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LegendsLegends can sometimes be true... Viking Voyagers
Over a thousand years ago, a Viking adventurer, Leif Eiriksson, sailed southwest from his home in Greenland to a new country of hills covered in forests. He and his men found grapevines in the woods, and named the place ‘Vinland’. Leif had reached North America – 500 years before Columbus. Leif’s deeds were told in two famous sagas, ‘The Greenland Saga’ and ‘Eirik the Red’s Saga’, but for centuries no one knew if the story was truth or fiction. Then, in the 1960s, a Norwegian archaeologist excavated a Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland, Canada. Proof that the Vikings really had reached North America! But of course, North America was already inhabited. The sagas tell how the Vikings met with ‘Skraelings’ – their scornful name for the Native Americans. These meetings didn’t bode well for future relations. When Leif’s brother Thorvald, who sailed to Vinland the year after, came across nine ‘Skraelings’ sleeping on the beach under their canoes, he and his men promptly killed eight of them. The ninth escaped to raise the alarm. A fleet of ‘Skraeling’ canoes attacked the Viking invaders, and Thorvald died from an arrow wound. Tales of the NisThere are lots of stories in Scandinavian folklore about the mischievous Nisses. Helpful but touchy, they did all sorts of odd jobs around the farm. Here are two traditional tales: A Fight Between Two NissesTwo Nisses, each carrying a load of hay, met in the middle of a narrow bridge. As they could not pass each other, and neither would give way, they finally threw all the hay into the river and came to blows. A farmer who saw them, burst out laughing. “What fools you both are!” he called as he went his way. That evening the farmer came home, carrying a lantern to light his steps. As he came to the farm gate, he saw the two Nisses sitting there, one on each gatepost. As he tried to pass, one shouted to him, ‘Light high!’ Obediently he held his lantern high – but the Nis on the other side boxed him on the ear and shouted, ‘Light low!’ The confused farmer lowered his lantern – and got another slap from the first Nis. ‘Light high, I said!’ And this went on, with the farmer raising and lowering the lantern, and the Nisses boxing his ears, till the poor man took to his heels and ran. The Old BarrelA little Nis lived on a farm. The farmer was a mean man who never gave the Nis any porridge with butter in it, not even on Christmas Eve – and so, perhaps not surprisingly, the farmer’s luck was bad. He ended up having to sell his farm and live in a poor cottage nearby. The farmer’s young son, however, missed the little Nis, and one day went back to have a chat with him. “How are you all?” asked the Nis. “Miserable,” said the farmer’s son gloomily. “Dad’s luck is no better than before.” The Nis felt sorry for him. “Then tell him to come here and ask the new owner if he can have that old barrel at the back of the house. Say you forgot to take it with you when you moved out.” “That rotten old thing? But we didn’t forget it,” said the farmer’s son, “we just didn’t want it.” “Never mind,” said the Nis, “do as I say.” The farmer’s son told his father what the Nis had advised, so the farmer went over to ask the new owner if he could take the barrel. “Have it by all means,” said the new owner, “it’s an eyesore. Good enough for you, I suppose – but I can afford a new one.” When the farmer got home with the barrel, it fell apart, and gold coins spilled on to the floor. There had been a double bottom in the barrel, with enough money hidden in it to buy the old farm back again – which the farmer lost no time in doing. After that, he made sure to put down hot buttered porridge for the Nis every night – with a layer of sugar and cinnamon for good measure. [adapted from ‘Scandinavian Folklore’, William Craigie, 1896] Viking 'Kennings'Like Harald Silkenhair in ‘Troll Blood’, a man might be a fierce fighter and a bold sailor, but the Vikings would admire him even more if he was also a good poet. They thought very highly of wit and word-skill, and one of their favourite kinds of poetry used a lot of complicated riddles called ‘kennings’. Vikings liked to chant poetry aloud around the fire in the evenings, or after a feast. Part of the fun was trying to understand the riddles. So in a poem about the sea you wouldn’t say ‘the sea.’ You’d call it the ‘whale’s home’ or the ‘swan’s bath’, and your audience would know what you meant. If you wanted to make up a poem in which a king rewards one of his men with gold, you wouldn’t say ‘The king gave gold to his warrior.’ That would be plain boring. Instead you had to say something like ‘The Land-Ruler gave Sif’s Hair to his Sword-Bearer.’ For your listeners to understand it, they’d have to know the story of how the trickster god Loki cut off the goddess Sif’s beautiful hair. The other gods were so angry with him that he went to the dwarfs and got them to make Sif some beautiful new hair from pure gold, which would magically grow just like real hair. But there were a lot of other ‘kennings’ for gold. For example, you could call it ‘Frodi’s flour.’ And to understand that, your audience would need to have heard a completely different story, about a Danish king called Frodi who bought two giant slaves and set them to turn two enormous magic millstones which would grind out whatever you told them to grind. Instead of flour, King Frodi told them to grind out peace, prosperity and gold. (That’s why gold could be called ‘Frodi’s flour’.) For a time, King Frodi’s people enjoyed a golden age. Unfortunately, however, Frodi made the two giants work almost non-stop, not allowing them to rest or sleep ‘for longer than it takes to hear a cuckoo call.’ In revenge, the two giants asked the millstones to grind out an army which attacked King Frodi and killed him. And that was the end of his peaceful reign! The Vikings enjoyed listening to these riddling poems. Here are a few extra ‘kennings’. See if you can figure them out.
Why not try and make up some of your own? Seidr MagicSeidr (pronounced roughly: ‘saythoor’) was a variety of magic involving the arts of prophecy, spirit journeys, healing (or causing harm) and illusion. The word may come from the same root as the English verb ‘to seethe’ which means ‘to boil’ – like Shakespeare’s three witches boiling up spells in their cauldron. A man or woman who practised seidr would be regarded with a mixture of awe and fear. There are plenty of examples in the Norse stories. In ‘The Saga of Grettir the Strong’, an old woman cuts runes on a floating tree trunk, smears them with her own blood, walks round it widdershins – against the sun – and tells Grettir’s enemies to push the tree into the sea so that it will float to the island where Grettir has taken shelter, and bring him harm. In ‘Eyrbyggya Saga’, a woman called Katla uses seidr magic to save her son Odd (now there’s an odd name) from a band of his enemies. On seeing them approach the house, she tells her son to sit next to her as she spins her wool. Though Arnkell and his men search the house, they don’t see Odd, only Katla’s distaff with the clump of wool on it. When they come back a second time, Katla is combing Odd’s hair, but to the war band it looks as though she is grooming her goat. The third time, though Odd is lying on a pile of ashes, the men ‘see’ only Katla’s boar asleep there. Each time they leave the house, the men realise they have been fooled by Katla’s magic arts. Not until they enlist the help of another woman skilled in seidr, Geirridr who hates Katla, do Odd’s enemies succeed in capturing him. (Incidentally, this story also goes to show how it seemed quite normal back in those days to find people sharing their living space with goats and pigs!). Like a shaman, a seidr-worker was supposed to be able to send out his or her spirit in the form of an animal. There are many stories from around the world in which the soul is visualised as a small animal, like a butterfly or a mouse, which can be seen creeping out of the mouth while the owner sleeps. Maybe the belief originated in dreams, in which we seem to travel while our bodies lie asleep. North American TalesThe Native American Indians you will meet in ‘Troll Blood’ are based on the Mi’kmaq people of New Brunswick, Canada, who have a rich heritage of amazing stories and traditions. Here is a tale about the jenu, the terrifying ice-giant. Adventures with a JenuA man, with his wife and child, had pitched camp far off in the north-west woods, intending to spend the winter hunting, fishing and trapping. At first all went well, and he brought back plenty of game, which his wife sliced, cured and dried. Then one day while the hunter was out, the woman heard something come crashing through the woods. She looked out and to her horror saw an enormous, gaunt, wild-looking man, naked except for a pack on his back, his hair long and tangled, his lips raw and bleeding where he had hungrily bitten his own flesh. She knew at once it was a jenu, who would eat her and her little son – unless she could trick him. So, instead of running away, she rushed out to meet the monster, pretending to be overjoyed. “My dear Grandfather! How honoured I am! Come in at once and let me cook for you.” The jenu was astonished. He expected people to scream and run when they saw him coming. No one had ever greeted him like this before. “Can this really be my grand-daughter?” he thought. The woman ushered him into the wigwam and gave the jenu the best meal he had ever eaten. Trying not to tremble, she watched him gulp it down, and placed even more food before him. When she heard her husband returning home she excused herself and dashed out to warn him. “There’s a jenu in the wigwam! He’s our guest! Call him ‘Grandfather!’ Be very polite!” The hunter fell in with the plan. He strolled into the wigwam and greeted the jenu most politely, begging him to stay with them as long as he liked. “These must really be my relatives,” thought the jenu. He stayed for weeks, even helping the man to hunt. The woman made him clothes. She cooked for him every day, and one morning he told her to throw away the pack he had brought with him. She peeked in before she did so, and saw with horror a pair of human hands and feet – the remains of the jenu’s last meal. By springtime, the jenu’s raw lips had healed. One day, sitting beside the fire, he began to cough. He coughed and he coughed, until he coughed up a big piece of ice shaped like a little human figure. It was the jenu’s frozen heart. It melted in the heat of the fire, and the jenu was a jenu no longer, but a real human being. He had been tamed – by kindness. [adapted from ‘Legends of the Micmac’, Silas Rand, 1893] |
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