CategoriesRe-enactment

How I started in Viking re-enactment

Posted on 12th March 2020by Kael

History is something most people read in books or watch on TV. But there is another way to experience history. Viking Re-enactment, or in a more general sense “living history,” is a unique pastime that gives us the opportunity to recreate parts of history. It could be using copies of ancient tools to craft goods or to create art, or the thrill of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with your team in a mock battle.

Warriors of Vikings of Middle England line up next to each other, preparing for battle
Re-enactment battles are a lot of fun, but not the only way to recreate history!

I had to be dragged along to a weekly training session for ‘the Viking group.’ I had no idea what I was in for. To be honest, it sounded pretty lame: people dressing up as Vikings and pretending to hit each other with blunt swords. That was 20 years ago.

At first, I enjoyed the fighting. It’s a system of combat that is designed to entertain a crowd. A mixture of historical European martial arts principles, with performing arts. The first time I had a crowd cheering me on by name is indelibly marked on my brain. Sadly, I was cut down soon after. It was awesome. It’s a lot of fun, and training scales remarkably well for different levels of fitness and body type. Axes, spears, swords and huge two-handed ‘Dane axes’ are used as you progress as a warrior.

But fighting is only a small part of the experience. I didn’t know anything about the Vikings when I joined – except that they wore horned helmets and sailed in longships. Turns out, one of those things was wrong! At my first Viking re-enactment event I dressed up as an Anglo-Saxon peasant – the shame – but playing a plucky underdog definitely appealed. Other members helped me learn all about the different crafts and displays, filling in my knowledge as I went on.

Image shows 4 Viking warriors from Vikings of Middle England re-enactment group
Me, on the right. Could be about to drop the Dark-Ages biggest Folk Album.

The aim of the group is to put on public displays to educate and entertain. In doing it, I was also being educated and entertained, and I didn’t even know it. As well as history, I learned how to make things, how to chop wood and cook over an open fire. Being part of a group, working together for a shared goal and sharing stories around the campfire gave me valuable life experience.

The Vikings became my extended family over the years. In fact, many would bring their children who’d have the run of beautiful historic venues, castles, woods and country parks. A giant playground. Sometimes the kids would know more about the Vikings than me, and they are always better at archery! Years later, I’m bringing my own son to events with his ‘aunts and uncles’ and friends. I’m going to enjoy watching him grow up and earn those life skills and have those experiences.

The years have passed, I’m a bit slower, a bit (a lot) fatter and as interested in researching Viking-age life and crafts as I am hitting people with swords, but my enthusiasm hasn’t diminished. I’ve since started a family with someone I met through the group and I have a massive extended family of awesome people. I haven’t ever regretted it.

I can’t imagine what my life would have been like If I hadn’t joined a Viking re-enactment society. It’s a fantastic activity, and a great place to meet people. You don’t need to know anything (I didn’t) or be TV-Vikings fit (I wasn’t) to get started. Why not try it out?

~ Alan ‘Kael’ Ball, Deputy Leader, Vikings of Middle England. Vikings of Middle England are based in Leicester, UK. To find out more, visit vikingsof.me or contact info@vikingsof.me

CategoriesLiteratureReligion

The Road to Hel is not paved with good intentions, it has a gold roof

Posted on 12th March 2020by Hrafn

I am constantly being told that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So, I decided to do some digging just in case I have been misinformed. This is what I found.

Hel in the Eddas was a little bit different to the similar sounding Hell of Christianity. For a start Hel was ruled over by Hel the daughter of Loki. To me that could get mightily confusing on the to day administration of the place. For a start does being told to go to Hel mean person or place? Does the person want us to report to the boss or just go to a place usually reserved for the dead? I guess the only way to find out is to go there. The question is how do we get there?

Not wanting to die, the best way to find out is to look for directions from the Prose Edda, especially concerning the death of Baldur and his time in Hel (the place not the person…). This is not a ramble blog about Baldur, so I will keep it light and promise to talk about him and his misfortunes at a later date. Right now, it is about going to Hel and the best person for that was Hermóðr who volunteers to ride to Hel (the place, not the being) to get Baldur out.

Riding on  Slipnirr, Odin’s 8 legged steed, he rides the Helvegr or hell road. Snorri Sturluson, the author of the Edda, almost certainly got this from earlier poetry, as Hermóðr has to ride through more alliteration than a one eyed Aseir could shake a stick at. He has to ride nine nights through deep and dark valleys which looks something like this in written form: Døkkva dala ok djúpa

Riding through all the alliteration he comes to the river Gjǫll spanned by a bridge Gjallabrú which is covered by a roof of gold. Here he was met by a young woman called Móguðr who asks him why he is riding to Hel. A reasonable question as he was not dead.

She comments that 5 groups of warriors passed that way yesterday which is interesting as it sounds like this was the default destination for people at the time. This is probably based on an earlier belief system where everyone goes to Hel. Being a coward and incredibly lazy this works for me as I have to put no extra effort into the afterlife.

Hermóðr who was not a coward asked Móguðr if she had seen Baldur, to which she says she had. He had ridden there earlier. This ties in with the fact Baldur was cremated with his horse, which is incredibly useful if you are Baldur, not so good if you are his horse. With stories like these it is not so good for any horse. The amount of Danish horse burials is quite staggering…

So, if you want to go to Hel, while avoiding the whole dying thing, head to the river Gjǫll and look out for a bridge with a gold roof. After that go down and north. While this is not quite Google Maps it is a good start for a time when maps were a bit thin on the ground. It is also the start of a phrase that lasted hundreds of years. Being told to go down and north was for hundreds of years like being told to go to hell.

Just like Rome, there appears to be many roads to Hel, just in case there is congestion. It also suggests it is more like a physical place than a conceptual one. In the poem Helreið Brynhildar in the Poetic Edda, Brynhildar rides to Hel after her cremation on a wagon. Again, not so good for the wagon, not so good for the horse.

Instead of finding a bridge of gold she rides through the farm of a giant woman whose name we are not given. Which is not that helpful, but just adds to the idea that this is a place where you journey to and where you can meet fairly normal things (for the Eddas).

The thing with both of these directions is that there is very much a physical road you can ride, which is part of your transitioning across. It also seems mundane compared to other concepts of the dead. Okay, a gold roof is pretty swish, but we are riding on a bridge over a river, or on a road past a farm… Hel itself does not seem to bad either, there are no tortured souls, roasting sinners or other unpleasantness. Baldur even got a feast, which has got to be better than turning up hungry.

My takeaway from the road to Hel is that it is not paved with good intentions, the chances are it is not even paved at all. No matter the state of the road it leads to a place, underground or not, it is a place, not some mystical state. You don’t find Hel at the centre of the earth just by digging and you don’t wake up there after falling badly off your horse. You can (if you are insane or a hero like Hermóðr) go there before you die, but my advice is that Miami is probably nicer this time of year. Should you wait until the end of your life there are no real entry requirements and you are likely to find some interesting people and the occasional Valkyrie, so it’s not all bad.

CategoriesMedicineReligion

Anglo-Saxon Medicine: speech therapy and hair care

Posted on 12th March 2020by Hrafn

Most of what we know about Anglo-Saxon medicine comes from the medical texts written late into the Viking period. We can see how they translated, mistranslated, and adapted earlier Latin and Greek texts each time showing more and more of their process. There is also, of course, a veritable army of dead bodies that we can tell all kinds of things from. But sometimes it is nice to have a look at those early days and see what was going on through anecdotes and stories of saintly behaviour.

Enter Bede and his Ecclesiastical History of The English People. While he did not write a manual on keeping the sick alive, he did write some interesting things on how others did. More specifically he wrote about that group of people that could read and often practiced medicine, miracles and something in between.

The case I am thinking of today was concerning Bishop John of Beverly, who we meet in book five chapter two (conveniently called John of Beverley’s cures). Here John summons a dumb youth who has a scabby head to come to him to be cured. Given a few hundred years of language evolution I am talking about a youth with no speech rather than a not very clever one. While the youth’s intellect was never commented upon, I suspect he was actually quite clever given what happened to him.

John proceeds to put the sign of the cross on his tongue and gets him to start making letters and short words such as ‘yea.’ John is a patient if unrelenting sort of man and spends every waking minute of the next day teaching the boy to speak. By the end of the unremitting encounter the youth is no longer dumb and can communicate through words. John then sends him off to the physician to cure his scalp.

When Bede recounts this he is full of religious wonder, but when we break it down, Bishop John is doing some really interesting and purely medicinal things. I think from the description we have stumbled into the land of genuine Anglo-Saxon medicine, not otherworldly miracles.

John starts off icebreaking, giving confidence and probably giving a physical investigation into the limitations of the tongue. Doctors wear white and look very business-like today, it is part useful, part mental. John was doing the same thing, he had God on his side, while conveniently assessing the youth’s tongue. He knew of the youth, almost certainly knew he could understand, if not speak, so gave him a physical inspection.

He then goes through a day of speech therapy starting with the basics and working up. It sounds like there was lesson, practice, progress, next, rinse and repeat. After making progress he sends him to a physician to have his scalp healed and so he moves onto the next treatment. The unnamed physician is successful, and the youth goes off all healed and no doubt waiting to be struck down by some other form of horrible disease of the time.

If John had simply made the sign of the cross and the youth broke into song, a Saxon musical if you like, I would have been more than a little sceptical. But what I like about this is that there is work which is identifiable, the results are not instantaneous and when he can do no more, he sends the youth to a different specialist. This looks like medicine; this looks like therapy.

Was he totally mute before? Maybe, maybe not. Was there anything else going on? Quite possibly. But in the confines of the text this looks a good example of good healthcare when we know that health and well-being were in short supply.  

Check out our other articles on Anglo-Saxon Medicine!