The story of Ragnar’s death is of course told in his own saga, the Saga of Ragnar.
But there’s also a long poem, which is supposed to have been sung by Ragnar from the snake-pit.
And it’s called the Krákumál, ‘The Song of the Crow’.
And it’s a death song, but it’s also what they call an aevisöngr, it’s a song of
life, in which Ragnar recounts his battles and eventually looks forward to dying and
going to feast on the benches of Odin, and of course predicting the revenge which will
be taken for him.
And the last line of it, which I adopted for my book title, is “læjandi skalk deyja.”
‘Laughing shall I die.’
oss munu æsir bjóða, esat sýtandi dauði.
lífs eru liðnar stundr, læjandi skalk deyja.
‘The gods will invite me in, in death there is no sighing.
The hours of life have passed, laughing shall I die.’
King Hrolf’s story, like King Arthur’s, ends of course with a great battle in which
Hrolf is killed by someone who appears to have been his cousin Hjörvard.
Well I said that sagas often have an element of fairy-tale, and that’s the case with
the Saga of Hrolf-Kraki, because his most famous champion is someone called Bödvar
Bjarki.
And Bjarki means ‘little bear’.
And Bjarki is in fact a were-bear.
In the final battle, he takes bear shape, just like Beorn in Tolkien’s The Hobbit,
and starts fighting in the front rank as a bear.
Because he actually has two shapes: he’s human, and he’s bear.
And he can project the bear shape.
In the saga account, when the final battle takes place, Hrolf’s men realise there is
a gigantic bear fighting in the their front ranks, which is tossing people around and
knocking them down and crushing them with bear-hugs and all sorts.
But Bödvar isn’t there!
So his friend Hjalti goes back to the hall, and finds Bödvar sitting there in the hall
on a bench.
And he says, “Come on Bödvar, you’re missing the battle!”
Bödvar Bjarki, he looks like fairy-tale, but just the same, the giant halls at Ledreborg,
they’re absolute fact.
So once again, we have a mix of fact and fancy in the story, and you just have to try to
separate the bits out.
The famous thing about them is that they were deluded into getting involved with Norwegian
politics and their downfall was called by the Viking custom of ‘heitstrenging’,
in which you have to make a boast, usually when drunk, and when you make the boast of
course, when you’re sober, you have to follow it up.
And that’s what they do.
So they sail off to help the conquest of Norway, and it was their bad luck to run into Jarl
Haakon with his supernatural goddess helper, his family goddess helper, Lathgertha.
And also his son, Jarl Erik who was the greatest warrior of the Viking age.
So the Jomsvikings were very heavily defeated at the Battle of Hjörungavágr, which took
place probably about 986.
The story of the Battle of Stiklarstaðir comes at the end of the Saga of Olaf Haraldsson,
which was written by Snorri Sturluson, oh sometime about 1230.
The battle however took place on 29th July 1030, so we are now well into recorded history
times.
Thormod the poet survives – not his fault, he just happens to survive.
And at the end of the battle, when it’s all over, he laments that he has not been
allowed to join his king, and at that moment, an arrow comes flying from nowhere, and hits
him.
Thormod goes off to the dressing station, a very interesting scene in the Viking dressing
station, but it’s clear that they can’t do anything for him, so he starts to compose
a final poem, which is about his own wound.
And he goes through the poem in a very complex metrical stanza, and he dies on his feet,
without quite finishing it.
The last line is incomplete.
Emkak rauðr, en rjóðum ræðr grönn kona manni;
jarn stendr fast et forna fenstígi mér benja.
þat veldr mér, en mæra marglóðar nú tróða,
djúp ok danskra vápna Dagshríðar spor…
I am not red, but the slim woman has a man unwounded.
The ancient iron stands fast in my marsh of wounds, that makes me pale now, wearer of
gold wave-fire, the deep track at Dagshrid of Danish weapons…
Fortunately standing by is the teenage Harald Hardrada, and Harald was very keen on poetry,
and very skilful in Skaldic metres.
And he listens to the poem and he says, “What he was going to say was…”
And he finishes the poem for Thormod in exactly the right rhyme and metre.
So the poem is finally completed, but Thormod has died standing on his feet.
One of the nice things about Harald Hardrada, in fact I think it’s the only nice thing
about Harald Hardrada, is that he was a genuine devotee of poetry.
His whole saga has accounts of him favouring poets, criticising poets, making his own poetry
up etc.
I have to say also that he was a poetic snob!
He very much preferred the difficult metres which are almost impossible to compose, and
almost impossible to understand!
But just the same, he was a patron of the arts… though you’d better not get your
rhymes and half-rhymes mixed up!
He didn’t like it if people did that…
Everyone’s familiar with the idea of Valhalla, and of course of the Valkyries.
If you are a warrior like Kirk Douglas in the famous Vikings movie and you die sword
in hand, then your soul will be picked up by the Valkyries, the choosers of the slain,
and you’ll be taken off to Odin’s halls, Valhöll, the Halls of the Slain, where you
will feast and frolic and fight with your companion warriors for the rest of eternity.
Well that’s the story, and no doubt some Vikings believed it, and some no doubt did
not.
Because that, I think, is a story particularly associated with the followers of Odin, and
of course there were others who were followers of Thor, or of Freyja, or Heimdall, or Njörðr
or one of the many other gods in the Viking pantheon.
So I’m sure there were many different ideas of what happened after you were dead.
But that is the prominent one and the familiar one and we find it written down by Snorri
Sturluson.
It’s part of his digest, his little handbook of Norse mythology.