Coursing Through the Deepest Snow

It's nearly the end of the cross-country skiing season. I used to indulge in this wonderful sport but lack of time, snow and other things have intervened these last few years. Nevertheless, frequent visits over the last few months to my family where they have Eurosport on the telly have enabled me to indulge vicariously by watching the racers, whose technique is lightyears ahead of anything I could once produce. I particularly enjoyed the many successes of the Norwegians, with their fetching red outfits and stars like Therese 'Duracell Bunny' Johaug, with her amazing performance in the Holmenkollen 30 km last weekend. That did make me nostalgic, since many years ago I lived up on Holmenkollveien and skied around those same tracks myself.

Of course the Norwegians should be best at skiing since they seem to have invented it, as suggested by Stone and Bronze Age rock carvings. Adam of Bremen, from whom the title quotation comes, associated skiing with the Scritefingi, the northern neighbours of the Norwegians and Swedes, or Saami as we might call them. He doesn't seem to have associated the Norwegians themselves with skiing, but then what do you expect, as his information mostly came from the King of the Danes, and when were they ever any good at skiing? (See my comments on Danish eminences in one of last year's blogs, and they don't get that much snow, either.)

Another non-skiing nation appears to have been the Icelanders. Clearly, they were familiar with the concept of skiing, from their regular trips to Norway, but they don't seem to have indulged in it themselves. Skiing gets a mention in ch. 163 of Sverris saga when King Sverrir sends a company of lads from eastern Norway to spy on his opponents because 'there was a lot of snow and good skiing conditions, while walking conditions were so bad that one would sink into deep snowdrifts as soon as one left the track' - an exact description of why skiing is necessary in some places, possibly written by an Icelander who, lacking skiing skills, had tried the walking in the snow lark. A slightly odd skier is Earl Rögnvaldr of Orkney who famously boasts in his poetry of his nine skills, one of which is skiing. Orkney doesn't get that much snow and when it does, it mostly blows away! But of course Rögnvaldr grew up in southern Norway, near the mountains of Agder, perhaps even in Telemark, that real home of skiing.

My favourite skiing anecdote is from Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla, where he has a  bit of a cheerful dig at his own countrymen. In ch. 141 of the saga of St Óláfr, we're told of an Icelander called Þóroddr Snorrason who, along with a companion, comes across an archetypal Norwegian backwoodsman, Arnljótr gellini, who helps them to escape after many adventures on a tax-collecting expedition to Jämtland. Trouble is, it's winter, and he's hoping to help them escape by skiing, but they just can't do it. So in the end he puts both Icelanders on the back of his own skis and, we're told, 'glided as fast as if he were unburdened', as wonderfully illustrated in Halfdan Egedius' woodcut interpretation (pictured) for the 1899 Norwegian edition of Snorres kongesagaer.

Location, Location, Location

Today's Guardian review of BBC 1's Shetland, based on Ann Cleeves' Red Bones, concludes that 'Sometimes ... a place is as compelling as a plot'. Which is pretty much what I said on this blog some time ago.

I suppose it was the need to establish the place more obviously that led the producers to introduce an Up-Helly-Aa subplot, making it all somewhat incongruous, since the story revolves around an archaeological dig (hardly likely in Shetland in January). Still, let's not get too fussy. This also gives the producers a chance to introduce various Norse mythology references that weren't in the original book. Shetland is, after all, as Viking as they come.

Coo-coo-ca-choo

©Trustees of the British Museum

As was recently pointed out on Twitter by Dave Gray, star presenter of Radio Orkney, 'Folk under the age of 50 are reading Walrus tweets containing the phrase "Coo-coo-ca-choo" and wondering what's going on'. Has John Lennon been reincarnated? I refer of course to the young male walrus that had a brief holiday on North Ronaldsay in Orkney the other day, just as I did almost a year ago.

Walruses are iconic in Norse and Viking culture. My esteemed colleague in Aarhus Else Roesdahl has written extensively about the export of ivory from their tusks from Greenland and across medieval Europe, and of course this ivory is the material of the Uig playing pieces or everyone's favourite 'Lewis chessmen'. But walruses are iconic in early medieval texts, too, such as the account of Ohthere, a Norwegian at King Alfred's court in the late ninth century, who said he travelled north for þæm horshwælum because they had such excellent bone in their teeth. Walruses rarely appear in Iceland (let alone North Ronaldsay), but the place-name Rosmhvalanes in the south-west of the country confirms some archaeological finds which suggest that the early Icelandic immigrants found and exploited breeding colonies.

There seem to be three different words for this creature in Old Norse. Rosmhvalr is an old word which survives mainly in the place-name and in legal provisions, in which it is sometimes confused with hrosshvalr. The Old English horshwæl mentioned above seems to be a calque on Old Norse hrosshvalr, which does occur in some texts, though there wasn't always a clear distinction between walruses and whales, and the Old English loan is perhaps the best evidence for this word meaning 'walrus' in Old Norse. Snorri, in his Edda (trans. Faulkes, p. 162), lists 27 different creatures which include various kinds of whales, including both hrosshvalr, which Faulkes translates as 'horse-whale' and rostungr, the more common term for walrus. The thirteenth-century Norwegian author of Konungs skuggsjá 'King's Mirror' is aware of the problem - he notes that the Greenlanders consider the rostungr to be like a whale, while he considers it more to be like a seal. And some Icelandic legal provisions also make a clear distinction between whale, which can be eaten along with fish on meat-free days, and walrus (and seal), which cannot. Rostungr is also a common nickname, and one can easily imagine the corpulent, buck-toothed or mustachioed chaps who would deserve such a nickname!

Sword-Girl

Most Vikingologists will already be aware of the small metal figurine (apparently it's silver) found by a detectorist last year on the island of Fyn in Denmark, and depicted on Martin Rundkvist's Aardvarchaeology blog earlier this month (from where I have 'borrowed' the photo, taken by Jan Hein). It is there described as a 'valkyrie' and indeed the figure, as far as I can tell from the photo, has long hair and is wearing a long dress with an apron (?), while carrying a shield in its left hand and holding a drawn sword in its right. I say 'its' because I do think we always have to reserve judgement, and I was amused to see that the first comment on Martin's blog post asks whether we are sure it isn't a man. Good question. Having said that, it looks fairly female to me, so let's go with the idea that it does indeed represent a valkyrie, that enigmatic figure who plays a wide variety of roles in Old Norse literature and mythology. The interesting question is, how to link the various material 'valkyries' found in recent years with their literary sisters. Now there's a fruitful topic for some aspiring student...

 

One thing that struck me about the Hårby figure is that it is holding a sword, as is the one on another, rather indistinct, brooch from Jutland also pictured in Martin's blog (where I do think there is a greater chance the figure is intended to be male). For some reason, I had always had it stuck in my head that swords were very much a male weapon, and that valkyries, when armed, were armed with shields and spears (the latter a weapon particularly associated with Odin), as well as protective armour, but not swords. I'm not sure where I got this idea from, though probably from st. 15 of Helgakviða Hundingsbana I. There, the valkyrie Sigrún arrives with some of her mates in the middle of Helgi's battle with Hundingr, and they are said to have helmets, blood-spattered mailcoats, and shiny spears. Later on, in st. 54, the valkyries are said to be 'helmet-creatures'.

 

But clearly I wasn't paying that much attention, since there is in fact a valkyrie-kenning sverðman 'sword-girl' in a poem I once wrote an article about. Oops. The poem is Hallvarðr háreksblesi's Knútsdrápa (to be published next month, edited by Matt Townend in vol. I of Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages). There, the valkyrie-kenning is embedded in a raven/eagle kenning ('gull of the sword-girl'), but the sword is clearly there. There is at least one other valkyrie kenning with a sword-word as a determinant in a Viking Age poem, so the connection exists, even if it is not especially common.

 

Finally, I did wonder whether this detectorist find was genuine - it's almost too good to be true. But archaeologists I have asked seem to have no doubts. It will be great to read a detailed analysis of it some time. In the meantime, it provides lots of food for thought in the emerging discipline of valkyrieology.

More Cats and Killings

I could go on, though I try not to, about the various mistranslations I notice when Scandinavian programmes are aired on British TV. A particularly annoying one is of course when Forbrydelsen whether I, II or III) is translated as 'The Killing', when 'The Crime' would be more accurate, though obviously less dramatic. Clearly, the Danish producers of the programme have noticed this too and are having a bit of a laugh at the Brits, since killing is the Danish word for 'kitten' (cf Old Norse kettlingr), and they have accordingly introduced a sub-plot revolving around a kitten into the latest, and last series. Still, I happily settled down last night to watch Forbrydelsen III wearing my very own Faroese woollie (pictured). Not quite as glamorous as Sarah Lund's snowflake or more modern zigzag versions, but purchased in the Faroes as long ago as 2001, long before the words Nordic Noir were on everyone's lips.

Three Daughters Deprive Me of Sleep

Although my recent visits to Norway (see the previous post for more on these) were not made in a particularly runological frame of mind, I kept coming across interesting runic inscriptions, in particular several involving women. So here's a quick tour of some of these, in the order of their chronology, rather than the order in which I saw them. Most obscure was probably the Tune stone (side B pictured right), well-lit and displayed in the Prehistoric Norway section of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, which basically includes everything up to and including the Viking Age. The inscribed stone itself contradicts the OED definition of 'prehistoric' as 'Of, relating to, dating from, or designating the time before written historical records', though I suppose you could argue about what was or was not a 'historical record'. Anyway, pedantry aside, it is a lovely stone with an intriguing inscription. I quote the English translation from Terje Spurkland's Norwegian Runes and Runic Inscriptions (now available in paperback, by the way):

(A) I, WiwaR, in memory of WoduridaR the master of the household, made these runes. (B) I entrusted the stone to WoduridaR. Three daughters arranged the funeral feast, the dearest / most devoted / most divine of the heirs.

Much of the detail is obscure, so do read Terje's discussion of this 'extraordinary piece of writing' to find out what it might all mean.  But there are two particular points of interest. Sometime around 400 AD, daughters could inherit property (Terje suggests that WoduridaR was the father of the three daughters, but had no son, and that WiwaR was his grandson). Secondly, the inscription is metrical, in something not unlike the ljóðaháttr of the Eddic poems. Both the supposed inheritance patterns and the verse form of the Tune inscription have their counterparts in the Viking Age and even later (since the laws and the poems were not written down until after the Viking Age). This means that either we have important evidence for an astounding longevity of certain cultural patterns in Scandinavia, or some odd coincidences.

Skipping the Viking Age, for once, it's interesting to note the presence of women in the medieval churches of Norway, both as the subject and object of the statements made in the inscriptions. A wooden pillar now in the Historical Museum in Bergen was originally in Stedje church in Sogndal. Stedje was one of those stave churches that did not survive the rebuilding craze of the nineteenth century, but the pillar at least was saved, along with a finely carved portal, also in the museum. The inscription records that 'Sigríðr of Hváll gave this staff for mercy towards the souls of Arnþórr and herself.' Arnþórr was presumably her husband, and Hváll is the farm Kvåle near the church. A man of that name at that place is mentioned in Sverris saga in the winter of 1183-4, and the saga also mentions the burning of Stedje by Sverrir's Birkibeinar, though the church itself was saved. How all this fits with the runic inscription, if it does, is impossible to tell. Magnus Olsen came to the conclusion that  Sigríðr and Arnþórr were the grandparents of the saga's Arnþórr and dates the inscription to c. 1175. The runes were at about head height and are deeply carved - Sigríðr clearly wanted the world to know about her gift to the church.

Much less obvious, and only discovered in 1966, is a more casual inscription in Bø gamle kyrkje, on the wooden panel of a repositorium, a kind of nook in the south wall of the chancel. The inscription puzzled many learned minds, though eventually Jonna Louis-Jensen arrived at the very ingenious solution. The Old Norse text reads:

Svefn bannar mér, sótt er barna,
fjón svinkanda, fjalls íbúi,
hests erfaði, ok heys víti,
þræls vansæla. Þat skulu ráða.

which can roughly be translated as 'It deprives me of sleep, it is a children's disease, the enemy of the worker, inhabitant of the mountain, toil of the horse and danger to hay, the bad luck of the slave; people need to work it out.' The simple alliterative stanza poses a question, 'what deprives me of sleep?' and gives the answer in riddling form. Each of the following phrases works out as a word which is also the name of a particular rune, so the 'inhabitant of the mountain' is an ogre, or Old Norse þurs - the name of the third rune. The six phrases give the runes k u þ r u n giving, of course, the female name Guðrún. So that is clear enough. But who was she and who was she depriving of sleep? Normally, only priests went into the chancel... Was he in love, or is it just an intellectual exercise? Is it the effort of working out the riddles that keeps the writer awake? If only we could tell... The inscription is dated to around 1200, when love poetry certainly was in fashion.

My last inscription comes from this fine pair of wrist-warmers I purchased in Heddal and knitted by a local lady who does other runic knits, too. Unfortunately, the runes don't say anything intelligible, which might be because they are based on an inscription in the gallery of Heddal stave church, which also does not say anything intelligible. Despite unconvincing attempts to make out that the runes represent the date 1242, all we can say for certain is that the runes say either -m-rn or mmrn (by interpreting the last, and possibly the first and third, runes as cryptic runes). Which could, I suppose be a cack-handed attempt to write Maria, to whom the church is in fact dedicated, or, more charitably, an abbreviation for some kind of phrase involving her name. I append a picture of the runic inscription, too, so you can compare, though it was hard to photograph through the protective glass.

 

A Church is Made of Many Assembled Parts

Twice in October conference invitations drew me to Norway and I can resist anything except temptation. One conference was in Bergen, where my cool Søs Jensen raincoat (bought quite cheaply in Nottingham) made a return visit to its birthplace and came in very handy indeed. Bergen is lovely, but I have been there quite a lot over the years. Bø i Telemark, on the other hand, is a place I hadn't been to for around twenty years, so it was a real pleasure to go there, and to think about Viking women, a topic I similarly hadn't thought much about in twenty or so years. Both trips were full of visual delights, despite the gloomy autumnal weather, and I saw so many lovely things, I might try to get more than one blog out of them. So today's blog is about churches, and its title is a quotation from the sermon In dedicatione tempeli, popularly known as the 'Stave Church Homily', and found in a manuscript written around 1200 in Bergen, no less.

 

Norwegian churches and church art are special, partly because of their very abundance. Stave churches are nowadays thought to be typically Norwegian, but there were probably many such elsewhere in the world (or in Northern Europe) which have not survived. Even in Norway, only 26 remain out of originally many hundreds. But the stone churches are wonderful too (more on this below), and the church furniture, altar frontals and statues from the 12th to 14th centuries combine spirituality and aesthetics in a most pleasing way. A good place to see a lot of this stuff is the Historical Museum in Bergen, very well worth a visit if you're ever there. Its medieval exhibition is beautifully presented and awash with painted altar frontals, statues of saints, including several wonderful St Óláfrs, carved portals and much else. But probably my favourite object is the model of a church pictured above - they don't know what its function or purpose was, though it might have been a reliquary. I like to think it had no real function except to be lovely.

 

The event in Bø  was one of those in which the organisers properly recognised that the key to a successful conference lies in some good excursions. So the very first item on the programme was a visit to Bø gamle kyrkje (follow the link for some nice pictures of it in winter), a stone church from the 12th century dedicated to our favourite St Óláfr. The church is lovely in itself, sitting on a very prominent hill with views all around, and was particularly atmospheric in the gloaming, illuminated inside only by candlelight. Most of the surviving furniture is 17th-century, but medieval pieces included a splendid candelabra, a crucifix, some fascinating runic inscriptions (more on this in a future blog), and a painted altar frontal just as good as those in the museum in Bergen. It's a bit damaged (see picture above), but it was wonderful to see this one in its original location rather than a museum.

  

The high point was the second day of the conference when we were all bussed to Heddal, one of Norway's largest surviving stave churches, though much rebuilt. We had some of the lectures in the church itself, then some in the nearby former parsonage barn, now transformed into a 'barn church' where most religious activity now takes place. Sitting in the church was very atmospheric again, even though illuminated by electric light rather than candles this time. I guess they can't risk candles in wooden churches (!), though they must have done in the Middle Ages. No doubt that's why 1000 got reduced to fewer than 30... The best thing in Heddal was not so much the church itself, fine though that is, nor its one measly runic inscription (more on this in future), but the amazing episcopal chair still kept in the church. There are several of these around the country, mostly in museums, so again it was good to see this one in its original location. It is beautifully carved all over, and includes a scene (pictured above) which has plausibly been related to the Sigurðr legend. The figure in the middle seems to be Brynhildr, welcoming either Sigurðr or Gunnar, depending on which one you think she thinks is riding the encircling flame to spend the night with her, and ignoring the other one.

 

What's fascinating is that the Sigurðr legend was so popular in this part of Norway (Agder and Telemark) in the 13th and 14th centuries. It is, as is well known, depicted on several of the famous carved stave church portals, as well as on various bits of church furniture, somewhat less well known. Although it is usual to link these objects with other depictions of this legend, such as the 10th-century carvings from the British Isles, or the 11th-century Swedish runestones, it was argued, recently and plausibly, by Gunnar Nordanskog that the Norwegian examples of this phenomenon served a rather different cultural purpose and came from rather a different cultural context than those earlier representations. By this time, of course, we are well within chronological reach of known written versions of the story. Thinking about Sigurðr brings me back to Bergen, and one of my favourite sights there, now a bit faded, this advertisement for Per O. Moe's machine-tool shop, wittily based on the Hylestad portal.