Hi, I'm Old Norse specialist Dr. Jackson Crawford. I teach at the University of Colorado Boulder, previously at UC Berkeley and UCLA.
What I want to talk about in this video is a topic
I've been asked about several times in the past few months
which is mourning in Old Norse society.
Now, I'm not talking about
funeral procedures, funeral rituals, how someone is buried or cremated or something like that
that seems like a different topic to me.
For the most part archaeological evidence suggests that
Burial was practiced in most parts of Scandinavia during the Viking Age, cremation in some areas.
We often find grave goods, frequently graves are shaped like ships or include a ship or a boat
But that's that's not what I want to talk about. I have talked about one
example of a possible Viking funeral or the Viking-slash-something else funeral that was witnessed by the Arabic writer
Ahmad ibd-Fadlan. I'll link to that in the top right corner in a card
And what I want to talk about is the reaction to people's death,
the personal side of losing someone, and of course
for this we have to rely on literature where such things should be mentioned
but we get a fairly comprehensive picture of a very
human reaction to the loss of a loved one.
Probably the most famous scene of mourning in Old Norse literature is in Guđrunarkviđa I in the poetic Edda
one of the poems that the Saga of the Volsungs is
inspired by, although it doesn't use a whole lot of material from this particular poem.
In this poem Guđrún has lost a beloved husband Sigurđr and she is unable to cry.
And from the context in which this is presented,
It seems like crying would be a very natural reaction, as it probably is for anyone who has lost a dear loved one
but she can't bring herself to do it and
all of these different people, relatives and servants and friends, come to her and tell her all these terrible stories about men
or other family members that they've lost as if to say, "You've got it bad, but I had it bad too,"
to try to bring her out of her weeping. And this has always reminded me of the way that
we, when we have lost
special people will often be approached by other people who try to contextualize it with their own miseries and say
"Oh, well I had it worse. You know, you lost so-and-so. Well, I lost so-and-so who was closer to me."
It's a very human scene
both for the mourner and for the people
talking to the mourning, but finally someone suggests that she
pull the coverings that have been placed over Sigurđr's face away from his face and kiss him
and once she does this her tears are able to get free and
she is able to truly mourn for Sigurđr and
And, by implication, crying really is something acceptable for not only women but also men
when Baldr dies, according to Snorri and the Prose Edda
everything, including the gods,
was asked to cry by Hel as a condition of bringing Baldr back, and everything did cry except for Loki in disguise
This implies that for example Thor, the manliest of Gods, was able to cry at Baldr's death and indeed at the moment that Baldr dies
Snorri says that
That everything spontaneously did mourn as well, that they were unable to hold back their sorrow and their tears
Now a great example that I like from the human sagas is from Egil's saga. This is
Translated in the Penguin volume "Sagas of Icelanders," that has a Viking ship on the front of it
It's got a great collection sagas, actually so look for it there
if you haven't read the translation before look for the Old Norse in the East lines 400 Edition or
online at heimskringla.no or snerpa.is
and in Chapter 55 of the saga Egil buries his brother Thorolf after he's killed in battle
and he recites two skaldic poems, including one that
has these striking lines and I'm going to read these in reconstructed Medieval Norse pronunciation
Jord grør en vér verđum Vínu nær of mínum
Helnauđ es þat hylja harm ágætum barmi.
I would translate this
The earth will grow back over my excellent brother near the Veen River and I must hide my sorrow
Which is a hellish pain
the use of Helnauđ which could mean hellish or literally Hel's pain or hellish need is a really
stirring and surprisingly open window into the emotions of a saga hero because typically they're very stoic
And in fact after this, after the loss of the King Egil been serving with,
the English King Æthelstan is serving a feast
a victory feast, and Egil is attending, but he refuses to drink and be merry with the other men
Instead he sits in the corner by himself with a dark look on his face constantly drawing his sword a little way out of the scabbard
Then putting it back in, then raising one eyebrow and then another looking really menacing at everyone around
and it's only when the King comes over and pays him out a huge treasure in
compensation for his brother's sacrifice,
offering, for example, a ring straight from his own arm
that Egil will drink with the other men, apparently accepting that his brother's death and sacrifice was not in vain.
So these are just a few key scenes and
And poems and sagas to look at. Of course many sagas include deaths
often
Because the martial nature of saga says people are fighting what we really hear about are enemies
Perspectives on their enemies' deaths, which is not really what we're looking for.
But Gísli's saga, Egil's saga, Njal's saga, many of these
Great sagas do include scenes of people truly
Struggling to deal with the loss of people who are near and dear to them
as of course does the Baldr story in the mythical material.
I think there we see that both the Æsir and the Vanir above us and
The humans on Miđgardr react just like we do today
2018 to the loss of a loved one
I
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For now from beautiful Colorado where it is hot as hell and wishing you
All the best.