Crowbone, by Robert Low. Book review

Harper, 2013. ISBN 978-0-00-729856-3. 369 pages

Crowbone is set mainly in Ireland and Scandinavia in 979-981. The central character, Olaf Tryggvason (by-named Crowbone) is a historical figure, as are his arch-enemies Gunnhild Mother of Kings, widow of Eirik Blood-Axe, and her last son Gudrod. Other main characters are fictional. The historical Norse Earls of Orkney and various Irish kings appear as secondary characters.

In 979, Olaf Tryggvason (known as Crowbone) is seventeen and already a veteran fighter and raider. Having quarrelled with his friend Vladimir of Kiev, Crowbone is no longer welcome in the Rus lands and is at something of a loose end when he meets his old friend Orm Bear-Slayer, jarl of the Oathsworn, in Hamburg. Orm has received a message from a monk on the Isle of Man concerning a secret that could help Crowbone make good on his claim to the throne of Norway. Orm gives Crowbone silver to hire a ship and a crew, and sends him off with the trader who brought the message. But Crowbone’s rival and arch-enemy Gunnhild Mother of Kings and her last surviving son Gudrod – who between them were responsible for the death of Crowbone’s parents – have also heard of the secret, and will pursue it and Crowbone to the death. And the monk on the Isle of Man is not all he seems... As the quest unfolds and the searchers converge on their goal, Crowbone faces battle, shipwreck and treachery, and must decide who – if anyone – he is willing to trust.

In theory this is the fifth in the Oathsworn series, following The Whale Road, The Wolf Sea, The White Raven, and The Prow Beast (links to my previous reviews of each title). However, as the focus is on Crowbone (as implied by the title), rather than on Orm and the Oathsworn, it is much more of a stand-alone. There is no need to have read the others first, although readers who have will pick up lots of references to previous characters and events.

Like the others, Crowbone is a blood-and-thunder adventure full of action and violence. The historical Vikings were part traders and part bloodthirsty raiders, and although both aspects feature here, the bloodthirsty raider aspect is very much to the fore. Crowbone and his followers are fighting men, and fighting is what they do, whether it be a duel to the death on a deserted beach, or a pitched battle among the Irish kings. Political manipulation is another major focus, more so than in the other Oathsworn novels, reflecting Crowbone’s status as a claimant to the kingdom of Norway. The Norse game hnefatafl*, referred to as ‘the game of kings’, is a recurring theme, both as the game itself and as a  metaphor for the political manoeuvring that is as essential to the would-be Norse king as the axe in his hand and the knife in his boot.

Crowbone dominates the novel. Highly intelligent, courageous and a gifted storyteller, he has more than a hint of the uncanny about him (as was foreshadowed when he was a boy in The White Raven). Not surprisingly, given his ambitions and his traumatic early life, he is not a particularly attractive character, manipulative, suspicious and ruthless. Not a man you want to be around, as Orm muses. In this novel, Crowbone is emerging into adulthood and beginning to carve out his place in history. He is often very much alone, even when surrounded by his companions, and this is in large part his own choice, recognised as part of the price he must pay for power, however much he may occasionally hunger for human warmth.

The atmosphere is brooding, with a strong sense of supernatural undercurrents – whether due to gods, Fate or seidr magic – that could erupt at any moment. The religious divisions of the late tenth century are never far away. The Oathsworn are bound by an oath taken before Odin, yet some of Crowbone’s other followers are at least nominally Christians. They encounter Christian kings, priests and monks in Ireland and elsewhere, even as they pursue their quest for a symbol of Odin’s power to a distant land renowned as the domain of a goddess of yet older beliefs. Religious tensions simmer beneath the surface, occasionally erupting into open conflict.

The writing style is dense, liberally sprinkled with Norse words for atmosphere (like hnefatafl, seidr, etc). There is no glossary in the book, but I found no difficulty as most of the Norse terms are translated or were clear from the context (caveat that I’m interested in the Norse world, so they were probably more familiar to me than might be the case for other readers). Scots dialect words and phrases seem to be used to indicate a Norse style of speech; again, I had no difficulty, but they may not be familiar to all readers. There is a map at the front that may help to follow the characters on their far travels, although it does not always give the Norse names used in the text (e.g. Dyfflin for Dublin, Hammaburg for Hamburg) and some places are not shown at all. A helpful Historical Note at the end outlines some of the underlying history.

Gripping, violent action-adventure following Crowbone (Olaf Tryggvason) on his quest for a dark secret that may be his key to claiming the throne of Norway.

*Hnefatafl is a board game of skill, a little like chess except that it is a hunting game rather than a battle game. Readers of Terry Pratchett’s Thud! will recognise it.

The Prow Beast, by Robert Low. Book review

Fourth in the Oathsworn series, following The Whale Road (reviewed here earlier), The Wolf Sea (reviewed here earlier) and The White Raven (reviewed here earlier), The Prow Beast is set in Scandinavia and what is now Poland in 975-976. Olaf Tryggvason (Crowbone), later King of Norway, Queen Sigrith of Sweden and Styrbjorn, nephew of King Erik of Sweden, are historical (or at least, saga) figures. All the main characters are fictional.

After their quest for the cursed treasure of Attila’s tomb (recounted in the first three books, particularly The Whale Road and The White Raven), Orm and the Oathsworn have achieved fame across the Norse world. Orm has married and is now a man of consequence, presiding over his jarl’s hall and lands at Hestreng in newly unified Sweden. Orm is entrusted with fostering Koll, the young son of Jarl Brand, and also with escorting Queen Sigrith, wife of King Erik the Victorious of Sweden, home to Uppsala. But although fame is the dream of every Norse warrior, it is the gift of Odin and carries a characteristically bitter price. When old enemies come to Hestreng with fire and sword, Orm and the Oathsworn must take ship again, following the ‘prow beast’ to revenge, violence and heartbreak.

Like its three predecessors, The Prow Beast is a larger-than-life tale, “a saga to be told around the fire against the closing dark”, as the author puts it. Like the others, it captures some of the grim grandeur of the Norse sagas (not an easy feat), with men who recognise their harsh fate and go out to meet it with courage and black humour. The series has been getting steadily darker in tone since the first book, no doubt reflecting Orm’s development from youth to battle-hardened jarl, and The Prow Beast is darker yet. The Oathsworn have always been hard and ruthless men; in The Prow Beast their savagery reaches a new depth. Orm himself has become a doom-laden, brooding figure, reminiscent of the fearsome Einar the Black in The Whale Road (and reminding me of Skarp-Hedin as his fate closes around him in Njal’s Saga). There is a tremendous sense of authenticity about the pagan Norse culture, not just the gods and rituals but also the world-view of inescapable fate and ‘fair fame’, that gives the Oathsworn series a feeling of depth underlying the adventures. The writing style reinforces this, with some of the laconic style of the sagas and liberally sprinkled with vivid imagery reminiscent of Norse kennings.

Characterisation is as vivid as ever, and readers will be pleased to see the return of old friends from the previous books, such as Finn Horsehead from Skane who fears nothing (in The Prow Beast the reader finds out why), giant Botolf who can be alternately genial and ferocious, Red Njal with his granny’s endless store of proverbial wisdom (I can’t help thinking that Red Njal’s granny could have written most of the Havamal [‘Sayings of the High One’]), and young Olaf Crowbone with his uncanny insights and fund of sharp stories. Not everyone will make it to the end (though any reader familiar with the previous three books will already have guessed this). The ending itself has a satisfying bleakness that fits well with what has gone before. Whether this really is the end or whether there is scope for further adventures for the remaining Oathsworn is hard to tell – certainly Olaf Crowbone’s story has much further to run to catch up with his historical career.

A useful map at the front helps readers unfamiliar with the geography of the Baltic and eastern Europe to follow the Oathsworn’s journey, and a historical note at the back sets out some of the underlying history. I have a nagging feeling that I have read something very similar to the episode of Queen Sigrith and Botolf somewhere before, so maybe that also occurs in one of the sagas, although it isn’t explicitly identified as such in the historical note.

Dark, gripping adventure with a strong sense of pagan Norse culture, following the adventures of a Norse warrior band in the tenth century.

The White Raven, by Robert Low. Book review.

Harper, 2009, ISBN 978-0-00-728798-7. 352 pages.

Third in the Oathsworn series, following The Whale Road (reviewed here earlier) and The Wolf Sea (reviewed here earlier), The White Raven is set in the winter of 972-3 AD, mainly in what is now Russia and the Ukraine. Olaf Tryggvason (later King of Norway), his uncle Sigurd, Vladimir Prince of Novgorod and his uncle Dobrynya are historical figures. All the main characters are fictional.

Orm and the remaining Oathsworn are living on a farmstead in Scandinavia granted them by Jarl Brand, and one of them, Kvasir, has married a capable wife, Thorgunna from the neighbouring farmstead. Orm would like to settle down and earn a reliable living by horse-breeding, but the rest of the Oathsworn are obsessed with returning to Attila’s tomb, deep in the steppes, in search of the hoard of cursed silver that cost many of their comrades their lives (recounted in The Whale Road). When a raid captures Thorgunna’s sister Thordis, the Oathsworn take to the seas again, sailing to Novgorod and trekking across the winter steppes in search of revenge and riches. But they are not the only ones out on the steppe in this bitter winter. Young Prince Vladimir of the Rus wants the treasure to finance his wars against his rival brothers; Brondolf Lambisson wants it to rebuild his dying town of Birka; and the fearsome Amazons, woman warriors of the steppe, are oathsworn to protect the hoard to the death against all comers.

Like its two predecessors, The Whale Road and The Wolf Sea, The White Raven is a larger-than-life adventure, a “saga to be told around the fire”, as the author puts it. On their quest for a hoard of cursed treasure, the Oathsworn encounter monsters (given a poignant modern twist), impossible battles against the odds, the treachery and friendship of princes, and legendary female warriors.

Olaf Tryggvason, nicknamed Crowbone, was the outstanding character for me. A couple of decades later, he was to become a notable king of Norway; here he is an enigma in the shape of a nine-year-old boy with an uncanny wisdom beyond his years, clearly destined for great things. An inspired touch was to make him a gifted storyteller, always ready with a tale to illuminate – often uncomfortably – the current situation. According to the Historical Note, this ability of Olaf’s is fictional, but the rest of the events involving him are documented (minus Orm and the Oathsworn, of course) in the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason. Whether the saga was itself recounting sober historical facts or adding its own embellishments is a different question.

The characters of Thorgunna and Thordis were also strong aspects of the novel for me. In the previous two instalments, women have been either disposable slaves or witches with hints of dark supernatural powers. In Thorgunna and Thordis we meet the capable, forthright, down-to-earth Norse women so familiar from the Icelandic sagas, women who are strong-minded and courageous without the need for swords or sorcery. The Amazons of the steppe are based in part on archaeological excavations of tombs of women armed as warriors in the Ukraine, southern Russia and Kazakhstan. A sort of female counterpart to the Oathsworn themselves, they are a warrior band sworn to their leader and each other, dedicated to protecting the memory of the long-dead Attila.

The plot rattles along at a dizzying pace as the Oathsworn encounter one adventure after another on their quest first to rescue Thordis and then to return to Attila’s tomb and its hoard of unimaginable riches. This instalment completes the Attila plot that was begun in The Whale Road, and resolves the plot threads that were left hanging at the end of that book. The story of Attila’s tomb seems to be at an end now (or at least, I cannot see how it could reappear), but the same is not necessarily true of the Oathsworn, who will return for at least one further adventure in Book 4, The Prow Beast.

The political and military rivalries between the Rus princes (Vladimir is a major secondary character) make for a suitably dramatic backdrop as the Norse colonies up and down the great rivers are starting to form the beginnings of a state, which will be the forerunner of Russia and the origin of its name. A helpful Historical Note outlines some of the underlying history, which, as so often, is stranger than fiction (assuming one counts the Saga of Olaf Tryggvason as history), and a map at the front helps to follow the far-faring Oathsworn on their journeys.

Larger-than-life adventure saga following a band of tenth-century Norse warriors on their quest for the cursed treasure of Attila the Hun, through the biting cold of the winter steppe, battles with monsters and Amazons, and the shifting politics of the emerging Rus kingdoms.

The Wolf Sea, by Robert Low. Book review

Harper, 2008. ISBN 978-0-00-721533-1. 336 pages.

Sequel to The Whale Road, reviewed here earlier, The Wolf Sea is the second in the series about the Oathsworn, a verjazi band of Norse mercenaries hired for pay, on their quest for a rune-spelled sword and a hoard of cursed silver. This instalment is set in Byzantium, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East in 965/966. Historical figures such as the Byzantine generals Leo Balantes and John Tzimisces (John Red Boots) appear as secondary characters. All the main characters are fictional.

Having escaped with their lives and not much else after their quest to find the treasure-tomb of Attila the Hun, young Orm Ruriksson and the remnant of the Oathsworn, now sworn to Orm as their jarl (leader), find themselves in Byzantium with no ship, no money and no plan. Beyond survival, Orm has two concerns; retrieving the precious rune-sword stolen from him by an old enemy, and finding the remainder of the Oathsworn who were left behind in Novgorod when Orm and the others went in search of Attila’s tomb. Going into partnership with Radoslav, a Slav-Norse trader who has a ship but no crew, gives Orm and the Oathsworn an opportunity to start the first task, and so begins a chase through the islands of the Mediterranean and the deserts of the Holy Land. Amid the wars between the Byzantines and the Arabs, the Oathsworn relentlessly pursue their stolen sword – and finally discover the fate of their lost comrades.

Like its predecessor, The Wolf Sea is an action-packed tale of violence and intrigue, full of gory battle scenes, gruesome deaths and black magic. If anything, the tone is even darker than The Whale Road. Orm is finding the responsibility of leadership a heavy burden, and is haunted by dark dreams of betrayal and loss. Black humour leavens the grim events, from the warrior losing an arm in battle and saying, “See if you can find the hand. I had a ring I liked”, to the Norseman told that Islam will allow him four wives but no alcohol and trying to work out if this is an acceptable deal. Narrated in first person by Orm, the laconic prose style is reminiscent of the Norse sagas, terse but sprinkled with vivid images recalling Norse kennings, e.g. bad news arrives “like a mouse tumbling from rafter into ale horn”, a beefy warrior is described as “he had muscles on his eyelids.” The characters display the openness to new lands and customs that seems to have been a characteristic of the historical Norse travellers. They may refer disparagingly to foreigners as “goat-botherers” (and more, ahem, colourful variations; there is no shortage of modern expletives), but they quickly develop a liking for exotic spices and learn to cook Arab food.

Some of the characters are familiar from The Whale Road. Orm himself, intelligent as ever and now older than his years; mystical Sighvat with his store of folklore and two tame ravens; brawny Finn Horsehead. New characters are introduced (the attrition rate in the Oathsworn requires it), of whom the most memorable for me were the Goat Boy, a young Greek boy with a name the Norse can’t pronounce who acts as guide and translator, and the lively Irish monk Brother John. As might be expected for a tale about a hard-bitten warrior band far from home, the cast is almost exclusively male. Apart from dark witchcraft, women are peripheral.

The end is more of a pause in the action, as the Oathsworn still have their search for Attila’s treasure to resolve. Indeed, the plot is almost circular; for all their adventures, Orm and the Oathsworn end in much the same position as they began, no further from returning to Attila’s hoard but not noticeably nearer to it either. It will be interesting to see if the quest for Attila’s hoard is resolved in Book Three (and if so, how).

A historical note summarises the historical background and the major events invented by the author, and a map at the front is invaluable for tracing the route of the Oathsworn’s epic journey.

Violent, action-packed military adventure following the grim fortunes of a Norse mercenary band in tenth-century Byzantium and the Middle East.

The Whale Road, by Robert Low. Book review

Harper Collins, 2007. ISBN 978-0-00-721530-0. 334 pages

The Whale Road follows the adventures of a band of Norse mercenaries in 964/965 AD in Scandinavia, Russia and the Ukraine, set against the backdrop of the emerging Rus kingdoms around Kiev. The historical figures Sviatoslav of the Rus and his sons Yaropolk and Vladimir have walk-on parts. Harald Bluetooth of Norway and Denmark is an important off-stage presence, and Attila the Hun – a historical figure from 500 years earlier – is the subject of the heroes’ quest. The legendary Volsungs also feature. All the main characters are fictional.

Brought up on his uncle’s farm in Norway, Orm Ruriksson knows his father only as a name, until a threat from the uncle brings Orm’s father home to take vengeance and to sweep Orm away to a new life as a warrior of the Oathsworn. Sworn to each other and to their formidable leader Einar the Black, the Oathsworn are a verjazi band, Norse mercenaries who travel and fight for pay. This time they are on a quest for a rune-inscribed sword and the legendary hoard of Attila the Hun, trying to keep one step ahead of rivals and ex-employers who are also seeking the same treasures. The trail will lead them across the wild oceans and deep into the Russian steppes to face battle and treachery and dark magic – and the inexorable doom woven by a broken oath.

As the author says in his ‘Note on the history’, this is “...a saga, to be read around the fire against the lurking dark.” It has classic saga ingredients – a sword engraved with runes that has magical symbolism in two religions, a beautiful woman with a mysterious link to the Otherworld, a mountain forge of immense antiquity, a long-lost treasure hoard, desperate battles in far-off lands and epic sea voyages through storm and tempest. It also has something of the feel of the Icelandic sagas beyond the adventure, partly from the prose style and partly because of the sense of grim and implacable fate closing in as a result of the characters’ own choices and the unyielding demands of oath and obligation. The language is laconic, sprinkled with occasional vivid phrases reminiscent of Norse kennings, e.g. “...[the ship] leaped like a goosed goodwife”, “windows comfort-yellow with light”, “crow-wing hair”. The title of the novel itself is a classic Norse kenning – the whale road is the open ocean. Dialogue is terse and lively, liberally laced with black humour and Scots or Norse dialect terms. In keeping with the hard-drinking, hard-fighting life of the main characters, modern four-letter words are frequent; readers who are offended by words such as f**k and c**t may like to consider themselves warned.

The book is narrated throughout in first person by Orm. I often dislike first-person narratives, as the reader sees only the narrator’s point of view, but fortunately Orm is intelligent and interested in working out hidden information and in trying to understand other people’s motivations.

The plot is non-stop action, with plenty of casual violence (the “Glasgow kiss” makes an appearance under another name), gory battle scenes and gruesome ways to die. As one might expect from the subject matter, it’s a dangerous novel to be a character in. The Whale Road captures the precarious nature of life as a mercenary warrior, forever poised between the possibility of riches beyond the dreams of avarice and the (much more likely) possibility of an unpleasant death. It is a little surprising that Orm, an inexperienced youth of 15, fits into this tough, ruthless band with apparent ease, although this might be explained by Orm’s ability to read Latin (which turns out to be a skill of considerable use to the fearsome Einar) and his father’s status as a respected member of the group.

A strong sense of the supernatural is woven through the narrative. Storms are sent by angry gods, a lost comrade has to be honoured by a sacrifice, and who else would emerge from an abandoned mine under a mountain but an angry black dwarf wielding a hammer (a scene that still makes me laugh weeks after reading it)? For the most part the supernatural exists in the minds of the characters; the exception seems to be the mysterious and beautiful Hild with her aura of evil spirits, dark magic and supernatural link to the mysterious treasure hoard.

A useful map at the front of the book and a list of place names with their modern equivalents at the back is helpful for following the Oathsworn on their epic journeys, and a ‘Note on the history’ gives a brief summary of the historical background to the tale. There is no glossary for the colourful Norse terms; I recognised most of them and those that were new to me were clear from the context, but I have a long-standing interest in Norse history. Readers who are not familiar with the period may find the Norse glossary on the author’s website useful.

Gripping saga of epic journeys by land and sea, hard-fought battles and the dark power of oaths, as a band of Norse mercenary warriors seek a legendary sword and a long-lost hoard of cursed silver in tenth-century Scandinavia and Russia.

Old English gods and myths: the worlds

Heaven, earth and hell

The Old English word for earth is middangeard, Middle Earth, (yes, this is where Tolkien got it from). It has cognates in Old Icelandic (Midgard), Old High German (mittigart, mittingart) and Gothic (midjungards) (Branston 1957; Oxford English Dictionary). So the world was conceived as being in the middle of something.

The term occurs in Beowulf:

Manigre mægthe geond thisne middangeard
(Modern English translation: many a tribe over middle earth)

--Beowulf, line 75, available online

and in the poem known as Caedmon’s Hymn:

Tha middungeard moncynnæs uard,
eci dryctin, æfter tiadæ,
firum foldu, frea allmectig
(Modern English translation: Then the Lord of mankind, the everlasting shepherd, ordained in the midst as a dwelling place, Almighty Lord, the earth for men)

--Caedmon’s Hymn, original and translation both given in The Earliest English Poems, 1991

Bede gives a Latin translation of Caedmon’s Hymn in his Ecclesiastical History, where he tells us that Caedmon composed it (and much other poetry) at the monastery of Whitby around 680 (Bede, Book IV Ch. 24).

As discussed in an earlier post, the word ‘hell’ also has cognates across various Germanic languages. It shares a root with the word for ‘hole’, and indicated a cold, dark, miserable underworld.

‘Heaven’, Old English ‘heofon’, is cognate with Old Swedish himin, Old Danish himaen, Old Dutch himil and Old High German himil, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Like ‘middangeard’, it occurs in both Beowulf and Caedmon’s Hymn:

under heofones hwealf
(Modern English translation: under heaven’s vault)

--Beowulf, line 576, available online

efne swa of hefene hadre scineth
rodores candel
(Modern English translation: a clearness such as the candle of heaven sheds in the sky)

--Beowulf, line 1571-2, available online

heofonrices weard
(Modern English translation: keeper of the kingdom of heaven)
heofon to hrofe
(Modern English translation: heaven as a roof)

--Caedmon’s Hymn, original and translation both given in The Earliest English Poems, 1991

These seem clear enough that ‘heaven’ was considered to be in the sky, or the sky itself. The reference to ‘keeper of the kingdom of heaven’ in Caedmon’s Hymn also indicates that heaven was considered to be the realm of the Christian god. While this may be purely a Christian concept, it is also possible that it reflects an earlier pagan world-view, in which the gods inhabited a world above the world of men. This is explicit in Snorri Sturluson’s description of the Norse world view in his Prose Edda, written in thirteenth-century Iceland:

...the gods built a bridge from the earth to the sky and it is called Bifrost. You will have seen it, and possibly you call it the rainbow.

--Prose Edda, 13

This gives us a three-fold division: heaven, the world above; hell, the world below; and earth, the world in the middle. The words for this three-fold division are shared across several Germanic languages, so it appears to be a shared concept. It also has obvious parallels with the Greco-Roman idea of a miserable Underworld inhabited by the dead, the gods living high up on Mount Olympus, and humans living on the earth in the middle.

Worlds within worlds

Within this threefold division, there were other distinct worlds. The Old English Nine Herbs Charm, written down in the tenth-century manuscript Lacnunga, mentions seven worlds, without naming any of them:

The wise lord shaped these plants
While he was hanging, holy in the heavens
He set them and sent them into the seven worlds

--Nine Herbs Charm, Lacnunga 80, translated in Pollington 2000

The Norse poem Voluspa (‘The Sibyl’s Prophecy’) refers to nine worlds:

Nine worlds I knew, the nine in the tree

--Voluspa, 2, available online

The Prose Edda also refers to nine worlds:

Evil men go to Hel and from there into Niflhel, which is below in the ninth world

--Prose Edda, 3

Hel he threw down into Niflheim and made her ruler over nine worlds

--Prose Edda, 34

However, trying to make a list of the nine worlds quickly becomes confusing:

Evil men go to Hel and from there into Niflhel, which is below in the ninth world

--Prose Edda, 3

Niflheim was made many ages before the earth was created
[…]
First was that world in the southern region which is called Muspellheim

--Prose Edda, 4

The world is circular around the edge and surrounding it lies the deep sea. On these ocean coasts the sons of Bor* gave lands to the clans of the giants to live on. But further inland they built a fortress wall around the world […] and called this stronghold Midgard

--Prose Edda, 8

...[the gods] made a stronghold for themselves in the middle of the world, and it was called Asgard

--Prose Edda, 9

There are many magnificent places [in heaven]. One is called Alfheim. The people called the light elves live there, but the dark elves live down below in the earth.

[...]

It is said that a second heaven lies to the south and above this heaven. It is called Andlang. Still further up, there is a third heaven called Vidblain. We believe that this region is in heaven but now only the light elves live there.

--Prose Edda, 17

Njord [...] was brought up in Vanaheim, but the Vanir sent him as a hostage to the gods

--Prose Edda, 23

All-father sent Skirnir down to Svartalfheim (World of the Dark Elves), and there he had some dwarfs make the fetter called Gleipnir...

--Prose Edda, 34

Have you lost count yet? I make that: Hel (which might or might not be distinct from Niflhel), Niflheim (which might or might not be distinct from Hel and/or Niflhel), Muspellheim, the land of the giants (Jotunheim), Midgard, Asgard, Alfheim (which might be the same as the third heaven called Vidblain), Svartalfheim (unclear whether the dark elves employed or perhaps had captured some dwarfs, or are the same as dwarfs, or if they share a world with dwarfs), a second heaven called Andlang, Vanaheim. And that’s only one source. The poem Voluspa also mentions a place called Nithavellir, which may be a home for the dwarfs (if they had their own world and were distinct from the dark elves). Depending how you count it, you can get to anything up to a dozen or so. And that doesn’t count the numerous halls and fortresses, like Odin’s hall Valhalla.

Interpretation

The apparent confusion may simply indicate that the exact number of worlds and their position in relation to each other were not important. In a tale about, say, a hero journeying to a perilous land to win a treasure from dangerous supernatural enemies, the question of whether the enemies live in a separate world or in a fortress in a distant and dangerous region of this one may be no more than a minor detail. One storyteller might choose to make it a separate world in order to describe a magical journey or the hero’s supernatural powers; another might set it in the universal ‘far away and long ago’ of story so as to deal with the journey there in a line or two.

The worlds and their inhabitants may also have varied at different times and places, depending on local environment and cultural influences. The Nine Herbs Charm was written down in the tenth century, by which time the English had been Christians for three hundred years, and may have been influenced by classical ideas of the seven planets or the seven days of the week in the Christian calendar. Muspellheim, the land of fire, could be seen as an Icelandic concept in response to the local geology. The Prose Edda mentions worlds for the light elves and dark elves, mentions dwarfs in the world of the dark elves and also has a story about the origin of the dwarfs (Prose Edda 14), but does not name a world for the dwarfs. Did the dwarfs not have a home of their own, or did they share a world with one of the other groups, or were they another name for the dark elves, or did they have a world that happens to have missed being named (perhaps the Nithavellir mentioned in Voluspa), or did this depend on the stories the teller happened to be familiar with? Even if there was a poetic convention about the number of worlds, it doesn’t necessarily follow that there was a definitive list. Indeed, it seems most unlikely that there could be a definitive list, given that the stories and myths were a living oral culture, told and retold over hundreds of years and thousands of miles of distance.

I would say that the threefold division into here (earth), up above (heaven, sky) and down below (hell, the underworld), was important, since the words are shared among several Germanic languages. Within that, the number and relationships of sub-worlds and their inhabitants was probably somewhat fluid. Trying to define a precise number of worlds is probably unnecessarily pedantic and may well be missing the point.

I happen to like the phrase “the nine worlds”, partly because the Nine Herbs Charm is full of references to three, thirty and nine and the seven looks a bit out of place, and partly because the idea of a threefold division of the major threefold division has a pleasing symmetry. So in creating a fictional culture for the Anglian characters in Exile, I picked nine worlds – though I imagine that the different characters would probably come up with different, partly overlapping, lists depending on the stories they happened to be familiar with.

References

Alexander M (translator). The earliest English poems. Penguin Classics, 1991, ISBN 978-0-140-44594-7.
Beowulf in Old English, available online
Beowulf, translated by Michael Alexander. Penguin Classics, 1973, ISBN 0-14-044268-5.
Branston B. The lost gods of England. Thames and Hudson, 1957. ISBN 0-009-472740-6.
Pollington S. Leechcraft: Early English charms, plantlore and healing. Anglo-Saxon Books, 2000, ISBN 978-1-898281-23-8.
Prose Edda, by Snorri Sturluson. Translated by Jesse Byock. Penguin Classics, 2005, ISBN 978-0-14-044755-2.
Voluspa, translation available online

*The three sons of Bor were the god Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve

Early medieval surgical knowledge

Occasionally I get asked whether the medical details in Paths of Exile have any basis in history. As is often the case for the seventh century, direct evidence is thin on the ground, though surviving evidence from other areas provides a starting point for inference and extrapolation.*

I suppose I should add a disclaimer: this article is for historical and literary interest only, and in no way represents any medical advice of any kind. If you are looking for medical help, consult a qualified medical practitioner.

Evidence

Bede
In his Ecclesiastical History, Bede tells us that Saint Etheldreda (Aethelthryth), Abbess of Ely, underwent surgery for a tumour on her neck:

…the physician Cynifrid, who was present at both her death and exhumation. Cynifrid used to relate that during her last illness she had a large tumour under the jaw. “I was asked,” he said, “to open the tumour and drain away the poisonous matter in it. I did this, and for two days she seemed somewhat easier […]
There I saw the body of the holy virgin taken from its grave […] and when they had uncovered her face, they showed me that the incision which I had made had healed [….] there remained only the faint mark of a scar.”

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book IV, Ch. 19

The matter-of-fact tone of Bede’s account indicates that surgery was accepted as normal. The apparent healing of a surgical scar after death is treated as a miracle (I can think of natural explanations, not all of them unpleasant), but the surgery itself is treated as a routine procedure with nothing magical or mystical about it. Etheldreda died in 660, and Bede was writing in 731. From this we can reasonably conclude that surgery was known and practised in the late seventh and early eighth century in England, although how widely is a matter for conjecture. It may have been confined to the religious and social elites; Etheldreda was a king’s daughter and a queen before she became an abbess. Unfortunately (perhaps because it was routine), Bede gives no details of the techniques used.

Leechbook of Bald

The Leechbook of Bald is an Old English medical textbook, compiled in the late ninth or early tenth century possibly as a result of Alfred the Great’s encouragement of learning and scholarship. Some of the information contained in it may also have been in circulation in earlier centuries. The Leechbook does not have very much to say on surgery, but does mention it in a couple of places:

For hare lip, pound mastic very small, add the white
of an egg, and mingle as thou dost vermillion, cut
with a knife the false edges of the lip, sew fast with
silk, then smear without and within with the salve,
ere the silk rot. If it draw together, arrange it with
the hand ; anoint again soon.

--Leechbook of Bald, Book I chapter 13, translated by Cockayne, 1860, searchable online

If someone’s bowels be out [….] put the bowel back into the man, sew it together with silk

--Leechbook of Bald, Book III chapter 73, translated in Pollington 2000

Again, there is not much in the way of detail, perhaps because a surgeon or medic of the time would be expected to know the techniques. Silk sutures have a long history in surgery, although they have now been largely displaced by modern synthetic materials (Kuijjer 1998). It can reasonably be inferred from these terse references that surgery was known and practised when the Leechbook was compiled. The instructions for hare lip indicate that plastic surgery was in use at this date, and also suggest that surgery was not necessarily confined to trauma or life-threatening conditions. This may further imply that the success rate was reasonable, making the surgical risk worth taking for the benefit of repairing a hare lip.

Celsus, De Medicina

De Medicina (‘On Medicine’) is a Roman medical textbook dating to about the first century AD and attributed to an author called Celsus.

Celsus provides a detailed description of abdominal surgery techniques:

Sometimes the abdomen is penetrated by a stab of some sort, and it follows that intestines roll out. When this happens we must first examine whether they are uninjured, and then whether their proper colour persists. If the smaller intestine has been penetrated, no good can be done, as I have already said. The larger intestine can be sutured, not with any certain assurance, but because a doubtful hope is preferable to certain despair; for occasionally it heals up. Then if either intestine is livid or pallid or black, in which case there is necessarily no sensation, all medical aid is vain. But if intestines have still their proper colour, aid should be given with all speed, for they undergo change from moment to moment when exposed to the external air, to which they are unaccustomed. The patient is to be laid on his back with his hips raised; and if the wound is too narrow for the intestines to be easily replaced, it is to be cut until sufficiently wide. If the intestines have already become too dry, they are to be bathed with water to which a small quantity of oil has been added. Next the assistant should gently separate the margins of the wound by means of his hands, or even by two hooks inserted into the inner membrane: the surgeon always returns first the intestines which have prolapsed the later, in such a way as to preserve the order of the several coils. When all have been returned, the patient is to be shaken gently: so that of their own accord the various coils are brought into their proper places and settle there. This done, the omentum too must be examined, and any part that is black is to be cut away with shears; what is sound is returned gently into place in front of the intestines. Now stitching of the surface skin only or of the inner membrane only is not enough, but both must be stitched.

[detailed instructions on stitching technique follow]
--Celsus, De Medicina, Book VII Ch. 16, available online

Having said that a wound to the small intestine is hopeless, Celsus also provides instructions for diagnosis:

The signs when the small intestine and the stomach have been wounded are the same; for food and drink come out through the wound;

--Celsus, De Medicina, Book V Ch. 26, available online

The standard antiseptic appears to have been honey, which Celsus recommends in many places for the cleaning of wounds (e.g. after draining an abscess):

…a little honey will be infused into the cavity to clean it...

-- Celsus, De Medicina, Book V Ch. 2, available online

Honey has antiseptic properties due to its high sugar concentration. When bacteria are exposed to a high concentration of sugar (or anything with a high osmolarity), water is drawn out of the bacterial cells and they become dehydrated and die. Honey may have some specific antibacterial properties in addition to the effect of its high sugar concentration, though this has not been confirmed (Moore et al 2001). Honey and/or sugar paste are sometimes used for the treatment of wounds in modern surgical practice (Moore et al 2001; Newton 2000) and in veterinary medicine (Matthews and Billington 2002).

Celsus clearly had detailed and practical knowledge of surgery, including the treatment of stab wounds to the abdomen. I wonder if he was a retired Roman army surgeon, or had access to someone who was.

A specialist military medical corps was introduced by Emperor Augustus in the first century AD, when the Roman Army became a professional standing army composed of trained (and therefore expensive) soldiers (Jackson 1988). Roman military doctors were highly respected, and probably also treated civilians living near army bases. Jackson (1988) suggests that the Roman army was probably the most powerful single agency in spreading Roman medicine around the empire. Some Roman army doctors may have settled locally and continued in civilian practice after their retirement (Jackson 1988), thus potentially establishing a source of Roman medical techniques that could continue independently of the army, if, for example, the local army unit was transferred to another base. Medical expertise has obvious utility in any society, and it would be reasonable for at least some medical knowledge to be handed down as doctors trained their successors. How much knowledge could have been transmitted, for how long, and how garbled it got, is open to question. Nevertheless, it does not seem unreasonable to me that at least some of the skills in Celsus’ textbook could have been handed down to early medieval Britain. The Christian Church, with its Latin literacy and respect for learning, is the most obvious method of transmission, but not necessarily the only one.

Heimskringla

Heimskringla is a collection of sagas about the kings of Norway, written by the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson in the thirteenth century. The saga of King Olaf Haraldson (St Olaf) describes how the king’s skald Thormod was treated for his wounds after the battle of Stiklestad in 1030:

The girl said, "Let me see thy wound, and I will bind it."
Thereupon Thormod sat down, cast off his clothes, and the girl
saw his wounds, and examined that which was in his side, and felt
that a piece of iron was in it, but could not find where the iron
had gone in. In a stone pot she had stirred together leeks and
other herbs, and boiled them, and gave the wounded men of it to
eat, by which she discovered if the wounds had penetrated into
the belly; for if the wound had gone so deep, it would smell of
leek.

--Heimskringla, available online

This is consistent with Celsus’ method for diagnosing a perforated intestine (see above); if the intestine has been pierced, food (or in this case the smell of food) will come out of the wound. So the same knowledge was being applied in eleventh-century Norway (if the account is an accurate description of the battle; or in thirteenth-century Iceland if it is something that Snorri added from his own experience) and in first-century Rome. This could reflect continuity in the transmission of knowledge, as suggested above, or it could reflect empirical discoveries made independently. A warlike society has plenty of opportunity for studying wounds, and skills that increased the recovery rate from battlefield trauma would have been of obvious value to kings and warlords. It’s also worth noting that in the Norse saga it is a woman who examines the wounds and makes the diagnosis. Nursing is a traditional female occupation, and it seems that in the Norse world at least it could extend into specific medical treatment.

Archaeology

Usually the only part of a body that survives to be discovered by archaeology is the skeleton, so any soft tissue surgery would have disappeared without trace. Only surgery that directly affects the bones would leave evidence on the skeleton, and then only if the bones are sufficiently well preserved. So one would expect the archaeological record to under-report surgery, perhaps to a large extent.

Nevertheless, various archaeological excavations have found evidence for surgery in pre-Norman Britain. For example:

• evidence of brain surgery in a young woman in Donegal in around 800 AD. Her skull had a hole cut in it, and bone growth around the hole showed that she had survived the operation (reported in the Irish Times, 10 November 2009)


• evidence of surgical treatment of a fractured skull in a man in Wharram Percy, Yorkshire, in 960-1100. The man was aged about 40 and had suffered a depressed fracture of the skull caused by a blow from a blunt weapon. Left untreated, the depressed bone fragments would have pressed on the brain and proved fatal. Surgery had removed the bone fragments, and the fracture had healed (reported in BBC News, October 2004)

By their nature, reports such as these are sporadic; they show us that cranial surgery happened at those times and places but do not say how widespread it was. However, Wharram Percy is an ordinary village, not an elite settlement. Unless the man at Wharram Percy was unbelievably lucky that a skilled healer happened to be passing through the area at just the time he had his skull fractured (which is possible), this may suggest that high levels of medical skill were more widely available than popular stereotype would suggest.

Interpretation

Surgical knowledge and techniques with a sound basis, sometimes still reflected in current or recent practice, were clearly known in first-century Rome, early medieval Britain and eleventh-century Norway. Whether these represent the same body of knowledge being handed on, or the independent empirical discovery of effective techniques, or both, is open to question.

Surgical treatment of trauma tends to be an acute procedure, in which the cause of the problem is clearly identifiable (the injury or lesion) and the link between treatment and outcome is direct and likely to be apparent fairly quickly. These features support the empirical development of new skills and the evaluation of old ones; when the link between cause and effect is readily recognisable, you can see what works and what doesn’t. A warlike society has plenty of opportunity to observe wounds and gain experience in treating them, and veterinary experience may provide additional knowledge that can be applied. It is therefore quite possible that the same or similar techniques were invented independently at different times and places. Continuity of transmission is possible, but not necessary.

Skilled surgery may have been confined to the military, religious and social elite. Bede and Heimskringla both describe surgery in high-status contexts, a royal abbess and a king’s warband, respectively. It is impossible to say how far access to skilled surgeons extended into the wider population. However, the man at Wharram Percy may indicate that high levels of surgical skill were widely available (although he may just have been very lucky), and unless the girl at Stiklestad was attached to the king’s household (which is possible) her medical skills were presumably available to her local community. Access to skilled and effective surgery may have been more widespread than popular stereotypes about the ‘Dark Ages’ would like to believe.

References

Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.
Celsus, De Medicina, available online
Heimskringla, available online
Jackson R. Doctors and diseases in the Roman empire. British Museum Press, 1988, ISBN 0-7141-1398-0
Kuijjer PJ. History of healing: wound suturing. Ned Tijdschr Geneeskd 1998;142:473-479. English-language abstract available online on PubMed
Leechbook of Bald. Translation by Cockayne, searchable online
Matthews KA, Billington AG. Wound management using sugar. Veterinary Compendium 2002;24:41-50, available online. Note: some of the photographs in this article may be upsetting. If you’re squeamish, consider yourself warned.
Moore OA, Smith LA, Campbell F, Seers K, McQuay HJ, Moore RA. Systematic review of the use of honey as a wound dressing. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2001;1:2, available open-access online
Newton 2000. Using sugar paste to heal postoperative wounds. Nursing Times 2000;96:15, available online
Pollington S. Leechcraft: Early English charms, plantlore and healing. Anglo-Saxon Books, 2000, ISBN 978-1-898281-23-8.


*If you’ve read Paths of Exile, you may recognise the sources of some of the medical techniques used in the story.

Sword Song, by Bernard Cornwell. Book review

Edition reviewed: Harper, 2008. ISBN 978-0-00-721973-5. 360 pages.

Fourth in Bernard Cornwell’s Uhtred series, Sword Song is set in 885. Alfred of Wessex (later known as Alfred the Great), Aethelred of Mercia, Alfred’s daughter Aethelflaed and the Danish leader Haesten are based on historical figures. All the main characters are fictional.

Uhtred of Bebbanburg is now 28, married to his beloved Gisela, sister of the Danish king of Northumbria (told in Book 3, The Lords of the North). Still reluctantly oath-bound to serve King Alfred of Wessex, he is lord of the burh of Coccham (modern Cookham) on Wessex’s eastern border. Alfred and the Danes have signed a treaty, ceding north and east England to Danish rule (the Danelaw), and the land is more or less at peace. When a new group of Norse adventurers come to Lundene (modern London) bent on conquering Wessex, they offer to recognise Uhtred as King of Mercia if he will join them. Uhtred has to choose between allying with the Danes, whom he likes but does not entirely trust, and remaining loyal to Alfred, whom he neither likes nor trusts but to whom he is bound by a sworn oath. When Aethelflaed, Alfred’s lovely and spirited daughter, enters the frame, Uhtred’s uncertain loyalties shape the fate of kingdoms.

Years ago, I once persuaded a gentleman in my local bookstore who said he loved the Sharpe series but had got fed up with Bernard Cornwell’s medieval novels to try The Last Kingdom, on the grounds that it was essentially Sharpe with Vikings and battleaxes instead of rifles and Frenchmen. Well, it seems that early assessment was not too far off the mark. The Uhtred series seems to get more like Sharpe with each succeeding book. Sword Song has all the trademark ingredients: the detailed blood-splattered battle scenes; the resentful hero from the wrong side of the tracks with an unrivalled talent for violence and war; the incompetent/vicious/deceitful/hypocritical enemies in high places on his own side; a plot constructed around one or two set-piece battles. In Finan, the capable Irish warrior introduced in Book 3 (Lords of the North) and now Uhtred’s loyal friend and comrade-in-arms, there may even be an echo of Sergeant Harper. Sword Song is located firmly in the south along the River Thames, so Ragnar and the likeable Guthred of Northumbria don’t make an appearance, but Finan and the ebullient Welsh warrior-turned priest Father Pyrlig inject a cheerful note into the proceedings.

All the usual features of the Uhtred series are present too: Vikings are cool; whenever Uhtred kills someone he quite likes he makes sure to put a weapon in the man’s hand so they can drink together in the corpse-hall after death; Christianity is “…a religion that sucks joy from this world like dusk swallowing daylight…” and its senior clergy are cruel woman-oppressing hypocrites; Uhtred miraculously overcomes impossible odds. Fans of the series so far will know pretty much what to expect.

Sword Song is a quick, easy and undemanding read. The plot is somewhat average, and in places it feels almost as if it has been padded out to fill in the space between the battles (e.g. a dozen pages devoted to an obscure Old Testament ceremony with no evidence of it ever having been used by the relevant characters). As one would expect, the set-piece battle scenes are suitably bloodstained, brutal and graphic. For me the highlight was the assault on Lundene in the middle of the book, with its attack and counter-attack and its bitter fighting among the gates and ramparts of the old Roman fortifications.

Poor Aethelred of Mercia gets a very unflattering portrayal, and probably has grounds for joining the Support Group for People Unfairly Maligned in Historical Fiction. Not that much is known about Aethelred, and he may well not have been the greatest ruler ever, but there’s no evidence that he was a stupid wife-beating snake. It’s his misfortune to be in the right historical place at the right time to be cast as a fictional hero’s antagonist, and I suspect he also has to be cast as a loathsome creep so that the reader won’t mind when Aethelflaed cuckolds him. Bernard Cornwell, to his credit, acknowledges in his Historical Note that he has probably been extremely unfair to the real Aethelred.

The Historical Note also acknowledges that there is more fiction in Sword Song than in the previous Uhtred novels. In particular, the major plot strand involving Aethelflaed is completely fictional, as acknowledged in the Note. I can see its attraction; it has the same obvious dramatic appeal as a meeting between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I. I can’t help wishing, however, that something more interesting had been made of it. The historical Aethelflaed was a remarkable woman, a highly effective ruler of Mercia whose death was respectfully noted in the Annals of Ulster (“U918.5. Ethelfled, a very famous queen of the Saxons, dies”) and Annales Cambriae (“917. Queen Aethelflaed died”). In Sword Song, however, she is merely beautiful and haughty and spends most of the novel being taken here and taken there, willingly or otherwise, by the various men in her life. Perhaps this is because she is still only about fourteen or fifteen, and maybe she will come into her own in the later novels in the series. I hope so.

Entertaining adventure yarn with Cornwell’s trademark battle scenes carrying a rather slight plot. Not his best, but still an enjoyable read.

The Lords of the North, by Bernard Cornwell. Book review

Harper Collins, 2007. ISBN 978-0-00-721970-4. 377 pages.

Lords of the North is Book 3 in Bernard Cornwell’s Uhtred series, set in 878-880 AD mostly in Northumbria, against the backdrop of the conflict between Alfred the Great and the Danes*. Historical figures such as Alfred the Great, Ivar Ivarrson, King Guthred and Abbot Eadred feature as secondary characters. The main characters are fictional.

Uhtred is now aged 21, a seasoned and highly capable warrior. After Alfred the Great’s victory over the Danes at the battle of Ethandun (told in Book 2, The Pale Horseman), Alfred and the Danes have signed a peace treaty. For the moment there is no fighting in the south of England, and Uhtred is angry with Alfred, feeling he has been short-changed after his role at Ethandun. So he returns to his native Northumbria to pursue a blood-feud against the Danish warlord Kjartan the Cruel, who murdered Uhtred’s foster-father Ragnar five years previously and now holds Ragnar’s daughter Thyra prisoner (told in Book 1, The Last Kingdom). Northumbria is riven by violence and political chaos, and Uhtred finds himself becoming the mentor and right-hand man of its new King Guthred. Uhtred hopes to use Guthred to further his revenge on Kjartan, but instead finds that Guthred is using him. Betrayed into slavery, it will take all Uhtred’s determination – and a little help from some old friends – to survive and pursue his feud to its bloodstained climax at Kjartan’s impregnable stronghold of Dunholm.

I admit that I was a little disappointed with Books 1 and 2, which is why I haven’t reviewed them here. They seemed longer on incidental detail, such as how to paint shields or burn charcoal, and thinner on story than is usual for a Bernard Cornwell adventure. I found the portrayal of Alfred unconvincing, and I found it frustrating that the first-person narrative meant I had to see everything through the eyes of Uhtred, a belligerent teenager who thinks any problem can be solved by murder if he feels like it. However, in this third instalment Uhtred is starting to grow up a little and even to recognise that other people might have their own point of view, becoming more interesting and less limited as a result. Alfred is a shadowy figure in the background, and so little is known of Northumbria around 880 that there’s essentially no history to get in the way of an exciting action-adventure yarn of the kind that Bernard Cornwell does so well.

If you’re already familiar with Bernard Cornwell’s military adventures (Sharpe, the Grail Quest, etc), Lords of the North is very much in the classic mould. Uhtred is the near-invincible warrior-hero – since the series is framed as him looking back on his adventures from extreme old age, the reader already knows he is indestructible – a loner with ties to both Alfred’s Wessex and to the Danes. The trademark battle scenes are as frequent and graphic as one would expect, and after two climactic shield-wall clashes in Books 1 and 2 we are treated to a different type of engagement in Book 3.

Uhtred’s adventures spin along with hardly a dull moment, this time taking him as far afield as Iceland. Some of the plot twists are, well, improbable, and the outcome of the battle for Kjartan’s stronghold is not much short of fanciful. But the narrative sweeps along with such verve that I just suspended my disbelief and enjoyed the ride, without bothering over plausibility (even if I did find myself saying later, “Now hang on a minute, if she could do that, how come she’d been a prisoner all this time?”).

Uhtred, the central character and narrator, is a more interesting figure than I found him in the two previous books, perhaps because he seems to be starting to realise that life is not always quite as simple as “if it annoys you, kill it, if it wears a skirt, hump it”. He is even beginning to get a glimmer that Alfred is more than a priest-ridden wimp; the two men are never going to like one another, and therein no doubt lies several more books’ worth of dramatic conflict, but there’s a hint of respect starting to emerge. Alfred’s daughter Aethelflaed, now aged 9, gets a walk-on part, so it looks as if Bernard Cornwell is still setting up to make her the heroine of later books in the series – as the historical Aethelflaed deserves. I confess I was also mildly gratified to see that I had correctly spotted her husband-to-be when he first appeared in Book 1. A feature I particularly liked about Lords of the North is that it shows the Danes and the English beginning to mingle and integrate in Northumbria.

Although this is Book 3 in the series, all the novels can stand alone and you don’t have to have read the first two books to read this one.

A rattling adventure yarn full of derring-do. Imagine Sharpe with swords and Vikings rather than rifles and Frenchmen, and you won’t be far wrong.





*Vikings, if you prefer.

Far After Gold, by Jen Black. Book review

Edition reviewed: Quaestor2000, 2009. ISBN 978-1-906836-03-0. 186 pages.

Disclaimer: Far After Gold is published by Quaestor2000, who are also publishing my novel Paths of Exile. However, I read and reviewed Far After Gold before Quaestor2000 expressed interest in Paths of Exile.

Set in 10th-century Scotland, Far After Gold is a historical romance charting the relationship between Emer, a Hebridean chieftain’s daughter kidnapped by Viking* pirates, and Flane, the handsome young Viking warrior who buys her as a slave. All the characters are fictional, though I suspect that Skuli, chief of Flane’s village, may be the eponymous founder of Ullapool.

Emer is a chieftain’s daughter from the tiny island of Pabaigh in the Scottish Hebrides. Her life changes for ever when she is kidnapped by Viking raiders and sold as a slave in the Norse town of Dublin. Her buyer, a handsome and carefree young Norse warrior named Flane Ketilsson, takes her back to his home at Skuli’s Steading on the north-west coast of Scotland, intending to keep Emer as his concubine when he marries Skuli’s daughter Katla. However, Emer and Katla both have other ideas, and Flane finds his life becoming increasingly complicated. Emer refuses to sleep with him until he marries her, Katla wants to get rid of Emer altogether, and another warrior in the settlement wants Emer for himself. The ensuing conflict threatens Emer’s life and finally forces Flane to make a choice between love and power.

Far After Gold is an enjoyable read, with all the elements one would expect from a romance. The hero is handsome and has a tender side, both the rival women are beautiful, and the reader is left in no doubt whatsoever about the two leads’ physical attraction to one another. While the relationship between Emer and Flane is the main focus of the story, the novel is also rich in historical detail. The title is a quotation from a Swedish runic inscription set up by a mother in memory of her sons, “they fared like men, far after gold”, and Flane quotes some of the cheerfully pragmatic Norse proverbs from the poem Havamal. As well as everyday life in a Norse chieftain’s hall, including the bathing facilities (I’m afraid the myth of the unwashed hairy Viking is just that, a myth), the novel also brings Norse customs to life through Emer’s eyes. Emer is unfamiliar with Norse ways, and some of the customs are startling, even shocking, to her, such as the acceptance of single combat (the holmgangr) as a method of settling arguments and the businesslike nature of a Norse wedding ceremony. As she grows closer to Flane she has to learn about the society that shaped him, and her discovery that there is more to Norse society than mindless violence is shared with the reader. One aspect I liked is that the novel doesn’t make a great fuss about religious differences, even though Emer is Christian and Flane is not. This tolerance, on the pagan Norse side at least, is reflected in some archaeological artefacts, such as the jeweller’s mould from tenth-century Denmark that was designed to cast a Thor’s hammer amulet side by side with Christian cross pendants.

Flane is an attractive character, cheerful and humorous. He comes over as just a little bit immature at the start of the novel, wanting to have his cake and eat it, acting on impulse without much regard for the consequences, and unwilling to make a difficult decision until he is forced into it. He seems genuinely baffled that Emer doesn’t fall into his bed at the first opportunity, and his willingness to wait for her to do so rather than force her seems to be due in about equal parts to a belief in his own irresistible attractiveness and a desire for a quiet life. In some ways Emer and her rival for Flane’s affections, the chieftain’s daughter Katla, are the stronger characters. Katla in particular is familiar from the Icelandic sagas, an outspoken woman at least as determined as the men around her. Emer is a mixture of sweet and sharp, naïve and sarcastic, and displays considerable courage. Whether a Norse warrior would really have put up with quite so much defiant back-chat from a girl he bought in a slave market is perhaps a moot point, but Flane admits to a friend that Emer intrigues him, and maybe that is explanation enough.

The novel is written in straightforward modern prose, with no expletives that I noticed. As one would expect in a romance there are a number of explicit sex scenes, but they don’t overwhelm the rest of the story. The character names are authentic as far as I can tell, always something I look for in historical fiction. I recognised most of the Norse names, Emer is an Irish name (wife of the hero Cuchulainn in Irish legend), and Katla is the name of a volcano in Iceland, highly appropriate for the tempestuous chieftain’s daughter. Landscape descriptions were sufficiently clear for me to work out most of the locations in the story, though I would have liked a map to confirm whether I was right!

Warm historical romance with all the classic features, in the unusual setting of tenth-century Norse Scotland.

More information on Jen Black's blog.


*’Viking’ and ‘Norse’ are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to the people of Scandinavia (modern Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland) in the eighth to eleventh centuries. I prefer to use ‘Norse’ to refer to people of Scandinavian origin, and ‘Viking’ to refer specifically to those who were engaged in raiding and piracy.

Human sacrifice in Anglo-Saxon England: what rite might have been used?

In an earlier post I reviewed the limited evidence relating to human sacrifice in early England (‘Anglo-Saxon’ England), and came to the conclusion that the early English almost certainly knew of human sacrifice, but that there is little evidence that they practised it to any great extent. A small number of graves, such as the strange burials at Sutton Hoo, are consistent with human sacrifice but other explanations are possible. I personally think it most likely to have been a rare event reserved for exceptional circumstances.

If human sacrifice was practised at all in early England, what form might the rites have taken? As there’s little evidence for it at all, it won’t surprise you to hear that there’s no definite evidence for the rites that might have been employed. However, it may be possible to make some extrapolations from related cultures, with due caution and the usual caveat that other interpretations are possible.

Sutton Hoo

The body buried without grave goods and probably face down in one of the quarry pits used to construct Mound 5 at Sutton Hoo may have been a sacrifice, but was not well enough preserved to give any evidence for the cause of death (Carver 1998).

The group of anomalous burials (see earlier post for details) surrounded the site of a gallows, so it is plausible (though not certain) that at least some of them had died on it. Whether they represent sacrifices or executions, or indeed whether such a distinction can be made, is not known. One body had a dark stain around its neck that could have been the remains of a rope. Others were decapitated, but whether this happened at or after death is not known. The dates for this group of burials span the period from the sixth to the eleventh century (Carver 1998).

Iron Age Europe: the bog bodies

The Roman historian Tacitus, writing in the 1st century AD, says that the tribes living in the areas that are now Germany and southern Denmark sacrificed human victims to Mercury, but doesn’t say what rite was used.

Mercury is the deity whom they chiefly worship, and on certain days they deem it right to sacrifice to him even with human victims.

--Tacitus, Germania

He also says that the slaves who washed the wagon of the goddess Nerthus were drowned in a sacred lake, although this is attributed to a desire to maintain secrecy rather than to sacrifice as such.

Anon the chariot is washed and purified in a secret lake, as also the curtains; nay, the Deity herself too, if you choose to believe it. In this office it is slaves who minister, and they are forthwith doomed to be swallowed up in the same lake. Hence all men are possessed with mysterious terror; as well as with a holy ignorance what that must be, which none see but such as are immediately to perish.

--Tacitus, Germania

Remarkably, a few human bodies from the Iron Age in northern Europe have survived to the present day, preserved in acid and waterlogged conditions in peat bogs. Readers in Britain will probably be most familiar with “Lindow Man”, discovered during peat cutting at Lindow Moss in Cheshire, in north-west England in 1984. The lower half of his body had presumably been destroyed by the peat-cutting machinery (unless someone found a nasty surprise in their azalea bed), leaving only the body above the waist and part of one lower leg. The investigations into the body have been described in clear and readable detail by Don Brothwell of the University of London (Brothwell 1986). Lindow Man had been struck at least twice on the top of the head by a blunt instrument, fracturing his skull. He also had a broken jaw and chipped tooth which may indicate another blow to the lower face, and a broken rib which may indicate a violent blow to his back. He had also been strangled by a twisted cord, his neck was broken, his throat had been cut, and there was a possible stab wound to his chest. The number of different types of injury seems excessive for an ordinary murder, and suggests a ritual death (Brothwell 1986). Hutton comments that it recalls the “triple death” of Irish legends (Hutton 1993).

Although many other bog bodies have been found from sites across northern Europe, including Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Britain and Ireland, many were either insufficiently preserved or insufficiently investigated to identify a cause of death. However, several other bog bodies show evidence for one or more of the types of injuries inflicted on Lindow Man:

• Borre Fen Man - hanging/strangulation, skull injury


• Borre Fen Woman (II) – skull injury, other fractures


• Elling Woman – hanging/strangulation


• Grauballe Man – throat cut, skull injury, other fractures


• Lindow Man - hanging/strangulation, throat cut, skull injury, chest wound (possible) other fractures (possible)


• Lykkegard Man - hanging/strangulation


• Osterby Man – beheading, skull injury


• Rendswuhren Fen Man – skull injury, chest wound


• Stidsholt Fen Woman – beheading


• Tollund Man – hanging/strangulation


• Werdingerveen Man – chest wound

--Brothwell 1986; Coles & Coles 1989

More than half of these bodies (6/11) had multiple types of injury, though Lindow Man had the widest range. Head injuries were the most common (6), perhaps intended to stun the victim out of mercy or convenience. The other modes of death include strangling or hanging (5), chest wounds (2) and cutting of the throat (2). Placing the body in a pool in the bog (all of them, by definition) may also have represented drowning, yet another mode of death. Other bog bodies have been found pinned down in the bog by stakes or branches and may have been drowned (a woman at Jelling in Denmark, a man and a girl at Windeby in north Germany, a man at Gallagh in Ireland), although it may also be possible that the bodies were placed in the bog after death and pinned down to prevent them floating to the surface of a pool. Two of these bodies had cords around the neck that might have been used for strangulation (Gallagh, the man at Windeby) (Coles & Coles 1989).

Some Irish legends feature a “Triple Death”. For example, Adomnan’s Life of Columba says that St Columba prophesied that Aed Dub (Aed the Black) would die by falling, drowning and stabbing.

And Aid, thus irregularly ordained, shall return as a dog to his vomit, and be again a bloody murderer, until at length, pierced in the neck with a spear, he shall fall from a tree into the water and be drowned

--Adomnan, Life of Columba, Chapter XXIX

In another Irish legend, Diarmait mac Cerbaill, king of all Ireland, is killed by his foster-son Aed Dub by drowning, burning and stabbing (see Wikipedia).

The significance of the multiple modes of death is unknown. It has been suggested that certain modes of death were sacred to particular gods (Powell 1983), so perhaps a person killed using several modes was believed to influence several gods. Or it may be that the elaborate ritual was required to differentiate the sacrifice from a commonplace death – after all, people could drown by accident, or could be stabbed, beaten or strangled as a result of war, a brawl or an ordinary murder. Perhaps a multiple death was intended to mark the person out as a gift presented especially to the gods.

Norse documentary sources

Multiple modes of death are also found in documentary descriptions of Norse customs. In the tenth century, an Arab diplomat, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, wrote a detailed description of the Rus, who were Norse traders living on the River Volga in what is now Russia. In it he describes a human sacrifice at the funeral of one of the Rus leaders:

… they laid her at the side of her master; the old woman known as the Angel of Death re-entered and looped a cord around her neck and gave the crossed ends to the two men for them to pull. Then she approached her with a broad-bladed dagger, which she plunged between her ribs repeatedly, and the men strangled her with the cord until she was dead.

--Risala

According to the Icelandic poem Havamal, the Norse god Odin was hanged on the World Tree and stabbed with a spear.

I trow I hung on that windy Tree
nine whole days and nights,
stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,
myself to mine own self given,

--Havamal

If we take hanging and strangling as equivalent, this is the same death as that meted out to the slave girl on the Volga, and Havamal is explicit that this is a sacrifice to Odin.

The Greek historian Procopius, writing in Byzantium in the 6th century AD, says of the inhabitants of Thule (modern Norway and Sweden):

This sacrifice they offer to Ares, since they believe him to be the greatest of the gods. They sacrifice the prisoner not merely by slaughtering him, but by hanging him from a beam or casting him among thorns, or putting him to death by other horrible methods.

--Procopius, Gothic War. Quoted in Ellis Davidson (1964).

Ares is the Greek war-god, whom the Romans called Mars. Procopius presumably substituted the name of the Greek god he considered to be the nearest equivalent to the Norse deity concerned. The two most obvious candidates for a Norse war god are Tyr or Odin, both of whom could be considered gods of war.

Adam of Bremen, writing in 1070, described extensive human sacrifice at the temple of Old Uppsala in Sweden:

There is a festival at Uppsala every nine years […] The sacrifice is as follows; of every kind of male creature, nine victims are offered. By the blood of these creatures it is the custom to appease the gods. Their bodies, moreover, are hanged in a grove which is adjacent to the temple. This grove is so sacred to the people that the separate trees in it are believed to be holy because of the death or putrefaction of the sacrificial victims. There even dogs and horses hang beside human beings.

--History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen

He is clear that the victims were hanged, and if his reference to “blood” is literal rather than poetic it may indicate that they were also stabbed, as described in Havamal and the account of the slave girl on the Volga.

The medieval Norse saga Gautrek’s Saga contains a vivid account of a sacrifice to Odin. In the saga, King Vikar prays to Odin for a favourable wind, and when the lots are drawn to decide who will be the sacrifice in payment, the lot falls to King Vikar himself. King Vikar tries to cheat his fate by staging a mock sacrifice. He stands on a tree stump with the soft intestines of a calf looped around his neck and fastened to a branch above, and one of his men thrusts a blunt wooden rod at him with the words, “Now I give you to Odin”. As soon as the words are uttered, the rod becomes a spear piercing King Vikar through, the intestine becomes a strong rope and the branch jerks the king into the air and hangs him (Ellis Davison 1964). Odin, the master of deceit, is not easily cheated.

This colourful story is from a late source and may be no more than vivid fiction, or it may be based on a genuine tradition of a rite used to send a victim to Odin by hanging and stabbing. It is consistent with Havamal, but if the saga writer was familiar with Havamal he could simply have copied the rite and added some dramatic details.

Conclusion

Irish and Norse legends, and accounts of Norse customs, all describe human sacrifice involving death by multiple methods. These might be dismissed as no more than bizarre stories invented by chroniclers about barbaric peoples of far away and long ago, if it were not for the evidence of the bog bodies.

These individuals demonstrate clearly that death by elaborate and multiple methods was inflicted in Iron Age northern Europe, including Britain, north Germany and Denmark, and the victims placed in the peat and water of bogs. The pattern of injuries varies from one to another, presumably indicating variations in the rite as well as variations in the survival of evidence. Wounding with sharp implements, hanging or strangulation, and violent blows to the head are all represented among the bodies, and their location in watery places may represent actual or metaphorical drowning. It is worth remembering that alternative rites, such as burning, would either leave no trace (if the ashes were dispersed) or might be difficult to distinguish from an ordinary cremation burial. Drowning and/or disposal in bogs might have been a common factor among ritual deaths, or just the common factor among the ones that happen to have left evidence for us to identify and interpret.

Exactly how widespread human sacrifice was, how long it persisted, and what rites were used when and in which societies, remains uncertain. No definite sacrificial victim from the early medieval period in England has yet been identified (Lindow Man has been dated to around the first century AD), which might be interpreted either as absence of evidence or evidence of absence. However, if human sacrifice was carried out in early England, one might reasonably conjecture that the rites involved would have been likely to resemble either those used on the earlier Iron Age bog bodies, or those recorded for later Norse culture.

References
Full-text sources available online are linked in the text
Brothwell D. The bog man and the archaeology of people. British Museum Press, 1986, ISBN 0-7141-1384-0.
Coles B, Coles J. People of the wetlands: bogs, bodies and lake-dwellers. Thames & Hudson, 1989, ISBN 0-500-02112-0
Ellis Davidson HR. Gods and myths of northern Europe. Penguin, 1964, ISBN 0-14-020670-1.
Carver M. Sutton Hoo: Burial ground of kings? British Museum Press, 1998, ISBN: 0-7141-0591-0.
Hutton R. The pagan religions of the ancient British Isles: their nature and legacy. Blackwell, 1993, ISBN:0-631-18946-7.
Powell TGE. The Celts. Thames & Hudson, 1983, ISBN 0-500-27275-1.