Valhalla Conversations podcast. I'm your host
Becky Hill, otherwise known as Soul Chaser Becky,
and I am a proud Viking geek. I fell in love
with the history, culture and mythology of the
Viking Age, and I have been on an endless quest
for more ever since. Join me as I discuss all
things North with those who have been inspired
by Viking Age history and North mythology in
their creative works, or those who have studied
the sagas and archaeology and review. how such
subjects are being presented to modern audiences
today. If you like Viking stuff you are welcome
in my Valhalla and I hope you stay for the conversation.
Welcome everyone to Valhalla Conversations podcast,
where we like to talk all things north, the past,
the current, the history, the mythology, popular
culture, and everything else in between. And
I'm delighted to welcome this episode's guest,
Dr. Roderick Dale. And he's joining me all the
way from Stavanger in Norway. Welcome, Roderick.
Thank you for having me. me and Rory have a bit
of a personal connection going back quite a few
years now because I first met Rory at the Unlocking
the Vikings Symposium or conference, one of the
two, it was over a couple of days back in the
UK, I can't remember, was that at the University
of Nottingham? That was in Nottingham, yeah.
It was in Nottingham, yes, that's where I first
met you and learnt about your own passionate
interests and professional studies and of course
we've both kind of gone on to do other things
since. I will read for you, dear listeners and
dear viewers, his bio from his book The Myths
and Realities of the Viking Berserker which is
available from Rutledge and he's worked as an
archaeologist throughout the United Kingdom and
in research roles at the University College of
Cork in Ireland and the University of Nottingham
here in the UK. He currently works at the University
of Stavanger in Norway and his research interests
include Old Norse literature, Viking history
and the reception of Vikings in popular culture.
Now, I know for a fact, because we've been keeping
in touch all these years, as you can tell, because
I've roped you back in onto the podcast, that
after we first met at Nottingham all those years
ago at the Unlocking the Vikings conference,
you went on to your job at the University of
Cork in Ireland and had a bit of a role in the
Project World Tree, which always fascinated me
and I now have contributed a little bit to that
because it was about the modern reception representation
of Vikings in modern day culture. Would you mind
telling our viewers and listeners more about
it? Yeah, the World Tree project was a fantastic
opportunity to find out what people think Vikings
are. The project was based around getting people
to submit Viking related items that would then
be part of an online database that could be used
as teaching tools. what we learned from it was
that it's Vikings are everywhere. That was what
we learned from it. And essentially people found
loaves of bread with God's names on or packets
of potato flour with Odin's name on or things
like that. Viking taxis and Viking pizzas were
everywhere. And a lot of these, so it was, well,
it was Tom Burkett's baby. He's the one who came
up with the idea and got the funding for it.
He's still at University College Cork and he's
working on a new project now, NorSmart. Yeah,
we worked closely together across the UK, Ireland,
Denmark and Norway. developing a community collection
initiative where people would spot Vikings in
the wild, as it were, send them to us. We would
add them with notes to the website and they're
then available for teaching purposes. But also
what it gave us was a very close look at reception
of Vikings in modern culture. So when we're looking
at it, we're thinking, why is it Viking river
cruises, for example? But then you're plundering
the heritage of the area in a metaphorical sense.
And Viking taxis, are you really going to get
into a Viking taxi? That was what we were working
on. The website last I looked was still up. I
haven't actually checked in a while, I must admit.
But it's available. We got given people who worked
in academia let us have some notes that could
be used as teaching resources about the Vikings.
And it included a wide variety of different types
of being. for wanting a better word that is Viking
related. It's certainly a fascinating area and
I know I remember being in a fish and chip shop
in my hometown of Huddersfield and seeing kind
of like on the window kind of like a stylised
Viking longship, photorefing that and sending
that in. As well as when I went to see York Minster
and they had a digitized copy of the Gospel of
York. Gospel of York? No, not the Gospel of York.
It would be an old book to do with York Minster
and it had the pages of where Emma and King Canoaton
visited and I remember taking photos of that
and sending it in. But I did follow it with great
interest because it is remarkable how much Vikings
are not just a people of history, their own culture,
their own mythology and all that, but they are
very much a brand now. It's amazing what connotations
are applied when you have the word Viking in
front of a business or a product or a service.
Oh yeah, I mean that's something that we found,
for example Viking tires are hard wearing, you
know, and a lot of the things that have a Viking
related name to them build on the mythology of
the Vikings or the myth of the Vikings, the idea
that they're adventurous, hardy, go places nobody
else does, and that they survive. So they bring
to mind a lot of different things that aren't
necessarily what the historical Vikings are.
To some extent, there are two types of Viking
in the world. There's the historical Viking and
there's the Viking brand. The Viking brand has
horned helmets and the historical Viking doesn't.
How do you know they're Vikings if they don't
have horned helmets? That is a very good point
that there are two types of Viking. I'm sure
if that project were just an eternal database
where people could contribute for years and years
to come, it would be fascinating to look at it
in 100 years time and see how that image has
evolved or continued to evolve, or whether it's
just stuck and it continues to repeat the same
characteristics and types. It's very interesting.
You can actually see it if you compare older
online searches for Viking. versus the ones that
you see now. It's very clear that TV programs
like Vikings have influenced how Vikings look
in pop culture. So you can go online and do a
search. And I did that for an article I've written
recently, which I hope will get published. It
showed that modern Vikings are much darker and
muddier. Older vices were very much shampoo adverts
with flowing golden blonde hair and very much
looking like beefcake men, a lot of them. And
now they all look like Travis Fimmel. Well, it's
made me actually remember that, was it last week?
It was last week when I did my weekly food shot.
there was an energy drink brand and I can't remember
the name of the brand but they had a new flavor
cult coming out called Viking Berries and it
had it had very stereotypical cartoon -esque
artwork of a male Viking, horned helmet. He had
a round shield, he had a sword, he also had two
axes on his back which I thought was a bit of
a overkill. He was surrounded by skulls also
with horned helmets on so it's kind of like the
question of like who killed these Vikings and
then on the opposite side of the can was what
I guess you could call a shield maiden although
she wasn't wielding a shield she had an axe of
her own, a two -handed one and a wolf. just to
make her look even more fearsome. And of course
a longship in the background with more horned
helmets popping out. And I did send it in to
the Nordic mythology podcast Discord Tube saying,
have you seen this spiking drink? It looks horrible.
Horrible. I mean, what's this guy got two axes
for when he's already got a shield and a sword?
Well, you've got to have spares just in case
you lose it in the middle of the battle. But
it really represents, as you say, that brand
image that people have now of Vikings. And I
certainly want to think back to more innocent
representations, such as Christina Cowell's How
to Train Your Dragon. All her Vikings have hold
helmets, even though at first, in the live action
adaptation of her book, they do look genuinely
ridiculous. So you can kind of see my hold helmets
would not work in any battle shape. or existence
in the world. But it's that motif, that iconography
that's kind of stuck to it. Very much like how
Valkyrie's kind of figures of beauty and ethereal
are and kind of like you dream of going off with
one, you don't really dread going off with one.
Considering it means you die, kind of like who
would want to? There's so much and I would certainly
kind of like love. I think I will have to go
back to Project Unisil and just have a more nosy
on their website because there was so much more
on there than the little bits that I put on.
And as you mentioned, Tom Berkett is now working
on the North Map, which seems to be an even bigger
bubble, so to speak, looking again at representation
of Vikings and in some ways their mythology as
well, not just their historical. representations,
but across literature and art and music. And
I was so jealous every time he advertised for
a PhD funded placement. I'm like, I would if
I could, I would if I could. But I don't have
the degrees or the qualifications or the time,
especially now that I've got a baby waiting to
come out for me in the summer. So I will be following
that project with great interest. It's just a
shame it's still early days otherwise I'd have
had him on as well on the podcast. But maybe
to later date when he's got some data to show
off. because it's fascinating to think how our
20th century minds have morphed and amalgamated
people from the time. You have to think how do
people in the future amalgamate us as 20th century
folk because it must happen at some point. We
can't always be the innocent party and not change
in some representation. That's it. And what will
be interesting in the future is which bits of
our culture and who will be the people that are
representative of it to those people of the future,
much like we get with the Vikings, where the
focus is always on the elites. So all we hear
about is Viking warriors and we don't hear about
Viking pig farmers often enough. That's true.
All the fishermen, all the boat builders. and
all like as you say kind of like there must be
sheep farmers because I know kind of they used
wool a lot in their sales that it took a lot
of sheep's wool to make just one cell so that's
a whole industry of people there doing that job
but no no one really knows about it. I think
that's one thing I always liked about when there
have been big Viking exhibitions like the one
at the British Museum over a decade ago now which
I still can't believe but I was lucky enough
to go there and you get to see or even in the
orbit. Museum actually in York, I think they've
got a plank of wood where you can just see someone's
carved out the lines to play Knappertafel. Even
though it's kind of seen as an elite game, people,
more common people knew the rules would probably
use stones or rocks or shiny pebbles as the pieces.
Well I mean the National Museum of Ireland in
Dublin basically has a rock with, I don't think
it's a Knappertafel, I think it's a Merrill's
board, it's a nine men's morris board. basically
scratched onto it I mean we say it's an elite
game but these games were played by almost everybody
we have evidence from the sagas of people sitting
around playing games including the women so therefore
you know it's not just burly macho warriors sitting
in the hall getting drunk and playing board games
it's everybody I mean people are always going
to play games and games like those are really
easy because you scratch a board on the ground,
grab some rocks, somebody else grabs some different
bits and pieces and you can play. Yeah that's
a very good point. It's made me think back to
when finds from the talk see winter camp were
found and they found kind of like hundreds if
not thousands of dice in like big shapes little
ones with some tiny tiny little dice and kind
of like they were probably using gambling or
other types of games yet they all got lost somehow
or just discarded when they got moved on. The
D &D player in me kind of thinks I would never
lose my dice like that these dice are kind of
like staying in my D &D bag they're not going
to get lost and buried underground and found
hundreds of years later. There's always one die
that disappears under the sofa and never re -emerges.
Oh, yes. Or the dreaded deep floor when you step
on it. Ouch, yes. Yeah, worse than Lego. But
yeah, I mean, the gaming pieces from Torxy, we've
realised that they're diagnostic of Viking Age
activity as well. So they're not just found at
Torxy and they just look like little lead thimbles
and they're everywhere too. So yeah, people were
sitting around playing games in these camps.
And I say camps, I mean, Torxy was big enough
to be a town. It was. They obviously had like
their own followers that would come through.
I think there was evidence of Smith working there,
obviously to repair bits of buckles or repair
swords and other stuff. So it was quite kind
of like, as you say, it was kind of, if not a
town, definitely at least a mobile village. main
warriors, but all the people who supported those
warriors, almost like groupies, so to speak.
The people who cooked, the people who hunted,
the people who put up the tents, put them down
again. Not just groupies, also merchants. Basically
they found the various dodecahedral weights,
I think they are dodecahedral, that have their
origins in Middle Eastern weight types. So there
were merchants there. There's evidence for women
there, which means there's evidence for children
there. You know, I mean, it was a town. I mean,
the estimate toxic had a population of around
5000 people or something. That's a fairly large
town by that time standards. So, yeah, there
was everybody there and, you know, an entire
support network of people who saw an opportunity
to get rich quick off the people who were actually
in the army it's certainly a better version of
kind of like engagement more than having them
turn up at your village and start burning your
house down on seeding all your pigs because they
need the pigs to feed their army kind of like
i'll sell you my pig if you give me some gold
for it oh yeah i should say more than gold more
likely silver but yeah yeah i'm sure they wouldn't
turn their noses up at gold either So we've got
all that evidence and these types of artifacts
are scattered all around that area as well. The
metal detectors have found and reported quite
a few that show where people were and it's instructive
to see how many of them are alongside the river
so you can see that the great army was using
the rivers like we would use the A1 or the M1.
Yeah, because those ships were formidable at
going up the rivers in ways that other previously
kind of like other big warships or remaining
armies couldn't, which of course is one of the
keys to the Viking success. Coming back to Project
World Tree, you mentioned how it had input not
just from the UK and Ireland but also from Norway.
Did you ever notice any differences between how
Vikings were represented in obviously their native
Scandinavia compared to the British Isles where
they kind of have the kind of like the good bad
boy image so to speak they're the bad guys from
history that everyone likes not really there
are some things that are different names of gods
from Norse mythology are more common on everyday
items so that kind of thing but generally speaking
the same attributes that make them popular in
the UK are the ones that make them popular in
Scandinavia and make and also in the Norwegian
settled areas or the North settled areas of America.
Interesting. They've always kind of like wondered
what it must be like to grow up having that culture
as part of your national identity and then wondering
whether they kind of like hey they have a particular
view or stance on it compared to people where
the Vikings invaded and settled more than actually
kind of naturally flourished as a society. Yeah
that's a good question I should ask my colleagues.
What do you think about Vikings Holvore? Yeah
no I genuinely don't know how Vikings are received
here in that way I think they're just part of
the culture. I mean, I know that just three miles
down the road from me, the bottle of Hofstjord
was fought. I know some people call it into a
question whether it actually was fought there.
But there's information boards up about it that
present information that I don't entirely agree
with about dates and things like that. And there's
a monument, the swords in the rock, to commemorate
it. These kinds of things are found all over.
The local archaeological museum has an amazing
collection of room stones in it, as well as some
lovely Viking Age finds, including gold. But
I'm not convinced that people think too hard
about the Vikings. They just are. Yeah. But I
wonder if that's almost kind of like the way
us Brits treat the Anglo -Saxons a bit like,
yep, we had the Anglo -Saxons with King Alfred
and then we had King Athelstan and eventually
become one big country, et cetera, et cetera,
et cetera. Kind of like it's, because we're taught
it all as a teenage at school, we're kind of
like not too fussed about it when we're all adults
and we're seeing it pop up on history channels
or on history dramas kind of thing. Certainly
it makes me think to an advert for wearing bicycle
helmets which made me chuckle, that North Smith
use of Facebook shared where it's set to the
Viking age and this guy is going to ride off
and join his troop to go and, well not his troop,
his kind of like shipmates on a ship to go raiding
and his kind of like son comes out saying are
you not going to wear your helmet? He goes no,
no it'll damage my braids, it'll damage my hair.
I was like yeah but... it's not going to protect
you from arrows or anything so can you like just
put it on and his wife eventually comes out with
the baby saying look will you just put it on
so you can come back and then I'm not having
to wait for it to find out what you've been shot
in the head by an arrow and I thought that was
a really clever interpretation of reflecting
kind of like the safety value of wearing a bicycle
helmet both for bikes and motorbikes of course
I think it's primarily motorbikes this case but
kind of like the idea of Vikings wearing helmets,
because of course we've got the ever -ending
myth of them having horned helmets, but I think
I was chatting to another previous guest, Cedric
Adrian, and he said there's only been one genuine
Viking age helmet ever found, which I found equally
mind -blowing. I thought, well why has this concept
come from that they all had helmets, if not chainmail,
or mail, I should suppose, because it's not chainmail,
it's mail. Another thing I learnt recently. That
was equally rare. Yeah, the only nearly complete
Viking Age helmet ever found is the Jarmundi
helmet from Norway. And it's the spectacle style
helmet that you sometimes see. There have been
eyebrows found. I'm waving my hands around like
people will be able to see what I'm doing here.
But basically the sort of the ridged brows of
helmets have been found. There's a couple from
Denmark that I know of and they remind quite
a bit of the Vendel era helmets. But the Jammu
helmet is quite plain, so it lacks all the helmet
decorative helmet plates and everything else.
So yeah, we only have that one helmet. It doesn't
have horns on it, so they obviously took them
off before they threw it away, or maybe they
fell off and that's why they threw it away. But
as Roberta Frank outlined quite a while ago,
the real influence is Wagner here. Oh yes, I
could have a whole episode talking about him!
But the chorus of the ring cycle all wore horned
helmets. The gods don't wear horned helmets and
we see that in the iconography as well, but the
everyday Vikings all have horned helmets and
that's where it comes from. But that's also interesting
because that's where the Valkyrie iconography
comes from too. with her winged helmet and that
just goes all the way through, you see it in
the 1928 The Viking, all the way through to Zena
Warrior Princess and they all have that winged
helmet when they're being Valkyries. So, Wagner,
well, Karl Dupluss designs for Wagner massively
influential. And I know I've had this argument
with people when Twitter was a thing who said,
oh, it's not Wagner because the Valkyries don't
have horned helmets. And it's like Valkyries
are a completely different iconography. They're
a completely different stereotype to the Vikings
with the chorus and the gods with their winged
helmets as well. So so that's where it comes
from. And I have no idea why that was so influential.
But it was. Well, as you know, I kind of happened
to join you in Stavanger two years ago now. I
started my crazy fan theories about Valkyries
in fiction, and I didn't quite get to touch on
the iconography of their design, but I do in
the article. That is hopefully, hopefully keeping
my double fingers crossed here, folks, going
to get through to publication and see the light
of day after two years of work. And I did dive
a bit deeper into where kind of like these modern
day authors are find this attiring their Valkyries
and ultimately it does of course stem from the
winged helmet look from Wagner and only one of
them actually adapts the winged helmet look to
be more almost like centurion cheek plates because
she has the wings coming down along the cheeks
instead of being up and upright and flapping
about and getting caught in all sorts I suspect.
But I know I looked at Alberto Delgado's book
about Viking films, and he has a small section
on Wagner, but also about the winged helmet being
used to represent the protagonist, the hero.
And that's actually got Celtic roots to do with
a series of Celtic poetry. It didn't last with
the Vikings as film characters in their own right,
but it did transfer, as you say, to the Valkyries
with them ever since. It's never really left.
but I think, what's his name, there's another
academic that is in Spain and I've forgotten
his name, but he had written an article a couple
years ago about Viking representation in 18th
and 19th century art and he found that there
was a painting, a mural, I think it was in a
museum in Berlin before Wagner's cycle started,
that depicts Tia the god of war and he's got
two Valkyries question mark, either side of him
and they've got winged helmets because of course
their connotation with war was more recognized
in that sense. I think that's one thing that's
definitely been lost with the Valkyrie iconography
compared to the Viking iconography. Vikings are
always at war, they're always killing people,
raiding, pillaging. The Valkyries are kind of
more beautiful, strong, independent women which
is a more 20th century edition than actually
being kind of like the bloodthirsty, curdling
kind of like... horrors that they were supposedly
more like to the people of the time when these
myths and legends were told. So that's just a
tip of an iceberg. I would love to do much more
research on winged helmets. It would be awesome
to see if I can find out when it's starting.
Who put them on compared to who put the horns
on the helmet? Winged helmets as well and similar
helmets are all generic barbarian traits prior
to Wagner. So there's a lot of that going on.
I've not looked into it in any detail, so there's
plenty of room for you to do that. Please go
ahead. But there's this idea of barbarians, 19th
century idea of barbarians, that they all have
these winged helmets and similar. you know they
all look a bit like Asterix yeah i mean now that
you've mentioned that it's also made me think
of eric the viking written by one of the gang
from monty python i've forgotten his name and
it's all very billion um no it's the other one
the one that probably died i think he had parkinson's
or alzheimer's oh i'm gonna get it off my shelf
one second can't not name him, that's embarrassing.
Kerry Jones, I knew Kerry, but his hero in his
book, and it is a really delightful kids book,
very reminiscent of Islamic sagas but much more
fun, and his hero also has winged helmets in
the illustration. So even he's carrying on that
motif of winged helmet signaling this is the
leader, this is the guy you need to follow, not
the other. people in the group. But I guess speaking
about barbarians we really should touch on one
area that I know is kind of like your dominant
area of expertise which of course is berserkers
and your excellent book The Myths and Realities
of the Viking Berserker looks at all of this
in terms of berserkers like why do we think they
ate magic mushrooms and wore loin cloths or just
bare skins and would go off and commit merry
murder? and then have a bit of a daze afterwards?
Yeah, yeah, no, I spent far too long researching
Basadkar. Is that a sign of a wasted life? No,
it must have been interesting because what sparked
the idea off? What sparked the idea? I wanted
to do a PhD and it was a topic that I wasn't
particularly interested in. Shall I begin at
the beginning? Let us begin at the beginning.
I've always been interested in Vikings and Norse
mythology since as far as I can remember. My
mother always said that it was because my grandma
told us stories of our Norse forefathers or some
such rubbish, but I don't remember that. And
then, of course, you get into Dungeons and Dragons
and there's barbarians who go berserk and everything
else. And it's super cool when you're 13 and
14 and thinking, whoa, this is awesome. Obviously,
what was more awesome was actually learning to
read old Norse as much doing my undergrad and
reading the Icelandic sagas and realizing that
things were actually even more interesting when
you looked at the reality instead of the rather
superficial stereotypes. So. After I did my master's
in Viking and Anglo -Saxon studies, I thought
I'd like to do a PhD. And I was casting around
for something to do. And it took an absolute
age to sort myself out and get the courage up
to say, can I look at berserkers to Judith Yesh,
who was going to be my supervisor? And then she
said, oh, I guess. So and I just thought, well,
I would really like to look at this. I feel like
there is room for something more in there and
I can adjust the perception of them slightly
and also give me an excuse to read all about
them and yeah it kind of snowballed from there
when I realized that I'd gone into it thinking
in completely incorrectly about the whole thing.
Oh, it was fantastic. It was it was it was like
there was a light bulb moment where I suddenly
thought nobody's actually asked if they went
berserk. Everybody says, how did they go berserk?
Nobody takes the first step. You know, it's not
you can't ask how without asking, did they? And
then reading the text and getting into it. I
realized that actually the medieval audience
probably didn't think they went berserk because
they're not associated with berserk words. And
so a lot of the perception that we have of them
comes from people's translations. So people will
read a translation and the translation says he
went berserk and did this, that and the other.
That's a translator's interpretation. That's
not the actual text. And yeah, it kind of snowballed
from there, really. But my interest still remains
in that topic, which is why I'm here happily
talking about it. I also feel like the book probably
provides everything I should have said, if not
in all, even if all the words are not in exactly
the right order that I would like them to be
in. It's a topic where I keep coming back and
thinking, should I have said it this way to help
people understand what I'm thinking? But it's
interesting because once you actually start looking
at the source material, then you realize that
If you're going to analyse the topic properly,
you've got to try and understand what the medieval
saga audience thought about it, because we only
know the word from the Old Norse literature,
which means that if we did not have that Old
Norse literature, we would not have Viking Berserkers.
No, that's true. We would have depictions of
people wearing wolf skins. from a very small
number of places in Scandinavia, plus from other
places in Europe. But we wouldn't actually have
the word berserk. So you cannot start your analysis
by asking how did they go berserk. You've got
to start your analysis by asking how are they
depicted in Old Norse literature. When you start
doing that, you've got to then remember that
Old Norse literature is not reportage. It is
a view of the Viking Age past from an outsider's
perspective. Yes, people are living in a development
of that culture, but they're not actually part
of that culture. So they're reporting what they
saw, not what they understood. It's a bit like
Ibn Fadlam watching a vulgar burial. and what
he's reporting is what he understands of it,
which isn't necessarily what the participants
understood of it. So yeah, that's kind of where
it went and where it came from. And then I looked
at the sagas as literature and I thought, hang
on a minute, going berserk doesn't fit with how
this literature is constructed. then I looked
at what words were associated with the word Berserkskanger
which is usually translated as Berserk of fury
or went berserk and realized that anger words
are not part of it. There is literally one example
of the word order associated with it and order
is the word which became Odin's name as well
meaning madness or fury. So of all the all the
instances of encountering Berserkia there is
literally one who is associated with that word
and the circumstances of his going berserk in
the modern English sense of the word are that
he's just heard that his sons died so he kills
the messenger. Kind of understandable. I mean
he was clearly upset he obviously liked his son
so When you actually start looking at it in more
detail you just realize that there is a lot more
going on here and the medieval audience probably
understood things differently and that means
that in the Viking Age it is more likely that
something close to what's being depicted in the
medieval sources was happening. than that all
the various ideas about people going berserk
and eating magic mushrooms or just being hungover
or whatever that come after because of how language
develops. The language is developed from the
Viking Age, the medieval period to now. So our
modern word means something different. But that
also is a problem because our modern word is
so ubiquitous that it's almost impossible to
take the step back from it to look at the past
and see the past differently. And yeah, it was
a rabbit hole. I'm just going to say that. I
completely relate, I feel like there's a lot
more I could do with Valkyries just generally,
certainly in terms of their depiction because
I'm not a historian, I haven't studied history,
I haven't even studied the mythology professionally
at any level, I just read lots of books like
yours and get lots of ideas and I've always been
fascinated by the idea of kind of like exploring
how people represent the Valkyries choosing the
dead and of course the bigger question of did
were they subservient to Odin or did they have
anything with Freya or were they more independent
and just kind of like used as a go -between like
the ferryman in Greek mythology because it's
you can only get across the river Styx without
the ferryman without the ferryman how do you
get across the river Styx you can't so it's but
then he's not got anyone telling him what to
do but of course that's a whole other whole other
debate um it's certainly to touch back on almost
like the Monty Python of course Eric the Viking
went from a book to being a film, a film that
was very different from the book in many, many
ways. It's something I discussed with Dr. Chris
Tuckley, formerly of York Archaeology, but now
working at Selby Abbey. He pointed out kind of
like how the image, the berserker there was just
kind of like uncalled, offending, frothing at
the mouth. And it was all comically spewed from
having a very persistent father telling him that
he's doing everything wrong. Oh, yeah. Spend
them happeningly calm is a fantastic berserker
figure. You know, telling his son, look, no,
you've got to control it. You've got to keep
it in until the right moment instead of going
berserk all the time. It's actually made me think
now, I wonder if there was an element of Berserker
-ness that inspired the creation of the Hulk
in the Marvel film, because of course he's typically,
I'm always angry and then I just turn green and
let it all out. It's hard to tell if it's Viking
related, but it's clearly Berserk related, yes.
The Hulk, Wolverine, probably other characters
that don't immediately spring as they'll like
to mind. all have these berserker fits. They
are the epitome of modern ideas of what it is
to be a berserker. It certainly becomes synonymous
with excessive anger, if not excessive violence,
which stems from excessive anger. Which is why
people find it so very hard to step away from
it and actually look more dispassionately at
the medieval sources. But I do appreciate kind
of like explaining for viewers and listeners
how it's not just kind of the language difference
and language development over centuries that
has influenced our understanding, perception
and meaning. But also kind of how the sources
that we do have that mention it are also from
a time outside of the time it was commonly witnessed,
accepted and better understood, I suppose, more
relatable to the people. of that time, especially
kind of like when I'm looking at Norse mythology,
of course, most people go straight to kind of
like Snowy Stilson's prose ever, because it's
more easy to read than the poetic ever. But of
course, he was a man, he was a Christian, and
he was writing it with a set agenda and a bias
that wouldn't have existed at the time when those
stories were better and wider known kind of thing.
Yeah, I mean, Snoddy's an interesting example
because he did try to write things down so that
the poets of his day could understand them. His
goal wasn't preserving the Norse mythology per
se, it was helping people understand the old
poetry. So he wrote the stories down, but we're
also pretty sure that he structured things in
a way that they wouldn't have been structured
in the Viking Age. We know that Viking Age religion
was intensely personal. You had a personal relationship
with the gods. You did not need intercessors
or intermediaries to make your sacrifices to
the gods. And that it was a lived religion, not
something you just did on Sundays. So, and Snoddy
systematized that to some extent to make it more
coherent in his work. But He also, I mean, he
employed historical method as well. His explanations
of why he trusts Scaldic verse are interesting
and fit, you know, because it's he had various
ideas about Scalds would not lie to their lords
or overly flatter them. It's all in his introduction
to the Edda. So he's He's an interesting character
in a lot of ways but what he's presenting is
not the religion as it was lived necessarily
by people living in the north of Sweden or the
south of Denmark or whatever or wherever. We
can see from place names that different areas
have different focuses in terms of which gods
seem to be favoured. and Snorri is writing, I
mean he was at the court in Norway but he was
writing in Iceland so he's presenting a more
Icelandic perspective as well. This is another
issue with the sagas that a lot of them are written
down in Iceland and only a few of them are known
from Norway and from other places so... you have
that geographical bias as well as the distance
from the time they're describing. Yeah it's a
shank, so no one could like the other Edder as
the poetic Edder, and I have Caroline Lawinton's
translation and that was a core piece of my own
independent Valkyrie research because of course
when I was looking at primarily the legend of
Brynhild, it's hard to not acknowledge Brynhild's
legend without looking at the other sagas that
feature Valkyrie characters, although not as
dramatically as Brynhill's own kind of like arrival
and ending. Like the legend, the second poem
of Helgi Hunding -Spain, or Hunding -Stade, whichever
way you want to pronounce it, I always butcher
it. kind of how it mentions in kind of almost
like a footnote from the person who was writing
it down who we don't know and we don't know who
they heard this story from they mentioned oh
yes there was this other poem called the song
of cara and they reincarnated and that's now
lost so i'm like That's such a tease for the
generations of centuries of future people to
that who are studying. It's kind of like there
was other stuff but we don't have it because
someone decided it wasn't worth writing down
or they couldn't find someone who knew it. And
of course the people who were writing it down,
as this one says, they described the theory of
reincarnation as an old wives tale. So they clearly
had moved on from that perception, that belief,
that understanding, plus they were clearly Christian
probably. because the Christians were the ones
that were literate, not necessarily the original
pre -Christian people that worshiped these gods
and believed in these stories and had these gals
telling them orally for decades if not centuries.
Yeah, I mean it depends what you mean by literate
because we do have roots from the Viking age
and before as well, so people were carving written
texts. And we have to assume that if somebody
is carving a runestone, they expect other people
to be able to read it. The problem with those
is that they are short texts that don't actually
give us the information that we get written down
in the medieval period in Iceland. And we don't
know what we've lost unless it's mentioned in
the footnote. we could have had there could have
been versions of these stories that got made
into bishops mitre somewhere and they've never
reappeared so yeah we're looking through a keyhole
at the past the best i like to describe it as
a jigsaw with half the pieces missing but we
don't know they're missing until because we're
still building what we can with the pieces that
i like yeah i think all the pieces that don't
fit i'm wondering why they don't fit But going
back to Berserkers, of course, the most recent
depiction that I think of Berserkers is of course
in the Northman film. Did you watch it and what
were your thoughts? I did watch it. I watched
it with an archaeologist friend and I spent more
time watching him in his face, to be honest.
I wasn't engaged by the movie The Northman. I
was interested to see how they depicted Berserkers
in it. There's a bit where Ulf Hethnard, the
guys with the wolfskins on, are dancing around
and I thought, well, this kind of fits in function,
if not in form, my ideas about what was going
on in the Viking Age. The idea that Berserksgangr
was a ritual that you did before a fight. And
we don't see it before battles. in the saga literature.
We do see it before duels so maybe it's actually
intimately associated with Hongan. Not 100 %
sure on that. Perhaps it was something that was
performed before a battle in the same way that
Tacitus a thousand years earlier described, well
800 years earlier, describes Germanic warriors
chanting behind their shields to try and scare
the enemy. So The idea that it's a performance,
that it is what struck me, especially after reading
the sagas where you get more detailed descriptions
of what's going on. And I mean, I always use
Eil's saga because it's the most complete example,
but this is not cherry picking. This is general
across. all of the examples. So in Arood's saga,
you get a group of Berserkers chanting on their
ship and then they all rush up onto land to fight.
It's kind of like there's a pause between the
fight and the chanting. In Hale's saga it's even
more pronounced. The guy does the Berserkerskanger,
the Ultrin Blakey does the Berserkerskanger,
Eyal starts getting impatient and says, look,
are you ready yet? He says, not yet, and carries
on. So Eyal composes a poem slighting him, a
poetry slam kind of thing going on, putting him
down. Then they fight. Then they have a rest
because they're a bit tired. So they go, oh,
can we have a rest now? So Hegel composes a bit
more poetry, basically slamming the guy again,
then he kills him afterwards when they carry
on their fight. There is nothing in the pacing
of that narrative that suggests that this berserker,
Jotrim Bleke, Jot the Pale, has gone berserk.
The distinct narrative pauses indicate that in
fact he's in control and that what he's doing
before the duel is something else. To my mind
then, that means it's some kind of a ritual function.
Every archaeologist says it's all ritual, but
we'll leave that aside for a moment. It's some
kind of ritual where he's trying to build himself
up for the fight, possibly scare Ael, who's not
easily scared by anything, but he didn't know
that. It may have had some kind of magico -religious
function in the Viking Age, because he's performing
it before a ritual duel. In which case, given
that Basakias seemed to be associated with Odin,
it might be to actually get the god on his side
for this forthcoming fight. uh these are all
things that are lost and all we actually have
is a description by somebody who is outside this
milieu and actively saying uh i saw yeah equivalent
to uh saying i saw this on tv and this is how
i interpret it so yeah it's very likely that
vasavskanga wasn't going berserk it was more
of a ritual that was performed If it had magical
function, it could have done. The connection
is incredibly tenuous, but in Hohemahl 156, there
is Odin's 11th spell is chanting under the shield
to take people safely into battle and bring them
home again. Which immediately made me think of
Tacitus's Baritus, the Germanic warriors chanting
behind the shield. And then I thought, well,
You know, is this related to what's going on
with Berserkia chewing the shields? I was going
to say yes, the Lewis Chessman biting his shield
and he's often been described as a berserker.
Yeah, I mean, that's a medieval pop culture depiction
of a Viking Age archetype. Worth remembering
that they're not actually Viking Age, those gaming
pieces. So they're what the medieval people thought
of Berserk might have looked like. So potentially
sorry. So potentially what you've got going on
is either chewing on the shield is metaphorically
raising the shield above the mouth or as happens
in one Irish source, there's a legal text which
I've been told about that was actually found
where they plant the teeth in the top of the
shield and do the chanting behind the shield
from that. Oh, gosh. I am now full. Literally,
yes. So potentially, you've got this idea of
the shield being brought up in front of the mouth
and then some kind of magical spell being chanted,
which would fit with the idea of Galdr, which
is described as like cox -crowing or whatever,
and also fits with the idea of the various words
used of Brzec's bellowing. We usually describe
them as howling, but the actual words used are
more like sort of bulls and similar animals.
So if you've got this really sort of macho, gruff
bellowing going on behind the shield as well,
you've got, you've actually potentially got all
the elements of how buttocks are described in
the sagas, biting on the shields, bellowing and
all the rest. The problem is linking that one
verse in Havamal to the actual saga texts, but
the resemblances are striking, so I'm going to
do a bit of a, oh, but hey, this looks like it
might be right. So that then means that Basadkira
are associated with dueling. We know they're
associated with elite kings from sagas like Rolf's
Saga, so with being part of the bodyguard. We
know that they're often associated with Odin
and we know that they do weird stuff that people
in later times have gone, oh my god, they're
absolute nutters because we don't understand
this because we're looking at it from outside.
All of these together indicate that you have
elite warrior types who are functioning as king's
champions, like Charlemagne's knights or King
Arthur's knights as his personal bodyguard, and
doing stuff for them. They're associated with
duels, which means that potentially some people
who went round challenging others to duels were
called Barsechia because they did the dueling
bit and performed this ritual. There's a lot
going on, and the real issue here is that we
just have no Viking Age sources that actually
talk about that, that tell us that. And when
we try to relate it to the archaeology, we're
making connections, but those connections might
not have existed to the Viking Age people who
produced the, like the Torslander helmet plates
with the wolf's... huskin figure and the horned
helmeted figure on it which are generally thought
to be Odin leading the Ulfheden into battle.
It's entirely possible that something else is
being depicted there or that it's not actually
going into battle, it's the pre -battle ritual
or the pre -dual ritual. Then you've got ideas
like Neil Price has put out that the war leader
embodied Odin. The article that he published
on the Sutton Hoo helmet, where there's no reflective
film behind the garnet above one of the eyes,
suggesting that this then was a one -eyed helmet,
even though the person wearing it had two eyes,
and thus they were cosplaying Odin. in a Viking
age, well actually it's pre -Viking ages for
that one, but you know, kings might be embodying
Odin at particular times as the king of the gods,
leader of the gods. The king then becomes Odin
in people's minds, intimately connected. And
again, because they're associated with Odin,
We're coming back to this thing in half a month,
saying that the high one, this person there,
it's an Odinic spell. It is the religion's personal,
therefore the people performing these rituals
probably have a personal connection to the god
and are seen to be the most appropriate person
to actually do this because of that personal
connection. And breathe. Yes, and maybe as much
as you could find all that and more in his book,
The Myths and Realities of the Viking Berserker,
because that is a wonderful whirlwind walk through
it, and I can't wait to read it personally. It's
just got me thinking more about kind of like
the way, particularly kind of like in the pop
culture sense, kind of like how they're represented,
such as kind of like in D &D, never thought actually,
oh yeah, Barbary's in D &D, do I have that kind
of like, I would like to rage, as Grog says,
critical role, kind of thing. and how they're
presented because I think the only other time
I've come across it recently was in a historical
fiction novel written by Angus Donald called
The Last Berserker and he presents them very
much as an elite, lightly reclusive, if not secretive,
cult society where it involves tribes, groups
of people being assigned to different animal
totems and animal spirits and connecting to that
rage through animals and doing impossible things
basically. But it was a very deeply spiritual
and kind of like more as a cult slash following,
as you say, a religious practice more than actual
kind of like just seeing the enemy like, okay,
switching on berserk, go. They all had certain
steps that they had to do before they could go
for it, or say connections spiritually more than
physically that they had to do. Oh yeah, and
as Charlotte Hedden, hence Diana Jonsson actually
says in an article, people going berserk and
suddenly charging out of the shield wall will
actually be counterproductive because it creates
gaps in the shield wall. So that kind of spontaneous
berserking would be to the detriment of warfare
in this period and therefore would likely be
frowned on. But I shall also add there that there
are examples of people going berserk in the sagas
but they are not people who are described as
berserkir. So we see it at Vinheather in Egil's
saga where Egil's brother throws his shield behind
him, either onto his back or just behind him,
and charges into the enemy, striking out on both
sides so no one could stand against him. And
that is mirrored in Herald's Saga, where at the
Battle of Stanford Bridge, where Harold Hadrather
does exactly the same. Really? I never knew that.
That's interesting. So you actually have Berserker
episodes. You also find it in Das Nibelungenliedhagen
does it at one point when they're besieged in
the hall towards the end before they all die
horribly. So, you know, it's more than just a
Scandinavian trope that. But those figures are
never associated specifically with the word Berserk.
So it suggests that this is a different literary
trope being used. And the fact that it exists
in Middle High German as well suggests that it's
more ubiquitous than purely Scandinavian. So
it's not Viking berserkers as such. So, yeah.
And I suppose the other thing that's interesting
is that apart from precisely two references from
the 14th century, Basakia do not appear after
about pretty much after the year 900 in the literature,
roughly speaking. So they are not part of the
king's sagas at the time of Harold Hadrada, for
example. So when people talk about a berserker
holding the bridge, that's basically romantic
embellishment of what was going on. So yeah,
they don't really exist, but I do know of two
actual historically attested Basakia that's not
part of the literature. Both from the mid -14th
century. One of them is in the will of a monk
in Oslo who says he wants to be buried in St.
Olavar's church in Oslo next to his kingman,
Ogman Basak. He is buried in the church, in a
Christian context, and he has the title Master,
which means he's clerical. He's not, you know,
so he's actually part of the church. No idea
why he has the nickname Barsak, but Bugman Barsak
is buried in St. Olavath Church in Oslo, unless
they've removed the bones from there now. So
you can stand on the spot roughly where he's
buried, if you can see there. And then you have
another one, Thore, who's busy paying tithes
to the church on behalf of his wife and stepdaughter.
And that's recorded in a document from the mid
-14th century as well. Interesting. I never thought
to look at it from a language point of view,
certainly considering I'm an English degree student.
or graduate, I should say, more than a student.
It certainly makes a lot of sense to look at
how language has shaped and evolved and changed
that understanding. Gosh. Oh yeah, and has been
shaped by the post -medieval research as well.
All our perceptions about Prosedkier actually
stem from starting with Stefan Stefanius in the
mid -17th century, and then further research
going on from there. So he said they were possessed
by black magic and Odin was a black was it they
were possessed by demons summoned by Odin as
the black magician and Then everybody else from
then has gone. Oh, yeah. Okay Well, that's obviously
not right because we're not religious now because
this is the age of reason So we're gonna look
at Siberian mushroom eight taking practice Which
is a whole nother thing and then every generation
revises the perspective on what Berserker were
based on, whatever the latest scientific theories
are. So the most recent stuff is all PTSD. These
were people with PTSD, so they just popped because
of that, which all stems from, I mean, it starts
with shell shock in the First World War and then...
developed to PTSD after Vietnam where people
actually did go berserk and threw off their flak
jackets and attacked and they have interviews
with these people but that doesn't make them
berserkers, which is a different thing entirely.
So people keep looking at that past reality from
a lens of the present and very few people actually
go back and analyze the medieval literature as
literature as well to understand it. So yeah.
Yeah, I mean, certainly talking to it's made
me realize that kind of like as well as the conception
of them having kind of like kind of like crazed
mindsets going into a frenzy, whether it's mushroom
induced or ritual induced, also kind of like
the bearskin, the furs that are kind of like
having been very vulnerable but yet fiercely
determined to throw themselves into dangerous
situations. The other examples you mentioned
show that there are berserkers that also were
kind of like well equipped, well armed, it wasn't
just kind of like throwing everything off and
going to the will of the gods. They did it in
the typical fashion of going into battle, that
you would put armour on and have a shield and
have a weapon of some description. Yeah yeah
I mean I have wondered if they wore bearskins
actually as armor because a bearskin is quite
hard to cut with a sword which would also fit
with the idea that you couldn't actually cut
them so you had to beat them to death with a
blunt object which occurs in the Sargas because
a bearskin again would not protect you very well
from massive trauma damage. If somebody clobbers
you hard with a big heavy mallet or what have
you, you'll still feel that. So I've wondered
about that, but that's really even more speculative
than I'm willing to go to. And it has been called
into question on the grounds that a bearskin
would be too heavy to wear. But then again, were
they wearing a whole bearskin? They weren't stupid
either. So they could have tailored these things
to make their armor. And there is a line in one
saga which basically says that they had wolf
skins for armor. Specifically for armor. Wearing
a heavy leather jacket will protect you from
a lot of cutting damage in theory. And in terms
of how I've always envisaged them as warriors,
I always envisage them as being something like
the parachute regiment or the French foreign
legion, applying massive amounts of highly controlled
aggression to the situation and controlling it
that way with absolute confidence in their own
abilities because they are the elite warriors,
which again is likely means that they were probably
descended from Berserkir as well because the
people who were in that position would get the
best food and be the biggest and the strongest
and brought up to it. And the question then is
how far back does the tradition go? When does
the word actually emerge? You know, because if
it relates to bears, then Bjarne is a Viking
age word, which means that an earlier Beran,
meaning bear, has to be pre -Viking age, so they
would have been part of that pre -Viking age
society. So yeah, there's a lot going on. There's
a lot we cannot know. But again, as I will constantly
say, you have to look at the medieval sources,
not the post -medieval analysis. be any medieval
sources on their own basis, on their own premise.
So yeah, that's Berserker's in a nutshell. Well,
certainly kind of like, as you say, all the gaps
in knowledge that we don't have because of the
way the sagas, as you say, were recorded out
of their time by people out of that time, not
witnessing or understanding what they were recording.
fully kind of like in an authentic sense. It's
certainly allowed as we discussed kind of like
with Vikings and indeed with Valkyries kind of
like creative interpretation, creative license
to any flourish because there's no one around
today that could say no that wasn't true that
didn't happen. We can say on some things that
they didn't happen or more likely that they didn't
happen but it's always to a degree we cannot
be a hundred percent accurate or definite unfortunately.
And the sources we're working with are more like
historical fiction than history as well, which
is the other issue. A lot of these sources, people
originally thought of them as being actual descriptions
of the past, and a lot of people still approach
them in that way, read them in that way, but
they're actually much more like historical fiction.
It's a bit like analyzing the Viking Age by reading
Charles Christian's books or, you know. I love
those books, but they're not history, they're
historical fiction. And even though the Icelanders
who wrote these things down appear to have thought
of what they were writing down as history, we
need to understand that it isn't really, it's
not reportage. No, no and I think that can stem
a lot to kind of like even the mythology kind
of side of things because I often think having
dived so deep into kind of like the saga of the
ballsongs and the poetic edger and Brynhild and
Sigurd Strathnir's Bane kind of like storytelling
I think I like to think that when they were already
told by different people in different regions
of Scandinavia or even in Iceland because of
course even the Nibelungliad which was more Germanic
than Scandinavian, that even the skulls would
have twisted and changed things depending what
audience they were telling to, kind of like the
time, kind of like because storytelling is so
creative, it's so free, it's not rigid, it's
not set, even kind of like with the invention
of the printing press, we still have 101 different
types of Vikings and 101 different authors and
equally berserkers. uh included in that spectrum
of interpretation there'll be a core idea and
it will have just evolved and got a spectrum
of things so the other thing i'm going to throw
out there then is also you may have manifested
differently in different parts of scandinavia
so again um you know what we're seeing is what's
been codified in iceland but it's possible that
a Eastern Swedish bassadka would have performed
differently from a Western Norwegian one, for
example. So there's that. And the other thing
to add to it is, of course, the manuscript traditions
show that the sagas were written down in multiple
variants as well. There are differences between
them. So again, you've got different stories
cropping up. So when we read a translation, that
is not the saga. It is a saga translated and
interpreted by someone. When I work with an Old
Norse text, more often than not, it's an edition,
which is a compilation of various manuscripts
because there are gaps in one manuscript because
mysait it or whatever. that we've filled in the
gap from a different manuscript but we can't
guarantee that what existed on that page that's
disappeared is what we've actually substituted
it with but we've produced a story. Yes, we humans
love to find patterns and things and when we
can't fill in a pattern we fill in the gap. That's
it and that's what we've done. And that is why
such books exist in multiple variants still.
Well I think kind of, I think a lot of people
would find this book really interesting and I
will when I eventually have the time and opportunity
to read it but it is here, I have it in my hands
on my bookshelf so you know I will do at some
point. It's been absolutely fascinating talking
to you about all of this Rory and of course I
wish you luck in your current position at Stavanger
and all the fun things that you're doing there
and hopefully one day we'll get you back on again
soon. Yep, thank you, thank you for giving me
a soapbox. It's been really good, I've really
enjoyed it, it's been really insightful for me
personally and I hope our viewers and listeners
have. enjoyed learning more about where Berserkers
and Berserkers are coming from and have a change
of perception themselves. Yep, we'll just think
about how they approach the sources. That's the
other thing. But yeah, thank you. Thank you very
much. Okay. Thank you very much for listening
to this episode. I hope you enjoyed the discussions
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