The Real Valkyrie

by Nancy Marie Brown

trade route: Bjørn Myhre, “The Early Viking Age in Norway,” Acta Archaeologica 71 (2000): 43–44. Tenaya Jorgensen, The Scandinavian Trade Network in the Early Viking Age (master’s thesis, University of Oslo, 2017), 7, 21, 26–29. Aina Margrethe Heen-Pettersen, “The Earliest Wave of Viking Activity?” European Journal of Archaeology (2019): 523–41. Haralds saga hárfagra, ch. 34 (Jaeren). J. R. L. Anderson, Vinland Voyage (Funk and Wagnalls, 1967), 67 (“vicious tumble”). Frankish Annals, quoted by Skre (2011), 445 (“set out for Vestfold”).

  Artisans: Völundarkviða. Johann Callmer, “Wayland,” Uppåkra Studies 7 (2002): 337–61. Skre and Stylegar (2004), 47, 50, 58. Skre (2011), 411, 417, 426–33.

  slavery: Jorgensen, Scandinavian Trade Network, 21. Ben Raffield, “The Slave Markets of the Viking World,” Slavery & Abolition 40 (2019): 682–704. Price (2020), 141–54.

  dirhams: Christoph Kilger in Skre (2008), 239 (fake), 246.

  risk of trade: Skre and Stylegar (2004), 59. Frans-Arne Stylegar, “The Kaupang Cemeteries Revisited,” in Skre (2007), 83. Skre (2007), 446–52. Ingrid Gustin, “Trade and Trust in the Baltic Sea Area During the Viking Age,” in J. H. Barrett and S. J. Gibbon, eds., Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World (Maney Publishing, 2015), 25–40.

  4: LITTLE “HEL-SKINS”

  Arrow-Odd: retold from Örvar-Odds saga, ch. 35.

  Olaf and Sigrod: Snorri Sturluson, in Haralds saga hárfagra, ch. 35, is unclear about how long after the killing of Bjorn the Merchant Eirik Bloodaxe killed his brothers Olaf and Sigrod.

  bow chisels: The lines of verse are translated by: H. Pálsson and P. Edwards, trans., Egil’s Saga (Penguin, 1976), 148 (“bow chisels”). A. Faulkes, trans., Snorri Sturluson: Edda (Everyman, 1987; rpt., 1995), 139, 141 (“sea thuds,” “froth piles,” slightly revised). A. W. Brøgger and H. Shetelig, Viking Ships (Twayne, 1951; rpt., 1971), 113 (“mane”).

  childhood: Hervarar saga, ch. 3 (Hervor). Landnámabók, ch. 112 (“Hel-skins”); trans. H. Pálsson and P. Edwards (University of Manitoba, 1972), 57 (“puny-looking”). On loving mothers, see Friðriksdóttir (2013), 129. Egils saga, ch. 31 (feast), ch. 40 (foster mother, ball game). Njáls saga, ch. 11, 12, 17 (Hallgerd). Laxdæla saga, ch. 28 (“We both lie abed”). Landnámabók, ch. 68 (fishing). Laxdæla saga, ch. 29 (Leg-Biter). Njáls saga, ch. 95 (Hildigunn). Óláfs saga helga, ch. 2 (Olaf). Grettis saga, ch. 14 (geese).

  Irish legal text: Bronagh Ni Chonaill, “Child-Centred Law in Medieval Ireland,” in R. Davis and T. Dunne, eds., The Empty Throne (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 14–15. Bronagh Ni Chonaill, “Flying a Kite with the Children of Hiberno-Norse Dublin,” in J. Bradley, A. J. Fletcher, and A. Simms, eds., Dublin in the Medieval World (Four Courts Press, 2009), 17.

  “make the bread”: Völsunga saga, ch. 6–7.

  Tools: Moen (2019), 97, 190. See also my Ivory Vikings (St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 135, 144.

  rough games: Ni Chonaill, “Flying a Kite.” Leszek Gardeła, “What the Vikings Did for Fun,” World Archaeology 42 (2012): 234–47. Short (2014), 161. Hjardar and Vike (2016), 61–63. Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar, ch. 85 (juggle, oars).

  Play weapons: Ben Raffield, “Playing Vikings,” Cultural Anthropology 60 (December 2019). Hervarar saga, ch. 3 (Hervor). Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 40 (Kjartan). Russian Primary Chronicle, trans. Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (Medieval Academy of America, 1953), 80 (Sviatoslav). Landnámabók, ch. 80 (Herjolf). Örvar-Odds saga, ch. 2 (Arrow-Odd).

  miniature farms: Óláfs saga helga, ch. 76.

  “make-believe”: Njáls saga, ch. 8, loosely translated. In the saga, the girl is not directly quoted, though she is “chattering” with the boys.

  fight at Tunsberg: Haralds saga hárfagra, ch. 35.

  “king-slayer”: Hákonar saga góða, ch. 31.

  5: QUEEN ASA’S REVENGE

  Queen Asa: Ynglinga saga, ch. 48. Hálfdana saga svarta, ch. 1. Lee Hollander, trans., Heimskringla (University of Texas Press, 1964; rpt., 2009), 48 (“deep-wrought wiles”).

  buried in the Oseberg ship: Holck (2006). Nina Nordstrom, “The Immortals,” in H. Williams and M. Giles, eds., Archaeologists and the Dead (Oxford University Press, 2016), 204–32. Niels Bonde and Arne Emil Christensen dated the burial chamber to 834; see “Dendrochronological Dating of the Viking Age Ship Burials at Oseberg, Gokstad, and Tune, Norway,” Antiquity 67 (1993): 575–83. To deduce the date of Queen Asa’s death, we must assess Snorri Sturluson’s claims that Harald Fairhair became king at age ten and ruled for more than seventy years. We must also guess Asa’s age when she gave birth to Halfdan and how long she ruled in Agdir. I find she could have died in about 839 at age thirty-five to forty. Gwyn Jones in A History of the Vikings (Oxford University Press, 1968), 8, believes Asa died after 858. On the DNA tests, see Price (2020), 199.

  Oseberg grave mound: Thorleif Sjøvold, The Oseberg Find (Oslo Universitetets Oldsaksamling, 1969), 10. Anne Stine Ingstad, “The Interpretation of the Oseberg Find,” in O. Crumlin-Pedersen and B. M. Thyre, eds., The Ship as a Symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia (Copenhagen Nationalmuseet, 1995), 146–47. Frands Herschend, “Ship Grave Hall Passage,” in G. Barnes and M. Clunies Ross, eds., Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society (University of Sydney Centre for Medieval Studies, 2000), 142–51. Robert Ferguson, The Vikings (Viking Penguin, 2009), 15–16. Kirsten Ruffoni, Viking Age Queens (master’s thesis, University of Oslo, 2011), 20, 28. Niels Bonde and Frans-Arne Stylegar, “Between Sutton Hoo and Oseberg,” Danish Journal of Archaeology 5 (2016): 19–33. Eva Andersson Strand, “Northerners,” in M.-L. Nosch et al., eds., Global Textile Encounters (Oxbow Books, 2014), 77. Heide Eldar, “The Early Viking Ship Types,” in Særtrykk fra Sjøfartshistorisk Árbok 2012 (Bergen, 2014), 81–83. Lisbeth Weichel, “The Viking Ship That Couldn’t Sail Is Headed for Roskilde,” Viking Ship Museum press release, July 6, 2015. The retrieved contents of the Oseberg mound are curated at the Viking Ship Museum, Bygdøy, Norway, and listed online by the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History at www.khm.uio.no.

  “wave runes”: Völsunga saga, ch. 21.

  burial ceremony: Neil Price, “Passing into Poetry,” Medieval Archaeology 54 (2010): 123–56. Haralds saga hárfagra, ch. 8 (three summers). Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness, trans. P. Lunde and C. Stone (Penguin, 2012), 49, 51. Ynglinga saga, ch. 8 (burned). Sigurðarkviða in skamma (“Build me a pyre”) and Helreið Brynhildar (“two pyres”). Heimskringla Prologus (“Uppsala”).

  “women are silenced”: Robert MacFarlane, Underland (W. W. Norton, 2019), 191.

  grave robbers’: A. W. Brøgger and H. Shetelig, Viking Ships (Twayne, 1951; rpt., 1971), 67. Herschend, “Ship Grave Hall Passage,” 144–45. Holck (2006), 190. Moen (2010 [2011]), 37. Ruffoni, Viking Age Queens, 23, 34. Gardeła (2013), 291. Terje Gansum, “Role the Bones—from Iron to Steel,” Norwegian Archaeological Review 37 (2004): 41–57. Back Danielsson (2007), 247–48 (“bone coal”).

  “rode on the wind”: Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar, prose after st. 9.

  Gokstad mound: Marianne Moen, interviewed August 20, 2018, compares it to Oseberg; Moen (2010 [2011]), 39–43, 73, 96, 245.The retrieved contents are curated at the Viking Ship Museum, Bygdøy, Norway, and listed online by the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History at www.khm.uio.no. On the date of the burial, see Bonde and Christensen, “Dendrochronological Dating.” On the skeleton, see Holck (2009).

  6: THE WINTER NIGHTS FEAST

  Winter Nights: I based my reconstruction of the ritual on Terry Gunnell, “The Season of the Dísir,” Cosmos 16 (2000): 117–49. Eldar Heide, “Spinning Seiðr,” in A. Andrén, K. Jennbert, and C. Raudvere, eds., Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives (Nordic Academic Press, 2006), 164–70. Price (2019), 35, 129, 168. Gavin Lucas and Thomas McGovern, “Bloody Slaughter,” European Journal of Archaeology 10 (2007): 7–30. Lectures by Einar Selvik at the Midgardsblot in Borre, Norway, August 17–18, 2019 (“power of poetry”). Ynglinga saga, ch. 15 (“kings’ blood,” Domaldi), 29 (Adils). Örvar-Odds sa
ga, ch. 3 (“wrestle”). Eiríks saga rauða, ch. 4 (“worthy family”).

  staff of power: Leszek Gardeła, “A Biography of the Seiðr-staffs,” in L. Slupecki and J. Morawiec, eds., Between Paganism and Christianity in the North (Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, 2009), 121–64 and 190–219. Price (2019), 84, 132–47. Eldar Heide (“mind-threads”), quoted in Leszek Gardeła, “Into Viking Minds,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 4 (2008): 49. Ingrid Gustin, “Of Rods and Roles,” in C. Theune et al., eds., Zwischen Fjorden und Steppe (Leidorf, 2010), 343–54.

  men are named witches: Astrid Ogilvie and Gísli Pálsson, “Weather and Witchcraft in the Sagas of Icelanders,” presented at the Thirteenth International Saga Conference, Durham and York (August 2006). Miriam Mayburd, “Helzt þóttumk nú heima í milli,” Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 129 (2014): 135.

  dísablót: Egils saga, ch. 44 (led by Gunnhild). Hákonar saga góða, ch. 14 (“sprinklers”), 17, 18. Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 37. Gísla saga Súrssonar, ch. 20. Gunnell, “Season of the Dísir.” Jane-Anne Denison, Rituals in the Viking World (master’s thesis, University of the Highlands and Islands, 2016), 24.

  dísir: Maria Kvilhaug, The Maiden with the Mead (master’s thesis, University of Oslo, 2004), 38. Judith Quinn, “Mythological Motivation in Eddic Heroic Poetry,” in P. Acker and C. Larrington, eds., Revisiting the Poetic Edda (Routledge, 2013), 173. Anne Irene Riisøy, “Eddic Poetry,” Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 8 (2016): 157–71. Terry Gunnell, “Blótgyðjur, Goðar, Mimi, Incest, and Wagons,” in P. Hermann et al., eds., Old Norse Mythology: Comparative Perspectives (Harvard University Press, 2017), 113–38.

  goddesses: Gro Steinsland (creation myth), cited by Back Danielsson (2007), 57. Gardeła, “Into Viking Minds,” 64 (chairs). Edda, 1:13, 21 (Frigg), 21 (“no less holy”), 23–24 (Skadi), 24 (Freyja), 29–30 (Eir, Vor, Syn, Hlin, and Gna); 2:61 (Skadi). John Lindow, Norse Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2001), 126 (“lust”).

  Odin: Ynglinga saga, ch. 6 (berserks). Terry Gunnell, “From One High-One to Another,” in L. Slupecki and R. Simek, eds., Conversions (Fassbaender, 2013), 153–78. Price (2019), 59–62.

  Gullveig: Kvilhaug, Maiden with the Mead, 135–40.

  Freyja: Ynglinga saga, ch. 6 (magic), ch. 10 (“lady”). Kvilhaug, Maiden with the Mead, 37 (Great Goddess). Anne Irene Riisøy, “Performing Oaths in Eddic Poetry,” Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 8 (2016): 146 (sun).

  “god house”: Søren Diinhoff of the University Museum of Bergen, quoted by Tom Metcalfe, “1,200-Year-Old Pagan Temple to Thor and Odin Unearthed in Norway,” Live Science (October 8, 2020). Katherine Morris, Sorceress or Witch? (University Press of America, 1991), 2, 5–6, 129–30. Neil Price and Bo Gräslund, “Excavating the Fimbulwinter?” in F. Riede, ed., Past Vulnerability (Aarhus University Press, 2015).

  7: THE VALKYRIES’ TASK

  “trolls’ foe”: Egils saga, ch. 44.

  cup bearer: Michael J. Enright, Lady with a Mead Cup (Four Courts Press, 1996; rpt., 2013), 7 (“ritual of lordship”), 2 (“cohesion”). Christopher Abram, Myths of the Pagan North (Continuum, 2011), 68, 105. Price (2019), 279. Edda, 1:30–31 (“serve in Valhalla”). Hákonarmál in Hákonar saga góða, ch. 32 (“ale from the Aesir”). Eiríksmál, st. 1 (“What did I dream?”). Sandra Ballif Straubhaar, Old Norse Women’s Poetry (D. S. Brewer, 2011), 16 (Gunnhild as poet). John Lindow, Norse Mythology (Oxford University Press, 2001), 104 (“Lone-Fighters”). Luke John Murphy, Herjans Dísir (master’s thesis, University of Iceland, 2013), 118 (“recalcitrant teenagers”).

  “women drinking”: Back Danielsson (2007), 81 (“How close”). Ynglinga saga, ch. 36 (King Ingjald), 37 (pairs, Hildigunn). Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar, ch. 43 (Sigrid). Egils saga, ch. 48 (“lots”); Sandra Ballif Straubhaar translated the poem “Who said” in Old Norse Women’s Poetry, 24.

  kitchen: Moen (2019), 261 (graves). Daniel Serra and Hanna Tunberg, An Early Meal (ChronoCopia Publishing, 2013), 139 (“time and effort”), 179 (joints). Helgakviða Hundingsbana II. Grottasöngr, st. 15 (“As heroes”).

  beer and ale: Merryn Dineley and Graham Dineley, in Serra and Tunberg, An Early Meal (2013), 134–36; “Where Were the Viking Brew Houses?” presented at the Seventh Experimental Archaeology Conference, Cardiff University and St. Fagans Museum (January 11–12, 2013). Geir Grønnesby, “Hot Rocks! Beer Brewing on Viking and Medieval Age Farms in Trøndelag,” in F. Iversen and H. Petersson, eds., The Agrarian Life of the North 2000 BC–AD 1000 (Portal, 2016) 133–50. Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Cornell University Press, 1995), 121. Stephen Law, “Berserkir Beer,” presented at the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo (May 12, 2011) (“stupefying,” “whopping”). Hymiskviða, st. 2–3 (Aegir). Sigurdrífumál, st. 7, 29, 30. Hávamál, st. 12–13.

  8: THE FEUD

  The feud: Egils saga, ch. 44–45, 48–49, 56–57.

  women and wisdom: Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (Boydell Press, 1991), 156. Friðriksdóttir (2013), 115; Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, “Hyggin ok Forsjál,” in M. Arnold and A. Finlay, eds., Making History (VSNR, 2010), 73.

  Saga of Hrolf: Hrólfssaga Gautrekssonar. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards, Hrolf Gautreksson: A Viking Romance (University of Toronto Press, 1972), 7 (“unacceptable”), 20 (“realistic”). Michael Chesnutt (“late,” “frivolous”), quoted in Friðriksdóttir, “Hyggin ok Forsjál,” 69, 70. Marianne Kalinke, Bridal-Quest Romance in Medieval Iceland (Cornell University Press, 1990), 6. Emily Lethbridge, “Some Observations on Íslendingasögur Manuscripts and the Case of Njáls Saga,” Arkiv for Nordisk Filologi (January 2014): 84–88.

  “skrifaði í tabula”: Hrólfssaga Gautrekssonar, ch. 37. Pálsson and Edwards, Hrolf Gautreksson, 148 (“committed to vellum”; I’ve substituted the more common term “parchment”). Normann (2008), 1–3, 31 (“to weave”).

  “submission”: Pálsson and Edwards, Hrolf Gautreksson, 9. Hrólfssaga Gautrekssonar, ch. 11.

  “Grim Gunnhild”: Egils saga, ch. 57.

  Hakon the Good: Hákonar saga góða, ch. 1–3.

  “absolute chronology”: H. Pálsson and P. Edwards, trans., Egil’s Saga (Penguin, 1976), 248.

  possibly not Bloodaxe: Clare Downham, “Eric Bloodaxe—Axed?” Medieval Scandinavia 14 (2004): 51–77.

  9: THE QUEEN OF ORKNEY

  Horse Island: Now Mainland, Orkney. That Gunnhild and Eirik lived at Stone Ness (Stenness) is my guess. James H. Barrett et al., “Diet and Ethnicity During the Viking Colonization of Northern Scotland,” Antiquity 75 (2001): 145–54. Jane Harrison, “Settlement Landscapes in the North Atlantic,” Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 4 (2013): 129–47. Raymond C. Lamb, “Carolingian Orkney and Its Transformation,” in C. E. Batey et al., eds., The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic (Edinburgh University Press, 1993), 260–71. Olwyn Owen, “The Scar Boat Burial,” in J. Adams and K. Holman, eds., Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350 (Brepols, 2004), 3–34. Orkneyinga saga, ch. 4–10.

  Aud the Deep-Minded: Landnámabók, ch. 95–110, 170.

  marriages: Njáls saga, ch. 97 (“find you a good wife”). Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Cornell University Press, 1995), 21, 29, 37. Thomas Bredsdorff, Chaos and Love: The Philosophy of the Icelandic Family Saga (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2001), 22. Else Mundal, “The Double Impact of Christianization for Women in Old Norse Culture,” in K. E. Børresen et al., eds., Gender and Religion (Carocci, 2001), 237. Birgit Sawyer, “Marriage, Inheritance, and Property in Early Medieval Scandinavia,” n.d., posted on her Academia.edu page. Orkneyinga saga, ch. 8–9.

  textile arts: The costumes described are my speculation, based on many sources, chiefly: Moen (2019), 33–34. Elizabeth Wayland Barber, Women’s Work (W. W. Norton, 1995), 35, 87, 191, 194, 202, 234, 282. Thor Ewing, Viking Clothing (History Press, 2012), 24–58, 65–69, 79, 90–99, 123, 131, 144, 154–57, 164, 167. Jenny Jochens, “Before the Male Gaze,” in L. Lönnroth, ed.
, The Audience of the Sagas (Gothenburg University, 1991), 1:250–51. Colleen Batey et al., eds., Cultural Atlas of the Viking World (Facts-on-File, 1994), 67. Michèle Hayeur-Smith, Draupnir’s Sweat and Mardöll’s Tears (Hadrian Books, 2004), 71, 92; “Weaving Wealth,” in A. L. Huang and C. Jahnke, eds., Textiles and the Medieval Economy (Oxbow Books, 2015), 27–28. Marta Hoffman, The Warp-Weighted Loom (Oslo Universitetsforlaget, 1974), 247, 269. Agnes Geijer, “Textile Finds from Birka,” in N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting, eds., Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe (Heinemann Educational Books, 1982), 81, 86. Penelope Walton Rogers, Textile Production at 16–22 Coppergate (Council for British Archaeology, 1997), 1735, 1744–49, 1769. Bertil Almgren, The Viking (Tre Tryckare, Cagner, 1966), 200. Nobuko Kajitani, “A Man’s Caftan and Leggings from the North Caucasus of the Eighth to Tenth Century,” Metropolitan Museum Journal 36 (2001): 106. Eva Andersson Strand, “Northerners,” in M.-L. Nosch et al., eds., Global Textile Encounters (Oxbow Books, 2014), 77. Price (2020), 392 (slave labor); he warns that the discovery of the Hårby “valkyrie” in 2012 and another figurine at Revninge, Denmark, in 2014 “have shifted, indeed undermined, scholars’ presumed understanding of Viking-Age clothing,” 129. Örvar-Odds saga, ch. 19 (magic shirt).

  tapestry: Barber, Women’s Work, 227–29. Normann (2008), 1–2, 3 (“bók”), 31 (“wrote on it”), 80, 174 (“memory peg”). Orkneyinga saga, quoted by Normann (2008), 100 (“make a verse”).

  10: THE TRAGEDY OF BRYNHILD

  Brynhild: In Old Norse, the tragedy is told in prose in Völsunga saga and referred to in seventeen poems in The Poetic Edda (Eddukvæði), as well as in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda. Brynhild also appears in Þiðreks saga af Bern (a Norse translation of German tales), the German Nibelungenlied and Das Lied vom Hürnen Seyfrid, and several Faroese ballads. Theodore M. Andersson reconstructs the oldest version of the story in The Legend of Brynhild (Cornell University Press, 1980), 72, 239–49. My retelling relies on Völsunga saga, ch. 21–31 (“I am a shield-maid,” “The fire flared,” “How dare you,” “stitching,” “skillful”), Fáfnismál, st. 42–43 (“High on Hindarfell”), and Sigurdrífumál, st. 23 (“Swear no oaths”). Brynhild gives advice in both Völsunga saga and Sigurdrífumál. I have added details about oaths from Völundarkviða, st. 32, and Helgakviða Hundingsbana II, st. 33. See also Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, “Women and Subversion in Eddic Heroic Poetry,” in P. Acker and C. Larrington, eds., Revisiting the Poetic Edda (Routledge, 2013), 117–25. Anne Irene Riisøy, “Performing Oaths in Eddic Poetry,” Journal of the North Atlantic Special Volume 8 (2016): 141, 147–48.