Messages
from the past
by Michael E Wills
What we know about the Viking Age comes
almost entirely from the accounts of their victims. The very useful Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle is, understandably, coloured by outrage at the raiding, plundering
and murder perpetrated by the Norsemen. The description of the Vikings written
by Adam of Bremen in his "History of the Archbishops of Hamburg", is also
valuable, but it is not contemporaneous as he wrote around 1070, nor is his
information gained at first hand. The Icelandic Sagas were written well after
the Viking Age and are based on oral tradition.
However, there are two other sources
which are contemporary. Firstly, some Arab travellers wrote about Vikings they
met on the Eastern European trade routes. They described their social and
personal habits, (definitely not admired), their dress and customs.
Secondly, there are the records kept by
the Vikings themselves in the form of runic carvings. These messages are sometimes
cryptic, but they can give the researcher vital clues to the travels and ways
of life and death of the Vikings.
It is claimed that there are around
3000 runes stones in Scandinavia. I think that this claim is somewhat high, for
looking at published maps of where they are to be found, there seems to be far
fewer than 3000. However, it was not only in Scandinavia that runes were
carved. There are Viking rune stones in England, Scotland, The Faroes,
Greenland, Germany and Ukraine.
When touring in Scandinavia, I have
made a point of going out of my way to seek out the stones. A few are, to an
historian, spectacular. The majority, while often richly decorated, have a
simple message. Most are dedicated to a lost relative, a few are clearly meant
to brag about the daring deeds of a person while they were still alive. The
stone on the right falls into this category.
One of the most remarkable rune stones
is the "Jelling Stone" in Denmark. This stone gives the first mention
of Denmark being a "state" and that it had been Christianised. It can
be dated very accurately, (965), and tells us that Harald Bluetooth claimed the
unification of the country. There are in fact two large stones outside of the
medieval church adjacent to huge burial mounds in Jelling. The largest, the
Jelling Stone, is that which Harald ordered in memory of his father, King Gorm
and his mother Queen Thyra. The other was ordered by King Gorm in memory of his
wife.
I had a particular piece of luck when I
visited Jelling. Despite the fragility of the carvings, the two stones had been
left where they had first been placed, in the open air. Clearly, a decision had
been made to move them into a protective glass cover, for when I arrived, a
crane was lifting the smaller of the two stones. As I stood watching the stone
rising from the ground there was excitement among the archaeologists - there
was a man's skeleton directly under the stone. It had definitely been buried
exactly under the setting of the stone. I immediately found myself wondering if
this was a ritual sacrifice and what significance the burial had.
I would like to give two examples of
how these stones have helped me in researching the background for stories.
Visitors
to Stockholm, travelling by BA, do not have far to go before they see their
first rune stone. Just to the left of the Terminal 2, "Arrivals"
entrance, there is a fine rune stone. Obviously, this is not its natural
resting place. The stone was discovered when the motorway to the airport was
being built. Like so many stones it seems to have been placed near an ancient
bridge over wetlands. The runes on
the stone have been translated as, “Gunnar
and Björn and Thorgrim set up this stone in memory of Thorsten their brother.
He died in the east with Ingvar and built this (bridge?).”
The
rune stone design gives a strong clue to the period when it was carved. In the
centre of the traditional writhing snakes containing runic letters, futhark*,
there is a cross. This indicates that it was made in the late Viking Age when
the people of this region had embraced Christianity. That is not to say that
the old pagan practices did not still hold sway and there is a very powerful
symbol of this on the stone which shows this.
Right
in the centre of the cross is a swastika. This symbol in Norse mythology
denoted Thor, the principal sky god of the Viking Age. In the Norse tradition,
his hammer was used to defend the gods’ celestial stronghold, Asgard, from
the giants, the forces of chaos, decay, and destruction. The swastika was carved
in the middle of the cross as a form of “double insurance” that the person
being commemorated would be guaranteed to be taken from one state of being – that
of chaos and weakness – to another – that of sacred order and strength. Use of
the symbol in this way really does illustrate graphically how tenuous the
foothold of Christianity was in Sweden at the time the rune stone was carved.
A second significance of the stone is
that there is a mention of what was perhaps the greatest disaster ever to
befall a Viking expedition. The stone mentions Ingvar. In 1036, the 25-year-old Ingvar, a Viking
chieftain later to be called “Ingvar the Far Travelled”, set off with a fleet
of at least thirty ships and as many as 2000 men, to travel to the Middle East,
to Serkland, the land of the Saracens. Serkland is the area around the Caspian
Sea.
The purpose of the expedition was almost
certainly a quest for gold. There are 26 runes stones in the area around
Stockholm which commemorate men lost on the expedition and several of them
mention gold. The stone at Gripsholm says, “"Tóla had this stone
raised in memory of her son Haraldr, Ingvar's brother. They travelled valiantly
far for gold, and in the east gave (food) to the eagle. (They) died in the
south in Serkland." . “Food to the Eagle”, is a
classic Viking way of saying that someone was killed.
According to a contemporary Georgian chronicle,
dated to about 1040, around 2000 Norsemen had travelled from the Black Sea up
the River Rioni to Basha. There they agreed to send 700 men to support the
Georgian King Bagra in a battle against his enemies. Unfortunately, the battle
was lost, but the victors agreed to let the Vikings go free. Legend has it that
Ingvar then led his men to Baku in Azerbajan. What
happened to the expedition after that is a complete mystery. It is said that
just one ship returned to Sweden and the crew of this ship reported that the
expedition had ended in disaster. See http://www.michaelwills.eu/?s=Ingvar+the+Far+Travelled for more background.
The second rune stone I would like to introduce
gives a tantalizing glimpse of what, from the Viking perspective, was much more
successful.
A few kilometers north of Stockholm is a tiny
village called Orkesta. The beautiful village church was built in the 12th
century. Outside the church there are two rune stones which were placed there
in 1977. Both of these stones mention the name of “Ulv”. One carving translates
as, “Ulv raised this stone for Onäm, hjs
uncle. They both lived in Borresta”. Borresta is an ancient estate to the
west of Orkesta church. This a
conventional rune stone inscription. However, the second stone is nothing short
of sensational fodder for a novelist looking for background to a story.
This second rune stone which is the basis of my
present work in progress, “For The Want Of Silver”, translates as, “Ulv received danegeld in England three times. The first was (part of)
Toste’s Danegeld, the second was (part of) Torkel’s, the third was (part of)
Knut’s.”
It is often claimed that the “Toste” mentioned
was Toste Skagul, a legendary chieftain from Swedish province of West Götaland,
who is said to have raided England in 970. However, Sweden’s leading rune stone
expert, Magnus Källström, emphatically denies that this is so,
pointing out that Ulv of Borrestad would not hve been alive in 970.
The second person, Torkel was “Torkel the Tall”,
commander of the dreaded “Jomsvikings”. He
led a Viking army to raid Kent in 1009. After being paid a danegeld of 3000 pounds
of silver to leave Canterbury, he went on to besiege London. He was
unsuccessful and so in 1011, returned to Canterbury to claim another danegeld.
However, the Archbishop refused to allow the danegeld to be paid and was taken
prisoner. Then the story gets really ugly. A number of Torkel’s warriors
mutinied. He offered them everything he owned, with the exception of his ship,
to release the holy man who had previously converted him to Christianity. The
chieftain’s offer was refused by the rebel warriors who savagely tormented the
Archbishop and then murdered him. Torkel took those who were loyal to him and
continued raiding southern England, eventually collecting 48,000 pounds of
silver in danegeld.
The third name is that of King Canute. After
being crowned King of England in 1017, he paid off his warriors with a huge sum
of 82,500 pounds of silver to persuade them to go home.
However, there is another story behind these two
runestones. In 1868, an antiquarian called Richard Dybeck, carried out a search
of the Orkesta area for a rune stone which was said to extend the text of the
first one I mentioned above. He did not find it, but he discovered the second one
above being used as a hearth stone at a farmstead. The extraordinary thing
about this stone, apart from the message on it, is that the runes had been
carved as a mirror image. That is, they had to be read from right to left. Why?
It is most odd that Ulv’s story should be recorded in a way which rendered it
almost impossible for anyone to read unless they could decipher runes
backwards! Could it be that he wanted his story to be recorded for posterity
but did not want to flaunt the fact that he had a stash of silver in his house?
My new book, a Viking story for young readers,
called “Bound for Home”, was greatly inspired by the runes carved in Istanbul
by Viking warriors employed by the Greek emperor. These runes, such as those
carved on the lion statue seem to indicate that the warriors had plenty of time
on their hands!
I could tell more, though I have much research
left to do. A study of the stones produced outside Scandinavia beckons. And
don’t think that the use of runes ceased at the end of the Viking Age. They
were still in daily use in the 20th century. But that’s another
story.
*Futhark – the Viking runic alphabet in used at this time, named after
its first six letters.
Children of the Chieftain – Bound for Home
The
concluding book in the series. After three years in the service of the emperor
of the Greeks, Ahl and his Viking friends have become very rich. Now the crew
longs to return home with their wealth, their problem is that the emperor will
not permit them to leave. They make a daring plan to escape. The route home is
perilous as they navigate uncharted seas. They must overcome robbers, storms
and hostile strangers as they seek their way back to the Northlands with the
riches which they have earned.
Michael E. Wills
Michael E. Wills
was born on the Isle of Wight, UK, and educated at the Priory Boys School and
Carisbrooke Grammar. He trained as a teacher at St Peter’s College, Saltley,
Birmingham, before working at a secondary school in Kent for two years.After re-training to become a teacher of English as a Foreign Language he worked in Sweden for thirteen years. During this period, he wrote several English language teaching books. His teaching career has included time working in rural Sweden, a period that first sparked his now enduring interest in Scandinavian history and culture - an interest that after many years of research, both academic and in the field, led him to write “Finn’s Fate” and the sequel novel, “Three Kings – One Throne”. Continuing in a Viking theme, in June 2015, Michael published, “Children of the Chieftain: Betrayed”, the first of a quartet of Viking adventure stories for young readers. The book was described by the Historical Novel Society reviewer as “An absolutely excellent novel which I could not put down.” The novel was long-listed for the Historical Novel Society, 2016 Indie Prize. The second book in the quartet, “Children of the Chieftain: Banished”, was published in December 2015 followed by the third book, “Children of the Chieftain: Bounty”, which was published in 2017. The fourth and final book in the quartet. “Children of the Chieftain: Bound for Home”, has just been published.
Today, Michael works part-time as Ombudsman for English UK, the national association of English language providers. Though a lot of his spare time is spent with grandchildren, he also has a wide range of interests including researching for future books, writing, playing the guitar, carpentry and electronics.
