The Ideology of Violence

Similarly to other groups that exert violence, the Vikings embraced a com­plex ideology, including a kind of heroic honour code, that governed their behaviour in their violent pursuits.

The word, and derivations from it, often show up in Viking Age runic inscriptions and poetry in praise of individual Vikings. A runestone raised in central Sweden early in the eleventh century encapsulates the ideals of the Vikings. In the inscription, a woman called Tula remembered her son Harald with a short verse:

They travelled ‘drengila' (in the manner of a drengr; valiantly) far for gold, gave (food) to the eagle. (They) died in the south, in Serkland (the land of the Saracens, i.e. the Arabs).

Harald had undertaken his travels (apparently to the shores of the Caspian Sea) together with several others under the leadership of the famous Ingvar (himself the subject of a fantastical Icelandic saga), whom the runestone claims was ‘his brother'. Fellow fighters in Viking bands seem often to have referred to each other as brothers, so Ingvar and Harald may not actually have been related. The inscription uses a common poetic circumlo­cution in describing Harald's and Ingvar's martial prowess (appropriate for a drengr): they gave food to the eagle, or in other words, they killed enemies whose dead bodies were left on the battlefield for eagles and other carrion eaters to devour.

A Viking who had fought loyally and valiantly in accordance with their code of honour expected after death to go to Valholl, the great hall of the god Odin. Female valkyries select among those fallen in battle those who will go there. This gathering place of fallen chieftains and their warriors is well attested both in poetry and in pictorial sources. Among the latter are the many Viking Age picture stones from the island of Gotland, Sweden, that depict a horseman arriving at a great hall; he is typically greeted by a woman offering a drink. According to the probably old, perhaps even Viking Age eddic poem Grimnismal, the roof of Valholl is supported by spears and covered with shields. The hall has 540 entrances, each spacious enough for 800 warriors to go through at the same time. The warriors who dwell there eat pork from the constantly reborn boar S^hrimnir, and they drink mead running from the teats of the goat Heidrun, who stands on the roof of the hall, as well as beer offered by valkyries.

The image of Valholl that appears in the earliest sources conveys an ideal image of the feasting halls of quite earthly chieftains, at the same time clearly being inspired by Christian ideas of the afterlife and of Paradise. Later medieval writers, not to mention latterday popular culture, further devel­oped the themes of Valholl and of being a good drengr. A particular theme, becoming a widespread literary topos, emphasises the stoicism and heroic resignation of Vikings in death. The high medieval (twelfth-century?) moving and forceful poem conventionally known as the Lay of Kraka is a famous example. As the great hero Ragnar Lodbrok was dying, tortured by King Ella in a pit of vipers (itself an old literary topos), he supposedly composed that poem celebrating his heroic career as a warrior, remembering deeds all around northern Europe. He is confident ‘that the benches of Balder's father (Odin's benches in Valholl)... are prepared for feasting' and ‘the gods will invite me in'. Since Ragnar knows that his sons will take vengeance on his killer, he is able to laugh and thus ends the poem: ‘The hours of life have passed, laughing shall I die.' Ragnar's attitude, however legendary and literarily developed, is thought to reflect something of the real mindset of Viking fighters, of being a good drengr.^[166]