Old Norse poetry isn’t just a rip-roaring account of the exploits of gods and giants. It’s also an indispensable portal into how the Vikings understood the universe.Alicia Maddalena and Matthew Townend give us a whistle-stop tour of a glittering art form
King, you made a great attack on the family of princes. Gracious leader, you reddened broad Kantaraborg in the morning.” With these words, an early 11th-century poet, Óttarr the Black, praises one of the martial feats of his patron, King Óláfr Haraldsson of Norway. Kantaraborg is the Old Norse form of the name of Canterbury; the event that is being commemorated here is the capture of the city by a Viking army in 1011. Its sequel the following year was the shocking martyrdom of Archbishop Ælfheah.
For the English writers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the capture of Canterbury was a grievous event: the 1011 entry laments that “there misery could be seen in the place where joy was often seen previously”. But that is not at all how the taking of Canterbury is viewed in Óttarr’s verse. Here, the assault offers grounds for celebration, an instance of the king’s military prowess.
Old Norse poetry such as Óttarr’s, in other words, gives us access to a perspective on the Viking Age from the Vikings themselves. Such poetry is full of journeys and battles, dominated by charismatic war-leaders who wield weapons, conquer lands, and share out treasure to their followers. The stereotype of the Vikings as great warriors derives largely from this self-image that was cultivated by their poets.
But that is by no means the only subject matter that we find in this body of verse. In the Viking Age, poetry was also used to tell mythological stories about the gods and their cosmos, celebrate special occasions, woo prospective lovers, insult rivals, and commemorate everything from a generous gift to a well-decorated interior.
Composed in the Old Norse language, Viking poetry is the great under-used resource for exploring and understanding the early medieval Scandinavian world. Only in such poetry, and in the less eloquent corpus of runic inscriptions, can we hear the Vikings speak for themselves. Given that their actions and ideas have predominately been mediated to us through texts produced by their victims – in places such as England and France – its value cannot be overestimated.
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