Vikings (37 page)

Each party in a dispute would make his case, either personally or through a trusted representative, and all agreed to accept whatever judgment was handed down. As well as the wisdom of the law speaker, decisions depended upon the votes of all free men. In a system that was essentially one-man, one-vote, majority and consensus were all. By the time the German historian Adam of Bremen came to write about the ways of the Icelanders in the second half of the eleventh century, he was able to say: ‘They have no king, only the law’

Far enough away from Norway, Iceland retained a crucial degree of independence right up into the modern era. Without a master, the society there developed along unique lines until what crystallised in the end was something best described as a Free State, a proto-republic. Byock may have come closest to the truth of it all when he called Iceland’s self-governing community ‘a great village.

The place chosen for the Iceland Althing – the
Thingvellir
, or Thing Plain – is suitably unique, and spectacular. Iceland breaks its back across the Mid-Atlantic Ridge like a saucer cracked over a knife-edge. In the south-west of the island, near the Reykjanes peninsula, the faultline appears as a yawning fissure in the living rock, like the crack of doom. The world feels raw there, a work in progress, and in such a dynamic, changeable landscape it is easy to imagine people being inspired to think in new ways.

Located just east of Reykjavik, the Thingvellir was always close to Iceland’s most heavily populated areas and no more than a fortnight’s travel from any of the gothars’ homesteads. Activity centred on a rocky outcrop called the
Logberg
, or Law
Rock, and a temporary city of tents was erected all around it for the duration of the assembly. Since it was the only time of year when the whole community came together, the Althing was also a social event, like a summer festival. Modern Icelanders regard the Thingvellir and the Althing as nothing less than the foundation stones of their nation and there was an annual assembly there until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the business of state was finally moved to Reykjavik.

Iceland is 800 miles and seven days’ sail from the west coast of Norway. While the settlers were able to remain in contact with the homeland, and with their colonies in Britain five days’ sail to the south, to all intents and purposes they were alone. Self-reliance and self-sufficiency were prerequisites from the start and the first Icelanders were not found wanting. As ever in the northern latitudes, the long dark months of winter posed the greatest challenge of all, and much ingenuity was required to ensure enough foodstuffs were laid up during the short summers. The cuisine of the Vikings was therefore a challenging prospect in itself, much of it demanding a strong stomach and a willingness to try new things . . . or should that be
old
things, months and months old.

The most important part of the Viking approach to winter rations was always preservation. Much of whatever had been grown, caught or otherwise produced during spring, summer and autumn had to last the family through the barren months ahead – and it was no time for the choosy. Nowadays the traditional foods are consumed, at least by the hardy, during the midwinter festival of
Thurseblot
, and the sights and
smells
of the accompanying buffet Icelanders call
Thorramatur
are a multisensory insight into a lost world.

Easiest for modern, western palates to cope with are the dairy products like
skyr
, which is a kind of yoghurt. There are various curd cheeses too and all of the flavours are familiar enough.
It is in the approach to preserving meat and fish that Viking cuisine truly departs from the norm and I can honestly say that some sensory memory of the smells and tastes of certain delicacies will stay with me for ever. Lamb and mutton were popular – some of it, called
hangikjöt
, is dried or smoked much like prosciutto and as enjoyable. At the harder end of the spectrum, however, is lamb preserved in such a way that the aroma from it is what might politely be described as gamey or ‘high’, if not actually rotten. Longer-lasting than the taste, which lined the mouth with a suggestion of stale sweat, was the smell – like walking back into the kitchen after a summer holiday only to find someone had forgotten to put the bin out before departing all those weeks ago. It may have been an illusion, but I would have sworn the rancid reek of it was in my hair and on my clothes the day after I ate it.

The tastes of the pickled fish were familiar enough, and excellent; and the dried cod, or
klippfisk
, went down like an unusually pungent, salty pub snack.
Surströmming
, however, is herring pickled in brine and sealed in tin cans, which often bulge from the pressure of the ongoing fermentation within. Even Icelanders prefer to open cans of
surströmming
outdoors, on account of the almost overwhelming odour that is released. The smell is so strong you would swear you could see it. Scientists in Japan – a country that is no stranger to the acquired taste – rated it the most putrid smell in the world. Several airlines will not allow cans of
surströmming
onboard for fear of explosions.

Popular with Vikings, and with modern Icelanders of a certain age and inclination, is horsemeat stored in barrels of whey, the cloudy liquid that separates from the curds when milk sours. Also available for the bold in heart and stomach were
hrutspungar
, rams’ testicles cured in lactic acid;
svith
, boiled whole sheep’s heads complete with eyes and tongue and
blothmor
, or blood pudding.

My most lasting memory, however, is of the fermented shark meat dish called
hákarl
, from the Icelandic word for the Greenland or basking shark. The flesh of the freshly caught animal is naturally toxic due to a high urea content, but, ever the innovators, Viking hunters of old persevered. Once caught and beheaded, the shark’s corpse was buried on the beach, preferably in coarse, gravelly sand. Heavy stones were then piled on top so that the natural fluids – and toxins – were pressed out of the flesh. The whole process might take as long as three months but by the end the putrid meat was ready to be sliced into strips and hung in the air to dry.

If all of that suggests a product best avoided, I can only say the experience of popping a piece of
hákarl
into one’s mouth, and then biting down, is the very definition of unforgettable. Think, if you will, of the combined aroma and flavour of the runniest, bluest Stilton cheese you have ever tasted. At the same time recall, if you can, the eye-watering, breath-stealing hit of the ammonia in old-fashioned smelling salts. The overall impact of
hákarl
is what you might perhaps expect from eating rancid, fishy fat that has been marinated in carpet cleaner – except
hákarl
is stronger and the taste lasts longer. The first wave of flavour is simply that of rotten fish, delivered in a texture like semi-soft lard. What is life-changing is the explosion of ammonia that fills mouth, nose and throat when you begin to chew. To say it clears the tubes is the understatement of a lifetime. It is a French kiss with the living dead.

Overwhelming and overpowering though some of the dishes certainly were, I have to say there was something I thoroughly enjoyed about it all, even as the fermented shark meat was making its defiant passage down my gullet. The past is elusive – out of reach. When you are in search of the Viking past it is all about the sagas, the historic sights and the hoards, skeletons
and other artefacts on display in the museums or boxed in their storage rooms.

But there are also priceless insights available from unexpected sources. The night I spent in the reconstructed Bronze Age house at Borum Eshøj, in Denmark, was one. The howling of the wind and the crackling of the logs settling on the fire conjured up an atmosphere from long ago. Also part of the sum total of my understanding of the Vikings is the taste of
hákarl.
This after all was part of the flavour and the smell of that lost world of theirs. A people who had learnt to tough it out and to survive, in any and all circumstances, also learnt to enjoy foods as far out on the edge of experience as the places in which they had to make their homes. The truth is that none of us can know what it felt like to be a Viking, far less to
go
a-viking – but at least I know now, as they did then, what it’s like to eat the three-month-old flesh of a buried basking shark.

It is not just in barrels of whey and brine that the essence of the Viking world is preserved. A quite different sense of their time and place survives in the unique literature of their sagas and poetry; and, in stark contrast to their meat and fish, their store of words has remained fresh and full of life.

Old Norse poetry is split into two categories, effectively two different books. All of it is known collectively by the Old Norse word for poetry –
edda
– but there is the Elder, or Poetic Edda, on the one hand and the Younger, or Prose Edda on the other. The Icelandic genius Snorri Sturluson wrote the Younger Edda sometime during the first two decades of the thirteenth century and, as well as his own creations, he included snippets of other, presumably older poems. It was only in the seventeenth century that a manuscript came to light containing copies of the works to which Snorri had referred. Since it was subsequently
presented as a gift to the then King of Denmark, it has been known to scholars ever since as the
Codex Regius.

It is in those pages that we can read about the Old Norse gods – Odin, Thor and all the rest – making them an almost unique source of information about pre-Christian beliefs. Only the ancient Greeks made a similar effort to write about their religion and it is therefore courtesy of the Elder Edda – remembered by heart long before they were written down – that we know what the Vikings actually
believed
. It is within those pages, for instance, that we find all the familiar stories of Thor: ‘He is the strongest of all gods and men . . . He carries three precious objects. One is his hammer, Mjölnir, which the . . . giants of the mountains recognise when he takes to the air, which is not surprising: he has crushed the skulls of many of their fathers and kinsmen.’ It is also in the Elder Edda that we read about
Ragnarok
, the Twilight of the Gods, when the old world ends and a new one begins.

(Once more I should make it clear it was hardly in the pages of the Elder Edda that I first encountered Thor. As a boy my favourite comics concerned the adventures of the superheroes. Among the best of all were those featuring an Americanised version of Thor – so that even as a 12-year-old I could have told you his other ‘precious objects’ were a belt that doubled his strength and a pair of iron gloves. The same source had informed me mortals mistook the sparks from his hammer for bolts of lightning.)

We learn of Odin’s primacy among the gods, that he commanded knowledge, war and, most importantly, victory, and that he travelled far and wide on an eight-legged horse named Sleipnir. Odin also kept the ravens – Huginn, ‘thought’ and Muninn, ‘memory’ – that he sent into the world every day so they might keep him informed of all that was unfolding.

There is also much about Odin that is mysterious, even
troubling. Within the Elder Edda, the words of the poem
Hávamál
are attributed to Odin himself:

I know that I hung

On the tree lashed by winds

Nine full nights,

And gave myself to Odin,

Myself to Myself;

On that tree

The depth of whose roots

No one knows.

No bread sustained me

Nor goblet.

I looked down,

I gathered the runes,

Screaming I gathered them;

And from there I fell

Again.

From across the centuries, millennia even, the words of the eddaic poems present a haunting image of a world, and of the world-view to go with it. By the start of the Viking Age, the Christian religion was already a rising tide, lapping at the doorstep of the peoples of Scandinavia. But while the power of that new religion lay in its promise of a better life to come – after death – it was the dream of all good Vikings to make the most of the here and now.

Hávamál
means ‘the sayings of the high one’ and a reading of it makes plain that nothing mattered more to Odin than that a warrior should live a heroic life and die a hero’s death:

A coward believes he will live for ever,

If he holds back in the battle.

But in old age he shall have no peace,

Though spears have spared his limbs . . .

Cattle die, kindred die,

Every man is mortal

But the good name never dies,

Of one who has done well.

Perhaps it was in hope of finally doing well, and ensuring the immortality of his name for the right reasons, that a murderous criminal named Eirikur Thorvaldsson chose to set sail from Iceland, into the west, around
AD
982. He was leaving as he had arrived – as an outlaw. Born in Norway, he had committed murder and fled that country with his father. More violence followed in his adoptive home of Iceland, more killings, until finally he was forced to flee for his life once more. Outlaws like Eirikur were fair game – literally outside the law and therefore beyond its protection. Anyone who cared to – relative or friend of the victims – was free to hunt him down and kill him without fear of any legal consequences. Some men in the same position might have chosen to try their luck in the established Viking colonies – the Faroe Islands or perhaps Shetland, Orkney, even mainland Britain – but Eirikur fancied his chances elsewhere.

Given its location, astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland might reasonably be described as the last vestige of Europe. Anywhere further into the west is a step beyond, out of the old world and into the new. Given their persistence, reinforced by religious zeal, it’s quite possible that Irish monks – St Brendan and his brothers, maybe – were first to complete the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. If they did so, however, they either missed out Greenland or left no trace there whatsoever.