How Do We Know? Vikings in Writing

The Vikings left us some of the most vivid stories in medieval literature, yet they wrote almost none of them. Norse society ran on memory and speech; it did not write its history while making it. So what we know comes from three kinds of witnesses. First, there are the people the Vikings raided and traded with, including Christian chroniclers and Muslim travelers like Ibn Fadlan. Next, there are the Icelanders who wrote down sagas and poems generations later. Last, there are the objects the Vikings left in the ground. They include the short runic inscriptions, the only Vikings in writing, in their own words.

Christian Sources: Vikings in Writing by Others

The Christian sources available include the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Frankish and Irish Annals, the letters of Alcuin, and Wulfstan’s “Sermon of the Wolf.” The latter two interpreted the Viking raids as God’s punishment of the Anglo-Saxons. Alcuin was writing about Lindisfarne. Christians wrote these sources, and the Vikings were attacking monasteries for their wealth. As a result, the chroniclers painted the Vikings in a negative light and amplified their atrocities. Christian monarchs, who participated in similar activities, did not face religious condemnation.

The Icelandic Sagas: Vikings in Writing

Icelanders wrote these stories after the Viking Age had ended. They often used them to support a king or noble, connecting him and his family with events of the past. At one time, historians accepted these tales as fact, except when they were clearly using mythology. The pendulum swung the other way, and historians decided that the sagas were worthless as historical documents. Currently, historians recognize that the sagas have more than just literary value. Still, historians must use them carefully when looking for historical value. The Founding of Iceland tells the story of Iceland’s own founding, taken from those sagas.

Skaldic Verses

The sagas quote many of the skaldic poems that survive and credit them to known poets (skalds). Skalds composed them orally, at or near the time of the events they describe. People passed them down by memory for two or three centuries before anyone wrote them on vellum. Their fiendishly strict form helps their credibility. With fixed syllable counts, internal rhyme, and alliteration, a verse is hard to alter without breaking it.

Still, later poets may have created skaldic verses and attributed them to the original skalds. These verses also contain highly poetic language that can make them difficult to understand. Finally, the strict structure also meant that skalds cared more about verses that worked. The accuracy of the historic event the verse presented mattered somewhat less.

Vikings in Writing: Runes and Coins

Vikings in writing were brief, and they wrote in runes. They carved them into memorial stones, but also onto wood, bone, and metal. That is why their messages tend to be short: names, memorials, ownership marks. (The tradition outlived the Vikings. Hundreds of carved sticks from medieval Bergen, a century or more later, carry everything from business notes to jokes, and love messages.)

Coins help too. Mints did not stamp Viking-Age coins with a year. Still, a coin of a known king or mint tells archaeologists that a grave or hoard can be no older than that coin.

Every post on this blog leans on these sources, and we try to tell you which ones. So when you see us write “according to the sagas,” now you know why that little phrase matters.

Next, see how those runic inscriptions recorded real people in How Did Vikings Get Their Names?. Then join Axe and Anchor, Asgard Alaska’s Newsletter for more of the Viking world as we work to bring it to life in Alaska.