Viking Poetry

Hi everybody!

Today I'm going to give some general info about various types of Old Norse literature. There are, in general, three main types of Viking poetry.

• The first is Eddaic poetry, which is found in the Poetic Edda. Two collections of Old Norse writings are known by the title of Edda. Together they form the most authoritative source for ancient Nordic mythology. The so-called "Elder Edda" or "Saemunder Edda", is more correctly referred to as the "Poetic Edda". It is a collection of 34 Icelandic poems, interspersed with prose. These anonymous poems use alliteration and a simple strophic form as their only formal devices. Most of them deal with Norse mythology and legend. The Poetic Edda can be divided into two sections, a mythical one and a heroic one. Eddaic verse is anonymous and is composed in relatively simple language and meters. The themes are mythical or drawn from heroic legends. Stanzas vary in number of lines within the same poem.

• The second type of Viking poetry is skaldic verse. Skaldic poems are usually attributed to named poets and many of them are praise poems made for a specific jarl or king. Skaldic meters follow strict rules and can be very complex in structure, and the language used is often complicated. A kenning is a riddling reference to one item or concept which does not name it directly, but rather suggests it by the elliptical way in which the subject is spoken of, which causes the listener or reader to visualize the intended concept. An example of a simple kenning is "wound-wand", which is a sword, or "raven's-mead", which is blood, usually of men slain in battle. 

• The third type of Viking poetry are the Rune Poems. The rune poems are usually composed with a stanza for each of the runes, and these stanzas explain a bit about the meaning the runes had in terms of divination. Three different poems have been preserved: the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, the Norwegian Rune Poem, and the Icelandic Rune Poem. These poems were created for remembering the rune symbols, their names, meanings and properties. Because the runes changed slightly in each culture the three poems differ in some aspects.

Now, I'm going to show you the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem translated in Modern English, it is too long but it is interesting to know the meaning of runes: 

   Feoh

            Wealth is a comfort to all men;

            yet must every man bestow it freely,

            if he wish to gain honour in the sight of the Lord.

  Ur

            The aurochs is proud and has great horns;

             it is a very savage beast and fights with its horns;

            a great ranger of the moors, it is a creature of mettle.

  Thorn

            The thorn is exceedingly sharp,

            an evil thing for any knight to touch,

            uncommonly severe on all who sit among them.

Os

          The mouth is the source of all language,

          a pillar of wisdom and a comfort to wise men,

          a blessing and a joy to every knight.

Rad

         Riding seems easy to every warrior while he is indoors

         and very courageous to him who traverses the high-roads

         on the back of a stout horse.

Cen

       The torch is known to every living man by its pale, bright flame;

        it always burns where princes sit within.

Gyfu

        Generosity brings credit and honour, which support one's dignity;

        it furnishes help and subsistence

        to all broken men who are devoid of aught else.

Wynn

       Bliss he enjoys who knows not suffering, sorrow nor anxiety,

       and has prosperity and happiness and a good enough house.

Haegl

       Hail is the whitest of grain;

       it is whirled from the vault of heaven

       and is tossed about by gusts of wind

       and then it melts into water.

Nyd

        Trouble is oppressive to the heart;

        yet often it proves a source of help and salvation

        to the children of men, to everyone who heeds it betimes.

 Is

       Ice is very cold and immeasurably slippery;

       it glistens as clear as glass and most like to gems;

       it is a floor wrought by the frost, fair to look upon.

Ger

      Summer is a joy to men, when God, the holy King of Heaven,

      suffers the earth to bring forth shining fruits

      for rich and poor alike.

 Eoh

      The yew is a tree with rough bark,

      hard and fast in the earth, supported by its roots,

      a guardian of flame and a joy upon an estate.

Peordh

        Peorth is a source of recreation and amusement to the great,

       where warriors sit blithely together in the banqueting-hall.

Eolh

       The Eolh-sedge is mostly to be found in a marsh;

       it grows in the water and makes a ghastly wound,

       covering with blood every warrior who touches it.

 Sigel

     The sun is ever a joy in the hopes of seafarers

     when they journey away over the fishes' bath,

     until the courser of the deep bears them to land.

Tir

      Tiw is a guiding star; well does it keep faith with princes;

      it is ever on its course over the mists of night and never fails.

 Beorc

     The poplar bears no fruit; yet without seed it brings forth suckers,

     for it is generated from its leaves.

     Splendid are its branches and gloriously adorned

     its lofty crown which reaches to the skies.

Eh

     The horse is a joy to princes in the presence of warriors.

     A steed in the pride of its hoofs,

     when rich men on horseback bandy words about it;

     and it is ever a source of comfort to the restless.

Mann

      The joyous man is dear to his kinsmen;

     yet every man is doomed to fail his fellow,

     since the Lord by his decree will commit the vile carrion to the earth.

Lagu

     The ocean seems interminable to men,

     if they venture on the rolling bark

     and the waves of the sea terrify them

     and the courser of the deep heed not its bridle.

 Ing

     Ing was first seen by men among the East-Danes,

     till, followed by his chariot,

     he departed eastwards over the waves.

    So the Heardingas named the hero.

 Ethel

     An estate is very dear to every man,

     if he can enjoy there in his house

    whatever is right and proper in constant prosperity.

 Dæg

    Day, the glorious light of the Creator, is sent by the Lord;

    it is beloved of men, a source of hope and happiness to rich and poor,

    and of service to all.

Ac

     The oak fattens the flesh of pigs for the children of men.

     Often it traverses the gannet's bath,

     and the ocean proves whether the oak keeps faith

     in honourable fashion.

 Æsc

     The ash is exceedingly high and precious to men.

     With its sturdy trunk it offers a stubborn resistance,

     though attacked by many a man.

 Yr

      Yr is a source of joy and honour to every prince and knight;

      it looks well on a horse and is a reliable equipment for a journey.

Ior

      Iar is a river fish and yet it always feeds on land;

      it has a fair abode encompassed by water, where it lives in happiness.

 Ear

     The grave is horrible to every knight,

     when the corpse quickly begins to cool

     and is laid in the bosom of the dark earth.

     Prosperity declines, happiness passes away

    and covenants are broken.

The Viking colonization of the Americas

Hello again ! Today I am going to talk about the Viking colonization of the Americas. It is thought that were the first Europeans in America but today we know that the Vikings were there first.

Viking colonization of the Americas or the Scandinavian colonization was ,  concerned to Greenland and an implantation in Newfoundland , called Vinland.

The Vikings are probably the first civilization of the "old world" to join America. Around the year 1000 , Leif Erikson sailed from Greenland to a point still to be discovered in North America (perhaps on the current site of Bay St. Lawrence, north of Cape Breton ) he called Vinland , which makes him the north European discoverer of America . A little later , Thorfinnr Karlsefni installs a village in Newfoundland , L'Anse aux Meadows (now listed as a World Heritage Site by Unesco ) he calls Straumfjörðr . Snorri was born in 1014 , son of Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid , the first European born in Vinland. 

The Vikings named American lands with Nordic names :
Grønland = Earth =  Greenland
Helluland = Earth = Baffin Island  Markland = Earth = Labrador forest
Straumfjörðr = L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland
Vinland = Earth =  Cape Breton, southern coast of Nova Scotia and northern coast of New England. It was also proposed as a translation of " fertile soil " 1 , and / or " land of meadows " 2.

Available sources are the sagas. It is prose written by clerics , scholars purposes , in Iceland between the eleventh century and fourteenth century. Often these texts combine reality and imagination , more or less established oral traditions and effects of romantic styles. Two sagas tell of the thirteenth century voyages of Leif Erikson and his father and the other explorer Vinland Thorfinnr Karlsefni : the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders Saga of Erik .
Before the nineteenth century, the idea of a Viking settlement in North America was considered by historians as folklore products until the development in 1837 of a first hypothesis by serious historian literature and Danish archaeologist Carl Christian Rafn in his book Antiquitates Americanæ where he concluded , after a thorough study of the sagas , as well as potential settlement on the North American coast , that Vinland was a real place in North America which had been colonized by Norwegians.
The discovery in 1960 of the site of L'Anse aux Meadows by Norwegian explorer Dr. Helge Ingstad  and his archaeologist wife Anne Stine Ingstad  has reinforced this theory and the credibility of the sagas.
The Kensington Runestone discovered south of the Great Lakes in Minnesota, United States, is still the subject of controversial studies . Indeed, the engraved text reveals the presence of an expedition of twenty Vikings accompanied by a dozen Goths and all dated mid 1362 . Most historians consider this inscription , discovered in 1898 , as false or questionable . The issue is still debated.
                                              
                             Leiv Eiriksson discovers North America

                                               
                                                         
                                                                      

History's 'Vikings'

Hello bloggers !

Due to the importance of the Vikings in the British History, a lot of films and series have been produced about this People and their travels and conquers around the world.
One of this series, and one of the most famous is Vikings, now I am going to tell you something about this serie.

Vikings is an Irish-Canadian television series created by Michael Hirst , broadcasted simultaneously from 3 March 2013 on the History Channel in the United States and History in Canada.

In France , the series has been running since June 10, 2013 on Channel 1 . In Spain you can watch in Antena 3.

The series follows the exploits of a group of Vikings led by Ragnar Lothbrok , one of the most popular vikings heroes of all time in a semi- legendary destiny. Ragnar would be Danish, Swedish or Norwegian origin according to sources. It is supposed to have unified the Viking clans in the undetermined  kingdom  at the end of the eighth century borders. But he is best known for being the developer of the first Viking raids into Christian lands , Saxon or Celtic francques .

This simple farmer, liege man Jarl Haraldsson , rebels against the strategic choices of his suzerain . Instead of attacking the pagan Slavic and  Baltic , he decided to launch the attack in the rich lands of the West, where the monasteries are full of treasures just waiting to be plundered by ambitious warriors.

Clandestinely , Ragnar will mount his own expedition and its success will change the fate of the Vikings as well as the Christian kingdoms of the South, because the simple name of " Vikings " terrorize them for nearly a century.

Here you can watch a trailer of Vikings !

The Viking´s influence in the English Language II

Hi again!
So,I am going to continue talking about the Viking´s influence in language, this time giving examples of that influence for example in the name of some cities.

The result of this prolonged period of contact was a large number of Danish settlements with Scandinavian names. There are over 1,500 placeof Scandinavian origin in England, especially in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Over 600 places end in -by, the Danish word for farm or town-Derby,Grimsby,Rugby,etc.

Many of the remainder end in -thorp( vilage ), as in Althorp and Linthorpe. –thwaite ( an isolated area ),as in Braithwaite and Langtwaite ; or –toft ( a piece of ground ), as in Lowestoft and Nortoft. 

Also we can find some examples of Scandinvian surnames in England :

Many Scandinavian personal names (e.g. surnames ending in –son,such as Davidson and Henderson) are also found in these areas.

And now I am going to show you some more Scandinavian loanwords,some of them are very common in the daily use of English.

Words like: 

Scant, sky, skin, skirt, bask, kid,  guest, get, give run Thursday though, raise, weak, both, die, ill ,husband, bull ,leg, wing, gape, root, take, wrong,ugly, call, law .
  

Now with this examples you can see the importance that Vikings had and have in the English language, even today.

The Viking´s influence in the English Language I

Hi, eveybody !
Today I am going to talk about the Viking´s influence in the English language and other words like the name of cities and surnames.

Over 1800 words of definite or probable Scandinavian origin entered the language during this period,and are still to be found in present day standart English.Several thousand more continued to be used in regional dialets.

Among these are these are most of the words which use sk sounds-skirt,sky,whisk,etc.

The closeness of the contact between the Anglo Saxons and the Danish settlers during is clearly shown by the extensibe borrowings.Some of the commonest words in English came into the language at that time,such as both,same,get,give,and take.Three of the Old English personal pronoums were replaced by Scandinavian forms(they,them,their,).And the invading language even took over a form of the verb to be,the most widely used English verb-Are is of Scandinavian origin.

Some Scandinavian loan words

Are,awkward,band,bank,birth,both,brink,bull,call,clip,crawl,die,dirt,drag,dregs,egg,fellow,flat,freckle,gap,gasp,get,give,glitter,guess,harbour,hit,ill,keel,keg,kid,knife,leg,lift,loan.low,meek,muck,odd,race,raise,ransack,reindeer,root,rotten,rugged,scab,scare,score,scowl,scrap,seat,sister,sky,slaughter,sly,stack,steak,take,their,they,thrust,tight,trust,want,weak,window.

Viking musical instruments

Good evening!

Today we are going to talk about some musical instruments which Vikings used. I think it could be interesting for people like me who loves music. 

Singing and playing music were important to the Vikings, both in everyday life and for festive occasions. They sang songs when they were happy and when they were sad. They danced, sang songs and played their instruments when they had celebrations of some kind. They had songs to accompany them when working, making the work easier. They sang love songs, and lullabies for their children.

They had a variety of instruments. The first were bone or wood wind instruments.  The easily-hollowed branches of the elder tree have been providing simple whistles for children and musicians alike in every land in which the tree grows since antiquity. Bone whistles and recorders have also been recovered, most commonly crafted from the leg bone of a cow, deer, or from large birds. 

Replica of a bone flute

Bone wind instruments produce a remarkably plangent sound. The ones which have been recovered are all end-blown, with the sound being produced by an inset bone or more often wood fipple. The normal number of finger holes is three, although examples with up to seven holes has been found. 
The photograph shown at the right is a replica of a 13th century example of a bone flute crafted from a sheep's leg bone, found in Denmark.

Reconstruction of the panpipes

Another type of woodwind instrument was found during the Coppergate excavations , a set of panpipes made from a small slab of boxwood which date from the 10th century. This Anglo-Scandinavian instrument was created by boring holes into the wood at different depths, then the top of the hole was beveled slightly to form a comfortable rest for the player's lip.

Replica of a cow horn

Another type of wind instrument would be a type of recorder made from a cow-horn. A four-hole cow-horn was found in Sweden, with the mouthpiece being at the small tip of the horn.This is the instrument many people think of when imagining Viking musical instruments.

The Bayeux tapestry

 On the Bayeux tapestry we can see a blast horn, apparently sounding the signal to 'come and eat'. The tapestry was made around 1070, shortly after William of Normandy, a descendant of the Vikings,  had landed and conquered England.

Replica of a lire

The last instrument that we are going to talk about is the lyre or harp. The sagas mention the harp as a gentleman's instrument, however we do not have a surviving example from Scandinavia. Early medieval manuscripts show a variety of illustrations of this type of lyre in use.  

Those with seven strings or less seem usually to have been played by holding the instrument upright resting on one leg, with the left hand held behind the instrument with the fingers spread, apparently against the strings. The right hand may hold some kind of plectrum, or in some cases the right hand appears to be strumming the strings backhanded, which would result in striking with the fingernails.

  

The diary Vikings Life

Good Afternoon everybody! 

Today we will deal with the routine in the vikings´ life; men vs women.

Most Viking men were all-round handymen, but some had special skills. There were boat-builders, for example.

Most Viking men knew how to handle a boat, and most could fight if they had to protect the family or to support their chieftain.

Women were able to do different kind of things; baked bread, looked after the children, made the family's clothes and cooked the two meals a day most families ate. A well as on the farm, women milked the cows and made cheese.

Babies, to protect them from evil spirits and sickness, were given little Thor's-hammer charms.Girls often took the same name as their mother or grandmother, and a boy usually took his father's name too - so Eric, son of Karl, became Eric Karlsson. 

Viking children didn´t go to school because they helped their parents at work, andthey also learnViking history, religion and law from spoken stories and songs, not from books. It was common for a girl's father to choose her husband by the age of 15 or 16. That is one of the most hard thing to me... don´t you reckon? 

I have also read that it was really normal that a young Viking man might go off on a trading voyage, or become a raider. He always hoped to come home rich so he could buy a farm. Vikings met at markets.They usually traded by exchanging goods (a wolf skin for a pair of shoes, perhaps) but also used gold and silver coins. Traders valued coins by weight, and carried small folding scales to weigh a customer's coins.

Not everyone was free to come and go as he or she liked, I mean, some people were slaves. Slaves did the hardest, dirtiest jobs. People could be born slaves.The child of a slave mother and father was a slave too, but the child of a slave mother and a free father was free.

How interesant,hey? at least for me! 

Many slaves were people captured in a Viking raid. Viking traders sold slaves in markets, but slave-trading in England was stopped in 1102.

Now I will mention some of the plays and thingks vikings like to do to enjoy its free time.

Viking men enjoyed swimming, wrestling and horse racing. In winter, people skated on frozen rivers, and used skis over the snow. A favourite board game was hnefatafl ('king's table'). Players moved pieces around a board, like in draughts or chess. There were lots of versions of this game.

Most children's toys were home-made - whistles made from leg bones of geese, for instance. Children had wooden dolls, played football, and sailed model boats. Pig bones found at Viking sites might be toy 'hummers' - the bones were threaded on a twisted cord which you pulled to make a humming noise.

From bones, seeds and other food remains at Viking sites, we know they ate meat from farm animals, and from wild animals that they hunted, and collected foods such as berries and nuts. They cooked meat in a big stew-pot over the fire, or roasted it on an iron spit. Fish and meat were smoked or dried to preserve it. Viking bread was made from rye or barley flour. They used milk mostly to make cheese and butter.

At a feast, guests drank ale and mead (a strong drink made from honey). People drank out of wooden cups or drinking horns (made from cow-horns). Feasts were held to mark funerals and seasonal festivals, such as midwinter. Some feasts lasted over a week!

Jobs such as collecting wood for the fire, weaving cloth and baking bread took up a lot of time. Vikings did not have much furniture - perhaps a wooden table and benches for sitting on and sleeping on.

There were no bathrooms in Viking homes. Most people probably washed in a wooden bucket, or at the nearest stream. Instead of toilets, people used cess-pits - holes outside dug for toilet waste. The pit was usually screened by a fence. Slimy muddy cess-pits have been found by archaeologistsstudying the remains of the Viking town of Jorvik (modern York).