Vikings, Christians and Heathens

Recent years have seen a major upsurge in interest regarding all things Viking. Books, games, movies, long ships, periodicals, television series, social media groups and reenactors, all dealing with medieval Scandinavia, abound in popular culture. And in general, I’m all for it. In my family medieval Scandinavia is both heritage and hobby. But much Viking-themed enthusiasm these days has adopted an explicitly anti-Christian and frankly rather racist attitude. So I think there are a few things we ought to clear up.

Vikings Were Christian
Well, not all of them, obviously. But only the very first kings of Norway and Denmark, Harald Fairhair and Gorm the Old, were pagan. Their children and grandchildren, from Erik Bloodaxe and Haakon the Good to Harald Bluetooth and Sven Forkbeard, immediately converted to Christianity. Voluntarily. Enthusiastically. And contrary to modern fakelore, those early kings didn’t force anyone to follow the Christian faith. Haakon was considered to be a great king explicitly in spite of his Christianity, and his pagan subjects considered him worthy of Valhalla despite his deep personal piety.

The greatest Viking explorers, rulers, and warriors in history were almost uniformly Christians. Nobody converted them; they converted themselves. And they did so with great appreciation for their heritage, but a greater appreciation for the Truth. A short list of great Christian Vikings would include:

Harald Bluetooth
Svein Forkbeard
Knut the Great
Haakon the Good
Erik Bloodaxe
Harald Greyskin
Hrolf Ganger (Rollo the Wise)
Olav Tryggvason
Leif Erikson
Olav Digre Haraldson
Sigurd the Stout*
Thorfinn the Mighty
Magnus of Orkney
Rognvald Kali Kolson
Magnus Barelegs
Sigurd the Crusader
Harald Hardrada

So, yeah, you can share pictures of big tough pagan Vikings murdering innocent unarmed monks. But keep in mind that a generation or two later, there were canonized Christian Viking saints who were swinging swords and axes right back, twice as hard.

You’re Not So Tough

Modern Viking enthusiasts tend to boast about their eagerness to fight and crush the weak. But when perhaps the toughest Viking of all time, Olav Tryggvason, accepted Baptism at the behest of a seer and treated Christ as Norway’s ultimate war god, those same enthusiasts start playing the victim card. “Oh here we were just minding our own business practicing human sacrifice and slavery and indiscriminate raiding when these nasty bad Christians came and beat us up. Boo hoo.”

But those Christians weren’t alien invaders. They were Vikings using Viking tactics against other Vikings. And they were better at it. Olav rightly may be said to have been dedicated to Christ, but not big on the Ten Commandments: he was more pagan than Christian in conduct. And yes, he did some pretty brutal stuff. But he didn’t do anything that wasn’t accepted practice in the annals of Norse warfare. Thus the double claim, that Christians are simultaneously weaklings yet somehow also brutal oppressors, falls utterly flat. Christians were farmers and warriors and sailors and Vikings, just like their pagan forebears. The major difference is that they realized that Odin was a jerk.

Odin Was A Jerk

And I say that as someone who can trace multiple lines of supposed descent from the man. Odin was a latecomer to the Norse pantheon, replacing the previous war god Tyr. He was never as popular amongst the common folk as Thor, the affable if somewhat dimwitted protector of humankind. One can see evidence of this insertion by comparing the Heimskringla, which charts the migration of Odin from the east, alongside the Orkneyinga Saga, which claims Thor as a native Norwegian. Odin was the god of frenzy and of altered states, popular with skaldic poets, and one tends to come to the fore when one is worshipped by all the historians.

In mythology, Odin was paranoid. He could see the end coming—Ragnarok, the damnation of the gods—and spent his long life in a futile attempt to overthrow fate. To this end he regularly betrayed his worshippers, turning on great warriors at the height of their fame so that he could collect their souls for his army of the dead. Though devotees might salute his stubborn resistance, Odin was very much a born loser. You could only join his ranks if you lost in battle and even then you’d spend your afterlife locked in mortal combat every day, only to fail miserably at the end of time. If there is one constant in Teutonic mythology, it’s that not even the gods could resist the inexorable march of Time and Fate. Well, except for this one guy. And you can read about Him in the Heliand.

Valhalla Sucked

Which leads me to my next point: Valhalla sucked. Most Norse wanted to die at home and be buried in local howes with their ancestors. Valhalla started out as a sort of consolation prize for poor saps who died far away from home. Should you perish in battle, you had a 50% chance of going to Valhalla, where you’d kill and be killed every day and get drunk every night over and over until the end of the world. At which point you’d lose once and for all to an army of fire giants, wolves, and a ship made from the fingernails of the damned. And this is what modern enthusiasts hold up as paradise? Sounds rather like the despair and nihilism most cultures associate with perdition. But then, we are talking about the same mythologies that gave us the very word Hel.

And this is precisely why Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and eventually Sweden converted to Christianity willingly. Heck, Iceland voted. Sure, they got such benefits as civilization, high arts and architecture, and centuries of peaceful trade free from berserkers, Viking pirates, and other assorted savages. But more importantly, they got hope in a noble afterlife beyond constant futile struggle and utter defeat. People joke snidely about how Christ was nailed to the Cross, and Thor holds the hammer. But remind me again how well Thor held up against serpents? Sure, the Christian God died, but so did the Viking gods at Ragnarok. The difference is which God rises again. And don’t say Baldur.

You’re Welcome

Why not say Baldur? Because the vision of a new world post-Ragnarok with a new pair of human beings and the return of Baldur from the dead is clearly an allegory of the coming of Christianity. Baldur comes back not so much as a god but as a fellow subject of the Most High God in Gimle. In fact, most all the Norse myths as we have them are heavily Christianized—in case Odin sacrificing himself to himself by hanging on a tree with a spear through his side in order to descend to the dead didn’t tip you off.

The only reason that we have the Eddas and the Heimskringla, the Sagas and the skaldic poems, is because Christians wrote them down. Icelandic Christians, mostly, the descendants of Vikings. If it weren’t for Snorri Sturluson and Saemund the Wise, a priest, we’d know effectively bupkis about Norse mythology, though Adam of Bremen would still have reminded us about the mass human sacrifices at Uppsala.

Moreover, if it weren’t for devout Christians such as Longfellow, Lewis, and Tolkien, Vikings would never have gained a foothold in Anglophone popular imagination. We would be left instead with Nazi propaganda about racial and cultural purity—absolutely ridiculous, given the Viking penchant for breeding with any female available and readily adopting the language and culture of more civilized societies from the Franks and Anglo-Saxons to the Gaels and the Slavs. Purity of any sort was not a major concern.

In Summation

Look, I get it. You’re a Viking nut. I am too. I love both Eddas. I’ve got 30-odd Sagas on my shelf. My Heimskringla is the only book apart from my devotional Bible that I’ve had to duct tape back together due to excessive use. Heck, my family claims descent from gods. Don’t we all? But if you’re going to use Viking mythology and history as excuses to be racist and anti-Christian, you clearly need to read more books. And I for one would be happy to recommend a few.

*Okay, Sigurd was converted by the sword. But given that my last name comes from his last name, I think it’s fair to say that the Baptism stuck.