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The Hero's Journey
By Joseph Campbell

Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

Norse Mythology

Nordic Gods and Heroes

The Norse Tarot: Gods, Sagas and Runes from the Lives of the Viking/Book and Cards

The Viking Gods

June 8, Lindisfarne Day  

June 8 is celebrated by Odinists (worshippers of Odin, Norse god). Odin is the supreme deity of the old religion of Norway, eldest of all the gods in the Nordic pantheon and leader of the race of gods known as the Aesir, they who live in Asgard. He is called 'All-father' for he is father of all the gods.

It is the day in 793 that Vikings raided Lindisfarne, the holy island off the coast of Northumberland. The Vikings hacked the monks to death or dragged them into the sea where they drowned them. The chapels and monastery were looted of the riches they contained, much of which had been derived from the payment by the common folk for their indulgences – monetary payments to safeguard them from the torments of hell. The treasure included gold, silver, jewellery, ivory coffins and much beside.

Pictured: Odin with the ravens Huginn and Muninn

It was not the first violent encounter between Vikings and the people of the British Isles – in 789 the crews of three Viking vessels landed at the present site of Portland, near Weymouth, England. There they were approached by a party of men led by Beaduheard, the shire reeve (from which title we derive the word ‘sheriff’) of the King of Wessex, who demanded that they accompany him to Dorchester, some nine miles away; an altercation ensued and the visitors slew Councillor Beaduheard.

In Britain, naturally enough, this incident is generally portrayed as the first Viking raid – a friendly councillor rushing to the quay to welcome what he thought was a Nordic package tour, and getting slewn … err … slain … for his troubles by a pack of horn-helmeted barbarians. However, it might well have been simply a case of Scandinavian sailors coming to port for purely honourable commercial purposes, being met by a pompous and xenophobic bureaucrat who handled the situation badly, from which a fight followed and things got out of hand [see Eelia’s Page, Chapter One). It might perhaps be thought of as a dockside brawl rather than an invasion from the north, whereas the Lindisfarne expedition some four years later was a raid, albeit more criminal than military.

Be that as it may, no fewer than four medieval scribes saw the 789 Portland incident as sufficiently significant to record it in their chronicles. Interestingly, one source, the important Anglo-Saxon chronicle, in recording the affair of 789, reveals the Britishers’ uncertainty about whence the raiders came, calling them both Norwegians and Danes:

In this year Beorhtric took to wife Eadburh, daughter of king Offa. And in his days came first three ships of Norwegians from Höthaland and then the reeve rode thither and tride [sic] to compel them to go to the royal manor, for he did not know what they were: and then they slew him. These were the first ships of the Danes to come to England.

Who knows, maybe in death Beaduheard gained immortality, all for being a jumped-up clerk with a tin badge and a somewhat capacious mouth.

More June folklore    Index of Articles on folklore and other topics

Viking treasure
The Cuerdale Hoard

On May 15, 1840 at Cuerdale on the banks of the River Ribble, England, a massive hoard of Viking silver was discovered.  

It was dated to around 905 and contained coins from as far afield as Afghanistan. The Cuerdale Hoard included 8,500 pieces of silver, including 350 ingots, weighing 44 kilograms, as well as silver neck rings from Russia. Some of the coins were of Arab and Byzantine origin. Curiously, the local people had an ancient tradition that there was a treasure somewhere in that vicinity, and for a long time people had searched for it, often using divining methods such as forked willow or hazel sticks and silver chains. The Cuerdale hoard is the largest Viking treasure trove found outside of Russia.

At Cuerdale, near Preston, Lancashire, it had been said from time immemorial that if you stood on the south bank of the River Ribble at Walton le Dale, looking up river towards Ribchester, you would be within sight of England’s richest treasure.

Then, on this very wet May 15^th in 1840, workmen walking home from repairing the embankment on the south side of the river marvellously noticed a wooden box exposed by a slump of the rain-sodden earth. The box contained a leaden casket, which in turn held a massive hoard (nearly 40 kilograms, or 88 pounds) of something highly prized by Vikings because they had virtually no mineral deposits of their own – silver. 

The landowner's bailiff made certain that almost the entire hoard was secured, and the labourers, who must have been very honest, were each allowed to retain one coin. At an inquest on August 15 of that year it was declared ‘treasure trove’, the property of Queen Victoria in right of her Duchy of Lancaster, which handed it over to the British Museum for examination before it was distributed to more than 170 lucky recipients. Fortunately, most of the Cuerdale find was allocated to the British Museum where it remains.

The hoard was dated to around 905 and contained coins from as far afield as Afghanistan. The Cuerdale Hoard included 8,500 pieces of silver, including 350 ingots, weighing 36 kilograms, as well as silver neck rings from Russia and from France, a very fine gilded Carolingian buckle. Some of the coins were of Arab and Byzantine origin. Much of the other material is typically Irish or Hiberno-Viking in form and decoration.

In an article in the Numismatic Gazette (December 1966), numismatist M Banks put forward the suggestion that the hoard was not even buried by Vikings, although it was Viking treasure, or much of it was. Banks suggested that the Cuerdale Hoard might have been a gift to English churches suffering persecution in the areas, known as the Danelaw, occupied by pagan Vikings. Since so many of the coins were apparently minted across the Channel, said Banks, they were probably a contribution from the Frankish Christians to their English brothers. Many such mysteries surround the Cuerdale trove.

Other Viking hoards have been found in the British Isles, such as the Halton Moor Hoard dating from the 11^th Century, but this was the largest trove of Viking silver found outside Russia. The coins found with the Cuerdale Hoard reveal that it must have been buried in the years between 905 and 910, shortly after the expulsion of the Vikings from Dublin in 902.

Silver formed the basis of currency in Viking times and was often buried in times of unrest, perhaps giving us the reason for this treasure’s presence for almost nine centuries on the south bank of the River Ribble. However, the Cuerdale Hoard and other treasures of its kind might have been buried for religious reasons (though the presence of coins bearing crosses would militate against this argument), or as a strange form of ostentation. In the 13^th-century Egil's Saga, the hero Egil Skallagrimsson does just that, hiding his hoard to provide a lasting talking point for other people. This kind of ostentatious destruction of wealth is paralleled in other cultures, even in the modern West – perhaps you’ve even noticed.

More    And more    Viking links    Top Ten treasures in the British Museum

For lovers of illuminated manuscripts: Painted Labyrinth - the World of the Lindisfarne Gospels

The Viking map of America
September 10, 1965 
Yale University published a map showing that Vikings discovered America in the 11th century. In 1972, some scientists claimed ‘the Vinland Map’ was a forgery,  by the modern provenance of some of the ink used. However, in 1996 Yale University scholars  raised doubts about the ink problem, as titanium anatase, which occurred in minute quantities in the map’s ink although it was ‘invented after 1920, occurs in the natural environment. The controversy, no doubt, will continue for years to come.

Stories like these are what you will find
in the free Wilson's Almanac ezine

 

 

Today in the Old Icelandic Calendar

Java applet © Tim Stridmann, http://norse.ulver.com

Viking god Odin and his Ordeal

Vikings and the origins of England's Hocktide games

Feast day of Loki the Trickster

Sleipnir, Odin's magical horse

Hel, Hodda and Skadi, the Viking Three Fates

The Burning of the Clavie

Wayland the Smith

Deities of many cultures in the Book of Days

Tynwald Day

Feast Day of St Médard, Bishop of Noyon, France 

(Moneywort, Lysimachia nummularia, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint)

June 8, by the way, is also an English weather marker day with an ancient prognostication:

If on the eighth of June it rain,
It foretells a wet harvest, men sain.

A similar formula existed in old France today, the Feast Day of St Médard of Noyon::

Quand il pleut a la Saint-Médard
Il pleut quarante jours plus tard;
S'il pleut le jour de Saint Gervais et de Saint Protais [June 19],
Il pleut quarante jours aprés.

Legend says that a sudden shower once fell, soaking everyone except St Médard who remained perfectly dry, because an eagle had spread its wings over him. Ever since,  Médard was known as maître de la pluie – master of rain. In religious art, an eagle shelters Médard from the rain.

It is quite likely the English invented their jingle following the French. The British tradition concerning forecasts of rain is much more commonly centred around St Swithin’s Day, July 15.

If today’s prognostication fails to help you decide whether to carry an umbrella, the laughing call of the European Green Woodpecker (Picus, or Genius, viridis) – alias the yaffle bird – is a sure sign of a shower. This is a bird of many names, for it is also known, just in English, as: eccle, hewhole, highhoe, laughing bird, popinjay, rain bird, yaffil, yaffler, yaffingale, yappingale, yackel, and woodhack.

But remember, as the sayings go:

Whether the weather be fine
Whether the weather be not
We must weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not.

And

He that is weather wise
Is seldom other wise.

St Médard's Day is one of several weather prognostication days explored in the Wilson's Almanac article Umbrella Days

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“Museum's broken treasure not just any old shit

York's Archaeological Resource Centre is working to repair a valued piece of fossilised Viking excrement damaged during a school visit

Simon Jeffery
Friday June 6, 2003  

“The Viking who lay it down probably gave his faeces little thought but more than a millennium later it was, in its hardened form, a York museum's most treasured excrement.

“School parties visiting the Archaeological Resource Centre would admire the artefact in a way that only children could. And all was well until two weeks ago when its display stand collapsed in the hands of an unfortunate teacher and, crashing to the floor, the rock-like lump broke into three pieces.

“A reconstruction job is now under way to glue the Viking faeces back together again. Named the Lloyds Bank Turd after its discovery on a 1972 dig on the land now occupied by a Lloyds TSB bank in York, it is considered to be the largest complete example of preserved human excrement ever found.

“Gill Snape, a student conservator on a placement with the York Archaeological Trust, who will assist in the operation, said that the natural replacement of organic matter with minerals - a type of fossilisation process known as mineralisation - had given a remarkable weight to the "long and fat" deposit.

“’Whoever passed it probably hadn't performed for a few days, shall we say,’ she said.

“Aside from delighting children, and quite a few adults too, the excrement has revealed the diet and health of its human source.

“He was not a great vegetable eater, instead living on large amounts of meat and grains such as bran, despite fruit stones, nutshells and other stools containing matter from vegetables such as leeks being found on the same site.

“Evidence of several hundred eggs left in the faeces would have meant that his stomach and intestines would have been full of worms.

“’This guy had very itchy bowels,’ Ms Snipe explained.”   Source

October 14 | Vinternatsblót/Haustblót/Winter’s Day, Norse (Viking/Ásatrú)

Vinternatsblót, or Haustblót, is to bid winter welcome. Today marks the beginning of Winter season in the old European calendar and is a harvest/Autumn ceremony, along the lines of Michaelmas, the feast day of St Michael (September 29). 

“Long distance sailing and other Summer activities also stopped on this day, as preparations for the Winter took priority” (Pennick, Nigel, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992, 117).

“The images of the gods were placed in a half-circle in the shrine. At the center stood the altar (stallr), upon which lay a large gold ring (baugr), upon which all solemn oaths were sworn. The bowl containing the blood of the sacrificed animals (hlautbolli) was placed on the altar by the priest (goði), who, with a stick (hlautteinn), sprinkled it on the images of the gods, and on the persons present. The meat of the animals was boiled, and served to the assembled people in the large hall of the temple, where toasts were drunk to the gods for victory and good harvests. The sanctuary and the grounds belonging to it was called vé, a holy or sacred place, and any one who violated its sanctity was called varg i véum (wolf in the sanctuary), and was outlawed. Three religious festivals were held each year: one at the beginning of winter (October 14), the vinternatsblót, or haustblót, to bid winter welcome; another at midwinter (January 14), midvintersblót, for peace and good harvest; and a third, sommerblót, held on the first day of summer (April 14), for victory on military expeditions.

“The temples seem to have been quite numerous, but especially well known were the ones at Sigtuna and Upsala in Sweden, at Leire (Hleidra) in Denmark, and at Skiringssal in Norway.”
Gjerset, Knut, PhD, History Of The Norwegian People, p. 105   Source

Index of articles on folklore and other topics

Viking calendar