The beginning of history

Cnut the Great is an example of a Viking king featured in both legends and history

As Viking skalds documented the annals of their kings, the focus of the sagas shifted from legend to historical record

ou would be forgiven for thinking that,

Yonce the sagas move away from the legends of gods and heroes and into the real historicity of the Viking Age, the drama of these tales would take a back seat. But that’s not the case. The kings recorded in the sagas claim to be able to trace their lineage back to gods and giants. Magic and mayhem still run in the royal bloodlines and will occasionally out in the form of a long-forgotten curse or prophecy, or an unexpected gift for sorcery. Most royal houses claim descent from Odin; those that don’t claim it from the vanir god Freyr or from the elemental jötnar, and this belief in a larger-than-life genetic heritage persists well into the Christian age of the historical kings and their vassals. Saint Olaf works miracles from beyond the grave; Norna-Gest lives an enchanted life for over 300 years thanks to some Norn candle magic. Outside of the aristocracy, magic still runs deep in the veins of the common Norse: soothsayers still have the ability to see the future, witches still ride the winds and seas in spirit form, and rune magic still offers powerful protection against evil.

And yet, this is when magic begins to fade from the Viking world. The wild wizardry of the early sagas is replaced with allusions to pettier witcheries – fortune telling, cursing, blood magic – and Christian miracles. Giants and dragons can still be found, but in faraway lands beyond the River Volga, not along the trade routes of the known world. The Christianisation of Scandinavia is almost complete; the Vikings whose pagan ancestors fought to conquer England in the Great Heathen Army are now among the world’s most vocal and well-travelled proselytisers of the god they call the White Christ.

The excitement of the sagas now comes from the thrill of battle between warring armies as kings vie with each other for land. Half-brothers fight for control of kingdoms, usurpers with little more than a strong arm and a good tale try their hands at a play for power, poison-tongued poets spread deceit and lies. This kind of astute political chicanery takes the place of the meddling of capricious gods in the earlier sagas, yet in the skilled language of the skalds, the pace and excitement never drops off.

The kings of the sagas can be broadly divided into two groups, legendary and historical, but there are some with one foot in each camp. The famous, archetypal Viking warrior-king Ragnar Loðbrók is, for want of any tangible evidence to the contrary, legendary. At least two of his sons, although overexaggerated by exposure to their possible father’s legend, are not – they’re recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 895 as leaders of an invasion force against England. They are solid, historical figures, despite the fact that, if the sagas are to be believed, they are the grandsons of the mythical hero Sigurd and his valkyrie lover Brynhild.

For a long time after the Viking Age, the sagas were simply not believed. They were great stories, but that is all they were seen as. However, archaeological research over the past 50 years has uncovered evidence that stories that were viewed as fairytale fabrications and exaggerations – the discovery of distant lands beyond the Atlantic, for example – do in fact have a kernel of truth in them.