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Fame is the one true afterlife

The promise of Valhalla did not, as might be supposed, make most Viking warriors reckless in battle. Although it may have been a comfort to a warrior facing death in battle, what he really wanted to do was live and enjoy the fruits of victory. Only for the berserkers, fanatical devotees of Odin, was death in battle actually desirable. Before going into battle, berserkers worked themselves into a trancelike rage (berserksgangr, ‘going berserk’), howling and biting their shields, which left them immune to the pain of wounds. They wore no armour and their complete disregard for their own safety made them terrifying opponents, but most inevitably found the violent death they craved. Aside from the concept of Valhalla, Norse beliefs about the afterlife were vague and mostly rather gloomy. The common practice of burying grave goods, sacrificed animals and even slaves with the deceased suggests that the Norse believed that the afterlife would resemble this life, complete with its distinctions of social status, and that the dead somehow lingered on as ghostly presences in their graves. Alongside this there was a belief that those who died of illness and old age, that is almost everyone, would go to the freezing-fog realm of Niflheim, where they would spend a cheerless afterlife sharing the meagre fare offered by the decaying goddess Hel. The souls of un-wed girls were claimed by Freyja, who took them to dwell in her own realm of Fólkvangr: Odin allowed her to take a share of his warriors to keep them company. Death by drowning was an obvious risk for a Viking warrior. The souls of the drowned were netted by Rán, who took them to dwell in Hlésey, the hall of her husband the sea god Aegir. Happily for those destined to spend their afterlives with him, he was the best brewer among the gods. Perhaps as a result of Christian influence during the Viking Age, Norse paganism developed a concept of reward and punishment in the afterlife, although this was a judgment of the dead without a judge. The souls of the righteous would dwell in the golden-roofed hall of Gimlé in Asgard. Or perhaps they would go instead to another hospitable hall, Sindri in the underworld’s Niðafjöll Mountains. Oath-breakers and murderers had the miserable time they deserved in Nástrandir, a frightful hall in Niflheim made of woven serpents dripping with venom. The most wicked souls were cast into the underworld well of Hvergelmir, to be fed on by the serpent Niðhöggr, the corpse-tearer. For most people these various afterlives offered nothing to come that was better than what they had in the here and now – even the most favoured warriors faced ultimate annihilation in a battle they could not win – so it was best to live for the present day.

Knowing that nothing was ever forever, not even the gods or the afterlife, gave the Viking Age Norse a fatalistic outlook and an indifference to death. The Viking warrior was expected to face death with a shrug of the shoulders and some black humour to show that he had kept his presence of mind and not given in to fear. Life was not so much to lose and if it was his fate to die, there was nothing he could do about it anyway.

The pagan Norse believed that female deities called Norns were present at the birth of every child to shape its life. Their fate-making was likened to spinning a thread or making a mark on wood and once a person’s fate had been decided it was unalterable. The Norns were the highest power in the universe and not even the gods could challenge their verdict. In some cultures such beliefs might have encouraged apathy. However, with the Norse they encouraged the spirit of risk-taking and enterprise without which the Viking Age would never have happened. For good or ill, the Norns determined a man’s fate but they did not determine how he faced it. He could play safe and keep as far away from danger as he could but this would not save his life: he would die at his appointed time whether he was snug in bed or in the thick of battle. The man who recognised and accepted this knew he had little to lose by taking risks. Death came to everyone and all that would survive of a man was his reputation, which, therefore, was far more important than his life. When a Viking warrior fought to the death alongside his lord and comrades, he did so not because he hoped to go to Valhalla but to protect his reputation from being dishonoured by the taint of cowardice. A man without honour was a niðingr, literally nothing, who would deservedly be forgotten even by his own family. The man who risked nothing achieved less than nothing. Better by far to be bold and adventurous and strive to win fame, wealth and glory by daring voyages and heroic deeds in battle. Such a man could die secure in the knowledge that the skalds (‘court poets’) would sing his praises in the feasting halls for generations to come: this was the only sure afterlife a man could hope for.

Chapter 1: Thule, Nydam and Gamla Uppsala. The origin of the Vikings

The Vikings did not spring into life fully formed at the end of the eighth century, even if it may have seemed that way to their startled and appalled victims. In reality, the breaking out of Viking raiding was the consequence of centuries of social and political evolution, which had created in Scandinavia a violent and predatory society. If these developments passed largely unnoticed in the rest of Europe it was only partly because of Scandinavia’s remoteness. In the literate Greco-Roman world of Classical antiquity, a deep cultural prejudice against the ‘barbarian’ meant that the peoples of northern Europe were little studied and rarely written about. This prejudice sur​vived into the Christian era, when Scandinavians were doubly damned for being pagans as well as barbarians. As Scandinavians them​selves did not develop a fully literate culture until after their conversion to Christianity at the end of the Viking Age, contemporary written evidence of Scandinavia’s historical development before the Viking Age is extremely scarce: Scandinavia’s prehistoric period was a long one.

Pytheas’ voyage to Thule

Scandinavia’s earliest known literate visitor was the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia, who made a long voyage in the northern seas in the years around 320 BC. On his return home Pytheas wrote an account of his travels entitled On the Oceans. Unfortunately, this was lost in antiquity and is known today only from extracts preserved in the works of later Greek and Roman geographers. These show Pytheas to have been a scientifically minded traveller who estimated the latitude of the places he visited on his journey by measuring the height of the sun at noon and by the length of the days. In his own time, however, Pytheas was believed by many to have invented the whole story, so fantastic did it seem.