Butzer C. M. - Guts & Glory--The Vikings

Sometimes its not possible to know every word and every happening, for most things happen long before theyre told about.

The Saga of Hrolf the Walker

F ROM ESPN HIGHLIGHTS OF M INNESOTA Vikings running backs trampling linebackers to How to Train Your Dragon movie marathons, we can feel the influence of the Vikings in almost every aspect of our daily lives. Sometimes those influences are so blatant that they smack you upside the head like Thor smiting Loki on the poster for an upcoming summer blockbuster. Other Viking hand-me-downs, like the Tooth Fairy or the song London Bridge Is Falling Down, are a little less obvious. Viking culture and Norse mythology can be found front and center in everything from Led Zeppelin albums to Final Fantasy video games; from Dungeons & Dragons sessions to NASA space probes; from The Lord of the Rings to popular cruise lines; and across all manner of television, movies, video games, comics, and books. Theyre everywhere you look, all portrayed at maximum volume and with varying degrees of historical accuracy. I mean, the Minnesota Vikings football team kicks off its pregame festivities by having a big bearded guy in a horned helmet charge onto the football field on a motorcycle screaming Vikiiiiiiiiiiings! while waving an enormous American flag.

But how many people outside Norway can even name one single Viking warrior? Who exactly were these guys, anyway?

Well, to be honest, its not easy writing a history book about a bunch of mostly illiterate, bloodthirsty marauders who carved their stories into rocks more than a thousand years ago and credited their victories to blessings from hammer-swinging lightning gods. Its enough to make sane people crazy and historians even crazier.

Most of what we know about Vikings is brought to us by a cranky old thirteenth-century Icelandic lawyer/politician named Snorri Sturluson, who was pretty much the exact opposite of every Viking stereotype. Snorri was a brilliant legal mind and a devoted reader who constantly plotted and schemed to seize power in the government. He lost almost every battle he ever fought, fled the country twice, came back, and was eventually stabbed to death by three Vikings while cowering in his wine cellar. But even though this guy wasnt swinging axes and eating meat off the bone, hes probably the most important man in the study of Norse history because hes one of the only Norsemen who had the good sense to write everything down. And despite writing his material some three hundred years after the height of the Viking Age, hes also the best thing we have going for us these days as far as Viking history is concerned. Sure, some of the Christian monks who lived through the raids wrote things down, but its hard to write something nice or useful about a group of guys who just burned your house to the ground and tried to kill you with an axe.