age at Brock University in
February 2018; we are grateful to all those involved for the many helpful sug-
gestions, which have allowed us to take the work in new directions, and of
course to University of Toronto Press for holding out the prospect of a revised
third edition to us in late 2017.

WHO, WHEN, AND WHERE WERE THE VIKINGS?

In the popular imagination, the Vikings were shaggy, unkempt, ax-­w ielding
thugs in horned helmets who raped, pillaged, and plundered their way across

xix
 the viking age: a reade r

Europe in the Early Middle Ages, nearly destroying Western civilization in

the process. They have been blamed for everything from a decline in learning
(thanks to the burning of monasteries, places of learning) to the break-­up of
the Carolingian empire that dominated Europe in the ninth century. So is the
Viking stereotype of the burly, destructive barbarian even remotely accurate?
As usual, the myth is far removed from reality. The shaggy Vikings were not
the unkempt louts of popular fiction but a proud people who were careful
about their appearance. The horned helmets associated with the Vikings in
popular culture are a romantic invention of the nineteenth century, and no
helmets with horns are known from the Viking Age anywhere in Europe. And,
while a very small minority of early medieval Viking Age Scandinavians might
well have resembled the warriors and bandits of the stereotype, their fellow
Norsemen were also renowned merchants, seamen, explorers, mercenaries,
and poets, who contributed much to early medieval European civilization.
Understanding the Vikings begins with understanding the word “Viking”
itself. In Old Norse (ON), the noun víkingr means a sea-­borne pirate or raider;
víking means a sea-­borne raid. The word “Viking” is, then, in the technical
sense, a job description, and it was a part-­t ime job at that, since Viking expe-
ditions were undertaken seasonally by farmers, fishermen, merchants, and
the like, as a means of supplementing their income. Few Scandinavians of the
Viking Age would have thought of themselves, or would have been described by
others, as Vikings. In fact, out of all those who suffered at the hands of maraud-
ing Scandinavians, only the Anglo-­Saxons actually named them wicingas.
Common designations in contemporary British and Irish, and European,
records include the terms “Northmen,” “foreigners,” and “heathens,” the
latter a reference to the fact that at the dawn of the Viking Age the Scandina-
vians had yet to be converted to Christianity. It was not until the nineteenth
century, following the “rediscovery” of the Icelandic sagas and eddas and their
translation into English, that the term “Viking” passed into common English
use. Today the usefulness of the term is a subject of debate among academics.
In this collection, however, we adopt the term in its widely accepted sense as
a descriptor for the peoples of Scandinavia in the period from the late eighth
to the eleventh centuries, not just for those who undertook sea-­borne raiding;
we use the terms “Norse” and “Norsemen” in the same sense.
Vikings, then, were raiders, traders, farmers, and, later, settlers; the activi-
ties were closely intertwined. In the course of the Viking diaspora, Norse-
men (and women) traveled westward across the North Atlantic to North
America and eastward down the Russian river systems to Constantinople
(modern-­d ay Istanbul) and into the Islamic world. Scandinavian trade flowed
through Hedeby in Denmark, Visby and Birka in Sweden, Kaupang in Nor-
way, Novgorod in Russia, Kiev in Ukraine, York in England, and Dublin in

xx
 introduction

Ireland. Scandinavians were thus important traders from the Caspian Sea to
Greenland. Accordingly, this text aims to capture the astonishing geographic
scope of the Viking world by including materials relating to all of these regions.
An increasing body of evidence suggests that the Viking Age may have
begun in the early to mid-­eighth century, with raiding and trading eastwards
across the Baltic Sea from Sweden. From the mid-­eighth century, Swedes were
living at the trading center of Staraya (Old) Ladoga on the upper Volkhov river.
By the tenth century, Scandinavian traders and raiders had traveled the Volga
river system as far as Constantinople. The extent of the Norse role in Russian
state formation is a point of great contention.
Until recently, there was general agreement that the Viking Age began in
the late eighth century with the dramatic explosion of Scandinavian raiding
parties onto the European stage. The destruction of Lindisfarne Abbey in
Northumbria in the summer of 793 horrified Europe and, along with other
raids like it, shaped the European perception of the Vikings for many centu-
ries. For several decades Viking raiding parties terrorized most of northern
Europe, using hit-­a nd-­r un tactics to target monasteries where they could lay
hands on easily portable wealth, along with captives who could be enslaved
or ransomed. But, within about 50 years of the earliest recorded raids, raid-
ing gave way to permanent settlement in Britain, Ireland, and the Continent,
as well as the North Atlantic islands of the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland,
which were given the names by which they are still known. Around the year
1000, Norsemen were the first Europeans to reach North America, exploring
the region they called Vinland the Good, probably the shores of the Gulf of
St. Lawrence. Indeed, Norse maritime activity of all kinds was at its height
during the so-­called medieval warm period of c. 800–c. 1300, and exploration
of the North Atlantic was at least partly facilitated by the comparative lack of
pack ice in those years.
The end of the period is harder to place. The unification and centraliza-
tion of the Scandinavian states in the tenth and eleventh centuries have been
simultaneously blamed for increases in Viking activity and credited with its
cessation. However, a case could be made for regarding some point during
the eleventh century as bringing the Viking Age to a close. The Battle of
Clontarf (1014) emphasized the waning power of Norsemen to do as they
pleased in Ireland. The North Sea empire of Knut (Cnut/Canute) the Great
disintegrated with his death in 1035, and his conquests might be seen as the last
great expedition of the age of the Vikings. Another possibility is 1066, when
King Harald Hardradi of Norway failed disastrously in an attempt to invade
England. Harald was killed, and his army destroyed, at the Battle of Stamford
Bridge in the north of England. Raiding in England was never more than half-­
hearted after the death of Harald and the arrival of William the Conqueror.

xxi
 the viking age: a reade r

All of these events may be regarded as stages in a slow process of change.

However, Norse activity in the British Isles continued until the death of Hakon
IV the Old (d. 1263). His doubtfully successful punitive raid on Scotland was
the last serious Scandinavian intervention in the British Isles.

HOW DO WE KNOW?

One major challenge is the dearth of literary materials from the Vikings
themselves in the early part of the Viking Age. It is not quite fair to say, as
is sometimes done, that the Vikings were illiterate at the time the Scandina-
vian expansion began, since they did possess a runic alphabet, the futhark,
which was used in carving inscriptions on stone, wood, bone, or metal. Runic
inscriptions are, by their very nature, not suited to long narrative, however, and
their study requires a highly specialized background. Until recently, therefore,
our knowledge of the Vikings and their culture was shaped by the accounts of
their European enemies, who gave them a very bad press. English and French
chronicles are a major source of contemporary narratives of Viking incursions.
From the nineteenth century onwards, translation into English of medieval
Icelandic sagas added another dimension to the study of the Viking Age, allow-
ing the Vikings to be appreciated from the perspective of their own culture—
or at least the culture of their Christianized descendants in thirteenth-­century
Iceland. The narratives of history and saga-­literature frequently overlap, and
this has tempted many to find in the sagas a greater degree of historical factual-
ity than is justified. Nonetheless, the sagas are among the major ways in which
thirteenth-­century Icelanders constructed their own and the wider Scandina-
vian past. They were closer to the events than we are, and we must concede to
their writing, if not factuality, a high degree of plausibility. In addition, social
network theory suggests that the society depicted in the Sagas of Icelanders is not
that of thirteenth-­and fourteenth-­century Iceland. Sociologically and statisti-
cally, the social networks of the Sagas of Icelanders function as the networks of
the smaller society of a much earlier period would have done.
Perhaps a distinction between small events and large historical patterns is
appropriate. While saga-­narrative is often enlivened by trivial details, unlikely
to survive in history, the ancestry-­obsessed Icelanders are quite likely to have
gotten right the larger development of ancestral feuds, lawsuits, quarrels over
inheritances, and power politics.
European and Scandinavian material is complemented by documents from
the neighboring civilizations of Byzantium and Islam; in fact, Islamic texts
provide some of the most important descriptions of Scandinavians and their
customs in the tenth century. Understanding the Vikings, then, necessarily

xxii
 introduction

involves the study of many texts and documents from many different regions
and periods, and written in many different languages. An important aim of this
collection is to highlight this geographic, historical, and linguistic diversity of
primary-­source materials relating to the Viking diaspora.

SOME NOTES ON THE TRANSLATIONS

Unless otherwise noted, all Old Norse and Anglo-­Saxon texts are newly
translated for this reader. As is usual, the names of persons are anglicized: for
example, Egill appears as Egil, and Guðrún as Gudrun.
In Old Norse texts, an individual is often identified as the son or daughter of
his or her father: for example, Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir, anglicized here as Gudrun
Osvifrsdottir, or Egill Skalla-­Grímsson, anglicized as Egil Skallagrimsson. A
few names, such as Hákon or Sigurðr, have a different form and are anglicized
as Hakonarson and Sigurdarson when used to express the patronymic, as in
Hakon Hakonarson or Harald Sigurdarson.
In the headings of chapters and sections of chapters, the titles of Norse texts
are given in their original form in parentheses after the customary English
translation: for example, Egil’s Saga (Egils saga Skalla-­Grímssonar).
Where placenames have well-­k nown English forms, these are generally
used: for example, York replaces Jórvík, and Reykjavik replaces Reykjarvík.
Only two symbols from Old Norse are likely to cause confusion on the
rare occasions when they are used here: Ð, ð: pronounced th as in that; Þ, þ:
pronounced th as in thin.

xxiii
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 C H A P T E R ON E

T H E SCA N DI NAV I A N HOM E L A N DS

Map 1.1: Scandinavia

The people we call the Vikings originated in the Scandinavian Peninsula, in modern
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, though these political divisions did not exist at the
start of the Viking Age. (Finland is not considered a Viking homeland.) This vast region,
which exhibits a great diversity of landscape and environment, covers an area of over
three-­quarters of a million square kilometers in northern Europe and stretches about 2,000
kilometers from the Danish-­German frontier to Cape North in Norway, well above the
Arctic Circle.
Despite the modern tendency to consider all the early inhabitants of Scandinavia as
“Vikings,” the region was home to a number of different peoples seldom labeled as such
in contemporary texts. Ninth-­century texts distinguish Norwegians or Northmen (a term
sometimes used to describe all the inhabitants of Scandinavia), Danes, the Svear, and the
Götar. They were not politically united and spoke different forms of North Germanic.

1
 the viking age: a reade r

Another group of people inhabiting the northernmost Arctic and sub-­Arctic regions of
Scandinavia were the Sámi. These people were primarily hunter-­gatherers and spoke a
Finno-­Ugric language. They were not Vikings, although they interacted in a variety of
ways with their Scandinavian neighbors.
Written descriptions of early medieval Scandinavia are sparse. Some early medieval
authors such as Jordanes in the sixth century were well informed about the contemporary
political situation in Scandinavia, but the earliest detailed accounts of the region from
inside come from the late-­ninth-­century voyagers Ohthere and Wulfstan. The most im-
portant foreign account is that of Adam of Bremen from the last quarter of the eleventh
century.

1. THE VOYAGES OF OHTHERE AND WULFSTAN

Ohthere, a Norwegian, explores the coastline from Halogaland in northern Norway

to the White Sea and goes on to describe the route from his northern home to the great
market town of Hedeby in Denmark. Wulfstan’s voyage begins where Ohthere’s ends.
He recounts his journey eastward through the Baltic Sea from Hedeby to Estland, in the
northeastern part of Germany.
Both narratives were inserted into Old English translations (possibly as early as
the 890s) of the early medieval historian Paulus Orosius’s Seven Books of History
Against the Pagans (Historiae adversum paganos), which included a section on
European geography. The King Alfred named at the beginning of the document is Alfred
the Great of Wessex (r. 871–899).

Source: trans. A.A. Somerville, from Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, ed. Janet Bately and Anton
Eglert, Maritime Culture of the North (Roskilde, Denmark: The Viking Ship Museum, 2007), vol. 1,
pp. 1–60.

The Voyages of Ohthere

Ohthere told his lord, King Alfred, that he lived farther north than any other
Norwegian. He said that he lived in the north of the country beside the West
Sea [the Atlantic]. He said that the land stretches a long way north from there,
however, though it is completely unpopulated except for a few places here and
there, where Sámi live, hunting in winter and fishing by the sea in summer.
He said that on one occasion he wanted to find out how far north the land
stretched, and whether anyone lived to the north of the wilderness area. So,
he sailed north close to the coastline. For three days, he kept the wilderness
to his starboard and the open sea to port. By then he was as far north as the
whalehunters ever go. After that, he kept traveling due north as far as he could
sail in the next three days. Then the land turned to the east, or the sea curved

2
 one: the scandinavian home lands

into the land, he did not know which. But he did know that he waited there
for a wind from the west-­northwest and afterwards sailed east along the coast
as far as he could sail in four days. Then he had to wait there for a north wind,
because the land turned due south there, or the sea turned into the land, he
did not know which. Next, he sailed south along the coast as far as he could go
in five days. There a large river [probably the Dvina] stretched into the land.
They turned into the river, not daring to travel beyond it for fear of hostility,
because the land on the other side of the river was thickly settled. Until now,
he had not come across any populated land since leaving his own home; but
all the way there was empty land to starboard except for fishermen, fowlers,
and hunters, and they were all Sámi and to port there was always the open sea.
The Biarmians had settled their land thickly, but they [Ohthere and crew]
dared not set foot there. The land of the Ter Sámi [southeast Kola Peninsula?],
however, was completely uninhabited except for hunters, fishermen, or fowlers.
The Biarmians told him many tales both about their own land and about the
lands which lay around them, but he did not know how true these tales were
because he did not see anything for himself. It seemed to him that the Sámi
and the Biarmians spoke much the same language.
In addition to exploring the land, he traveled there mainly for the walrus,
because they have very fine bone in their teeth—they brought some teeth for
the king—and their hide is very good for ships’ ropes. This whale is much
smaller than other whales, being no more than seven ells long [an English ell
is 1.14 meters]. But the best whale hunting is in his own land where the whales
are forty-­eight ells long, and the biggest fifty ells in length. He said that he and
six other men killed sixty of them in two days.
He was a very well-­to-­do man, rich in the possessions which comprise their
wealth, namely wild beasts. When he visited the king, he still had six hundred
unsold animals. These animals are called reindeer. Six of them were decoy
reindeer; these are highly prized by the Sámi because they catch wild reindeer
with them. He was one of the most prominent men in that land, yet he had
no more than twenty cattle, twenty sheep, and twenty pigs, and the little that
he plowed, he plowed with horses. Their wealth, however, consists mainly
of the tribute paid to them by the Sámi. This tribute consists of animal hides,
bird feathers, whale bone, and ships’ cables made from whale and seal skins.
Each man pays according to his rank. The highest ranking must give fifteen
marten skins, five reindeer hides, a bear skin, ten ambers of feathers, a bear
or otter skin coat, and two ships’ cables, each sixty ells long, one made from
whale skin and the other from seal skin.
He said that the land of the Norwegians is very long and very narrow.
All the land that can be grazed or plowed lies beside the sea, and even that is
very rocky in places. Above and to the east lie wild, mountainous wastelands,

3
 the viking age: a reade r

stretching all along the length of the inhabited land. Sámi inhabit the waste-
land. The inhabited land is broadest to the east [that is, in the south of Norway]
and the farther north it lies, the narrower it becomes. To the east, it can be
sixty miles broad, or slightly broader, and in the middle, it can be thirty miles
or broader. To the north, where it is narrowest, he said, it might be only three
miles broad before becoming wasteland. In some places the wasteland is as
wide as a man can cross in two weeks; in others, as wide as a man can cross
in six days. Alongside the southern part of the land, on the other side of the
wasteland, Sweden stretches up to the northern part of Norway, and adjacent
to the northern part of Norway is Cwenland [land of the Sámi]. Sometimes,
the Sámi harry the Norwegians across the wasteland, and at other times the
Norwegians raid them. There are huge freshwater lakes throughout the waste-
lands; the Sámi carry their boats overland to the lakes and raid the Norwegians
from there. They have very small, light boats.
Ohthere said that the district where he lived is called Halogaland and that
no one lived to the north of him. In the south of that land is a port called
Skiringssal [Kaupang]. He said that a man could not sail there in a month if
he camped at night and had a favorable wind every day. And all the while,
he must sail along the coast, and to his starboard, first there will be Ireland
and then the islands [Orkneys and Shetlands] between Ireland and this land
[Britain]. Then Britain is to starboard until he comes to Skiringssal and, all
the way, Norway is to port. South of Skiringssal, a very large sea cuts deeply
into the land; it is broader than anyone can see across. Jutland is opposite on
the other side and then Sillende [central and southern Denmark]. The sea flows
many hundreds of miles into the land. From Skiringssal, he said that he sailed
for five days to the port called Hedeby which stands between the Wends, the
Saxons, and the Angles and belongs to the Danes. When he sailed there from
Skiringssal, Denmark was on his port side for three days and open sea on his
starboard. Then, for two days before he came to Hedeby, Jutland, Sillende,
and many islands lay to starboard—the Angles lived in these places before they
came to this land [England]—and for these two days the islands that belong
to Denmark lay to port.

The Voyage of Wulfstan

Wulfstan said that he traveled seven days and nights from Hedeby before
arriving in Truso and that the ship ran under sail the whole way. Wendland
[Pomerania] was to starboard and to port were Langeland, Laaland, Falster,
and Skåne. These lands all belong to Denmark. Next, Bornholm lay to port,
and the people there have their own king. After Bornholm came Blekinge,
Möre, Öland, and Gotland; and these lands belong to the Swedes. Wendland

4
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 The Clavichord

In the clavichord, each key drove a metal tangent against a string

and was held there as was the bridge of the monochord. The tone was
dependent on the place where the tangent struck. The string vibrated
on one side of the tangent, but the other part of the string was
deadened by a strip of cloth. The strings were about the same length
and often two or three keys operated the same string so that it was
possible to make a very small instrument. In the 16th century, it
usually had twenty keys; in the 18th century, four octaves or fifty
keys, but of course there were less than fifty strings! Later, every key
had its own string and these were called bundfrei or unfretted
clavichords, while the others were called gebunden or fretted. The
clavichord was usually small enough to carry under the arm,
although sometimes it was made with legs. Should you be in New
York you must see the collection of beautifully ornamented
clavichords and harpsichords at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
the Crosby Brown Collection.
Bach liked the clavichord better than the harpsichord and the early
pianos that blossomed in his day. Because of the pressure of the
tangent, it was possible to get a delicately graded tone when the key
was pressed, a wavy, rocking, pulsating effect, which made each
player’s performance very individual, but to us, now, it sounds thin
and metallic. The word “clavichord” comes from clavis—a key, and
chord—a string. Clavichords and also virginals were often played in
pairs, no doubt for richer effect and for volume.
Large instruments developed slowly because before the 11th
century, wire-drawing (making) was not known, so all keyed string
instruments were strung with gut.
 Harpsichord

128TH SONNET
SHAKESPEARE AND THE HARPSICHORD

How oft when thou, my music, music play’st

Upon that blessed wood, whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that my ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand:
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness, by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips,
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gate,
Making dead wood more blessed than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.

The harpsichord, we like to call the “Jack and Quill” instrument—

for it is played by keys, jacks and quills which pluck its strings,
instead of pressing or hammering. This is like a keyboarded zither,
and is shaped something like our grand piano.
Each key has a string. Pressing the key pushes a jack, from whose
side projects a small quill or spine which twangs the string. When the
key is released, the quill slips back into the first position and a
damper falls upon the string. The strings vary in length according to
the pitch for the harpsichord has no tangent to divide off the string
as had the clavichord and monochord. Thus the harpsichord on
account of its long and short strings is not square like the clavichord
but is shaped more like the harp and the grand piano.
Some one said that the harpsichord tone was “a scratch with a note
at the end of it.” And yet, when we hear Wanda Landowska play the
harpsichord today, it sounds very beautiful indeed. Smaller varieties
are called virginals and spinets. Perhaps the spinet is named for its
inventor Spinetti, or perhaps the word comes from “spinet” meaning
spine, a thorn or point. The virginal comes from the word virgo—
meaning maiden and was the popular instrument for the “ladies” of
the day. There were larger harpsichords, too, with two and three
keyboards and very many varieties, both small and large. The
clavichord and the harpsichord were known from the 15th century
and were associated with the organ until the 17th century, when the
Ruckers family developed harpsichord making into a fine art. The
first mention of the harpsichord, is in the “Rules of the
Minnesingers” (1404).
 The First Pianofortes

Early in the 18th century, music ceased to be just pretty sounds,

and musicians wanted instruments on which they could express
deeper feelings and began to look around for some way to make the
harpsichord meet this need.
It came about in this way. Pantaleone Hebenstreit, a fiddler at the
Saxon court played a dulcimer which he enlarged by adding to it a
second system of strings. He tuned it in equal temperament, as Bach
had the clavichord, and used hammers on it which produced very
beautiful and loud tones. Louis XIV saw this, and liking it, called it
the Pantaleone. But, shortly after this, Gottlieb Schroeter heard it
and said, “only through hammers can the harpsichord become
expressive.”
So in 1721 Schroeter submitted to the King of Saxony his idea of a
harpsichord which could play soft and loud or in Italian piano and
forte (the fortepiano or loud-soft instrument). But as he had none
made he did not get credit for the invention until after much
argument, based on accounts in his diary. As always, when a thing is
needed someone will invent it.
The man who actually made the first pianoforte was an Italian,
Bartolomeo Cristofori (1653–1731) of Padua; and the Frenchman
Marius, and the German, Christoph Gottlieb Schroeter, followed suit.
In 1709, Cristofori exhibited harpsichords (gravicembali) with
hammer action capable of producing piano and forte effects. He
advertised it in the paper as a gravicembali col piano e forte. By
1711, the fame of his invention had spread into Germany. In
February, 1716, Marius in France tried to improve the harpsichord
with hammers which he called the clavecin à mallets, and made two
types.
Schroeter about this time made the two kinds also. The piano had
little standing, however, until Gottfried Silbermann took advantage
of Bach’s criticism of his pianos and made a grand type.
The next experimenters in pianos were, Frederici of Gera (died in
1779), who made the square. Spaeth, who made grands and George
Andreas Stein in Augsburg, who was trained by Silbermann,
invented the Viennese action on which a light touch was possible and
for this reason Mozart used it.
Burkhardt Tschudi, a piano maker in London, had a Scotch
assistant, James Broadwood, who became his partner (1770). Later
the firm became John Broadwood and Sons, which it has remained.
It was the first to use the damper and the soft pedals. For some time
they used Zumpe’s style of square piano but later made their own.
This house used the Cristofori action which made a more solid and
heavier tone than the Viennese action, and was known as the English
action, excellent for large rooms and concerts. These actions suited
the different methods of piano playing.
Stein’s daughter Nanette Streicher, a marvelous player and a
cultivated woman, upon inheriting her father’s piano business moved
to Vienna and for forty years was considered an expert in the piano
world. Thayer, in his life of Beethoven says: “In May, Beethoven, on
the advice of medical men, went to Baden, whither he was followed
by his friend Mrs. Streicher ... who took charge of his lodgings and
his clothes, which appear to have been in a deplorable state.” Thayer
says that Beethoven always preferred the piano of Stein to any
others. Beethoven wrote to Nanette: “Perhaps you do not know,
though I have not always had one of your pianos, that since 1809 I
have invariably preferred yours.”
So, you see a woman could keep house and be a manufacturer as
well, even in the early 19th century!
Then came Sebastien Erard (1752–1831) who made the first
French piano in 1777. Erard invented many new things for the piano
and formed a company in England. This firm was advertised on the
hand bill announcing Liszt’s concert in Paris when he was twelve
years old.
Added to these names is Ignaz Josef Pleyel (1757–1831), who also
made a piano with a very sympathetic tone which Chopin made
famous from 1831. The Pleyel and the Erard are still the leading
pianos of France.
For some years the pianoforte went through many changes. As you
are not learning to make a piano, you will have to take it for granted
that there were many many steps taken from this time on to make
the modern piano. However, the thing that held it back was the all-
wood frame which could not stand the strain of the tightly drawn
strings and it was a long time before the makers gave up the beautiful
wood for the sturdier metal. About the time of Beethoven, playing
the piano became a more complicated thing than it had been, and a
grown up instrument was needed, so musical instrument makers had
to “step lively” to keep pace with the music. At every concert, and
often in the middle of a piece, the player would have to stop to retune
the instrument on which he was playing. Therefore, all energy was
bent to making the frame of the piano rigid, the strings more elastic
and the pins firmer, and the metal frame was used.
All these special things were accomplished in later years. Some of
the inventors were John Isaac Hawkins, an Englishman, who
patented the upright pianoforte in 1800 in the United States,
William Allen, a Scotchman, who introduced metal braces in 1820
and Alpheus Babcock, who patented the iron frame in a single cast,
in Boston, in 1825. It was an American, Jonas Chickering, of Boston,
who invented the complete iron frame for the concert grand, and at
present, after many years, the instrument which seventy-five years
ago bent under the pull of the strings, can now stand the strain of
thirty tons! Chickering made pianos as early as 1823.
After this there was much experimentation in pianos, culminating
here, in the pianos made by Steinway and Sons the ancestor of which
was the firm of Heinrich Englehard Steinweg, of Brunswick,
Germany, starting as organ makers. In 1848 Heinrich’s sons went to
New York City and changed their name to Steinway, where
Theodore, the eldest, continued the firm as Steinway and Sons.
Of course, the methods of stringing and tuning a piano have taken
years to develop—all of which we cannot go into in this book. Now,
instead of twenty strings, as we saw them in the clavichord, we have
243 strings to produce 88 tones.
So now we have the harpsichord with hammers “grown up” into
the pianoforte, with its myriad parts, no longer made by hand, but
carefully manufactured by machinery and the finest of them are
American.
 Piano Buying Created a Holiday in the 18th Century

“When the pianoforte was completed and ready to be delivered at

the house of the impatient purchaser (in Germany) a festival took
place; the maker, was the hero of the hour, and accompanied the
piano followed by his craftsman and apprentices, if he had any. (In
those days the pianos took months and months to make, for they
were made by hand and the makers received cash in part payment
and the rest was made up in corn, wheat, potatoes, poultry and
firewood!)
“The wagon which conveyed the precious burden was gaily
decorated with wreaths and flowers, the horses magnificently decked
out, a band of music headed the procession, and after the wagon
followed the proud maker, borne on the shoulders of his assistants;
musicians, organists, schoolmasters and dignitaries marching in the
rear. At the place of destination the procession was received with
greetings of welcome and shouts of joy. The pastor of the place said a
prayer and blessed the new instrument and its maker. Then the
mayor or the burgomaster of the place delivered an address,—
dwelling at great length upon the importance of the event to the
whole community, and stating, perhaps, that the coming of such a
new musical instrument would raise their place in the eyes of the
surrounding country. Then followed speeches by the schoolmaster,
doctor, druggist, and other dignitaries, and songs by the Männerchor
(men’s chorus) of the place. Amidst the strains of the band, the
pianoforte was moved to its new home. A banquet and a dance closed
the happy occasion.” (From Reminiscences of Morris Steinert by
Jane Marlin.)
 “The Piano and Pneumatics”

It is very difficult to know just when this important instrument

first was invented. It seems to have started with a mechanical organ
and many were the experimenters among whom was John
McTammany, a soldier in the Civil War who while disabled turned
his mind to mechanics and became one of the great pneumatic (air
power) experts. And so, just as we arrive at the beautiful instrument,
the piano, comes another instrument far more complicated, whose
possibilities are still in its infancy. At present the automatic piano is
operated by bellows and pneumatic tubes (which look together like a
bunch of gray spaghetti) and through which the air is exhausted and
acts in such a way that the piano hammers fall against the piano
strings. Into these instruments are placed perforated music rolls
which travel over a tracker bar full of holes, each one having its
rubber spaghetti tube. When the bellows work and the perforation of
the roll passes over a perforation of the tracker bar, the air is released
and its exhaustion causes the hammer to fall on the strings. This
sounds simple,—but it is not!
There are three kinds of automatic players,—one, the piano
player, which is now practically extinct in this country, a cabinet
which moves up to the piano, and with a series of keys corresponding
to the keys on the piano which, when in action presses down the
piano keys and the tune starts.
Then we have the player piano. In this, whether it be an upright or
a grand piano, the machinery is inside the piano itself (instead of
being in the outside cabinet), so that one can hardly tell at first
glance whether it is an automatic instrument or not. The perforated
roll is put on inside the piano.
All these piano player bellows work either by electricity or by the
feet. So in the latter, one cannot help playing with “sole”!
The reproducing piano is the third type of player. This is magical,
for it reproduces the player’s performance as he plays it himself.
Therefore we can entice Paderewski, Bauer, Rachmaninoff and all
the other great players into our own drawing rooms and hear them
with their superb skill. These are usually operated by electricity, yet
the Æolian Company and probably others, have a reproducing piano
which is propelled by the pedals as were the old ones before the
invention of the electric player. Furthermore, some of the
reproducing pianos have a mechanism with which you yourself can
interpret any piece you desire. This gives the music lover who has
been denied the study of music a chance to enjoy interpreting great
music.
It is an impossibility to overestimate the value of the player piano
to the young student, to increase his auditory repertoire, for the
music of the world is his for the turning of a lever!
 Their Contribution to Art

For a long time, the mechanical player has been looked on as a

step-child, to be made fun of and scorned. Today, the great critics
and best musicians recognize its value which is not as a substitute for
a piano but as an instrument in itself. Sir Henry J. Wood of England
says: “I realize the value ... of the pianola ... for a good many of the
people in our audiences ... are acquiring by its means a closer
acquaintance with the great musical masterpieces.”
He says in another place, “It’s a foolish and a shortsighted policy to
despise any means by which we may add to the sum total of musical
appreciation.”
And Edwin Evans, English critic and writer, says: “The player
piano relieves the musician of the technical difficulties of the
keyboard.... It does not relieve him from the duty of thinking
musicianly, on the contrary, ... it makes it a point of honor with him
to give ... fuller employment to his brain and sensibility.... There are
dozens of scores nowadays which it is an impossibility to read at the
piano and very trying to read on paper. Here the player piano is a
boon and a blessing for it unravels every mystery and solves every
problem.”
Besides this, it can be played so skilfully by some that even
musicians can be fooled as to whether human or mechanical fingers
are playing. Gustave Kobbé said, in his Pianolist, something like this:
“There are only about five professionals who can play the piano
better than an accomplished pianolist.”
To prove its artistic worth further, Percy Grainger, Alfredo Casella
and Igor Stravinsky and other great moderns are writing music
especially for the player piano because they can use the whole eighty-
eight notes with full orchestral effects, without stopping to think of
the meagre ten fingers of man! So we see in the future the possibility
of this becoming one of the creative instruments.
 Other “Canned” Music

Then we have the phonographs and radio. These cannot be

considered instruments in the same way as the player piano and
reproducing piano, but are invaluable means of musical education
and are doing, with the player piano, a marvelous work in
introducing people to the great music of the world. Of course, it
depends upon the way all these music carriers are used, for if you
have poor music on them, it will mean nothing to you, but if you hear
the “wear evers” on them, you will have a touch of heaven in your
life, forever.
 Pianists Come to View

As an outcome of the work of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart, the

piano appeared because of the need of a more powerful instrument
than the harpsichord and clavichord. At this time there were two
particular schools of piano playing,—the Viennese, light and delicate
in tone, and the English school, producing a more solid and more
brilliant tone.
The principal pianists of the Viennese school were Johann
Hummel, who, as a boy of seven, was a pupil of Mozart, Franz
Duschek, Mozart and Pleyel. Later Beethoven himself appeared, the
profound pianist in this group, but also an advocate of Clementi’s
methods.
The Clementi School is named from Muzio Clementi (1752–1832),
the “Father of the Pianoforte.” He was a composer of piano pieces,
especially of sonatas which are still of musical value. Who of us has
not studied Clementi’s sonatinas? Besides being a great player, a
teacher and a composer, Clementi published a work called Gradus
ad Parnassum, piano studies, a form which sprang up because of the
need to develop a technic for the new instruments when the piano
was young.
Clementi, at fourteen, went to England, where he lived all his life
and became interested in the making of pianos. He was associated
with the firm of Clementi and Company, later Collard and Collard,
and it is said that he gave the Broadwoods much advice in the
making of their “grand” piano. So we see Clementi as a founder of
piano technic, and an instrument maker! He lived eighty years,
during the last years of Handel and Scarlatti, and he survived
Beethoven, Schubert and Weber. It is said that Mozart took a theme
from a Clementi sonata for one of his operas. His pupils were quite
famous: John B. Cramer, the composer of many important piano
studies still in use; Johann L. Dussek, one of the first to invent and
write down finger exercises, and there were many others.
There were two schools with Clementi at the head of one, and
Mozart, of the other. With Hummel, a pupil of Mozart, the Classic
School closed, and then Clementi’s ideas came to the fore in the new
Romantic School.
 The New Romantic School

One of the earliest of these new Romanticists was John Field, who
was born in Ireland, visited London, had quite a career in Russia and
foreshadowed Chopin in his playing. Then there was Ferdinand Ries,
son of Beethoven’s early friend and teacher, Franz Ries; but the most
famous of this period were Ignaz Moscheles and Frederick
Kalkbrenner, a fluent composer and writer of studies. He was the
first pianist to teach Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum.
Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) was a Bohemian and from about
1815, the most brilliant pianist in Germany, France, Holland and
England. He was Mendelssohn’s teacher. Chopin wrote three études
(studies) on an order from Moscheles. He is a very important figure
in the growing up of piano music.
Carl Czerny (1791–1857) was another very important pianist and
one of the few pupils of Beethoven. He was a follower of Hummel
and Clementi and won great fame as a teacher in Vienna, where he
lived. He wrote a great many pieces, about a thousand in all, making
many arrangements of orchestral works and many piano studies,
which we still use today. Beethoven encouraged him to make a piano
version of his Fidelio. Czerny was the teacher of many able
musicians.
Frederick Chopin, you will find out later (Chapter 24) changed
piano music from the bravura to a poetic and deeper style. His touch
and tone were so enchanting that he created a completely new
fashion in piano playing which has not been lost. (See page 322.)
Clara Schumann (1819–1896), the wife of Robert Schumann, was
the leading woman pianist of the day, in fact, of many days.
In the times of Mozart and of Liszt, improvising (before audiences
and at parlor entertainments), was very popular and a part of a
musical education; around 1795, after the Paris Conservatory was
founded, it seemed to die out. However, organists today often
improvise while waiting for the church service to begin. Dupré, one
of the famous French organists, who has played in the United States,
improvises whole sonatas on given themes.
 After Chopin, Schumann and Schubert there was a great love of
the short piano piece and as the piano was being developed more and
more, it was natural that pianists should become numerous. So piano
playing was heard in the concert hall and in the parlor where it was,
to be sure, often light and frivolous and yet quite often,—serious and
delightful. The light and decorated pieces were usually called salon
music and today many are written which are classed as salon pieces.
Cécile Chaminade, as delightful and clever as her pieces are, is a
typical salon composer, Rubinstein, also, with such pieces as Melody
in F, is a writer of salon pieces, and there are countless others.
Among the people who were prominent as pianists and composers
in that day, especially in Poland, where Chopin was born, were Alois
Tausig, a pupil of Thalberg and Josef Wieniawski, who was the
teacher of the “Lion of Pianists,” Ignace Jan Paderewski.
Around Paris gathered many pianists among whom were Ignace
Leybach an organist and composer at Toulouse, Henry Charles
Litolff the famous publisher, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American
pianist and the author of The Last Hope, and Eugene Ketterer. The
following, with many others, centered around Vienna: Joseph Löw,
Theodore Kullak, Louis Köhler, Gustav Lange and Louis Brassin.
 Dashing Playing

A little later, due to the improvements of the piano, another school

grew up called by some, the Bravura Pianists, because the pieces for
these pianists were written to show off brilliant technic. Most of the
people were flashy pianists, yet there were some very marvelous
performers, for among them, Liszt himself figures and Thalberg, a
Swiss, who was Liszt’s rival for piano honors.
Another set of pianists and composers was Henry Herz, Alexander
Dreyschock, Emil Prudent and Adolph Henselt, a Bavarian, who was
an amazingly poetic and beautiful player.
Practically all these pianists were prominent composers in their
day.
About this time we see women coming into great prominence as
professional pianists. The first one to interest us is Marie Felicité
Denise (Moke) Pleyel, who was Miss Moke, the beloved of Berlioz
and the lady whom he intended to kill but changed his mind! She
was an inspiring teacher, a pupil of Herz, Moscheles and
Kalkbrenner and was admired by Mendelssohn and Liszt.
 The Growth of Violin Music

The same things seem to have happened to violin playing and

violin music at this time as happened to the piano. There was always
the competition between writing fine, deep music and showy,
spectacular music, which, when played, would please an audience.
But the violin was the same then as it had been for years,—the only
advance it had made was the perfecting of the bow by François
Tourte, assisted by Giovanni Battista Viotti, Pugnani’s greatest pupil.
We use his bow today. It has about one hundred white horsehairs,
the tension of which is controlled by a screw at the nut in the finger
grip. But the thing that did affect violinists and violin playing was the
fact of the rise in the 19th century of the orchestra and chamber
music. From the time that madrigals were first accompanied by
instruments, we have heard about Chamber Music, but the string
quartet in sonata form as we know it today, had as its father, Haydn,
and Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805) as a godfather. The link between
the Corelli School of violinists and this school was Viotti who was one
of the first men to write a violin concerto in sonata form.
The violinists of this period were also given to bravura playing as
were the pianists. This was a safe thing for great violinists like
Paganini to do, but for the less gifted, it often developed into, not
music at all, but musical calisthenics. Here is the group which
appeared in the early 19th century: Rudolph Kreutzer, to whom
Beethoven dedicated his famous Kreutzer Sonata; Andreas Romberg
(1767–1821) who knew Haydn and Beethoven at Vienna and took
Spohr’s place as concert master at Gotha. He wrote music somewhat
in the style of Mozart. Then comes the “Wizard of the Bow,” Nicolo
Paganini, standing alone and belonging to no school.
He was born in Genoa and began to play in public in 1795, when he
was thirteen years old. A very pretty story is told of Paganini and the
spider:
When Nicolo was a very poor and lonely student, he had a pet
spider that used to listen to him practise. Every time Nicolo would
touch the bow to the strings, out came Mr. Spider to listen
attentively. Now there was a little girl, the daughter of a shop-keeper
near by; she adored the great, tall, slender youth who spent most of
the day and most of the night playing on his violin. She fell ill and
died, and by a curious coincidence, the spider was killed. Paganini
was so overcome by the loss of his admiring comrades that he left
home at once and wandered from place to place, playing the guitar
when he could not get work with his violin.
Later he played all over Europe and had the crowd with him for his
matchless brilliancy in rapid work, his deep pathos and exceptional
beauty of tone. He has probably never been surpassed in double
stopping, chromatics and his pizzicati (plucking the strings). Isn’t it
too bad the greatest violinist in the world lived before the
gramophone was invented, so we have no records of his playing as
we have of Mischa Elman, Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Albert
Spalding and Maud Powell!
In this period, Ludwig Spohr was of great importance. He was a
friend of Mendelssohn and, curious enough, was an admirer (one of
the early ones) of Wagner. He had been an intimate of Weber and
played with Paganini at Rome and knew Rossini. His rank as a
violinist was acknowledged. He did not stand for “fire works” but
demanded fine music. He was always a classical musician, for his
early love was Mozart. You will meet him again in the next chapter.
He traveled all over Europe and met many great men and his
autobiography is a rich store of anecdotes and interesting facts.
At this time too, there were many great violinists in France,
Austria, Germany and Italy. We would like to write a whole volume
on the brilliant pianists of the late 19th and 20th centuries such as
Paderewski, De Pachman, Godowsky, Busoni, Rosenthal, Harold
Bauer, Gabrilowitsch, Hofmann, Rachmaninov, Teresa Carreño,
Myra Hess, Guiomar Novaes, Katherine Bacon, John Powell, Percy
Grainger, Levitski and innumerable others!
 More about Radio

1927 witnessed the broadcasting of enchanting concerts by the

Boston Symphony under Serge Koussevitzky, The New York
Philharmonic Orchestra under Willem Mengelberg, The New York
Symphony under Walter Damrosch, Children’s Concerts under
Ernest Schelling and many other organizations. The important
broadcasting companies maintain superb musical organizations and
there is growing up a valuable radio musical field for pleasure as well
as for education. Mr. Damrosch’s musical lectures on the Ring have
elicited nearly one million letters, from all parts of the world!
1929 sees the capitulation of Leopold Stokowski and the
Philadelphia Orchestra to the value of radio in a series of broadcasts.
On many programs are heard the world’s greatest artists.