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História da Língua Inglesa

The Norse

Brown University

Ancient Scandinavia was dominated by speakers of North Germanic languages, including Old Norwegian, Old Swedish, Old Danish, and Old Icelandic. Scandinavians did not participate in the first wave of Germanic migrations that destroyed the Roman Empire, but in the eighth century some of them initiated a second wave of Viking invasions.

The typical Viking was a landless young man who made a living as a pirate, sometimes preying on other Scandinavians as well as peoples farther south. Most Scandinavians were farmers or traders who regarded Vikings with grave suspicion, and in the early literature Vikings often come across as arrogant louts who brag too much about their exploits abroad. Contrary to popular belief, Vikings did not wear horned helmets, though some of their armor is decorated with representations of earlier Germanic warriors wearing such helmets. The term Viking invasion is sometimes used for attacks by large fleets of ships under the command of an aristocrat who would probably not have been called a Viking by his fellow Scandinavians, at least not to his face.

Study of Old Norse texts is especially informative about early Germanic culture because the Scandinavians were converted to Christianity much later than the East and West Germanic peoples (around 1000 CE). By this time, Roman Christianity was well established in Western Europe and no longer felt much threatened by the few remaining traces of pre-Christian thought. Norse mythology could be used as ornamental material in Scandinavian poetry without offense, much as pagan Greek and Roman mythology was used by the deeply religious John Milton to ornament his Christian epic, Paradise Lost.

Particularly valuable for the study of pre-Christian myth is a treatise by the poet and historian Snorri Sturluson, which presents Germanic mythology in a clear and comprehensible way for the instruction of younger poets. This treatise, called the Prose Edda, allows for consistent interpretation of the old poems and sagas from which Snorri drew his information, many of which can be dated to the pre-Christian era. The early Norse poems are consistent, in striking detail, with each other and with Snorri's general survey, so they cannot have been much affected by Christianity.

The warrior maiden Brunhilde (sometimes referred to as a Valkyrie) plays a conspicuous role in the earliest heroic legends of Scandinavia. Her martial role can be validated in the archaeological record, since female warriors were given a distinctive style of burial with weapons. The default gender for chieftains was male, but women could also serve in this capacity. An example well documented in the historical record is Aud the Deep-Minded, chieftain of the Salmon River Valley district in Iceland.

A wealth of prose sagas survives in Old Norse. These employ an intricate"realistic" style that offers a valuable supplement to heroic literature, which tends to abstract away from everyday life and focus on generalized traits of character under imaginary conditions of extreme stress. Modern Iceland preserves many traits of early Scandinavian culture due to its geographical isolation from continental Europe. The Icelandic language has changed so little since Old Norse times that it is easier for a present-day Icelander to read ancient sagas than for the average American to read Shakespeare.

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