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copy Society for Medieval Archaeology 2010 DOI 101179174581710X12790370815779

Medieval Archaeology 54 2010

ANNUAL LECTURE TO THE SOCIETY FOR MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY 2008

Passing into Poetry Viking-Age Mortuary Drama and the Origins of

Norse MythologyBy NEIL PRICE1

THE BURIALS OF pre-Christian Scandinavia in the Viking Age can be broadly divided into a number of basic categories yet within these the range of individual expression in mortu-ary behaviour is immense This paper proposes a model to explain such variation focusing on the evident deliberation shown in the precise selection and placement of objects and in the treatment of animals (and sometimes humans) killed as part of the funeral process It is sug-gested that Viking-Age burials may have involved complex elements of mortuary theatre ritual narratives literally enacted at the graveside providing a poetic passage for the individual dead into a world of ancestral stories A number of archaeological and literary case studies are discussed including ship burials emphasising the central importance of tales in the Norse world-view The question is posed as to whether the material narratives of funerary rites could form one of the creative strands behind what we know today as Norse mythology

The Sutton Hoo ship burial with its curious assemblage of artefacts is not a truthful reference to real life at all it is itself a heroic text a poem like Beowulf in another medium and has many of the same problems of interpretation2

Any student of life in the Viking Age is sooner or later also confronted with those same peoplersquos attitudes to death as expressed in the thousands of burial monuments found across Scandinavia and the landscapes of the diaspora One of the key problems facing archaeologists working with the funerary practices of the Vikings3 (or any ancient culture) is the need to bridge the gap that exists between the contents of graves as excavated and interpreted and the mortuary behaviour that lay behind their creation For the Scandinavians of the late Iron

1 Department of Archaeology University of Aberdeen St Maryrsquos Elphinstone Road Aberdeen AB24 3UF Scotland UK neilpriceabdnacuk

2 Carver 1992 1813 As in any work on the Viking Age this paper must grapple with the intractable problems of a nomenclature

for the people with a cultural background in what is now Scandinavia during the mid-8th to late 11th centuries ad Since part of this text concerns lsquoNorse mythologyrsquo itself an unsatisfactory term but one that encompasses the beliefs of those living well beyond Norway I use lsquoNorsersquo here throughout alongside lsquoVikingsrsquo in the generalist sense and also lsquoScandinaviansrsquo mdash the latter as a locator with a chronological qualifi er

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124 neil price

Age in particular scholars must additionally contend with an unusually varied repertoire of burial form that differs geographically and also changes over time

There is no exact figure on the number of extant burials from the Viking Age in Scandinavia On the imprecise basis of a professional lifetime working with the archaeological material and following a personal canvas of Nordic colleagues who have done the same a guess of perhaps half a million graves seems reasonable though open to question From the same informal survey one can reach a figure for excavated examples in the low tens of thousands They fall into some basic broad patterns essentially the Vikings either burned their dead or interred their bodies To these can be added the unknown proportion of the population that did not receive any kind of burial that is visible to archae-ology whose existence is confirmed by the fact that the known graves are insuf-ficient in quantity to fully account for the settlements in their vicinity These lsquomissingrsquo individuals may have been disposed of in water dissipated through exposure or else cremated and their ashes scattered Among the surviving graves there are also some geographical trends In Sweden almost only cremation occurs with occasional inhumations and chamber burials at exceptional sites such as Birka In Norway and Denmark a mixture of cremation and inhumation was practised4

Beyond the level of cremation or inhumation a number of clear categories of grave form can be discerned The most ubiquitous is that of burials under mounds Burials are found within stone settings and also in the form of chamber graves the iconic ship and boat burials and occasionally as mass graves Within these basic structures however the variety in the detail of mortuary behaviour is almost such as to make every grave slightly (and sometimes dra-matically) different Clearly a generalisation of this kind is problematic without reference to individual excavated examples but here some type-sites can suffice for the features discussed below5

The relative numbers of burials in the same place can vary greatly partly in natural relation to the size of settlements mdash an obvious difference between for example a town and a single farmstead mdash but also sometimes grouped in clusters that must have served more than one community Mounds occur singly or in small groups all the way up to cemeteries of thousands The exteriors of the graves the part visible afterwards to the community that made them are found either unmarked or covered by stone settings that can take numerous dif-ferent forms The latter include rough circles elipses rectangles stars triangles and other alignments often with other stones within them forming still further variant patterns Mounds can also be crowned by single standing stones

4 See Price 2008a for a recent overview5 Providing merely a representative selection at the larger end of the scale a number of excellent reports have

appeared on urban cemeteries such as those from Birka (Arbman 1940ndash43) and Kaupang (Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 Blindheim et al 1999) The grave-fi elds of several Baltic islands have been published in detail with especially good coverage of Gotland (Thunmark-Nyleacuten 1998ndash2006) and Oumlland (Beskow Sjoumlberg et al 1987ndash2001)There are reports from cemeteries serving trading sites (eg Carlsson 1999) villages or clusters of them (eg Ramskou 1976 Andersson 1997 Rundkvist 2003) specialised communities such as the 10th-century enclosure at Fyrkat (Roesdahl 1977) and spectacular individual graves such as Mammen Denmark (Iversen 1991) Chamber graves ship burials and mass graves are discussed further below

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125passing into poetry

so-called bautastenar occasionally carved with runes Uniquely on the island of Gotland (Sweden) memorial stones carved with pictures occur6

Inhumation burials are found under mounds but also flat to the ground surface apparently unmarked The bodies are laid out on their backs or on their sides with knees straight or legs flexed and with many other variations of limb arrangements including corpses buried prone They may be just placed directly in the earth or in shrouds or coffins The dead could also be interred in other vessels such as the detachable bodies of wagons (especially for women)7 and even small boxes with bodies folded and crammed into them There are regional variations in all this as in Norway where people were sometimes buried in large lsquocoffin boxesrsquo taking the form of over-sized graves lined and floored with wooden planking in a construction that had been built inside the cut rather than being lowered into it8 Often lined with mats of birch bark covered with textiles the same features can also be built of stone In an increasing number of burials especially in Iceland evidence is now being found for post-built structures erected over inhumation graves Resembling small buildings some of them also appear one-sided and even with posts inserted at an angle perhaps making some kind of shelter-like affair above the interment9

Chamber graves effectively take the form of underground rooms built in wood with walls floors and raftered roofs usually covered by a mound10 There are no standard dimensions but the Swedish examples average 2 m deep and may be up to 4 m in length These are substantial structures requiring consider-able investment to build especially in a Scandinavian winter Most often found in urban cemeteries they were apparently reserved for occupants of high status buried in fully furnished environments packed with objects animals food and drink Here too the dead could be laid out on their backs or sides or even sitting in chairs many examples of the latter rite have been found in Sweden and Russia particularly11

Alongside these there are the famous burials within boats and ships that have become iconic for the period12 A funerary association with maritime craft could extend all the way from a simple one-person rowing boat up to a large ocean-going vessel What appear to be dugout canoes have been found as have graves that somehow reference boats (for example through inclusion of a few boat timbers alone) without actually containing them Sometimes graves are just shaped like boats even fitted out with stone lsquobenchesrsquo inside and still others are deposited as cremations in and around stone settings in the form of ships These latter can again range dramatically in size and form from a couple of metres to considerably bigger than any real longship could ever have been In addition to all these there are also rarer forms of burial such as mass graves perhaps more

6 Lindqvist 1941ndash42 Nyleacuten and Lamm 19877 Haumlgg 20098 Shetelig 19129 The graves at Litlu-Nuacutepar Lyngbrekka Kumlabrekka and Ingiriacuteetharstaethir are unpublished at time of

going to press but the author thanks Howell Roberts and THORNoacutera Peacutetursdoacutettir of the Institute of Archaeology in Reykjaviacutek for discussing them Interim reports in electronic form can be obtained from the Institute ltwwwinstarchisgt [accessed 9 August 2010] and a brief but well-illustrated popular article on the burials has appeared as Roberts 2009

10 Eisenschmidt 1994 Ringstedt 1997 Stylegar 200511 Graumlslund 1980 Robbins 200412 This form of grave is referenced in detail below

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126 neil price

situational in that they probably relate to specific events such as plague affecting large numbers of people in a single locality13

Although most graves contain a single individual it is not uncommon for two three four or more bodies to have been buried on the same occasion

Beyond even this the variation continues over literally thousands of graves all different The beginnings of a quantification of this data were made in the early 1990s with the ground-breaking work of Johan Callmer In two publica-tions mapping ethnic diversity in the southern Baltic14 he trawled the museum archives of the region to isolate differences in the burial traditions of each site painstakingly charting variation in mortuary behaviour at the most detailed level In real terms this is the difference between burying the dead with a pot to the right of their heads in one village and with a pot to the left in the next but writ large through every aspect of ritual practice and across the full artefac-tual spectrum The results were startling especially for their time in that they demonstrated the truly individual nature of funerary rites not just within and between regions or from one settlement to the next but even within discrete communities Similar mapping was undertaken more recently with a tighter focus in south-eastern Scandinavia by Fredrik Svanberg15 confirming Callmerrsquos findings

Many research questions arise when all this bewildering variety is consid-ered together but one emerges as an imperative What can explain the presence of so many individual exact and deliberate expressions of mortuary behaviour yet unfolding within a broadly consistent framework of funerary practice that takes a relatively small number of discrete forms To put this in practical terms for just one of those forms archaeologists can identify a clear category of lsquoship burialsrsquo but in their precise details each grave is unique What does this mean

This paper presents a model to explain this patterning The ideas proposed while speculative are nevertheless solidly linked to the collective data-set repre-sented by the excavated graves The difficulty in citing representative material from such a massive corpus has been mentioned above but it is important to understand the depth of individuality and deliberation in the graves As an opening case study a single example to stand for many I therefore consider a complex sequence of burials from one of several cemeteries serving an early trading site in Norway

FIVE DEAD AT KAUPANG

The scene is a small beachfront trading community located in the outer reaches of the Oslofjord Known today as Kaupang lsquomarketrsquo to its inhabitants it was Skiacuteringssalr mdash something like lsquothe shining hallrsquo perhaps named after its lordrsquos residence on the hill behind It appears now as an inlet on the little

13 Two examples connected to probable Viking armies or raiding parties have been discovered in the UK at Repton mdash see Biddle and Biddle 1992 mdash and at Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth as yet unpublished but summarised on the excavating unitrsquos website ltthehumanjourneynetgt [accessed 9 August 2010]

14 Callmer 1991 199215 Svanberg 2003

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127passing into poetry

Viksfjord with gently sloping soils leading up to scrub woodland on the higher ground In the 9th century the early Viking Age the shoreline was several metres higher than today and the waters much more accessible to shipping explaining the rise on this spot of the Kaupang settlement

A few elusive details of this young emporium are contained in the descrip-tions of the arctic trader Ohthere relating his voyage to the Baltic16 Excavations at Kaupang first by Charlotte Blindheim from 1950ndash67 and later by Dagfinn Skre from 2000ndash03 have revealed rows of small houses and workshops strung out along the waterrsquos edge with access to wharves where the ships came in from around the whole region17 The scene at the quayside can be imagined a bustling community of merchants and others looking to take advantage of a commercial centre18 Here attention can be focused on what was going on just outside the settlement in the cemeteries that developed around it on promon-tories and on the low heights along the edges of the fjord More specifically we can consider one grave a multiple burial so complex that when it was origi-nally excavated in the 1950s it was recorded as four separate features and later published in an extremely fragmented way19 Only during the second Kaupang project was it recognised as a single entity renumbered as Ka 294ndash7 and even then discussed only briefly20 The interpretation presented here is my own

The sequence begins in the midndashlate 9th century when a man of indeter-minate age was buried on his left side his head to the north-east probably dressed in a cloak because a penannular brooch was found at his shoulder He had been interred with his chest pressed up against a large stone and his body had been covered from the waist down with a cloth of very fine quality drawn up like a blanket over his legs With him were a handful of objects two knives a fire steel and two flints a whetstone some fragments of a soapstone vessel and what the excavators called an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo Some unspecified lsquoiron objectsrsquo perhaps tools were also found Little in this is particularly exciting though even this meagre burial has its own character and individualism every-thing in it being there for a reason A few nails and rivets may have come from a small box or may be intrusions resulting from what was to happen above the grave

Several decades later probably in the early 10th century a clinker-built boat 85 m long was placed on top of the dead man its keel aligned SWndashNE along the axis of his grave (which indicates that its location was remembered) Inside the boat were the bodies of four people a man two women and an infant together with a number of animals Around and above the bodies laid out together with them or deposited above them as the boat was filled with earth were numerous objects (Fig 1)

In the prow a man and a woman lay on the decking perhaps on blankets The woman was aged about 45ndash50 when she died arranged on her back with

16 Bately and Englert 200717 The main reports on the early investigations can be found in Blindheim et al 1981 1999 Blindheim

and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 Hougen 1993 Tollnes 1998 and Blindheim 2008 Publication of the later investi-gations is ongoing but at present two volumes have appeared Skre 2007 and 2008 A complete bibliography for the site can be found online at ltwwwkaupanguionogt

18 Skre and Stylegar 200419 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 22ndash6 92ndash5 99 103 115ndash20 128ndash920 Stylegar 2007 95ndash100 122ndash3

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124 neil price

Age in particular scholars must additionally contend with an unusually varied repertoire of burial form that differs geographically and also changes over time

There is no exact figure on the number of extant burials from the Viking Age in Scandinavia On the imprecise basis of a professional lifetime working with the archaeological material and following a personal canvas of Nordic colleagues who have done the same a guess of perhaps half a million graves seems reasonable though open to question From the same informal survey one can reach a figure for excavated examples in the low tens of thousands They fall into some basic broad patterns essentially the Vikings either burned their dead or interred their bodies To these can be added the unknown proportion of the population that did not receive any kind of burial that is visible to archae-ology whose existence is confirmed by the fact that the known graves are insuf-ficient in quantity to fully account for the settlements in their vicinity These lsquomissingrsquo individuals may have been disposed of in water dissipated through exposure or else cremated and their ashes scattered Among the surviving graves there are also some geographical trends In Sweden almost only cremation occurs with occasional inhumations and chamber burials at exceptional sites such as Birka In Norway and Denmark a mixture of cremation and inhumation was practised4

Beyond the level of cremation or inhumation a number of clear categories of grave form can be discerned The most ubiquitous is that of burials under mounds Burials are found within stone settings and also in the form of chamber graves the iconic ship and boat burials and occasionally as mass graves Within these basic structures however the variety in the detail of mortuary behaviour is almost such as to make every grave slightly (and sometimes dra-matically) different Clearly a generalisation of this kind is problematic without reference to individual excavated examples but here some type-sites can suffice for the features discussed below5

The relative numbers of burials in the same place can vary greatly partly in natural relation to the size of settlements mdash an obvious difference between for example a town and a single farmstead mdash but also sometimes grouped in clusters that must have served more than one community Mounds occur singly or in small groups all the way up to cemeteries of thousands The exteriors of the graves the part visible afterwards to the community that made them are found either unmarked or covered by stone settings that can take numerous dif-ferent forms The latter include rough circles elipses rectangles stars triangles and other alignments often with other stones within them forming still further variant patterns Mounds can also be crowned by single standing stones

4 See Price 2008a for a recent overview5 Providing merely a representative selection at the larger end of the scale a number of excellent reports have

appeared on urban cemeteries such as those from Birka (Arbman 1940ndash43) and Kaupang (Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 Blindheim et al 1999) The grave-fi elds of several Baltic islands have been published in detail with especially good coverage of Gotland (Thunmark-Nyleacuten 1998ndash2006) and Oumlland (Beskow Sjoumlberg et al 1987ndash2001)There are reports from cemeteries serving trading sites (eg Carlsson 1999) villages or clusters of them (eg Ramskou 1976 Andersson 1997 Rundkvist 2003) specialised communities such as the 10th-century enclosure at Fyrkat (Roesdahl 1977) and spectacular individual graves such as Mammen Denmark (Iversen 1991) Chamber graves ship burials and mass graves are discussed further below

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ey P

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iety

for

Med

ieva

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haeo

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125passing into poetry

so-called bautastenar occasionally carved with runes Uniquely on the island of Gotland (Sweden) memorial stones carved with pictures occur6

Inhumation burials are found under mounds but also flat to the ground surface apparently unmarked The bodies are laid out on their backs or on their sides with knees straight or legs flexed and with many other variations of limb arrangements including corpses buried prone They may be just placed directly in the earth or in shrouds or coffins The dead could also be interred in other vessels such as the detachable bodies of wagons (especially for women)7 and even small boxes with bodies folded and crammed into them There are regional variations in all this as in Norway where people were sometimes buried in large lsquocoffin boxesrsquo taking the form of over-sized graves lined and floored with wooden planking in a construction that had been built inside the cut rather than being lowered into it8 Often lined with mats of birch bark covered with textiles the same features can also be built of stone In an increasing number of burials especially in Iceland evidence is now being found for post-built structures erected over inhumation graves Resembling small buildings some of them also appear one-sided and even with posts inserted at an angle perhaps making some kind of shelter-like affair above the interment9

Chamber graves effectively take the form of underground rooms built in wood with walls floors and raftered roofs usually covered by a mound10 There are no standard dimensions but the Swedish examples average 2 m deep and may be up to 4 m in length These are substantial structures requiring consider-able investment to build especially in a Scandinavian winter Most often found in urban cemeteries they were apparently reserved for occupants of high status buried in fully furnished environments packed with objects animals food and drink Here too the dead could be laid out on their backs or sides or even sitting in chairs many examples of the latter rite have been found in Sweden and Russia particularly11

Alongside these there are the famous burials within boats and ships that have become iconic for the period12 A funerary association with maritime craft could extend all the way from a simple one-person rowing boat up to a large ocean-going vessel What appear to be dugout canoes have been found as have graves that somehow reference boats (for example through inclusion of a few boat timbers alone) without actually containing them Sometimes graves are just shaped like boats even fitted out with stone lsquobenchesrsquo inside and still others are deposited as cremations in and around stone settings in the form of ships These latter can again range dramatically in size and form from a couple of metres to considerably bigger than any real longship could ever have been In addition to all these there are also rarer forms of burial such as mass graves perhaps more

6 Lindqvist 1941ndash42 Nyleacuten and Lamm 19877 Haumlgg 20098 Shetelig 19129 The graves at Litlu-Nuacutepar Lyngbrekka Kumlabrekka and Ingiriacuteetharstaethir are unpublished at time of

going to press but the author thanks Howell Roberts and THORNoacutera Peacutetursdoacutettir of the Institute of Archaeology in Reykjaviacutek for discussing them Interim reports in electronic form can be obtained from the Institute ltwwwinstarchisgt [accessed 9 August 2010] and a brief but well-illustrated popular article on the burials has appeared as Roberts 2009

10 Eisenschmidt 1994 Ringstedt 1997 Stylegar 200511 Graumlslund 1980 Robbins 200412 This form of grave is referenced in detail below

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iety

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126 neil price

situational in that they probably relate to specific events such as plague affecting large numbers of people in a single locality13

Although most graves contain a single individual it is not uncommon for two three four or more bodies to have been buried on the same occasion

Beyond even this the variation continues over literally thousands of graves all different The beginnings of a quantification of this data were made in the early 1990s with the ground-breaking work of Johan Callmer In two publica-tions mapping ethnic diversity in the southern Baltic14 he trawled the museum archives of the region to isolate differences in the burial traditions of each site painstakingly charting variation in mortuary behaviour at the most detailed level In real terms this is the difference between burying the dead with a pot to the right of their heads in one village and with a pot to the left in the next but writ large through every aspect of ritual practice and across the full artefac-tual spectrum The results were startling especially for their time in that they demonstrated the truly individual nature of funerary rites not just within and between regions or from one settlement to the next but even within discrete communities Similar mapping was undertaken more recently with a tighter focus in south-eastern Scandinavia by Fredrik Svanberg15 confirming Callmerrsquos findings

Many research questions arise when all this bewildering variety is consid-ered together but one emerges as an imperative What can explain the presence of so many individual exact and deliberate expressions of mortuary behaviour yet unfolding within a broadly consistent framework of funerary practice that takes a relatively small number of discrete forms To put this in practical terms for just one of those forms archaeologists can identify a clear category of lsquoship burialsrsquo but in their precise details each grave is unique What does this mean

This paper presents a model to explain this patterning The ideas proposed while speculative are nevertheless solidly linked to the collective data-set repre-sented by the excavated graves The difficulty in citing representative material from such a massive corpus has been mentioned above but it is important to understand the depth of individuality and deliberation in the graves As an opening case study a single example to stand for many I therefore consider a complex sequence of burials from one of several cemeteries serving an early trading site in Norway

FIVE DEAD AT KAUPANG

The scene is a small beachfront trading community located in the outer reaches of the Oslofjord Known today as Kaupang lsquomarketrsquo to its inhabitants it was Skiacuteringssalr mdash something like lsquothe shining hallrsquo perhaps named after its lordrsquos residence on the hill behind It appears now as an inlet on the little

13 Two examples connected to probable Viking armies or raiding parties have been discovered in the UK at Repton mdash see Biddle and Biddle 1992 mdash and at Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth as yet unpublished but summarised on the excavating unitrsquos website ltthehumanjourneynetgt [accessed 9 August 2010]

14 Callmer 1991 199215 Svanberg 2003

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127passing into poetry

Viksfjord with gently sloping soils leading up to scrub woodland on the higher ground In the 9th century the early Viking Age the shoreline was several metres higher than today and the waters much more accessible to shipping explaining the rise on this spot of the Kaupang settlement

A few elusive details of this young emporium are contained in the descrip-tions of the arctic trader Ohthere relating his voyage to the Baltic16 Excavations at Kaupang first by Charlotte Blindheim from 1950ndash67 and later by Dagfinn Skre from 2000ndash03 have revealed rows of small houses and workshops strung out along the waterrsquos edge with access to wharves where the ships came in from around the whole region17 The scene at the quayside can be imagined a bustling community of merchants and others looking to take advantage of a commercial centre18 Here attention can be focused on what was going on just outside the settlement in the cemeteries that developed around it on promon-tories and on the low heights along the edges of the fjord More specifically we can consider one grave a multiple burial so complex that when it was origi-nally excavated in the 1950s it was recorded as four separate features and later published in an extremely fragmented way19 Only during the second Kaupang project was it recognised as a single entity renumbered as Ka 294ndash7 and even then discussed only briefly20 The interpretation presented here is my own

The sequence begins in the midndashlate 9th century when a man of indeter-minate age was buried on his left side his head to the north-east probably dressed in a cloak because a penannular brooch was found at his shoulder He had been interred with his chest pressed up against a large stone and his body had been covered from the waist down with a cloth of very fine quality drawn up like a blanket over his legs With him were a handful of objects two knives a fire steel and two flints a whetstone some fragments of a soapstone vessel and what the excavators called an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo Some unspecified lsquoiron objectsrsquo perhaps tools were also found Little in this is particularly exciting though even this meagre burial has its own character and individualism every-thing in it being there for a reason A few nails and rivets may have come from a small box or may be intrusions resulting from what was to happen above the grave

Several decades later probably in the early 10th century a clinker-built boat 85 m long was placed on top of the dead man its keel aligned SWndashNE along the axis of his grave (which indicates that its location was remembered) Inside the boat were the bodies of four people a man two women and an infant together with a number of animals Around and above the bodies laid out together with them or deposited above them as the boat was filled with earth were numerous objects (Fig 1)

In the prow a man and a woman lay on the decking perhaps on blankets The woman was aged about 45ndash50 when she died arranged on her back with

16 Bately and Englert 200717 The main reports on the early investigations can be found in Blindheim et al 1981 1999 Blindheim

and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 Hougen 1993 Tollnes 1998 and Blindheim 2008 Publication of the later investi-gations is ongoing but at present two volumes have appeared Skre 2007 and 2008 A complete bibliography for the site can be found online at ltwwwkaupanguionogt

18 Skre and Stylegar 200419 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 22ndash6 92ndash5 99 103 115ndash20 128ndash920 Stylegar 2007 95ndash100 122ndash3

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iety

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Med

ieva

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haeo

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125passing into poetry

so-called bautastenar occasionally carved with runes Uniquely on the island of Gotland (Sweden) memorial stones carved with pictures occur6

Inhumation burials are found under mounds but also flat to the ground surface apparently unmarked The bodies are laid out on their backs or on their sides with knees straight or legs flexed and with many other variations of limb arrangements including corpses buried prone They may be just placed directly in the earth or in shrouds or coffins The dead could also be interred in other vessels such as the detachable bodies of wagons (especially for women)7 and even small boxes with bodies folded and crammed into them There are regional variations in all this as in Norway where people were sometimes buried in large lsquocoffin boxesrsquo taking the form of over-sized graves lined and floored with wooden planking in a construction that had been built inside the cut rather than being lowered into it8 Often lined with mats of birch bark covered with textiles the same features can also be built of stone In an increasing number of burials especially in Iceland evidence is now being found for post-built structures erected over inhumation graves Resembling small buildings some of them also appear one-sided and even with posts inserted at an angle perhaps making some kind of shelter-like affair above the interment9

Chamber graves effectively take the form of underground rooms built in wood with walls floors and raftered roofs usually covered by a mound10 There are no standard dimensions but the Swedish examples average 2 m deep and may be up to 4 m in length These are substantial structures requiring consider-able investment to build especially in a Scandinavian winter Most often found in urban cemeteries they were apparently reserved for occupants of high status buried in fully furnished environments packed with objects animals food and drink Here too the dead could be laid out on their backs or sides or even sitting in chairs many examples of the latter rite have been found in Sweden and Russia particularly11

Alongside these there are the famous burials within boats and ships that have become iconic for the period12 A funerary association with maritime craft could extend all the way from a simple one-person rowing boat up to a large ocean-going vessel What appear to be dugout canoes have been found as have graves that somehow reference boats (for example through inclusion of a few boat timbers alone) without actually containing them Sometimes graves are just shaped like boats even fitted out with stone lsquobenchesrsquo inside and still others are deposited as cremations in and around stone settings in the form of ships These latter can again range dramatically in size and form from a couple of metres to considerably bigger than any real longship could ever have been In addition to all these there are also rarer forms of burial such as mass graves perhaps more

6 Lindqvist 1941ndash42 Nyleacuten and Lamm 19877 Haumlgg 20098 Shetelig 19129 The graves at Litlu-Nuacutepar Lyngbrekka Kumlabrekka and Ingiriacuteetharstaethir are unpublished at time of

going to press but the author thanks Howell Roberts and THORNoacutera Peacutetursdoacutettir of the Institute of Archaeology in Reykjaviacutek for discussing them Interim reports in electronic form can be obtained from the Institute ltwwwinstarchisgt [accessed 9 August 2010] and a brief but well-illustrated popular article on the burials has appeared as Roberts 2009

10 Eisenschmidt 1994 Ringstedt 1997 Stylegar 200511 Graumlslund 1980 Robbins 200412 This form of grave is referenced in detail below

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ey P

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iety

for

Med

ieva

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126 neil price

situational in that they probably relate to specific events such as plague affecting large numbers of people in a single locality13

Although most graves contain a single individual it is not uncommon for two three four or more bodies to have been buried on the same occasion

Beyond even this the variation continues over literally thousands of graves all different The beginnings of a quantification of this data were made in the early 1990s with the ground-breaking work of Johan Callmer In two publica-tions mapping ethnic diversity in the southern Baltic14 he trawled the museum archives of the region to isolate differences in the burial traditions of each site painstakingly charting variation in mortuary behaviour at the most detailed level In real terms this is the difference between burying the dead with a pot to the right of their heads in one village and with a pot to the left in the next but writ large through every aspect of ritual practice and across the full artefac-tual spectrum The results were startling especially for their time in that they demonstrated the truly individual nature of funerary rites not just within and between regions or from one settlement to the next but even within discrete communities Similar mapping was undertaken more recently with a tighter focus in south-eastern Scandinavia by Fredrik Svanberg15 confirming Callmerrsquos findings

Many research questions arise when all this bewildering variety is consid-ered together but one emerges as an imperative What can explain the presence of so many individual exact and deliberate expressions of mortuary behaviour yet unfolding within a broadly consistent framework of funerary practice that takes a relatively small number of discrete forms To put this in practical terms for just one of those forms archaeologists can identify a clear category of lsquoship burialsrsquo but in their precise details each grave is unique What does this mean

This paper presents a model to explain this patterning The ideas proposed while speculative are nevertheless solidly linked to the collective data-set repre-sented by the excavated graves The difficulty in citing representative material from such a massive corpus has been mentioned above but it is important to understand the depth of individuality and deliberation in the graves As an opening case study a single example to stand for many I therefore consider a complex sequence of burials from one of several cemeteries serving an early trading site in Norway

FIVE DEAD AT KAUPANG

The scene is a small beachfront trading community located in the outer reaches of the Oslofjord Known today as Kaupang lsquomarketrsquo to its inhabitants it was Skiacuteringssalr mdash something like lsquothe shining hallrsquo perhaps named after its lordrsquos residence on the hill behind It appears now as an inlet on the little

13 Two examples connected to probable Viking armies or raiding parties have been discovered in the UK at Repton mdash see Biddle and Biddle 1992 mdash and at Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth as yet unpublished but summarised on the excavating unitrsquos website ltthehumanjourneynetgt [accessed 9 August 2010]

14 Callmer 1991 199215 Svanberg 2003

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127passing into poetry

Viksfjord with gently sloping soils leading up to scrub woodland on the higher ground In the 9th century the early Viking Age the shoreline was several metres higher than today and the waters much more accessible to shipping explaining the rise on this spot of the Kaupang settlement

A few elusive details of this young emporium are contained in the descrip-tions of the arctic trader Ohthere relating his voyage to the Baltic16 Excavations at Kaupang first by Charlotte Blindheim from 1950ndash67 and later by Dagfinn Skre from 2000ndash03 have revealed rows of small houses and workshops strung out along the waterrsquos edge with access to wharves where the ships came in from around the whole region17 The scene at the quayside can be imagined a bustling community of merchants and others looking to take advantage of a commercial centre18 Here attention can be focused on what was going on just outside the settlement in the cemeteries that developed around it on promon-tories and on the low heights along the edges of the fjord More specifically we can consider one grave a multiple burial so complex that when it was origi-nally excavated in the 1950s it was recorded as four separate features and later published in an extremely fragmented way19 Only during the second Kaupang project was it recognised as a single entity renumbered as Ka 294ndash7 and even then discussed only briefly20 The interpretation presented here is my own

The sequence begins in the midndashlate 9th century when a man of indeter-minate age was buried on his left side his head to the north-east probably dressed in a cloak because a penannular brooch was found at his shoulder He had been interred with his chest pressed up against a large stone and his body had been covered from the waist down with a cloth of very fine quality drawn up like a blanket over his legs With him were a handful of objects two knives a fire steel and two flints a whetstone some fragments of a soapstone vessel and what the excavators called an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo Some unspecified lsquoiron objectsrsquo perhaps tools were also found Little in this is particularly exciting though even this meagre burial has its own character and individualism every-thing in it being there for a reason A few nails and rivets may have come from a small box or may be intrusions resulting from what was to happen above the grave

Several decades later probably in the early 10th century a clinker-built boat 85 m long was placed on top of the dead man its keel aligned SWndashNE along the axis of his grave (which indicates that its location was remembered) Inside the boat were the bodies of four people a man two women and an infant together with a number of animals Around and above the bodies laid out together with them or deposited above them as the boat was filled with earth were numerous objects (Fig 1)

In the prow a man and a woman lay on the decking perhaps on blankets The woman was aged about 45ndash50 when she died arranged on her back with

16 Bately and Englert 200717 The main reports on the early investigations can be found in Blindheim et al 1981 1999 Blindheim

and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 Hougen 1993 Tollnes 1998 and Blindheim 2008 Publication of the later investi-gations is ongoing but at present two volumes have appeared Skre 2007 and 2008 A complete bibliography for the site can be found online at ltwwwkaupanguionogt

18 Skre and Stylegar 200419 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 22ndash6 92ndash5 99 103 115ndash20 128ndash920 Stylegar 2007 95ndash100 122ndash3

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126 neil price

situational in that they probably relate to specific events such as plague affecting large numbers of people in a single locality13

Although most graves contain a single individual it is not uncommon for two three four or more bodies to have been buried on the same occasion

Beyond even this the variation continues over literally thousands of graves all different The beginnings of a quantification of this data were made in the early 1990s with the ground-breaking work of Johan Callmer In two publica-tions mapping ethnic diversity in the southern Baltic14 he trawled the museum archives of the region to isolate differences in the burial traditions of each site painstakingly charting variation in mortuary behaviour at the most detailed level In real terms this is the difference between burying the dead with a pot to the right of their heads in one village and with a pot to the left in the next but writ large through every aspect of ritual practice and across the full artefac-tual spectrum The results were startling especially for their time in that they demonstrated the truly individual nature of funerary rites not just within and between regions or from one settlement to the next but even within discrete communities Similar mapping was undertaken more recently with a tighter focus in south-eastern Scandinavia by Fredrik Svanberg15 confirming Callmerrsquos findings

Many research questions arise when all this bewildering variety is consid-ered together but one emerges as an imperative What can explain the presence of so many individual exact and deliberate expressions of mortuary behaviour yet unfolding within a broadly consistent framework of funerary practice that takes a relatively small number of discrete forms To put this in practical terms for just one of those forms archaeologists can identify a clear category of lsquoship burialsrsquo but in their precise details each grave is unique What does this mean

This paper presents a model to explain this patterning The ideas proposed while speculative are nevertheless solidly linked to the collective data-set repre-sented by the excavated graves The difficulty in citing representative material from such a massive corpus has been mentioned above but it is important to understand the depth of individuality and deliberation in the graves As an opening case study a single example to stand for many I therefore consider a complex sequence of burials from one of several cemeteries serving an early trading site in Norway

FIVE DEAD AT KAUPANG

The scene is a small beachfront trading community located in the outer reaches of the Oslofjord Known today as Kaupang lsquomarketrsquo to its inhabitants it was Skiacuteringssalr mdash something like lsquothe shining hallrsquo perhaps named after its lordrsquos residence on the hill behind It appears now as an inlet on the little

13 Two examples connected to probable Viking armies or raiding parties have been discovered in the UK at Repton mdash see Biddle and Biddle 1992 mdash and at Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth as yet unpublished but summarised on the excavating unitrsquos website ltthehumanjourneynetgt [accessed 9 August 2010]

14 Callmer 1991 199215 Svanberg 2003

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127passing into poetry

Viksfjord with gently sloping soils leading up to scrub woodland on the higher ground In the 9th century the early Viking Age the shoreline was several metres higher than today and the waters much more accessible to shipping explaining the rise on this spot of the Kaupang settlement

A few elusive details of this young emporium are contained in the descrip-tions of the arctic trader Ohthere relating his voyage to the Baltic16 Excavations at Kaupang first by Charlotte Blindheim from 1950ndash67 and later by Dagfinn Skre from 2000ndash03 have revealed rows of small houses and workshops strung out along the waterrsquos edge with access to wharves where the ships came in from around the whole region17 The scene at the quayside can be imagined a bustling community of merchants and others looking to take advantage of a commercial centre18 Here attention can be focused on what was going on just outside the settlement in the cemeteries that developed around it on promon-tories and on the low heights along the edges of the fjord More specifically we can consider one grave a multiple burial so complex that when it was origi-nally excavated in the 1950s it was recorded as four separate features and later published in an extremely fragmented way19 Only during the second Kaupang project was it recognised as a single entity renumbered as Ka 294ndash7 and even then discussed only briefly20 The interpretation presented here is my own

The sequence begins in the midndashlate 9th century when a man of indeter-minate age was buried on his left side his head to the north-east probably dressed in a cloak because a penannular brooch was found at his shoulder He had been interred with his chest pressed up against a large stone and his body had been covered from the waist down with a cloth of very fine quality drawn up like a blanket over his legs With him were a handful of objects two knives a fire steel and two flints a whetstone some fragments of a soapstone vessel and what the excavators called an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo Some unspecified lsquoiron objectsrsquo perhaps tools were also found Little in this is particularly exciting though even this meagre burial has its own character and individualism every-thing in it being there for a reason A few nails and rivets may have come from a small box or may be intrusions resulting from what was to happen above the grave

Several decades later probably in the early 10th century a clinker-built boat 85 m long was placed on top of the dead man its keel aligned SWndashNE along the axis of his grave (which indicates that its location was remembered) Inside the boat were the bodies of four people a man two women and an infant together with a number of animals Around and above the bodies laid out together with them or deposited above them as the boat was filled with earth were numerous objects (Fig 1)

In the prow a man and a woman lay on the decking perhaps on blankets The woman was aged about 45ndash50 when she died arranged on her back with

16 Bately and Englert 200717 The main reports on the early investigations can be found in Blindheim et al 1981 1999 Blindheim

and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 Hougen 1993 Tollnes 1998 and Blindheim 2008 Publication of the later investi-gations is ongoing but at present two volumes have appeared Skre 2007 and 2008 A complete bibliography for the site can be found online at ltwwwkaupanguionogt

18 Skre and Stylegar 200419 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 22ndash6 92ndash5 99 103 115ndash20 128ndash920 Stylegar 2007 95ndash100 122ndash3

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127passing into poetry

Viksfjord with gently sloping soils leading up to scrub woodland on the higher ground In the 9th century the early Viking Age the shoreline was several metres higher than today and the waters much more accessible to shipping explaining the rise on this spot of the Kaupang settlement

A few elusive details of this young emporium are contained in the descrip-tions of the arctic trader Ohthere relating his voyage to the Baltic16 Excavations at Kaupang first by Charlotte Blindheim from 1950ndash67 and later by Dagfinn Skre from 2000ndash03 have revealed rows of small houses and workshops strung out along the waterrsquos edge with access to wharves where the ships came in from around the whole region17 The scene at the quayside can be imagined a bustling community of merchants and others looking to take advantage of a commercial centre18 Here attention can be focused on what was going on just outside the settlement in the cemeteries that developed around it on promon-tories and on the low heights along the edges of the fjord More specifically we can consider one grave a multiple burial so complex that when it was origi-nally excavated in the 1950s it was recorded as four separate features and later published in an extremely fragmented way19 Only during the second Kaupang project was it recognised as a single entity renumbered as Ka 294ndash7 and even then discussed only briefly20 The interpretation presented here is my own

The sequence begins in the midndashlate 9th century when a man of indeter-minate age was buried on his left side his head to the north-east probably dressed in a cloak because a penannular brooch was found at his shoulder He had been interred with his chest pressed up against a large stone and his body had been covered from the waist down with a cloth of very fine quality drawn up like a blanket over his legs With him were a handful of objects two knives a fire steel and two flints a whetstone some fragments of a soapstone vessel and what the excavators called an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo Some unspecified lsquoiron objectsrsquo perhaps tools were also found Little in this is particularly exciting though even this meagre burial has its own character and individualism every-thing in it being there for a reason A few nails and rivets may have come from a small box or may be intrusions resulting from what was to happen above the grave

Several decades later probably in the early 10th century a clinker-built boat 85 m long was placed on top of the dead man its keel aligned SWndashNE along the axis of his grave (which indicates that its location was remembered) Inside the boat were the bodies of four people a man two women and an infant together with a number of animals Around and above the bodies laid out together with them or deposited above them as the boat was filled with earth were numerous objects (Fig 1)

In the prow a man and a woman lay on the decking perhaps on blankets The woman was aged about 45ndash50 when she died arranged on her back with

16 Bately and Englert 200717 The main reports on the early investigations can be found in Blindheim et al 1981 1999 Blindheim

and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 Hougen 1993 Tollnes 1998 and Blindheim 2008 Publication of the later investi-gations is ongoing but at present two volumes have appeared Skre 2007 and 2008 A complete bibliography for the site can be found online at ltwwwkaupanguionogt

18 Skre and Stylegar 200419 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995 22ndash6 92ndash5 99 103 115ndash20 128ndash920 Stylegar 2007 95ndash100 122ndash3

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128 neil price

fig 1

A reconstruction of grave complex Ka 294ndash7 from the Bikjholberget cemetery at Kaupang Norway dated to the early 10th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson copy Neil Price

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129passing into poetry

her right hand on her breast ankles crossed and her feet pointing into the prow Her head was resting on a stone like a pillow She was expensively dressed her clothes held together with two gilded oval brooches and a trefoil brooch beads and a silver ring strung between them At her waist probably hanging from a belt were a knife and a key To her immediate right was a bucket balanced across her knees a weaving sword A sickle lay somewhere nearby

A baby was bundled at her hip with the womanrsquos left hand probably resting on its head

Lying head to head with the woman arranged symmetrically with his feet pointing to the stern was a man of unknown age He had been placed slightly twisted his upper body lying supine while his legs were flexed and bent to one side at the waist Spatially though not necessarily personally associated with him were numerous weapons two axes of different types of which one was an antique when it was buried a throwing spear a sheathed sword its point by his head with two knives and a whetstone next to it a shield (two more lay nearby) a quiver of arrows implying probably also a bow now decayed On his midriff lay an inverted frying pan Two spindle whorls had been carefully placed on the sword scabbard A pot of German manufacture had been smashed and its pieces scattered over the manrsquos body along with three glass beads near a soap-stone vessel Two more of the latter were deposited at the manrsquos feet An iron dog chain was draped next to him

Amidships a bridled horse had been killed and laid on the deck Its exact manner of death is unknown but in the absence of other injuries its throat was probably cut Irregularities in the bone assemblage also suggest that the horse was decapitated and roughly dismembered its limbs and body parts then placed back in approximately anatomical positions A single spur was thrown into the fill above the mangled corpse

In the stern of the boat was a second woman apparently buried sitting up either in a chair or hunched up against the rising end of the vessel Most organ-ics are lacking from the grave but from the womanrsquos location and her seated posture it is possible mdash even likely mdash that the steering oar of the boat was resting in her hands A whetstone and a bridle-bit had been placed by her feet which touched the carcass of the horse She seems to have been well dressed her clothes fastened with oval brooches and beads fragments of textile suggest-ing high-quality fashion In addition she was apparently wearing some clothing item made of leather very unusual apparel indeed Somewhere close to her was a shield perhaps behind in the stern itself To her right resting on the deck another enigmatic lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo and a weaving sword of iron To her left an iron staff pinned down under a large rock In the womanrsquos lap was an imported Insular bowl of bronze that had been scratched with runes i muntlauku lsquoin the hand basinrsquo The bowl contained an unidentified object of gilt copper alloy fixed with iron nails a copper-alloy ring that might have been used to suspend the bowl a lsquotweezer-likersquo object and the severed head of a dog Its body lay crossways over the womanrsquos feet One pair of its legs perhaps detached lay a little below the torso the other legs were missing Marks on the bones suggest crude carving of the flesh before the ragged skeleton was reassembled Around the woman were also found fragments of wood and (curiously) bark pieces of sheet iron and objects of copper alloy the nature of these items is unknown

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130 neil price

The iron staff might offer a small clue to the identity of the dead steers-woman as it is of a kind identified by several scholars as a tool of the voumllur and other female magic-workers who feature extensively in the Old Norse poetic and prose sources I have discussed these possible sorceresses extensively elsewhere and will not pursue this aspect of the Kaupang grave further here except to a note a suggestive parallel another of these staff burials grave 4 from Fyrkat in Denmark contains a woman with the only other known example of a leather costume21

The four people in the boat the horse and the dog were probably not alone The excavation records are incomplete here but it looks as though there were other animals too Several loose lsquoanimal teethrsquo were recorded scattered around the body of the woman in the prow The whole burial was then covered with earth and several layers of stones bounded by a stone kerb around a low mound The excavators also found patches of cremated bone and wood mixed in the deposit hinting at further rituals about which we know nothing Other objects too had been thrown in between the stone layers as the grave was being filled a silver arm-ring above the manrsquos body another axe and an iron ring above the woman in the stern more broken fragments of soapstone vessels

Beyond the obvious but not especially informative notion of lsquodisposing of the deadrsquo what was actually happening on the banks of a Norwegian fjord in the early 10th century This is only one short sequence in a much larger cemetery which is itself one of several surrounding the Kaupang settlement The ship burial also represents only a few decades in the couple of centuries that the grave-fields were in use The relationship between this grave and those around it will be examined further below but for now I wish to pursue the larger picture through the lens of close examples such as this a detailed window on the wide-spread diversity in the funerary practices of the Vikings not only in Scandinavia but also in their burials across the vast region through which they moved during the late 8th to 11th centuries ad

At Kaupang then we find a burial of four people in a boat itself placed on top of another grave a few decades old Were the man and woman a couple with their child Or were they unrelated Who was the woman sitting in the stern perhaps some kind of witch Did they all die together either violently or through illness Was one or more of them killed to accompany the others in death Whose were the boat and the animals or did they belong to none of the dead Given all that is known of contemporary shape-changing beliefs and the permeable boundaries between human and animal in particular contexts22 it is possible that the horse dog and any other creatures originally in the grave may represent more than mere livestock What do the objects mean and would a contemporary understanding of them even approximate to our own What connection did all this have with the man under the keel

It is very hard indeed to suggest precise answers to questions such as these reasonable though they are However precision can be found in a different sense namely by acknowledging the degree of it present in the burial mdash by noting the detail the deliberate choice and positioning of objects the placement

21 Price 2002 Fyrkat ibid 149ndash57 Pentz et al 200922 See Price 2002 59ndash60 364ndash74

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131passing into poetry

of the humans and animals The treatment of these Viking-Age dead is eloquent in its sheer specificity It is also vital to be wary of obvious categorisation The archaeology of death has attracted considerable theoretical debate over several decades23 but with some polarisation we can observe that burials have tradition-ally been looked at as assemblages of things or lsquograve-goodsrsquo often taken mdash problematically mdash to represent typical forms of contemporary material culture They are usually catalogued and described in great detail but often left simply as a list At the same time they can be perceived as the results of sequences of actions the process of the funeral ceremonies or rituals that made the grave Of course this has rarely been an eitheror in archaeological practice but in the study of Viking-Age burials there has undoubtedly been an emphasis on description over analysis Many cemetery reports stop at the presentation of data without attempting to understand what it might mean across a sliding scale of social context

In countering this the Viking archaeologist can not only look to inspiration in the Anglo-Saxon world24 but also to the helpful trend of the last decade or so that has focused on materiality This concerns the study not of objects or materials but of the way in which these things actually constitute and structure behaviour25 illuminating the process whereby we make things but things also make us Our whole world and those of past peoples is full of objects that guide and constrain our actions This is a concept that of course is highly applicable to Viking burial ritual in which those performing it not only react and conform to an established pattern of behaviour (lsquowhat you do at a funeralrsquo) but also add to it and deepen its complexity at the same time The objects selected for disposal with the dead in part condition what you do with them and at the same time lsquowhat needs to be donersquo in part decides what objects are required to do it In this spirit the next stage of enquiry is to ask how variation on this scale might have been produced mdash what actually went on at a Viking funeral

DEATH ON THE VOLGA

We are fortunate here to have a written record that will be familiar mdash perhaps overly so mdash to those studying this period namely the account of an arguably Scandinavian ship cremation on the banks of the Volga witnessed in ad 922 by an Arab soldier on a northern mission from the Caliph in Baghdad He later wrote about what he had seen in a document known as the Risala (literally lsquoReportrsquo though this should not be taken as an overly official text) Readers may be surprised to see Ibn Fadlan described as a soldier rather than a scribe or religious scholar but this and many other new suggestions are some of the things coming out of the recent work by scholars of classical Arabic such as James Montgomery whose publications have revolutionised our understand-ing of this critical text26 The literature on Ibn Fadlan is vast encompassing more than two dozen variant translations into different languages alongside a

23 Eg Chapman et al 1981 Parker Pearson 1999 Williams 200324 Eg Carver 2005 Williams 200625 Eg Olsen 2003 DeMarrais et al 2004 Miller 200526 Montgomery 2000 2004a and b 2006 2008

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132 neil price

number of critical editions of the manuscripts together with hundreds of second-ary sources27 His description of the funeral alone runs to many chapters and is too long to present here in full but in its outline at least it is well known Here I wish to draw out just a few key points in his word-picture of what hap-pened at this funeral but it is first necessary to address some source-critical problems

ibn fadlan and source critique

A great many caveats have always been present in any attempt to generalise about Viking mortuary behaviour from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description Are his al-Rusıyyah really Scandinavians at all Even if they were how typical were the actions of a group of mobile traders in the early 10th century far from home and in a distinctly multi-ethnic environment Are other cultural traditions mixed up here with those of the North And can we trust what Ibn Fadlan says anyway What does he alter omit or simply misunderstand Comprehensive engagement with these problems could take a book in itself but some outline responses can be presented here with reference to the specific conclusions drawn

We know that al-Rusrsquo and al-Rusıyyah were terms applied by Arab authors in a far from consistent manner Usage varies from one writer to another though it almost always carries a connotation of lsquonorthern foreignerrsquo It is more than likely that individual travellers did not know the precise geographic origins of the lsquoRusrsquo they encountered28 Similarly it has long been understood that Rusrsquo denoted a contextualised hybrid identity developing over time akin to the Anglo-Scandinavians or Hiberno-Norse of the British Isles and the Normans on the Continent By the early 10th century when Ibn Fadlan met them on the Volga the label also probably carried greater implications of discrete ethnicity and it is worth remembering that unlike the new identities of the West this was a name that is known to have been used at the time and self-applied29 However it has never been in doubt that Rusrsquo identity included a very major Scandinavian component and the frequent passage of individuals to and from the Nordic region into the eastern rivers should be remembered the territory of European Russia was very far from being a foreign place to the Vikings A significant distinction should also be made between merchant travellers on the river systems and the more settled urbanites of Kiev and Novgorod Each textual reference should be considered in context and in the case of Ibn Fadlan it is striking how often scholars ignore the telling details of his account in favour of broad-brushed reference to the supposedly insoluble complexities of Rusrsquo ethnogenesis

To begin it is probably not irrelevant that Ibn Fadlan describes the men he encountered as tall blond or red haired with pale complexions mdash perhaps the ultimate clicheacute of Nordic appearance but nevertheless interesting The

27 This material is too large to address here but references can be found in Montgomeryrsquos work see also Price 2008b Lund Warmind 1995 and Schjoslashdt 2007 for comments from the respective viewpoints of an archaeologist and two historians of religion

28 Montgomery 200829 Shepard 2008

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133passing into poetry

details given of clothing for both men and women match the evidence of grave finds in Scandinavia As for the Rusrsquo burial rituals in the Risala if his report does not record a lsquoScandinavianrsquo funeral then why is it that almost every single material aspect of its procedures can be matched in the archaeological record of the Nordic countries but not in the cultures of the Volga These include the ship cremation itself the presence location and appearance of the chamber the specific grave-goods of weapons and food the couch-bed and its furnishings the clothing of the dead man the corpsersquos seated posture the animal killings and the death of another person as part of the ritual30 Even the more esoteric actions such as a woman being elevated by men to look over a door-like struc-ture and experiencing some kind of vision have an exact parallel in Old Norse poetry31 Taken together this very strongly suggests not only that Ibn Fadlanrsquos al-Rusıyyah mdash or at least the decision-making members of the group mdash were Scandinavians but also that their actions among the Bulgar closely resembled what they did at home

There are also more subtle hints contained in his choice of words that may help corroborate this Scandinavian interpretation The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo has a suggestive title considering that Ibn Fadlan must have been translating something he was told in a different language into a term he could understand He decided to use the Arabic Malak al-Maut which in Islam is the name of the angel that separates the soul from the body at death and who is responsible for taking the dead at their fated time It is quite a close approximation of lsquochooser of the deadrsquo or valkyrja

This is not to say that there are not foreign elements in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description The slaversquos vision over the door with its vista of a lsquoParadise beauti-ful and greenrsquo occupied by her dead family and master is actually similar to descriptions of the Khazar afterlife as Montgomery has observed32 That said it might be unlikely for Scandinavians to have Scandinavian slaves There are also practical problems that cannot be solved without more data coming to light How does Ibn Fadlan know what is going on inside the grave chamber or the tents Is someone telling him are the interiors somehow visible or is he inventing

the ten-day funeral

If we return to the detail with all this in mind it can be noted that the whole process of arranging the burial rites is so time-consuming that it is neces-sary to begin by building a temporary grave for the dead man In practical terms this is simply somewhere to keep the corpse while everything is prepared but even this modest inhumation is roofed with timber With the body are placed

30 To note only a few comparisons these include the ship burials from Oseberg Gokstad Ladby (Denmark) Hedeby and the later graves at Valsgaumlrde as well as Viking-Age funerary monuments outside Scandinavia on the Isle of Man and the Icircle de Groix (France) See Nicolaysen 1882 Broslashgger et al 1917ndash28 Bersu and Wilson 1966 Muumlller-Wille 1976 Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye 1995 Soslashrensen 2001 An early catalogue of ship burials was compiled in 1970 by Muumlller-Wille

31 In the Voumllsathornaacutettr poem contained in the late 14th-century manuscript of Flateyjarboacutek but probably much earlier in itself a woman presiding over a sexual ritual asks men to lift her lsquoover door-hinges and over door-lintelsrsquo where she looks into an ambiguous lsquootherrsquo place from which she attempts to lsquoretrieversquo a sacrifi ce see Steinsland and Vogt 1981

32 James Montgomery pers comm

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134 neil price

food drink and musical instruments In the context of a temporary burial it does not seem unreasonable to see these as representing entertainment something to pass away the time This in turn implies that the dead man is somehow still a presence if rather passive

There then follow ten days of activities If the events of this period are viewed as a whole there is no reason why these should be seen as leading up to the lsquorealrsquo funeral on the lsquolastrsquo day when the ship is cremated The ceremonies clearly begin the moment the man is dead and do not stop until the onlookers leave the freshly constructed mound for the last time This is a ten-day funeral at the very least

One of the first tasks to be undertaken is the making of special extremely rich clothes specifically for the deceased to be buried in (purpose-made funerary apparel has potentially worrying implications for the interpretation of excavated graves) These garments cost a whole third of the dead manrsquos wealth though presumably this means ready capital rather than his estate remembering that these are people on the move Another third finances the brewing of special funeral drinks The spending of so much wealth on the making of alcohol and more than a week of subsequent drinking may be more important than previ-ously acknowledged Ibn Fadlan notes how extraordinarily intoxicated everyone is and also that this was common practice at funerals of this stature This may be due to religious culture shock on his part but it does not necessarily render what he describes either inaccurate or atypical And yet how often is the pos-sibility entertained that some of the Viking-Age burials excavated in other parts of the Scandinavian world might have been created by people who were drunk The elements of sacred frenzy and ecstasy associated with for example the cult of Oacuteethinn are well known and may not be irrelevant here

It seems clear that the whole community was involved in the funeral with general participation in days of feasting drinking music and sex This feature of Ibn Fadlanrsquos description and especially the alcoholic and carnal aspects has led to a common view of the proceedings as a giant party in keeping with the stereotype of boisterous Vikings up for a seriously good time However this attitude again avoids engaging with the detail of the text and in some respects rather distastefully distorts what is actually going on In particular the directions of the lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo and her daughters and the rites performed all concern precise deliberate actions mdash just as observed above in the excavated graves This is anything but freeform rowdiness Similarly a party time interpretation of the alcohol consumption ignores the fact (mentioned by Ibn Fadlan) that ten full days of intoxication is literally hazardous to life As for the sex it is hard to judge the degree of coercion involved in most of the acts with the female slave but those occurring just prior to her death as the beating of staves muffles the sound of her cries can only be seen as rape The latter primarily concerns power rather than desire and it is very hard indeed to see any kind of lsquocelebra-tionrsquo in raping a screaming girl on the same bed as a ten-day-old corpse33 Not just a matter of modern moral sensibilities confronted with alien values of the

33 Variations on this theme include both lurid and apparently lsquoromanticrsquo readings an example of the latter being the writer Bruce Chatwinrsquos version of events (1990 178) in which the six men in the chamber did not rape the slave but lsquomade loversquo to her before she lsquolay back exhaustedrsquo

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135passing into poetry

past these events concern people who are all constrained by rules in ceremonies that are managed The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo is a funeral director and together with everyone else she is clearly following an agreed procedure

On the day the pyre is lit it seems that the rituals intensify and grow in complexity and without repeating the usual tropes of Risala interpretations it is still possible to draw some new conclusions Ibn Fadlanrsquos description of the deck construction lsquolike a tent made of woodrsquo is striking because we have Viking-Age camping gear from Gokstad (Norway) among other ship burial sites and the resemblance with the chamber on that vessel is exact34 There is no structural reason why these grave chambers need be triangular in cross-section so this suggests that it really may have been intended to resemble a tent an interesting kind of temporary resting place There may also be a link to the tents set up around the ship where the slave copulates with each man in turn Ibn Fadlan notes that they had been pitched there after the ship had been drawn up for burning so perhaps the tents are part of the ritual and put there for the purpose even related to the wooden version on the deck

The seated posture of the man bears close comparison with excavated burials and not just the chamber graves such as those in Birka where such rites are relatively common The woman sitting at the stern of the Kaupang boat has been mentioned above and at least one of the Vendel ships (Sweden) also had a seated corpse a man in a chair on the deck35 In Ibn Fadlanrsquos example the dead man may have been seen as sleeping in the same position adopted for the night as in the cramped bed-closets of Norse halls Interestingly apart from his weapons there is no real suggestion that any of the objects placed in the ship or the chamber actually belonged to him mdash another worrying factor for archaeologists

The deaths of the animals are interesting and quickly blur any easy catego-ries of lsquosacrificesrsquo and lsquoofferingsrsquo First the different creatures are chosen with care and have a part to enact before they are killed mdash witness the horses being run until blown and lathered It appears significant how many animals there are of different species entering the scene at specific points in a clear sequence They are participants and they are killed in precise ways that have nothing to do with the efficient methods of the slaughterhouse The horses in particular are hacked to pieces while alive presumably rearing and screaming while the dog is bisected and the birds decapitated both with knives and by tearing The body parts are also treated precisely being thrown either to one side of the ship or onto the deck

All of this echoes excavated ship burials and it is important to emphasise just how many animals might be involved On the foredeck of the Oseberg ship (Norway) was a heap of at least ten decapitated horses and three headless dogs with a further three horses and an ox beheaded outside the vessel by the prow while the severed head of a very large ox had been carefully tucked up in a bed on the deck36 At Gokstad at least 12 horses and six dogs were killed outside the ship and arranged along its sides while a peacock had been laid aft of the

34 Nicolaysen 188235 Vendel grave 9 Stolpe and Arne 1912 3736 Broslashgger et al 1917

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grave chamber37 In this as in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description too little thought has been given to what these events would have looked sounded and smelled like The graceful lines of the Oseberg ship as it is currently displayed in Oslo belie the fact that at the time of burial it must have been dripping with blood How did the animals react after the first of their number was killed It is not difficult to imagine the noise to visualise the gore covering ship objects and onlookers and to scent the blood and offal This is not an exercise in gratuitous melo-drama but an attempt to recapture an integral part of the funerary experience for those who were there Violent spectacle seems to be important something confirmed by other recent finds of Viking-Age animal killings in ritual contexts such as the hall at Hofstaethir in Iceland38

A similar pattern is drawn to an extreme in the person of the slave who the Arabic nouns imply is about 14 or 15 years of age As with the role played by the animals this girl does not really seem to be lsquogivenrsquo to anyone or anything through her death she is a component of the action It is hard to tell whether she really volunteered for her fate but Ibn Fadlan seems to have thought so The sexual themes appear central here and they take on a repetitive overtone with respect to the girl Ibn Fadlan mentions that the female slaves were sexu-ally abused by their owners This role is amplified significantly after the slave-girl is marked for a funerary death and the entire mortuary process is in fact punctuated by sexual acts In some manuscripts the girl is referred to as the dead manrsquos lsquobridersquo Finally the preparation of the ship for burning is significant not only for its elaboration but also because it confirms that in this case at least a funeral could involve both inhumation and then cremation and in effect two graves for one person How much of this has been missed in the archaeology This whole ten-day process is continuously accompanied by chanting and music that the Arab unfortunately does not understand

It is important to emphasise the brief nature of the above summary Ibn Fadlanrsquos account of one burial runs to 2000 words and he is a laconic writer Every sentence every Arabic word of his text has meaning and can be glossed or decoded with effort However in seeking to succinctly isolate key factors in the burial rites he describes one could do worse than to focus upon social inclu-sion expenditure effort violence intoxication and not least sexual performance mdash all of these in considerable quantities and expressed conspicuously Animals also seem very significant and certainly not merely as ambulatory possessions (we do not even know who they belong to) Above all we see deliberate complex action performed over time

Ibn Fadlan provides us with a key text the most elaborate eyewitness account of a (probable) Scandinavian funeral that we possess but there are also additional briefer sources that nevertheless contain fascinating points of detail resonating well with what we have so far seen Another Arab writer Ibn Rustah describes an elaborate chamber burial of a leading Rusrsquo man also in what is now Russia with deposits of food drinking vessels and coins39 Echoing the

37 Nicolaysen 188238 Lucas and McGovern 2007 detailed evidence was found here for cattle decapitation in a manner that would

have required two people and which was calculated to produce a dramatic spray of arterial blood39 Jakubovskij 1926

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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138 neil price

complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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144 neil price

fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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129passing into poetry

her right hand on her breast ankles crossed and her feet pointing into the prow Her head was resting on a stone like a pillow She was expensively dressed her clothes held together with two gilded oval brooches and a trefoil brooch beads and a silver ring strung between them At her waist probably hanging from a belt were a knife and a key To her immediate right was a bucket balanced across her knees a weaving sword A sickle lay somewhere nearby

A baby was bundled at her hip with the womanrsquos left hand probably resting on its head

Lying head to head with the woman arranged symmetrically with his feet pointing to the stern was a man of unknown age He had been placed slightly twisted his upper body lying supine while his legs were flexed and bent to one side at the waist Spatially though not necessarily personally associated with him were numerous weapons two axes of different types of which one was an antique when it was buried a throwing spear a sheathed sword its point by his head with two knives and a whetstone next to it a shield (two more lay nearby) a quiver of arrows implying probably also a bow now decayed On his midriff lay an inverted frying pan Two spindle whorls had been carefully placed on the sword scabbard A pot of German manufacture had been smashed and its pieces scattered over the manrsquos body along with three glass beads near a soap-stone vessel Two more of the latter were deposited at the manrsquos feet An iron dog chain was draped next to him

Amidships a bridled horse had been killed and laid on the deck Its exact manner of death is unknown but in the absence of other injuries its throat was probably cut Irregularities in the bone assemblage also suggest that the horse was decapitated and roughly dismembered its limbs and body parts then placed back in approximately anatomical positions A single spur was thrown into the fill above the mangled corpse

In the stern of the boat was a second woman apparently buried sitting up either in a chair or hunched up against the rising end of the vessel Most organ-ics are lacking from the grave but from the womanrsquos location and her seated posture it is possible mdash even likely mdash that the steering oar of the boat was resting in her hands A whetstone and a bridle-bit had been placed by her feet which touched the carcass of the horse She seems to have been well dressed her clothes fastened with oval brooches and beads fragments of textile suggest-ing high-quality fashion In addition she was apparently wearing some clothing item made of leather very unusual apparel indeed Somewhere close to her was a shield perhaps behind in the stern itself To her right resting on the deck another enigmatic lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo and a weaving sword of iron To her left an iron staff pinned down under a large rock In the womanrsquos lap was an imported Insular bowl of bronze that had been scratched with runes i muntlauku lsquoin the hand basinrsquo The bowl contained an unidentified object of gilt copper alloy fixed with iron nails a copper-alloy ring that might have been used to suspend the bowl a lsquotweezer-likersquo object and the severed head of a dog Its body lay crossways over the womanrsquos feet One pair of its legs perhaps detached lay a little below the torso the other legs were missing Marks on the bones suggest crude carving of the flesh before the ragged skeleton was reassembled Around the woman were also found fragments of wood and (curiously) bark pieces of sheet iron and objects of copper alloy the nature of these items is unknown

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The iron staff might offer a small clue to the identity of the dead steers-woman as it is of a kind identified by several scholars as a tool of the voumllur and other female magic-workers who feature extensively in the Old Norse poetic and prose sources I have discussed these possible sorceresses extensively elsewhere and will not pursue this aspect of the Kaupang grave further here except to a note a suggestive parallel another of these staff burials grave 4 from Fyrkat in Denmark contains a woman with the only other known example of a leather costume21

The four people in the boat the horse and the dog were probably not alone The excavation records are incomplete here but it looks as though there were other animals too Several loose lsquoanimal teethrsquo were recorded scattered around the body of the woman in the prow The whole burial was then covered with earth and several layers of stones bounded by a stone kerb around a low mound The excavators also found patches of cremated bone and wood mixed in the deposit hinting at further rituals about which we know nothing Other objects too had been thrown in between the stone layers as the grave was being filled a silver arm-ring above the manrsquos body another axe and an iron ring above the woman in the stern more broken fragments of soapstone vessels

Beyond the obvious but not especially informative notion of lsquodisposing of the deadrsquo what was actually happening on the banks of a Norwegian fjord in the early 10th century This is only one short sequence in a much larger cemetery which is itself one of several surrounding the Kaupang settlement The ship burial also represents only a few decades in the couple of centuries that the grave-fields were in use The relationship between this grave and those around it will be examined further below but for now I wish to pursue the larger picture through the lens of close examples such as this a detailed window on the wide-spread diversity in the funerary practices of the Vikings not only in Scandinavia but also in their burials across the vast region through which they moved during the late 8th to 11th centuries ad

At Kaupang then we find a burial of four people in a boat itself placed on top of another grave a few decades old Were the man and woman a couple with their child Or were they unrelated Who was the woman sitting in the stern perhaps some kind of witch Did they all die together either violently or through illness Was one or more of them killed to accompany the others in death Whose were the boat and the animals or did they belong to none of the dead Given all that is known of contemporary shape-changing beliefs and the permeable boundaries between human and animal in particular contexts22 it is possible that the horse dog and any other creatures originally in the grave may represent more than mere livestock What do the objects mean and would a contemporary understanding of them even approximate to our own What connection did all this have with the man under the keel

It is very hard indeed to suggest precise answers to questions such as these reasonable though they are However precision can be found in a different sense namely by acknowledging the degree of it present in the burial mdash by noting the detail the deliberate choice and positioning of objects the placement

21 Price 2002 Fyrkat ibid 149ndash57 Pentz et al 200922 See Price 2002 59ndash60 364ndash74

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131passing into poetry

of the humans and animals The treatment of these Viking-Age dead is eloquent in its sheer specificity It is also vital to be wary of obvious categorisation The archaeology of death has attracted considerable theoretical debate over several decades23 but with some polarisation we can observe that burials have tradition-ally been looked at as assemblages of things or lsquograve-goodsrsquo often taken mdash problematically mdash to represent typical forms of contemporary material culture They are usually catalogued and described in great detail but often left simply as a list At the same time they can be perceived as the results of sequences of actions the process of the funeral ceremonies or rituals that made the grave Of course this has rarely been an eitheror in archaeological practice but in the study of Viking-Age burials there has undoubtedly been an emphasis on description over analysis Many cemetery reports stop at the presentation of data without attempting to understand what it might mean across a sliding scale of social context

In countering this the Viking archaeologist can not only look to inspiration in the Anglo-Saxon world24 but also to the helpful trend of the last decade or so that has focused on materiality This concerns the study not of objects or materials but of the way in which these things actually constitute and structure behaviour25 illuminating the process whereby we make things but things also make us Our whole world and those of past peoples is full of objects that guide and constrain our actions This is a concept that of course is highly applicable to Viking burial ritual in which those performing it not only react and conform to an established pattern of behaviour (lsquowhat you do at a funeralrsquo) but also add to it and deepen its complexity at the same time The objects selected for disposal with the dead in part condition what you do with them and at the same time lsquowhat needs to be donersquo in part decides what objects are required to do it In this spirit the next stage of enquiry is to ask how variation on this scale might have been produced mdash what actually went on at a Viking funeral

DEATH ON THE VOLGA

We are fortunate here to have a written record that will be familiar mdash perhaps overly so mdash to those studying this period namely the account of an arguably Scandinavian ship cremation on the banks of the Volga witnessed in ad 922 by an Arab soldier on a northern mission from the Caliph in Baghdad He later wrote about what he had seen in a document known as the Risala (literally lsquoReportrsquo though this should not be taken as an overly official text) Readers may be surprised to see Ibn Fadlan described as a soldier rather than a scribe or religious scholar but this and many other new suggestions are some of the things coming out of the recent work by scholars of classical Arabic such as James Montgomery whose publications have revolutionised our understand-ing of this critical text26 The literature on Ibn Fadlan is vast encompassing more than two dozen variant translations into different languages alongside a

23 Eg Chapman et al 1981 Parker Pearson 1999 Williams 200324 Eg Carver 2005 Williams 200625 Eg Olsen 2003 DeMarrais et al 2004 Miller 200526 Montgomery 2000 2004a and b 2006 2008

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132 neil price

number of critical editions of the manuscripts together with hundreds of second-ary sources27 His description of the funeral alone runs to many chapters and is too long to present here in full but in its outline at least it is well known Here I wish to draw out just a few key points in his word-picture of what hap-pened at this funeral but it is first necessary to address some source-critical problems

ibn fadlan and source critique

A great many caveats have always been present in any attempt to generalise about Viking mortuary behaviour from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description Are his al-Rusıyyah really Scandinavians at all Even if they were how typical were the actions of a group of mobile traders in the early 10th century far from home and in a distinctly multi-ethnic environment Are other cultural traditions mixed up here with those of the North And can we trust what Ibn Fadlan says anyway What does he alter omit or simply misunderstand Comprehensive engagement with these problems could take a book in itself but some outline responses can be presented here with reference to the specific conclusions drawn

We know that al-Rusrsquo and al-Rusıyyah were terms applied by Arab authors in a far from consistent manner Usage varies from one writer to another though it almost always carries a connotation of lsquonorthern foreignerrsquo It is more than likely that individual travellers did not know the precise geographic origins of the lsquoRusrsquo they encountered28 Similarly it has long been understood that Rusrsquo denoted a contextualised hybrid identity developing over time akin to the Anglo-Scandinavians or Hiberno-Norse of the British Isles and the Normans on the Continent By the early 10th century when Ibn Fadlan met them on the Volga the label also probably carried greater implications of discrete ethnicity and it is worth remembering that unlike the new identities of the West this was a name that is known to have been used at the time and self-applied29 However it has never been in doubt that Rusrsquo identity included a very major Scandinavian component and the frequent passage of individuals to and from the Nordic region into the eastern rivers should be remembered the territory of European Russia was very far from being a foreign place to the Vikings A significant distinction should also be made between merchant travellers on the river systems and the more settled urbanites of Kiev and Novgorod Each textual reference should be considered in context and in the case of Ibn Fadlan it is striking how often scholars ignore the telling details of his account in favour of broad-brushed reference to the supposedly insoluble complexities of Rusrsquo ethnogenesis

To begin it is probably not irrelevant that Ibn Fadlan describes the men he encountered as tall blond or red haired with pale complexions mdash perhaps the ultimate clicheacute of Nordic appearance but nevertheless interesting The

27 This material is too large to address here but references can be found in Montgomeryrsquos work see also Price 2008b Lund Warmind 1995 and Schjoslashdt 2007 for comments from the respective viewpoints of an archaeologist and two historians of religion

28 Montgomery 200829 Shepard 2008

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133passing into poetry

details given of clothing for both men and women match the evidence of grave finds in Scandinavia As for the Rusrsquo burial rituals in the Risala if his report does not record a lsquoScandinavianrsquo funeral then why is it that almost every single material aspect of its procedures can be matched in the archaeological record of the Nordic countries but not in the cultures of the Volga These include the ship cremation itself the presence location and appearance of the chamber the specific grave-goods of weapons and food the couch-bed and its furnishings the clothing of the dead man the corpsersquos seated posture the animal killings and the death of another person as part of the ritual30 Even the more esoteric actions such as a woman being elevated by men to look over a door-like struc-ture and experiencing some kind of vision have an exact parallel in Old Norse poetry31 Taken together this very strongly suggests not only that Ibn Fadlanrsquos al-Rusıyyah mdash or at least the decision-making members of the group mdash were Scandinavians but also that their actions among the Bulgar closely resembled what they did at home

There are also more subtle hints contained in his choice of words that may help corroborate this Scandinavian interpretation The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo has a suggestive title considering that Ibn Fadlan must have been translating something he was told in a different language into a term he could understand He decided to use the Arabic Malak al-Maut which in Islam is the name of the angel that separates the soul from the body at death and who is responsible for taking the dead at their fated time It is quite a close approximation of lsquochooser of the deadrsquo or valkyrja

This is not to say that there are not foreign elements in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description The slaversquos vision over the door with its vista of a lsquoParadise beauti-ful and greenrsquo occupied by her dead family and master is actually similar to descriptions of the Khazar afterlife as Montgomery has observed32 That said it might be unlikely for Scandinavians to have Scandinavian slaves There are also practical problems that cannot be solved without more data coming to light How does Ibn Fadlan know what is going on inside the grave chamber or the tents Is someone telling him are the interiors somehow visible or is he inventing

the ten-day funeral

If we return to the detail with all this in mind it can be noted that the whole process of arranging the burial rites is so time-consuming that it is neces-sary to begin by building a temporary grave for the dead man In practical terms this is simply somewhere to keep the corpse while everything is prepared but even this modest inhumation is roofed with timber With the body are placed

30 To note only a few comparisons these include the ship burials from Oseberg Gokstad Ladby (Denmark) Hedeby and the later graves at Valsgaumlrde as well as Viking-Age funerary monuments outside Scandinavia on the Isle of Man and the Icircle de Groix (France) See Nicolaysen 1882 Broslashgger et al 1917ndash28 Bersu and Wilson 1966 Muumlller-Wille 1976 Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye 1995 Soslashrensen 2001 An early catalogue of ship burials was compiled in 1970 by Muumlller-Wille

31 In the Voumllsathornaacutettr poem contained in the late 14th-century manuscript of Flateyjarboacutek but probably much earlier in itself a woman presiding over a sexual ritual asks men to lift her lsquoover door-hinges and over door-lintelsrsquo where she looks into an ambiguous lsquootherrsquo place from which she attempts to lsquoretrieversquo a sacrifi ce see Steinsland and Vogt 1981

32 James Montgomery pers comm

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134 neil price

food drink and musical instruments In the context of a temporary burial it does not seem unreasonable to see these as representing entertainment something to pass away the time This in turn implies that the dead man is somehow still a presence if rather passive

There then follow ten days of activities If the events of this period are viewed as a whole there is no reason why these should be seen as leading up to the lsquorealrsquo funeral on the lsquolastrsquo day when the ship is cremated The ceremonies clearly begin the moment the man is dead and do not stop until the onlookers leave the freshly constructed mound for the last time This is a ten-day funeral at the very least

One of the first tasks to be undertaken is the making of special extremely rich clothes specifically for the deceased to be buried in (purpose-made funerary apparel has potentially worrying implications for the interpretation of excavated graves) These garments cost a whole third of the dead manrsquos wealth though presumably this means ready capital rather than his estate remembering that these are people on the move Another third finances the brewing of special funeral drinks The spending of so much wealth on the making of alcohol and more than a week of subsequent drinking may be more important than previ-ously acknowledged Ibn Fadlan notes how extraordinarily intoxicated everyone is and also that this was common practice at funerals of this stature This may be due to religious culture shock on his part but it does not necessarily render what he describes either inaccurate or atypical And yet how often is the pos-sibility entertained that some of the Viking-Age burials excavated in other parts of the Scandinavian world might have been created by people who were drunk The elements of sacred frenzy and ecstasy associated with for example the cult of Oacuteethinn are well known and may not be irrelevant here

It seems clear that the whole community was involved in the funeral with general participation in days of feasting drinking music and sex This feature of Ibn Fadlanrsquos description and especially the alcoholic and carnal aspects has led to a common view of the proceedings as a giant party in keeping with the stereotype of boisterous Vikings up for a seriously good time However this attitude again avoids engaging with the detail of the text and in some respects rather distastefully distorts what is actually going on In particular the directions of the lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo and her daughters and the rites performed all concern precise deliberate actions mdash just as observed above in the excavated graves This is anything but freeform rowdiness Similarly a party time interpretation of the alcohol consumption ignores the fact (mentioned by Ibn Fadlan) that ten full days of intoxication is literally hazardous to life As for the sex it is hard to judge the degree of coercion involved in most of the acts with the female slave but those occurring just prior to her death as the beating of staves muffles the sound of her cries can only be seen as rape The latter primarily concerns power rather than desire and it is very hard indeed to see any kind of lsquocelebra-tionrsquo in raping a screaming girl on the same bed as a ten-day-old corpse33 Not just a matter of modern moral sensibilities confronted with alien values of the

33 Variations on this theme include both lurid and apparently lsquoromanticrsquo readings an example of the latter being the writer Bruce Chatwinrsquos version of events (1990 178) in which the six men in the chamber did not rape the slave but lsquomade loversquo to her before she lsquolay back exhaustedrsquo

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135passing into poetry

past these events concern people who are all constrained by rules in ceremonies that are managed The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo is a funeral director and together with everyone else she is clearly following an agreed procedure

On the day the pyre is lit it seems that the rituals intensify and grow in complexity and without repeating the usual tropes of Risala interpretations it is still possible to draw some new conclusions Ibn Fadlanrsquos description of the deck construction lsquolike a tent made of woodrsquo is striking because we have Viking-Age camping gear from Gokstad (Norway) among other ship burial sites and the resemblance with the chamber on that vessel is exact34 There is no structural reason why these grave chambers need be triangular in cross-section so this suggests that it really may have been intended to resemble a tent an interesting kind of temporary resting place There may also be a link to the tents set up around the ship where the slave copulates with each man in turn Ibn Fadlan notes that they had been pitched there after the ship had been drawn up for burning so perhaps the tents are part of the ritual and put there for the purpose even related to the wooden version on the deck

The seated posture of the man bears close comparison with excavated burials and not just the chamber graves such as those in Birka where such rites are relatively common The woman sitting at the stern of the Kaupang boat has been mentioned above and at least one of the Vendel ships (Sweden) also had a seated corpse a man in a chair on the deck35 In Ibn Fadlanrsquos example the dead man may have been seen as sleeping in the same position adopted for the night as in the cramped bed-closets of Norse halls Interestingly apart from his weapons there is no real suggestion that any of the objects placed in the ship or the chamber actually belonged to him mdash another worrying factor for archaeologists

The deaths of the animals are interesting and quickly blur any easy catego-ries of lsquosacrificesrsquo and lsquoofferingsrsquo First the different creatures are chosen with care and have a part to enact before they are killed mdash witness the horses being run until blown and lathered It appears significant how many animals there are of different species entering the scene at specific points in a clear sequence They are participants and they are killed in precise ways that have nothing to do with the efficient methods of the slaughterhouse The horses in particular are hacked to pieces while alive presumably rearing and screaming while the dog is bisected and the birds decapitated both with knives and by tearing The body parts are also treated precisely being thrown either to one side of the ship or onto the deck

All of this echoes excavated ship burials and it is important to emphasise just how many animals might be involved On the foredeck of the Oseberg ship (Norway) was a heap of at least ten decapitated horses and three headless dogs with a further three horses and an ox beheaded outside the vessel by the prow while the severed head of a very large ox had been carefully tucked up in a bed on the deck36 At Gokstad at least 12 horses and six dogs were killed outside the ship and arranged along its sides while a peacock had been laid aft of the

34 Nicolaysen 188235 Vendel grave 9 Stolpe and Arne 1912 3736 Broslashgger et al 1917

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grave chamber37 In this as in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description too little thought has been given to what these events would have looked sounded and smelled like The graceful lines of the Oseberg ship as it is currently displayed in Oslo belie the fact that at the time of burial it must have been dripping with blood How did the animals react after the first of their number was killed It is not difficult to imagine the noise to visualise the gore covering ship objects and onlookers and to scent the blood and offal This is not an exercise in gratuitous melo-drama but an attempt to recapture an integral part of the funerary experience for those who were there Violent spectacle seems to be important something confirmed by other recent finds of Viking-Age animal killings in ritual contexts such as the hall at Hofstaethir in Iceland38

A similar pattern is drawn to an extreme in the person of the slave who the Arabic nouns imply is about 14 or 15 years of age As with the role played by the animals this girl does not really seem to be lsquogivenrsquo to anyone or anything through her death she is a component of the action It is hard to tell whether she really volunteered for her fate but Ibn Fadlan seems to have thought so The sexual themes appear central here and they take on a repetitive overtone with respect to the girl Ibn Fadlan mentions that the female slaves were sexu-ally abused by their owners This role is amplified significantly after the slave-girl is marked for a funerary death and the entire mortuary process is in fact punctuated by sexual acts In some manuscripts the girl is referred to as the dead manrsquos lsquobridersquo Finally the preparation of the ship for burning is significant not only for its elaboration but also because it confirms that in this case at least a funeral could involve both inhumation and then cremation and in effect two graves for one person How much of this has been missed in the archaeology This whole ten-day process is continuously accompanied by chanting and music that the Arab unfortunately does not understand

It is important to emphasise the brief nature of the above summary Ibn Fadlanrsquos account of one burial runs to 2000 words and he is a laconic writer Every sentence every Arabic word of his text has meaning and can be glossed or decoded with effort However in seeking to succinctly isolate key factors in the burial rites he describes one could do worse than to focus upon social inclu-sion expenditure effort violence intoxication and not least sexual performance mdash all of these in considerable quantities and expressed conspicuously Animals also seem very significant and certainly not merely as ambulatory possessions (we do not even know who they belong to) Above all we see deliberate complex action performed over time

Ibn Fadlan provides us with a key text the most elaborate eyewitness account of a (probable) Scandinavian funeral that we possess but there are also additional briefer sources that nevertheless contain fascinating points of detail resonating well with what we have so far seen Another Arab writer Ibn Rustah describes an elaborate chamber burial of a leading Rusrsquo man also in what is now Russia with deposits of food drinking vessels and coins39 Echoing the

37 Nicolaysen 188238 Lucas and McGovern 2007 detailed evidence was found here for cattle decapitation in a manner that would

have required two people and which was calculated to produce a dramatic spray of arterial blood39 Jakubovskij 1926

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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138 neil price

complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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150 neil price

supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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130 neil price

The iron staff might offer a small clue to the identity of the dead steers-woman as it is of a kind identified by several scholars as a tool of the voumllur and other female magic-workers who feature extensively in the Old Norse poetic and prose sources I have discussed these possible sorceresses extensively elsewhere and will not pursue this aspect of the Kaupang grave further here except to a note a suggestive parallel another of these staff burials grave 4 from Fyrkat in Denmark contains a woman with the only other known example of a leather costume21

The four people in the boat the horse and the dog were probably not alone The excavation records are incomplete here but it looks as though there were other animals too Several loose lsquoanimal teethrsquo were recorded scattered around the body of the woman in the prow The whole burial was then covered with earth and several layers of stones bounded by a stone kerb around a low mound The excavators also found patches of cremated bone and wood mixed in the deposit hinting at further rituals about which we know nothing Other objects too had been thrown in between the stone layers as the grave was being filled a silver arm-ring above the manrsquos body another axe and an iron ring above the woman in the stern more broken fragments of soapstone vessels

Beyond the obvious but not especially informative notion of lsquodisposing of the deadrsquo what was actually happening on the banks of a Norwegian fjord in the early 10th century This is only one short sequence in a much larger cemetery which is itself one of several surrounding the Kaupang settlement The ship burial also represents only a few decades in the couple of centuries that the grave-fields were in use The relationship between this grave and those around it will be examined further below but for now I wish to pursue the larger picture through the lens of close examples such as this a detailed window on the wide-spread diversity in the funerary practices of the Vikings not only in Scandinavia but also in their burials across the vast region through which they moved during the late 8th to 11th centuries ad

At Kaupang then we find a burial of four people in a boat itself placed on top of another grave a few decades old Were the man and woman a couple with their child Or were they unrelated Who was the woman sitting in the stern perhaps some kind of witch Did they all die together either violently or through illness Was one or more of them killed to accompany the others in death Whose were the boat and the animals or did they belong to none of the dead Given all that is known of contemporary shape-changing beliefs and the permeable boundaries between human and animal in particular contexts22 it is possible that the horse dog and any other creatures originally in the grave may represent more than mere livestock What do the objects mean and would a contemporary understanding of them even approximate to our own What connection did all this have with the man under the keel

It is very hard indeed to suggest precise answers to questions such as these reasonable though they are However precision can be found in a different sense namely by acknowledging the degree of it present in the burial mdash by noting the detail the deliberate choice and positioning of objects the placement

21 Price 2002 Fyrkat ibid 149ndash57 Pentz et al 200922 See Price 2002 59ndash60 364ndash74

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131passing into poetry

of the humans and animals The treatment of these Viking-Age dead is eloquent in its sheer specificity It is also vital to be wary of obvious categorisation The archaeology of death has attracted considerable theoretical debate over several decades23 but with some polarisation we can observe that burials have tradition-ally been looked at as assemblages of things or lsquograve-goodsrsquo often taken mdash problematically mdash to represent typical forms of contemporary material culture They are usually catalogued and described in great detail but often left simply as a list At the same time they can be perceived as the results of sequences of actions the process of the funeral ceremonies or rituals that made the grave Of course this has rarely been an eitheror in archaeological practice but in the study of Viking-Age burials there has undoubtedly been an emphasis on description over analysis Many cemetery reports stop at the presentation of data without attempting to understand what it might mean across a sliding scale of social context

In countering this the Viking archaeologist can not only look to inspiration in the Anglo-Saxon world24 but also to the helpful trend of the last decade or so that has focused on materiality This concerns the study not of objects or materials but of the way in which these things actually constitute and structure behaviour25 illuminating the process whereby we make things but things also make us Our whole world and those of past peoples is full of objects that guide and constrain our actions This is a concept that of course is highly applicable to Viking burial ritual in which those performing it not only react and conform to an established pattern of behaviour (lsquowhat you do at a funeralrsquo) but also add to it and deepen its complexity at the same time The objects selected for disposal with the dead in part condition what you do with them and at the same time lsquowhat needs to be donersquo in part decides what objects are required to do it In this spirit the next stage of enquiry is to ask how variation on this scale might have been produced mdash what actually went on at a Viking funeral

DEATH ON THE VOLGA

We are fortunate here to have a written record that will be familiar mdash perhaps overly so mdash to those studying this period namely the account of an arguably Scandinavian ship cremation on the banks of the Volga witnessed in ad 922 by an Arab soldier on a northern mission from the Caliph in Baghdad He later wrote about what he had seen in a document known as the Risala (literally lsquoReportrsquo though this should not be taken as an overly official text) Readers may be surprised to see Ibn Fadlan described as a soldier rather than a scribe or religious scholar but this and many other new suggestions are some of the things coming out of the recent work by scholars of classical Arabic such as James Montgomery whose publications have revolutionised our understand-ing of this critical text26 The literature on Ibn Fadlan is vast encompassing more than two dozen variant translations into different languages alongside a

23 Eg Chapman et al 1981 Parker Pearson 1999 Williams 200324 Eg Carver 2005 Williams 200625 Eg Olsen 2003 DeMarrais et al 2004 Miller 200526 Montgomery 2000 2004a and b 2006 2008

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iety

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132 neil price

number of critical editions of the manuscripts together with hundreds of second-ary sources27 His description of the funeral alone runs to many chapters and is too long to present here in full but in its outline at least it is well known Here I wish to draw out just a few key points in his word-picture of what hap-pened at this funeral but it is first necessary to address some source-critical problems

ibn fadlan and source critique

A great many caveats have always been present in any attempt to generalise about Viking mortuary behaviour from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description Are his al-Rusıyyah really Scandinavians at all Even if they were how typical were the actions of a group of mobile traders in the early 10th century far from home and in a distinctly multi-ethnic environment Are other cultural traditions mixed up here with those of the North And can we trust what Ibn Fadlan says anyway What does he alter omit or simply misunderstand Comprehensive engagement with these problems could take a book in itself but some outline responses can be presented here with reference to the specific conclusions drawn

We know that al-Rusrsquo and al-Rusıyyah were terms applied by Arab authors in a far from consistent manner Usage varies from one writer to another though it almost always carries a connotation of lsquonorthern foreignerrsquo It is more than likely that individual travellers did not know the precise geographic origins of the lsquoRusrsquo they encountered28 Similarly it has long been understood that Rusrsquo denoted a contextualised hybrid identity developing over time akin to the Anglo-Scandinavians or Hiberno-Norse of the British Isles and the Normans on the Continent By the early 10th century when Ibn Fadlan met them on the Volga the label also probably carried greater implications of discrete ethnicity and it is worth remembering that unlike the new identities of the West this was a name that is known to have been used at the time and self-applied29 However it has never been in doubt that Rusrsquo identity included a very major Scandinavian component and the frequent passage of individuals to and from the Nordic region into the eastern rivers should be remembered the territory of European Russia was very far from being a foreign place to the Vikings A significant distinction should also be made between merchant travellers on the river systems and the more settled urbanites of Kiev and Novgorod Each textual reference should be considered in context and in the case of Ibn Fadlan it is striking how often scholars ignore the telling details of his account in favour of broad-brushed reference to the supposedly insoluble complexities of Rusrsquo ethnogenesis

To begin it is probably not irrelevant that Ibn Fadlan describes the men he encountered as tall blond or red haired with pale complexions mdash perhaps the ultimate clicheacute of Nordic appearance but nevertheless interesting The

27 This material is too large to address here but references can be found in Montgomeryrsquos work see also Price 2008b Lund Warmind 1995 and Schjoslashdt 2007 for comments from the respective viewpoints of an archaeologist and two historians of religion

28 Montgomery 200829 Shepard 2008

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133passing into poetry

details given of clothing for both men and women match the evidence of grave finds in Scandinavia As for the Rusrsquo burial rituals in the Risala if his report does not record a lsquoScandinavianrsquo funeral then why is it that almost every single material aspect of its procedures can be matched in the archaeological record of the Nordic countries but not in the cultures of the Volga These include the ship cremation itself the presence location and appearance of the chamber the specific grave-goods of weapons and food the couch-bed and its furnishings the clothing of the dead man the corpsersquos seated posture the animal killings and the death of another person as part of the ritual30 Even the more esoteric actions such as a woman being elevated by men to look over a door-like struc-ture and experiencing some kind of vision have an exact parallel in Old Norse poetry31 Taken together this very strongly suggests not only that Ibn Fadlanrsquos al-Rusıyyah mdash or at least the decision-making members of the group mdash were Scandinavians but also that their actions among the Bulgar closely resembled what they did at home

There are also more subtle hints contained in his choice of words that may help corroborate this Scandinavian interpretation The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo has a suggestive title considering that Ibn Fadlan must have been translating something he was told in a different language into a term he could understand He decided to use the Arabic Malak al-Maut which in Islam is the name of the angel that separates the soul from the body at death and who is responsible for taking the dead at their fated time It is quite a close approximation of lsquochooser of the deadrsquo or valkyrja

This is not to say that there are not foreign elements in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description The slaversquos vision over the door with its vista of a lsquoParadise beauti-ful and greenrsquo occupied by her dead family and master is actually similar to descriptions of the Khazar afterlife as Montgomery has observed32 That said it might be unlikely for Scandinavians to have Scandinavian slaves There are also practical problems that cannot be solved without more data coming to light How does Ibn Fadlan know what is going on inside the grave chamber or the tents Is someone telling him are the interiors somehow visible or is he inventing

the ten-day funeral

If we return to the detail with all this in mind it can be noted that the whole process of arranging the burial rites is so time-consuming that it is neces-sary to begin by building a temporary grave for the dead man In practical terms this is simply somewhere to keep the corpse while everything is prepared but even this modest inhumation is roofed with timber With the body are placed

30 To note only a few comparisons these include the ship burials from Oseberg Gokstad Ladby (Denmark) Hedeby and the later graves at Valsgaumlrde as well as Viking-Age funerary monuments outside Scandinavia on the Isle of Man and the Icircle de Groix (France) See Nicolaysen 1882 Broslashgger et al 1917ndash28 Bersu and Wilson 1966 Muumlller-Wille 1976 Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye 1995 Soslashrensen 2001 An early catalogue of ship burials was compiled in 1970 by Muumlller-Wille

31 In the Voumllsathornaacutettr poem contained in the late 14th-century manuscript of Flateyjarboacutek but probably much earlier in itself a woman presiding over a sexual ritual asks men to lift her lsquoover door-hinges and over door-lintelsrsquo where she looks into an ambiguous lsquootherrsquo place from which she attempts to lsquoretrieversquo a sacrifi ce see Steinsland and Vogt 1981

32 James Montgomery pers comm

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food drink and musical instruments In the context of a temporary burial it does not seem unreasonable to see these as representing entertainment something to pass away the time This in turn implies that the dead man is somehow still a presence if rather passive

There then follow ten days of activities If the events of this period are viewed as a whole there is no reason why these should be seen as leading up to the lsquorealrsquo funeral on the lsquolastrsquo day when the ship is cremated The ceremonies clearly begin the moment the man is dead and do not stop until the onlookers leave the freshly constructed mound for the last time This is a ten-day funeral at the very least

One of the first tasks to be undertaken is the making of special extremely rich clothes specifically for the deceased to be buried in (purpose-made funerary apparel has potentially worrying implications for the interpretation of excavated graves) These garments cost a whole third of the dead manrsquos wealth though presumably this means ready capital rather than his estate remembering that these are people on the move Another third finances the brewing of special funeral drinks The spending of so much wealth on the making of alcohol and more than a week of subsequent drinking may be more important than previ-ously acknowledged Ibn Fadlan notes how extraordinarily intoxicated everyone is and also that this was common practice at funerals of this stature This may be due to religious culture shock on his part but it does not necessarily render what he describes either inaccurate or atypical And yet how often is the pos-sibility entertained that some of the Viking-Age burials excavated in other parts of the Scandinavian world might have been created by people who were drunk The elements of sacred frenzy and ecstasy associated with for example the cult of Oacuteethinn are well known and may not be irrelevant here

It seems clear that the whole community was involved in the funeral with general participation in days of feasting drinking music and sex This feature of Ibn Fadlanrsquos description and especially the alcoholic and carnal aspects has led to a common view of the proceedings as a giant party in keeping with the stereotype of boisterous Vikings up for a seriously good time However this attitude again avoids engaging with the detail of the text and in some respects rather distastefully distorts what is actually going on In particular the directions of the lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo and her daughters and the rites performed all concern precise deliberate actions mdash just as observed above in the excavated graves This is anything but freeform rowdiness Similarly a party time interpretation of the alcohol consumption ignores the fact (mentioned by Ibn Fadlan) that ten full days of intoxication is literally hazardous to life As for the sex it is hard to judge the degree of coercion involved in most of the acts with the female slave but those occurring just prior to her death as the beating of staves muffles the sound of her cries can only be seen as rape The latter primarily concerns power rather than desire and it is very hard indeed to see any kind of lsquocelebra-tionrsquo in raping a screaming girl on the same bed as a ten-day-old corpse33 Not just a matter of modern moral sensibilities confronted with alien values of the

33 Variations on this theme include both lurid and apparently lsquoromanticrsquo readings an example of the latter being the writer Bruce Chatwinrsquos version of events (1990 178) in which the six men in the chamber did not rape the slave but lsquomade loversquo to her before she lsquolay back exhaustedrsquo

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135passing into poetry

past these events concern people who are all constrained by rules in ceremonies that are managed The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo is a funeral director and together with everyone else she is clearly following an agreed procedure

On the day the pyre is lit it seems that the rituals intensify and grow in complexity and without repeating the usual tropes of Risala interpretations it is still possible to draw some new conclusions Ibn Fadlanrsquos description of the deck construction lsquolike a tent made of woodrsquo is striking because we have Viking-Age camping gear from Gokstad (Norway) among other ship burial sites and the resemblance with the chamber on that vessel is exact34 There is no structural reason why these grave chambers need be triangular in cross-section so this suggests that it really may have been intended to resemble a tent an interesting kind of temporary resting place There may also be a link to the tents set up around the ship where the slave copulates with each man in turn Ibn Fadlan notes that they had been pitched there after the ship had been drawn up for burning so perhaps the tents are part of the ritual and put there for the purpose even related to the wooden version on the deck

The seated posture of the man bears close comparison with excavated burials and not just the chamber graves such as those in Birka where such rites are relatively common The woman sitting at the stern of the Kaupang boat has been mentioned above and at least one of the Vendel ships (Sweden) also had a seated corpse a man in a chair on the deck35 In Ibn Fadlanrsquos example the dead man may have been seen as sleeping in the same position adopted for the night as in the cramped bed-closets of Norse halls Interestingly apart from his weapons there is no real suggestion that any of the objects placed in the ship or the chamber actually belonged to him mdash another worrying factor for archaeologists

The deaths of the animals are interesting and quickly blur any easy catego-ries of lsquosacrificesrsquo and lsquoofferingsrsquo First the different creatures are chosen with care and have a part to enact before they are killed mdash witness the horses being run until blown and lathered It appears significant how many animals there are of different species entering the scene at specific points in a clear sequence They are participants and they are killed in precise ways that have nothing to do with the efficient methods of the slaughterhouse The horses in particular are hacked to pieces while alive presumably rearing and screaming while the dog is bisected and the birds decapitated both with knives and by tearing The body parts are also treated precisely being thrown either to one side of the ship or onto the deck

All of this echoes excavated ship burials and it is important to emphasise just how many animals might be involved On the foredeck of the Oseberg ship (Norway) was a heap of at least ten decapitated horses and three headless dogs with a further three horses and an ox beheaded outside the vessel by the prow while the severed head of a very large ox had been carefully tucked up in a bed on the deck36 At Gokstad at least 12 horses and six dogs were killed outside the ship and arranged along its sides while a peacock had been laid aft of the

34 Nicolaysen 188235 Vendel grave 9 Stolpe and Arne 1912 3736 Broslashgger et al 1917

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grave chamber37 In this as in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description too little thought has been given to what these events would have looked sounded and smelled like The graceful lines of the Oseberg ship as it is currently displayed in Oslo belie the fact that at the time of burial it must have been dripping with blood How did the animals react after the first of their number was killed It is not difficult to imagine the noise to visualise the gore covering ship objects and onlookers and to scent the blood and offal This is not an exercise in gratuitous melo-drama but an attempt to recapture an integral part of the funerary experience for those who were there Violent spectacle seems to be important something confirmed by other recent finds of Viking-Age animal killings in ritual contexts such as the hall at Hofstaethir in Iceland38

A similar pattern is drawn to an extreme in the person of the slave who the Arabic nouns imply is about 14 or 15 years of age As with the role played by the animals this girl does not really seem to be lsquogivenrsquo to anyone or anything through her death she is a component of the action It is hard to tell whether she really volunteered for her fate but Ibn Fadlan seems to have thought so The sexual themes appear central here and they take on a repetitive overtone with respect to the girl Ibn Fadlan mentions that the female slaves were sexu-ally abused by their owners This role is amplified significantly after the slave-girl is marked for a funerary death and the entire mortuary process is in fact punctuated by sexual acts In some manuscripts the girl is referred to as the dead manrsquos lsquobridersquo Finally the preparation of the ship for burning is significant not only for its elaboration but also because it confirms that in this case at least a funeral could involve both inhumation and then cremation and in effect two graves for one person How much of this has been missed in the archaeology This whole ten-day process is continuously accompanied by chanting and music that the Arab unfortunately does not understand

It is important to emphasise the brief nature of the above summary Ibn Fadlanrsquos account of one burial runs to 2000 words and he is a laconic writer Every sentence every Arabic word of his text has meaning and can be glossed or decoded with effort However in seeking to succinctly isolate key factors in the burial rites he describes one could do worse than to focus upon social inclu-sion expenditure effort violence intoxication and not least sexual performance mdash all of these in considerable quantities and expressed conspicuously Animals also seem very significant and certainly not merely as ambulatory possessions (we do not even know who they belong to) Above all we see deliberate complex action performed over time

Ibn Fadlan provides us with a key text the most elaborate eyewitness account of a (probable) Scandinavian funeral that we possess but there are also additional briefer sources that nevertheless contain fascinating points of detail resonating well with what we have so far seen Another Arab writer Ibn Rustah describes an elaborate chamber burial of a leading Rusrsquo man also in what is now Russia with deposits of food drinking vessels and coins39 Echoing the

37 Nicolaysen 188238 Lucas and McGovern 2007 detailed evidence was found here for cattle decapitation in a manner that would

have required two people and which was calculated to produce a dramatic spray of arterial blood39 Jakubovskij 1926

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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138 neil price

complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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144 neil price

fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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131passing into poetry

of the humans and animals The treatment of these Viking-Age dead is eloquent in its sheer specificity It is also vital to be wary of obvious categorisation The archaeology of death has attracted considerable theoretical debate over several decades23 but with some polarisation we can observe that burials have tradition-ally been looked at as assemblages of things or lsquograve-goodsrsquo often taken mdash problematically mdash to represent typical forms of contemporary material culture They are usually catalogued and described in great detail but often left simply as a list At the same time they can be perceived as the results of sequences of actions the process of the funeral ceremonies or rituals that made the grave Of course this has rarely been an eitheror in archaeological practice but in the study of Viking-Age burials there has undoubtedly been an emphasis on description over analysis Many cemetery reports stop at the presentation of data without attempting to understand what it might mean across a sliding scale of social context

In countering this the Viking archaeologist can not only look to inspiration in the Anglo-Saxon world24 but also to the helpful trend of the last decade or so that has focused on materiality This concerns the study not of objects or materials but of the way in which these things actually constitute and structure behaviour25 illuminating the process whereby we make things but things also make us Our whole world and those of past peoples is full of objects that guide and constrain our actions This is a concept that of course is highly applicable to Viking burial ritual in which those performing it not only react and conform to an established pattern of behaviour (lsquowhat you do at a funeralrsquo) but also add to it and deepen its complexity at the same time The objects selected for disposal with the dead in part condition what you do with them and at the same time lsquowhat needs to be donersquo in part decides what objects are required to do it In this spirit the next stage of enquiry is to ask how variation on this scale might have been produced mdash what actually went on at a Viking funeral

DEATH ON THE VOLGA

We are fortunate here to have a written record that will be familiar mdash perhaps overly so mdash to those studying this period namely the account of an arguably Scandinavian ship cremation on the banks of the Volga witnessed in ad 922 by an Arab soldier on a northern mission from the Caliph in Baghdad He later wrote about what he had seen in a document known as the Risala (literally lsquoReportrsquo though this should not be taken as an overly official text) Readers may be surprised to see Ibn Fadlan described as a soldier rather than a scribe or religious scholar but this and many other new suggestions are some of the things coming out of the recent work by scholars of classical Arabic such as James Montgomery whose publications have revolutionised our understand-ing of this critical text26 The literature on Ibn Fadlan is vast encompassing more than two dozen variant translations into different languages alongside a

23 Eg Chapman et al 1981 Parker Pearson 1999 Williams 200324 Eg Carver 2005 Williams 200625 Eg Olsen 2003 DeMarrais et al 2004 Miller 200526 Montgomery 2000 2004a and b 2006 2008

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132 neil price

number of critical editions of the manuscripts together with hundreds of second-ary sources27 His description of the funeral alone runs to many chapters and is too long to present here in full but in its outline at least it is well known Here I wish to draw out just a few key points in his word-picture of what hap-pened at this funeral but it is first necessary to address some source-critical problems

ibn fadlan and source critique

A great many caveats have always been present in any attempt to generalise about Viking mortuary behaviour from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description Are his al-Rusıyyah really Scandinavians at all Even if they were how typical were the actions of a group of mobile traders in the early 10th century far from home and in a distinctly multi-ethnic environment Are other cultural traditions mixed up here with those of the North And can we trust what Ibn Fadlan says anyway What does he alter omit or simply misunderstand Comprehensive engagement with these problems could take a book in itself but some outline responses can be presented here with reference to the specific conclusions drawn

We know that al-Rusrsquo and al-Rusıyyah were terms applied by Arab authors in a far from consistent manner Usage varies from one writer to another though it almost always carries a connotation of lsquonorthern foreignerrsquo It is more than likely that individual travellers did not know the precise geographic origins of the lsquoRusrsquo they encountered28 Similarly it has long been understood that Rusrsquo denoted a contextualised hybrid identity developing over time akin to the Anglo-Scandinavians or Hiberno-Norse of the British Isles and the Normans on the Continent By the early 10th century when Ibn Fadlan met them on the Volga the label also probably carried greater implications of discrete ethnicity and it is worth remembering that unlike the new identities of the West this was a name that is known to have been used at the time and self-applied29 However it has never been in doubt that Rusrsquo identity included a very major Scandinavian component and the frequent passage of individuals to and from the Nordic region into the eastern rivers should be remembered the territory of European Russia was very far from being a foreign place to the Vikings A significant distinction should also be made between merchant travellers on the river systems and the more settled urbanites of Kiev and Novgorod Each textual reference should be considered in context and in the case of Ibn Fadlan it is striking how often scholars ignore the telling details of his account in favour of broad-brushed reference to the supposedly insoluble complexities of Rusrsquo ethnogenesis

To begin it is probably not irrelevant that Ibn Fadlan describes the men he encountered as tall blond or red haired with pale complexions mdash perhaps the ultimate clicheacute of Nordic appearance but nevertheless interesting The

27 This material is too large to address here but references can be found in Montgomeryrsquos work see also Price 2008b Lund Warmind 1995 and Schjoslashdt 2007 for comments from the respective viewpoints of an archaeologist and two historians of religion

28 Montgomery 200829 Shepard 2008

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133passing into poetry

details given of clothing for both men and women match the evidence of grave finds in Scandinavia As for the Rusrsquo burial rituals in the Risala if his report does not record a lsquoScandinavianrsquo funeral then why is it that almost every single material aspect of its procedures can be matched in the archaeological record of the Nordic countries but not in the cultures of the Volga These include the ship cremation itself the presence location and appearance of the chamber the specific grave-goods of weapons and food the couch-bed and its furnishings the clothing of the dead man the corpsersquos seated posture the animal killings and the death of another person as part of the ritual30 Even the more esoteric actions such as a woman being elevated by men to look over a door-like struc-ture and experiencing some kind of vision have an exact parallel in Old Norse poetry31 Taken together this very strongly suggests not only that Ibn Fadlanrsquos al-Rusıyyah mdash or at least the decision-making members of the group mdash were Scandinavians but also that their actions among the Bulgar closely resembled what they did at home

There are also more subtle hints contained in his choice of words that may help corroborate this Scandinavian interpretation The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo has a suggestive title considering that Ibn Fadlan must have been translating something he was told in a different language into a term he could understand He decided to use the Arabic Malak al-Maut which in Islam is the name of the angel that separates the soul from the body at death and who is responsible for taking the dead at their fated time It is quite a close approximation of lsquochooser of the deadrsquo or valkyrja

This is not to say that there are not foreign elements in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description The slaversquos vision over the door with its vista of a lsquoParadise beauti-ful and greenrsquo occupied by her dead family and master is actually similar to descriptions of the Khazar afterlife as Montgomery has observed32 That said it might be unlikely for Scandinavians to have Scandinavian slaves There are also practical problems that cannot be solved without more data coming to light How does Ibn Fadlan know what is going on inside the grave chamber or the tents Is someone telling him are the interiors somehow visible or is he inventing

the ten-day funeral

If we return to the detail with all this in mind it can be noted that the whole process of arranging the burial rites is so time-consuming that it is neces-sary to begin by building a temporary grave for the dead man In practical terms this is simply somewhere to keep the corpse while everything is prepared but even this modest inhumation is roofed with timber With the body are placed

30 To note only a few comparisons these include the ship burials from Oseberg Gokstad Ladby (Denmark) Hedeby and the later graves at Valsgaumlrde as well as Viking-Age funerary monuments outside Scandinavia on the Isle of Man and the Icircle de Groix (France) See Nicolaysen 1882 Broslashgger et al 1917ndash28 Bersu and Wilson 1966 Muumlller-Wille 1976 Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye 1995 Soslashrensen 2001 An early catalogue of ship burials was compiled in 1970 by Muumlller-Wille

31 In the Voumllsathornaacutettr poem contained in the late 14th-century manuscript of Flateyjarboacutek but probably much earlier in itself a woman presiding over a sexual ritual asks men to lift her lsquoover door-hinges and over door-lintelsrsquo where she looks into an ambiguous lsquootherrsquo place from which she attempts to lsquoretrieversquo a sacrifi ce see Steinsland and Vogt 1981

32 James Montgomery pers comm

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134 neil price

food drink and musical instruments In the context of a temporary burial it does not seem unreasonable to see these as representing entertainment something to pass away the time This in turn implies that the dead man is somehow still a presence if rather passive

There then follow ten days of activities If the events of this period are viewed as a whole there is no reason why these should be seen as leading up to the lsquorealrsquo funeral on the lsquolastrsquo day when the ship is cremated The ceremonies clearly begin the moment the man is dead and do not stop until the onlookers leave the freshly constructed mound for the last time This is a ten-day funeral at the very least

One of the first tasks to be undertaken is the making of special extremely rich clothes specifically for the deceased to be buried in (purpose-made funerary apparel has potentially worrying implications for the interpretation of excavated graves) These garments cost a whole third of the dead manrsquos wealth though presumably this means ready capital rather than his estate remembering that these are people on the move Another third finances the brewing of special funeral drinks The spending of so much wealth on the making of alcohol and more than a week of subsequent drinking may be more important than previ-ously acknowledged Ibn Fadlan notes how extraordinarily intoxicated everyone is and also that this was common practice at funerals of this stature This may be due to religious culture shock on his part but it does not necessarily render what he describes either inaccurate or atypical And yet how often is the pos-sibility entertained that some of the Viking-Age burials excavated in other parts of the Scandinavian world might have been created by people who were drunk The elements of sacred frenzy and ecstasy associated with for example the cult of Oacuteethinn are well known and may not be irrelevant here

It seems clear that the whole community was involved in the funeral with general participation in days of feasting drinking music and sex This feature of Ibn Fadlanrsquos description and especially the alcoholic and carnal aspects has led to a common view of the proceedings as a giant party in keeping with the stereotype of boisterous Vikings up for a seriously good time However this attitude again avoids engaging with the detail of the text and in some respects rather distastefully distorts what is actually going on In particular the directions of the lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo and her daughters and the rites performed all concern precise deliberate actions mdash just as observed above in the excavated graves This is anything but freeform rowdiness Similarly a party time interpretation of the alcohol consumption ignores the fact (mentioned by Ibn Fadlan) that ten full days of intoxication is literally hazardous to life As for the sex it is hard to judge the degree of coercion involved in most of the acts with the female slave but those occurring just prior to her death as the beating of staves muffles the sound of her cries can only be seen as rape The latter primarily concerns power rather than desire and it is very hard indeed to see any kind of lsquocelebra-tionrsquo in raping a screaming girl on the same bed as a ten-day-old corpse33 Not just a matter of modern moral sensibilities confronted with alien values of the

33 Variations on this theme include both lurid and apparently lsquoromanticrsquo readings an example of the latter being the writer Bruce Chatwinrsquos version of events (1990 178) in which the six men in the chamber did not rape the slave but lsquomade loversquo to her before she lsquolay back exhaustedrsquo

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135passing into poetry

past these events concern people who are all constrained by rules in ceremonies that are managed The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo is a funeral director and together with everyone else she is clearly following an agreed procedure

On the day the pyre is lit it seems that the rituals intensify and grow in complexity and without repeating the usual tropes of Risala interpretations it is still possible to draw some new conclusions Ibn Fadlanrsquos description of the deck construction lsquolike a tent made of woodrsquo is striking because we have Viking-Age camping gear from Gokstad (Norway) among other ship burial sites and the resemblance with the chamber on that vessel is exact34 There is no structural reason why these grave chambers need be triangular in cross-section so this suggests that it really may have been intended to resemble a tent an interesting kind of temporary resting place There may also be a link to the tents set up around the ship where the slave copulates with each man in turn Ibn Fadlan notes that they had been pitched there after the ship had been drawn up for burning so perhaps the tents are part of the ritual and put there for the purpose even related to the wooden version on the deck

The seated posture of the man bears close comparison with excavated burials and not just the chamber graves such as those in Birka where such rites are relatively common The woman sitting at the stern of the Kaupang boat has been mentioned above and at least one of the Vendel ships (Sweden) also had a seated corpse a man in a chair on the deck35 In Ibn Fadlanrsquos example the dead man may have been seen as sleeping in the same position adopted for the night as in the cramped bed-closets of Norse halls Interestingly apart from his weapons there is no real suggestion that any of the objects placed in the ship or the chamber actually belonged to him mdash another worrying factor for archaeologists

The deaths of the animals are interesting and quickly blur any easy catego-ries of lsquosacrificesrsquo and lsquoofferingsrsquo First the different creatures are chosen with care and have a part to enact before they are killed mdash witness the horses being run until blown and lathered It appears significant how many animals there are of different species entering the scene at specific points in a clear sequence They are participants and they are killed in precise ways that have nothing to do with the efficient methods of the slaughterhouse The horses in particular are hacked to pieces while alive presumably rearing and screaming while the dog is bisected and the birds decapitated both with knives and by tearing The body parts are also treated precisely being thrown either to one side of the ship or onto the deck

All of this echoes excavated ship burials and it is important to emphasise just how many animals might be involved On the foredeck of the Oseberg ship (Norway) was a heap of at least ten decapitated horses and three headless dogs with a further three horses and an ox beheaded outside the vessel by the prow while the severed head of a very large ox had been carefully tucked up in a bed on the deck36 At Gokstad at least 12 horses and six dogs were killed outside the ship and arranged along its sides while a peacock had been laid aft of the

34 Nicolaysen 188235 Vendel grave 9 Stolpe and Arne 1912 3736 Broslashgger et al 1917

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grave chamber37 In this as in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description too little thought has been given to what these events would have looked sounded and smelled like The graceful lines of the Oseberg ship as it is currently displayed in Oslo belie the fact that at the time of burial it must have been dripping with blood How did the animals react after the first of their number was killed It is not difficult to imagine the noise to visualise the gore covering ship objects and onlookers and to scent the blood and offal This is not an exercise in gratuitous melo-drama but an attempt to recapture an integral part of the funerary experience for those who were there Violent spectacle seems to be important something confirmed by other recent finds of Viking-Age animal killings in ritual contexts such as the hall at Hofstaethir in Iceland38

A similar pattern is drawn to an extreme in the person of the slave who the Arabic nouns imply is about 14 or 15 years of age As with the role played by the animals this girl does not really seem to be lsquogivenrsquo to anyone or anything through her death she is a component of the action It is hard to tell whether she really volunteered for her fate but Ibn Fadlan seems to have thought so The sexual themes appear central here and they take on a repetitive overtone with respect to the girl Ibn Fadlan mentions that the female slaves were sexu-ally abused by their owners This role is amplified significantly after the slave-girl is marked for a funerary death and the entire mortuary process is in fact punctuated by sexual acts In some manuscripts the girl is referred to as the dead manrsquos lsquobridersquo Finally the preparation of the ship for burning is significant not only for its elaboration but also because it confirms that in this case at least a funeral could involve both inhumation and then cremation and in effect two graves for one person How much of this has been missed in the archaeology This whole ten-day process is continuously accompanied by chanting and music that the Arab unfortunately does not understand

It is important to emphasise the brief nature of the above summary Ibn Fadlanrsquos account of one burial runs to 2000 words and he is a laconic writer Every sentence every Arabic word of his text has meaning and can be glossed or decoded with effort However in seeking to succinctly isolate key factors in the burial rites he describes one could do worse than to focus upon social inclu-sion expenditure effort violence intoxication and not least sexual performance mdash all of these in considerable quantities and expressed conspicuously Animals also seem very significant and certainly not merely as ambulatory possessions (we do not even know who they belong to) Above all we see deliberate complex action performed over time

Ibn Fadlan provides us with a key text the most elaborate eyewitness account of a (probable) Scandinavian funeral that we possess but there are also additional briefer sources that nevertheless contain fascinating points of detail resonating well with what we have so far seen Another Arab writer Ibn Rustah describes an elaborate chamber burial of a leading Rusrsquo man also in what is now Russia with deposits of food drinking vessels and coins39 Echoing the

37 Nicolaysen 188238 Lucas and McGovern 2007 detailed evidence was found here for cattle decapitation in a manner that would

have required two people and which was calculated to produce a dramatic spray of arterial blood39 Jakubovskij 1926

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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138 neil price

complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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144 neil price

fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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150 neil price

supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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132 neil price

number of critical editions of the manuscripts together with hundreds of second-ary sources27 His description of the funeral alone runs to many chapters and is too long to present here in full but in its outline at least it is well known Here I wish to draw out just a few key points in his word-picture of what hap-pened at this funeral but it is first necessary to address some source-critical problems

ibn fadlan and source critique

A great many caveats have always been present in any attempt to generalise about Viking mortuary behaviour from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description Are his al-Rusıyyah really Scandinavians at all Even if they were how typical were the actions of a group of mobile traders in the early 10th century far from home and in a distinctly multi-ethnic environment Are other cultural traditions mixed up here with those of the North And can we trust what Ibn Fadlan says anyway What does he alter omit or simply misunderstand Comprehensive engagement with these problems could take a book in itself but some outline responses can be presented here with reference to the specific conclusions drawn

We know that al-Rusrsquo and al-Rusıyyah were terms applied by Arab authors in a far from consistent manner Usage varies from one writer to another though it almost always carries a connotation of lsquonorthern foreignerrsquo It is more than likely that individual travellers did not know the precise geographic origins of the lsquoRusrsquo they encountered28 Similarly it has long been understood that Rusrsquo denoted a contextualised hybrid identity developing over time akin to the Anglo-Scandinavians or Hiberno-Norse of the British Isles and the Normans on the Continent By the early 10th century when Ibn Fadlan met them on the Volga the label also probably carried greater implications of discrete ethnicity and it is worth remembering that unlike the new identities of the West this was a name that is known to have been used at the time and self-applied29 However it has never been in doubt that Rusrsquo identity included a very major Scandinavian component and the frequent passage of individuals to and from the Nordic region into the eastern rivers should be remembered the territory of European Russia was very far from being a foreign place to the Vikings A significant distinction should also be made between merchant travellers on the river systems and the more settled urbanites of Kiev and Novgorod Each textual reference should be considered in context and in the case of Ibn Fadlan it is striking how often scholars ignore the telling details of his account in favour of broad-brushed reference to the supposedly insoluble complexities of Rusrsquo ethnogenesis

To begin it is probably not irrelevant that Ibn Fadlan describes the men he encountered as tall blond or red haired with pale complexions mdash perhaps the ultimate clicheacute of Nordic appearance but nevertheless interesting The

27 This material is too large to address here but references can be found in Montgomeryrsquos work see also Price 2008b Lund Warmind 1995 and Schjoslashdt 2007 for comments from the respective viewpoints of an archaeologist and two historians of religion

28 Montgomery 200829 Shepard 2008

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133passing into poetry

details given of clothing for both men and women match the evidence of grave finds in Scandinavia As for the Rusrsquo burial rituals in the Risala if his report does not record a lsquoScandinavianrsquo funeral then why is it that almost every single material aspect of its procedures can be matched in the archaeological record of the Nordic countries but not in the cultures of the Volga These include the ship cremation itself the presence location and appearance of the chamber the specific grave-goods of weapons and food the couch-bed and its furnishings the clothing of the dead man the corpsersquos seated posture the animal killings and the death of another person as part of the ritual30 Even the more esoteric actions such as a woman being elevated by men to look over a door-like struc-ture and experiencing some kind of vision have an exact parallel in Old Norse poetry31 Taken together this very strongly suggests not only that Ibn Fadlanrsquos al-Rusıyyah mdash or at least the decision-making members of the group mdash were Scandinavians but also that their actions among the Bulgar closely resembled what they did at home

There are also more subtle hints contained in his choice of words that may help corroborate this Scandinavian interpretation The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo has a suggestive title considering that Ibn Fadlan must have been translating something he was told in a different language into a term he could understand He decided to use the Arabic Malak al-Maut which in Islam is the name of the angel that separates the soul from the body at death and who is responsible for taking the dead at their fated time It is quite a close approximation of lsquochooser of the deadrsquo or valkyrja

This is not to say that there are not foreign elements in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description The slaversquos vision over the door with its vista of a lsquoParadise beauti-ful and greenrsquo occupied by her dead family and master is actually similar to descriptions of the Khazar afterlife as Montgomery has observed32 That said it might be unlikely for Scandinavians to have Scandinavian slaves There are also practical problems that cannot be solved without more data coming to light How does Ibn Fadlan know what is going on inside the grave chamber or the tents Is someone telling him are the interiors somehow visible or is he inventing

the ten-day funeral

If we return to the detail with all this in mind it can be noted that the whole process of arranging the burial rites is so time-consuming that it is neces-sary to begin by building a temporary grave for the dead man In practical terms this is simply somewhere to keep the corpse while everything is prepared but even this modest inhumation is roofed with timber With the body are placed

30 To note only a few comparisons these include the ship burials from Oseberg Gokstad Ladby (Denmark) Hedeby and the later graves at Valsgaumlrde as well as Viking-Age funerary monuments outside Scandinavia on the Isle of Man and the Icircle de Groix (France) See Nicolaysen 1882 Broslashgger et al 1917ndash28 Bersu and Wilson 1966 Muumlller-Wille 1976 Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye 1995 Soslashrensen 2001 An early catalogue of ship burials was compiled in 1970 by Muumlller-Wille

31 In the Voumllsathornaacutettr poem contained in the late 14th-century manuscript of Flateyjarboacutek but probably much earlier in itself a woman presiding over a sexual ritual asks men to lift her lsquoover door-hinges and over door-lintelsrsquo where she looks into an ambiguous lsquootherrsquo place from which she attempts to lsquoretrieversquo a sacrifi ce see Steinsland and Vogt 1981

32 James Montgomery pers comm

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food drink and musical instruments In the context of a temporary burial it does not seem unreasonable to see these as representing entertainment something to pass away the time This in turn implies that the dead man is somehow still a presence if rather passive

There then follow ten days of activities If the events of this period are viewed as a whole there is no reason why these should be seen as leading up to the lsquorealrsquo funeral on the lsquolastrsquo day when the ship is cremated The ceremonies clearly begin the moment the man is dead and do not stop until the onlookers leave the freshly constructed mound for the last time This is a ten-day funeral at the very least

One of the first tasks to be undertaken is the making of special extremely rich clothes specifically for the deceased to be buried in (purpose-made funerary apparel has potentially worrying implications for the interpretation of excavated graves) These garments cost a whole third of the dead manrsquos wealth though presumably this means ready capital rather than his estate remembering that these are people on the move Another third finances the brewing of special funeral drinks The spending of so much wealth on the making of alcohol and more than a week of subsequent drinking may be more important than previ-ously acknowledged Ibn Fadlan notes how extraordinarily intoxicated everyone is and also that this was common practice at funerals of this stature This may be due to religious culture shock on his part but it does not necessarily render what he describes either inaccurate or atypical And yet how often is the pos-sibility entertained that some of the Viking-Age burials excavated in other parts of the Scandinavian world might have been created by people who were drunk The elements of sacred frenzy and ecstasy associated with for example the cult of Oacuteethinn are well known and may not be irrelevant here

It seems clear that the whole community was involved in the funeral with general participation in days of feasting drinking music and sex This feature of Ibn Fadlanrsquos description and especially the alcoholic and carnal aspects has led to a common view of the proceedings as a giant party in keeping with the stereotype of boisterous Vikings up for a seriously good time However this attitude again avoids engaging with the detail of the text and in some respects rather distastefully distorts what is actually going on In particular the directions of the lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo and her daughters and the rites performed all concern precise deliberate actions mdash just as observed above in the excavated graves This is anything but freeform rowdiness Similarly a party time interpretation of the alcohol consumption ignores the fact (mentioned by Ibn Fadlan) that ten full days of intoxication is literally hazardous to life As for the sex it is hard to judge the degree of coercion involved in most of the acts with the female slave but those occurring just prior to her death as the beating of staves muffles the sound of her cries can only be seen as rape The latter primarily concerns power rather than desire and it is very hard indeed to see any kind of lsquocelebra-tionrsquo in raping a screaming girl on the same bed as a ten-day-old corpse33 Not just a matter of modern moral sensibilities confronted with alien values of the

33 Variations on this theme include both lurid and apparently lsquoromanticrsquo readings an example of the latter being the writer Bruce Chatwinrsquos version of events (1990 178) in which the six men in the chamber did not rape the slave but lsquomade loversquo to her before she lsquolay back exhaustedrsquo

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135passing into poetry

past these events concern people who are all constrained by rules in ceremonies that are managed The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo is a funeral director and together with everyone else she is clearly following an agreed procedure

On the day the pyre is lit it seems that the rituals intensify and grow in complexity and without repeating the usual tropes of Risala interpretations it is still possible to draw some new conclusions Ibn Fadlanrsquos description of the deck construction lsquolike a tent made of woodrsquo is striking because we have Viking-Age camping gear from Gokstad (Norway) among other ship burial sites and the resemblance with the chamber on that vessel is exact34 There is no structural reason why these grave chambers need be triangular in cross-section so this suggests that it really may have been intended to resemble a tent an interesting kind of temporary resting place There may also be a link to the tents set up around the ship where the slave copulates with each man in turn Ibn Fadlan notes that they had been pitched there after the ship had been drawn up for burning so perhaps the tents are part of the ritual and put there for the purpose even related to the wooden version on the deck

The seated posture of the man bears close comparison with excavated burials and not just the chamber graves such as those in Birka where such rites are relatively common The woman sitting at the stern of the Kaupang boat has been mentioned above and at least one of the Vendel ships (Sweden) also had a seated corpse a man in a chair on the deck35 In Ibn Fadlanrsquos example the dead man may have been seen as sleeping in the same position adopted for the night as in the cramped bed-closets of Norse halls Interestingly apart from his weapons there is no real suggestion that any of the objects placed in the ship or the chamber actually belonged to him mdash another worrying factor for archaeologists

The deaths of the animals are interesting and quickly blur any easy catego-ries of lsquosacrificesrsquo and lsquoofferingsrsquo First the different creatures are chosen with care and have a part to enact before they are killed mdash witness the horses being run until blown and lathered It appears significant how many animals there are of different species entering the scene at specific points in a clear sequence They are participants and they are killed in precise ways that have nothing to do with the efficient methods of the slaughterhouse The horses in particular are hacked to pieces while alive presumably rearing and screaming while the dog is bisected and the birds decapitated both with knives and by tearing The body parts are also treated precisely being thrown either to one side of the ship or onto the deck

All of this echoes excavated ship burials and it is important to emphasise just how many animals might be involved On the foredeck of the Oseberg ship (Norway) was a heap of at least ten decapitated horses and three headless dogs with a further three horses and an ox beheaded outside the vessel by the prow while the severed head of a very large ox had been carefully tucked up in a bed on the deck36 At Gokstad at least 12 horses and six dogs were killed outside the ship and arranged along its sides while a peacock had been laid aft of the

34 Nicolaysen 188235 Vendel grave 9 Stolpe and Arne 1912 3736 Broslashgger et al 1917

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grave chamber37 In this as in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description too little thought has been given to what these events would have looked sounded and smelled like The graceful lines of the Oseberg ship as it is currently displayed in Oslo belie the fact that at the time of burial it must have been dripping with blood How did the animals react after the first of their number was killed It is not difficult to imagine the noise to visualise the gore covering ship objects and onlookers and to scent the blood and offal This is not an exercise in gratuitous melo-drama but an attempt to recapture an integral part of the funerary experience for those who were there Violent spectacle seems to be important something confirmed by other recent finds of Viking-Age animal killings in ritual contexts such as the hall at Hofstaethir in Iceland38

A similar pattern is drawn to an extreme in the person of the slave who the Arabic nouns imply is about 14 or 15 years of age As with the role played by the animals this girl does not really seem to be lsquogivenrsquo to anyone or anything through her death she is a component of the action It is hard to tell whether she really volunteered for her fate but Ibn Fadlan seems to have thought so The sexual themes appear central here and they take on a repetitive overtone with respect to the girl Ibn Fadlan mentions that the female slaves were sexu-ally abused by their owners This role is amplified significantly after the slave-girl is marked for a funerary death and the entire mortuary process is in fact punctuated by sexual acts In some manuscripts the girl is referred to as the dead manrsquos lsquobridersquo Finally the preparation of the ship for burning is significant not only for its elaboration but also because it confirms that in this case at least a funeral could involve both inhumation and then cremation and in effect two graves for one person How much of this has been missed in the archaeology This whole ten-day process is continuously accompanied by chanting and music that the Arab unfortunately does not understand

It is important to emphasise the brief nature of the above summary Ibn Fadlanrsquos account of one burial runs to 2000 words and he is a laconic writer Every sentence every Arabic word of his text has meaning and can be glossed or decoded with effort However in seeking to succinctly isolate key factors in the burial rites he describes one could do worse than to focus upon social inclu-sion expenditure effort violence intoxication and not least sexual performance mdash all of these in considerable quantities and expressed conspicuously Animals also seem very significant and certainly not merely as ambulatory possessions (we do not even know who they belong to) Above all we see deliberate complex action performed over time

Ibn Fadlan provides us with a key text the most elaborate eyewitness account of a (probable) Scandinavian funeral that we possess but there are also additional briefer sources that nevertheless contain fascinating points of detail resonating well with what we have so far seen Another Arab writer Ibn Rustah describes an elaborate chamber burial of a leading Rusrsquo man also in what is now Russia with deposits of food drinking vessels and coins39 Echoing the

37 Nicolaysen 188238 Lucas and McGovern 2007 detailed evidence was found here for cattle decapitation in a manner that would

have required two people and which was calculated to produce a dramatic spray of arterial blood39 Jakubovskij 1926

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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138 neil price

complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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144 neil price

fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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133passing into poetry

details given of clothing for both men and women match the evidence of grave finds in Scandinavia As for the Rusrsquo burial rituals in the Risala if his report does not record a lsquoScandinavianrsquo funeral then why is it that almost every single material aspect of its procedures can be matched in the archaeological record of the Nordic countries but not in the cultures of the Volga These include the ship cremation itself the presence location and appearance of the chamber the specific grave-goods of weapons and food the couch-bed and its furnishings the clothing of the dead man the corpsersquos seated posture the animal killings and the death of another person as part of the ritual30 Even the more esoteric actions such as a woman being elevated by men to look over a door-like struc-ture and experiencing some kind of vision have an exact parallel in Old Norse poetry31 Taken together this very strongly suggests not only that Ibn Fadlanrsquos al-Rusıyyah mdash or at least the decision-making members of the group mdash were Scandinavians but also that their actions among the Bulgar closely resembled what they did at home

There are also more subtle hints contained in his choice of words that may help corroborate this Scandinavian interpretation The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo has a suggestive title considering that Ibn Fadlan must have been translating something he was told in a different language into a term he could understand He decided to use the Arabic Malak al-Maut which in Islam is the name of the angel that separates the soul from the body at death and who is responsible for taking the dead at their fated time It is quite a close approximation of lsquochooser of the deadrsquo or valkyrja

This is not to say that there are not foreign elements in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description The slaversquos vision over the door with its vista of a lsquoParadise beauti-ful and greenrsquo occupied by her dead family and master is actually similar to descriptions of the Khazar afterlife as Montgomery has observed32 That said it might be unlikely for Scandinavians to have Scandinavian slaves There are also practical problems that cannot be solved without more data coming to light How does Ibn Fadlan know what is going on inside the grave chamber or the tents Is someone telling him are the interiors somehow visible or is he inventing

the ten-day funeral

If we return to the detail with all this in mind it can be noted that the whole process of arranging the burial rites is so time-consuming that it is neces-sary to begin by building a temporary grave for the dead man In practical terms this is simply somewhere to keep the corpse while everything is prepared but even this modest inhumation is roofed with timber With the body are placed

30 To note only a few comparisons these include the ship burials from Oseberg Gokstad Ladby (Denmark) Hedeby and the later graves at Valsgaumlrde as well as Viking-Age funerary monuments outside Scandinavia on the Isle of Man and the Icircle de Groix (France) See Nicolaysen 1882 Broslashgger et al 1917ndash28 Bersu and Wilson 1966 Muumlller-Wille 1976 Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye 1995 Soslashrensen 2001 An early catalogue of ship burials was compiled in 1970 by Muumlller-Wille

31 In the Voumllsathornaacutettr poem contained in the late 14th-century manuscript of Flateyjarboacutek but probably much earlier in itself a woman presiding over a sexual ritual asks men to lift her lsquoover door-hinges and over door-lintelsrsquo where she looks into an ambiguous lsquootherrsquo place from which she attempts to lsquoretrieversquo a sacrifi ce see Steinsland and Vogt 1981

32 James Montgomery pers comm

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food drink and musical instruments In the context of a temporary burial it does not seem unreasonable to see these as representing entertainment something to pass away the time This in turn implies that the dead man is somehow still a presence if rather passive

There then follow ten days of activities If the events of this period are viewed as a whole there is no reason why these should be seen as leading up to the lsquorealrsquo funeral on the lsquolastrsquo day when the ship is cremated The ceremonies clearly begin the moment the man is dead and do not stop until the onlookers leave the freshly constructed mound for the last time This is a ten-day funeral at the very least

One of the first tasks to be undertaken is the making of special extremely rich clothes specifically for the deceased to be buried in (purpose-made funerary apparel has potentially worrying implications for the interpretation of excavated graves) These garments cost a whole third of the dead manrsquos wealth though presumably this means ready capital rather than his estate remembering that these are people on the move Another third finances the brewing of special funeral drinks The spending of so much wealth on the making of alcohol and more than a week of subsequent drinking may be more important than previ-ously acknowledged Ibn Fadlan notes how extraordinarily intoxicated everyone is and also that this was common practice at funerals of this stature This may be due to religious culture shock on his part but it does not necessarily render what he describes either inaccurate or atypical And yet how often is the pos-sibility entertained that some of the Viking-Age burials excavated in other parts of the Scandinavian world might have been created by people who were drunk The elements of sacred frenzy and ecstasy associated with for example the cult of Oacuteethinn are well known and may not be irrelevant here

It seems clear that the whole community was involved in the funeral with general participation in days of feasting drinking music and sex This feature of Ibn Fadlanrsquos description and especially the alcoholic and carnal aspects has led to a common view of the proceedings as a giant party in keeping with the stereotype of boisterous Vikings up for a seriously good time However this attitude again avoids engaging with the detail of the text and in some respects rather distastefully distorts what is actually going on In particular the directions of the lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo and her daughters and the rites performed all concern precise deliberate actions mdash just as observed above in the excavated graves This is anything but freeform rowdiness Similarly a party time interpretation of the alcohol consumption ignores the fact (mentioned by Ibn Fadlan) that ten full days of intoxication is literally hazardous to life As for the sex it is hard to judge the degree of coercion involved in most of the acts with the female slave but those occurring just prior to her death as the beating of staves muffles the sound of her cries can only be seen as rape The latter primarily concerns power rather than desire and it is very hard indeed to see any kind of lsquocelebra-tionrsquo in raping a screaming girl on the same bed as a ten-day-old corpse33 Not just a matter of modern moral sensibilities confronted with alien values of the

33 Variations on this theme include both lurid and apparently lsquoromanticrsquo readings an example of the latter being the writer Bruce Chatwinrsquos version of events (1990 178) in which the six men in the chamber did not rape the slave but lsquomade loversquo to her before she lsquolay back exhaustedrsquo

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135passing into poetry

past these events concern people who are all constrained by rules in ceremonies that are managed The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo is a funeral director and together with everyone else she is clearly following an agreed procedure

On the day the pyre is lit it seems that the rituals intensify and grow in complexity and without repeating the usual tropes of Risala interpretations it is still possible to draw some new conclusions Ibn Fadlanrsquos description of the deck construction lsquolike a tent made of woodrsquo is striking because we have Viking-Age camping gear from Gokstad (Norway) among other ship burial sites and the resemblance with the chamber on that vessel is exact34 There is no structural reason why these grave chambers need be triangular in cross-section so this suggests that it really may have been intended to resemble a tent an interesting kind of temporary resting place There may also be a link to the tents set up around the ship where the slave copulates with each man in turn Ibn Fadlan notes that they had been pitched there after the ship had been drawn up for burning so perhaps the tents are part of the ritual and put there for the purpose even related to the wooden version on the deck

The seated posture of the man bears close comparison with excavated burials and not just the chamber graves such as those in Birka where such rites are relatively common The woman sitting at the stern of the Kaupang boat has been mentioned above and at least one of the Vendel ships (Sweden) also had a seated corpse a man in a chair on the deck35 In Ibn Fadlanrsquos example the dead man may have been seen as sleeping in the same position adopted for the night as in the cramped bed-closets of Norse halls Interestingly apart from his weapons there is no real suggestion that any of the objects placed in the ship or the chamber actually belonged to him mdash another worrying factor for archaeologists

The deaths of the animals are interesting and quickly blur any easy catego-ries of lsquosacrificesrsquo and lsquoofferingsrsquo First the different creatures are chosen with care and have a part to enact before they are killed mdash witness the horses being run until blown and lathered It appears significant how many animals there are of different species entering the scene at specific points in a clear sequence They are participants and they are killed in precise ways that have nothing to do with the efficient methods of the slaughterhouse The horses in particular are hacked to pieces while alive presumably rearing and screaming while the dog is bisected and the birds decapitated both with knives and by tearing The body parts are also treated precisely being thrown either to one side of the ship or onto the deck

All of this echoes excavated ship burials and it is important to emphasise just how many animals might be involved On the foredeck of the Oseberg ship (Norway) was a heap of at least ten decapitated horses and three headless dogs with a further three horses and an ox beheaded outside the vessel by the prow while the severed head of a very large ox had been carefully tucked up in a bed on the deck36 At Gokstad at least 12 horses and six dogs were killed outside the ship and arranged along its sides while a peacock had been laid aft of the

34 Nicolaysen 188235 Vendel grave 9 Stolpe and Arne 1912 3736 Broslashgger et al 1917

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136 neil price

grave chamber37 In this as in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description too little thought has been given to what these events would have looked sounded and smelled like The graceful lines of the Oseberg ship as it is currently displayed in Oslo belie the fact that at the time of burial it must have been dripping with blood How did the animals react after the first of their number was killed It is not difficult to imagine the noise to visualise the gore covering ship objects and onlookers and to scent the blood and offal This is not an exercise in gratuitous melo-drama but an attempt to recapture an integral part of the funerary experience for those who were there Violent spectacle seems to be important something confirmed by other recent finds of Viking-Age animal killings in ritual contexts such as the hall at Hofstaethir in Iceland38

A similar pattern is drawn to an extreme in the person of the slave who the Arabic nouns imply is about 14 or 15 years of age As with the role played by the animals this girl does not really seem to be lsquogivenrsquo to anyone or anything through her death she is a component of the action It is hard to tell whether she really volunteered for her fate but Ibn Fadlan seems to have thought so The sexual themes appear central here and they take on a repetitive overtone with respect to the girl Ibn Fadlan mentions that the female slaves were sexu-ally abused by their owners This role is amplified significantly after the slave-girl is marked for a funerary death and the entire mortuary process is in fact punctuated by sexual acts In some manuscripts the girl is referred to as the dead manrsquos lsquobridersquo Finally the preparation of the ship for burning is significant not only for its elaboration but also because it confirms that in this case at least a funeral could involve both inhumation and then cremation and in effect two graves for one person How much of this has been missed in the archaeology This whole ten-day process is continuously accompanied by chanting and music that the Arab unfortunately does not understand

It is important to emphasise the brief nature of the above summary Ibn Fadlanrsquos account of one burial runs to 2000 words and he is a laconic writer Every sentence every Arabic word of his text has meaning and can be glossed or decoded with effort However in seeking to succinctly isolate key factors in the burial rites he describes one could do worse than to focus upon social inclu-sion expenditure effort violence intoxication and not least sexual performance mdash all of these in considerable quantities and expressed conspicuously Animals also seem very significant and certainly not merely as ambulatory possessions (we do not even know who they belong to) Above all we see deliberate complex action performed over time

Ibn Fadlan provides us with a key text the most elaborate eyewitness account of a (probable) Scandinavian funeral that we possess but there are also additional briefer sources that nevertheless contain fascinating points of detail resonating well with what we have so far seen Another Arab writer Ibn Rustah describes an elaborate chamber burial of a leading Rusrsquo man also in what is now Russia with deposits of food drinking vessels and coins39 Echoing the

37 Nicolaysen 188238 Lucas and McGovern 2007 detailed evidence was found here for cattle decapitation in a manner that would

have required two people and which was calculated to produce a dramatic spray of arterial blood39 Jakubovskij 1926

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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138 neil price

complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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food drink and musical instruments In the context of a temporary burial it does not seem unreasonable to see these as representing entertainment something to pass away the time This in turn implies that the dead man is somehow still a presence if rather passive

There then follow ten days of activities If the events of this period are viewed as a whole there is no reason why these should be seen as leading up to the lsquorealrsquo funeral on the lsquolastrsquo day when the ship is cremated The ceremonies clearly begin the moment the man is dead and do not stop until the onlookers leave the freshly constructed mound for the last time This is a ten-day funeral at the very least

One of the first tasks to be undertaken is the making of special extremely rich clothes specifically for the deceased to be buried in (purpose-made funerary apparel has potentially worrying implications for the interpretation of excavated graves) These garments cost a whole third of the dead manrsquos wealth though presumably this means ready capital rather than his estate remembering that these are people on the move Another third finances the brewing of special funeral drinks The spending of so much wealth on the making of alcohol and more than a week of subsequent drinking may be more important than previ-ously acknowledged Ibn Fadlan notes how extraordinarily intoxicated everyone is and also that this was common practice at funerals of this stature This may be due to religious culture shock on his part but it does not necessarily render what he describes either inaccurate or atypical And yet how often is the pos-sibility entertained that some of the Viking-Age burials excavated in other parts of the Scandinavian world might have been created by people who were drunk The elements of sacred frenzy and ecstasy associated with for example the cult of Oacuteethinn are well known and may not be irrelevant here

It seems clear that the whole community was involved in the funeral with general participation in days of feasting drinking music and sex This feature of Ibn Fadlanrsquos description and especially the alcoholic and carnal aspects has led to a common view of the proceedings as a giant party in keeping with the stereotype of boisterous Vikings up for a seriously good time However this attitude again avoids engaging with the detail of the text and in some respects rather distastefully distorts what is actually going on In particular the directions of the lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo and her daughters and the rites performed all concern precise deliberate actions mdash just as observed above in the excavated graves This is anything but freeform rowdiness Similarly a party time interpretation of the alcohol consumption ignores the fact (mentioned by Ibn Fadlan) that ten full days of intoxication is literally hazardous to life As for the sex it is hard to judge the degree of coercion involved in most of the acts with the female slave but those occurring just prior to her death as the beating of staves muffles the sound of her cries can only be seen as rape The latter primarily concerns power rather than desire and it is very hard indeed to see any kind of lsquocelebra-tionrsquo in raping a screaming girl on the same bed as a ten-day-old corpse33 Not just a matter of modern moral sensibilities confronted with alien values of the

33 Variations on this theme include both lurid and apparently lsquoromanticrsquo readings an example of the latter being the writer Bruce Chatwinrsquos version of events (1990 178) in which the six men in the chamber did not rape the slave but lsquomade loversquo to her before she lsquolay back exhaustedrsquo

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135passing into poetry

past these events concern people who are all constrained by rules in ceremonies that are managed The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo is a funeral director and together with everyone else she is clearly following an agreed procedure

On the day the pyre is lit it seems that the rituals intensify and grow in complexity and without repeating the usual tropes of Risala interpretations it is still possible to draw some new conclusions Ibn Fadlanrsquos description of the deck construction lsquolike a tent made of woodrsquo is striking because we have Viking-Age camping gear from Gokstad (Norway) among other ship burial sites and the resemblance with the chamber on that vessel is exact34 There is no structural reason why these grave chambers need be triangular in cross-section so this suggests that it really may have been intended to resemble a tent an interesting kind of temporary resting place There may also be a link to the tents set up around the ship where the slave copulates with each man in turn Ibn Fadlan notes that they had been pitched there after the ship had been drawn up for burning so perhaps the tents are part of the ritual and put there for the purpose even related to the wooden version on the deck

The seated posture of the man bears close comparison with excavated burials and not just the chamber graves such as those in Birka where such rites are relatively common The woman sitting at the stern of the Kaupang boat has been mentioned above and at least one of the Vendel ships (Sweden) also had a seated corpse a man in a chair on the deck35 In Ibn Fadlanrsquos example the dead man may have been seen as sleeping in the same position adopted for the night as in the cramped bed-closets of Norse halls Interestingly apart from his weapons there is no real suggestion that any of the objects placed in the ship or the chamber actually belonged to him mdash another worrying factor for archaeologists

The deaths of the animals are interesting and quickly blur any easy catego-ries of lsquosacrificesrsquo and lsquoofferingsrsquo First the different creatures are chosen with care and have a part to enact before they are killed mdash witness the horses being run until blown and lathered It appears significant how many animals there are of different species entering the scene at specific points in a clear sequence They are participants and they are killed in precise ways that have nothing to do with the efficient methods of the slaughterhouse The horses in particular are hacked to pieces while alive presumably rearing and screaming while the dog is bisected and the birds decapitated both with knives and by tearing The body parts are also treated precisely being thrown either to one side of the ship or onto the deck

All of this echoes excavated ship burials and it is important to emphasise just how many animals might be involved On the foredeck of the Oseberg ship (Norway) was a heap of at least ten decapitated horses and three headless dogs with a further three horses and an ox beheaded outside the vessel by the prow while the severed head of a very large ox had been carefully tucked up in a bed on the deck36 At Gokstad at least 12 horses and six dogs were killed outside the ship and arranged along its sides while a peacock had been laid aft of the

34 Nicolaysen 188235 Vendel grave 9 Stolpe and Arne 1912 3736 Broslashgger et al 1917

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grave chamber37 In this as in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description too little thought has been given to what these events would have looked sounded and smelled like The graceful lines of the Oseberg ship as it is currently displayed in Oslo belie the fact that at the time of burial it must have been dripping with blood How did the animals react after the first of their number was killed It is not difficult to imagine the noise to visualise the gore covering ship objects and onlookers and to scent the blood and offal This is not an exercise in gratuitous melo-drama but an attempt to recapture an integral part of the funerary experience for those who were there Violent spectacle seems to be important something confirmed by other recent finds of Viking-Age animal killings in ritual contexts such as the hall at Hofstaethir in Iceland38

A similar pattern is drawn to an extreme in the person of the slave who the Arabic nouns imply is about 14 or 15 years of age As with the role played by the animals this girl does not really seem to be lsquogivenrsquo to anyone or anything through her death she is a component of the action It is hard to tell whether she really volunteered for her fate but Ibn Fadlan seems to have thought so The sexual themes appear central here and they take on a repetitive overtone with respect to the girl Ibn Fadlan mentions that the female slaves were sexu-ally abused by their owners This role is amplified significantly after the slave-girl is marked for a funerary death and the entire mortuary process is in fact punctuated by sexual acts In some manuscripts the girl is referred to as the dead manrsquos lsquobridersquo Finally the preparation of the ship for burning is significant not only for its elaboration but also because it confirms that in this case at least a funeral could involve both inhumation and then cremation and in effect two graves for one person How much of this has been missed in the archaeology This whole ten-day process is continuously accompanied by chanting and music that the Arab unfortunately does not understand

It is important to emphasise the brief nature of the above summary Ibn Fadlanrsquos account of one burial runs to 2000 words and he is a laconic writer Every sentence every Arabic word of his text has meaning and can be glossed or decoded with effort However in seeking to succinctly isolate key factors in the burial rites he describes one could do worse than to focus upon social inclu-sion expenditure effort violence intoxication and not least sexual performance mdash all of these in considerable quantities and expressed conspicuously Animals also seem very significant and certainly not merely as ambulatory possessions (we do not even know who they belong to) Above all we see deliberate complex action performed over time

Ibn Fadlan provides us with a key text the most elaborate eyewitness account of a (probable) Scandinavian funeral that we possess but there are also additional briefer sources that nevertheless contain fascinating points of detail resonating well with what we have so far seen Another Arab writer Ibn Rustah describes an elaborate chamber burial of a leading Rusrsquo man also in what is now Russia with deposits of food drinking vessels and coins39 Echoing the

37 Nicolaysen 188238 Lucas and McGovern 2007 detailed evidence was found here for cattle decapitation in a manner that would

have required two people and which was calculated to produce a dramatic spray of arterial blood39 Jakubovskij 1926

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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144 neil price

fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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135passing into poetry

past these events concern people who are all constrained by rules in ceremonies that are managed The lsquoAngel of Deathrsquo is a funeral director and together with everyone else she is clearly following an agreed procedure

On the day the pyre is lit it seems that the rituals intensify and grow in complexity and without repeating the usual tropes of Risala interpretations it is still possible to draw some new conclusions Ibn Fadlanrsquos description of the deck construction lsquolike a tent made of woodrsquo is striking because we have Viking-Age camping gear from Gokstad (Norway) among other ship burial sites and the resemblance with the chamber on that vessel is exact34 There is no structural reason why these grave chambers need be triangular in cross-section so this suggests that it really may have been intended to resemble a tent an interesting kind of temporary resting place There may also be a link to the tents set up around the ship where the slave copulates with each man in turn Ibn Fadlan notes that they had been pitched there after the ship had been drawn up for burning so perhaps the tents are part of the ritual and put there for the purpose even related to the wooden version on the deck

The seated posture of the man bears close comparison with excavated burials and not just the chamber graves such as those in Birka where such rites are relatively common The woman sitting at the stern of the Kaupang boat has been mentioned above and at least one of the Vendel ships (Sweden) also had a seated corpse a man in a chair on the deck35 In Ibn Fadlanrsquos example the dead man may have been seen as sleeping in the same position adopted for the night as in the cramped bed-closets of Norse halls Interestingly apart from his weapons there is no real suggestion that any of the objects placed in the ship or the chamber actually belonged to him mdash another worrying factor for archaeologists

The deaths of the animals are interesting and quickly blur any easy catego-ries of lsquosacrificesrsquo and lsquoofferingsrsquo First the different creatures are chosen with care and have a part to enact before they are killed mdash witness the horses being run until blown and lathered It appears significant how many animals there are of different species entering the scene at specific points in a clear sequence They are participants and they are killed in precise ways that have nothing to do with the efficient methods of the slaughterhouse The horses in particular are hacked to pieces while alive presumably rearing and screaming while the dog is bisected and the birds decapitated both with knives and by tearing The body parts are also treated precisely being thrown either to one side of the ship or onto the deck

All of this echoes excavated ship burials and it is important to emphasise just how many animals might be involved On the foredeck of the Oseberg ship (Norway) was a heap of at least ten decapitated horses and three headless dogs with a further three horses and an ox beheaded outside the vessel by the prow while the severed head of a very large ox had been carefully tucked up in a bed on the deck36 At Gokstad at least 12 horses and six dogs were killed outside the ship and arranged along its sides while a peacock had been laid aft of the

34 Nicolaysen 188235 Vendel grave 9 Stolpe and Arne 1912 3736 Broslashgger et al 1917

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grave chamber37 In this as in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description too little thought has been given to what these events would have looked sounded and smelled like The graceful lines of the Oseberg ship as it is currently displayed in Oslo belie the fact that at the time of burial it must have been dripping with blood How did the animals react after the first of their number was killed It is not difficult to imagine the noise to visualise the gore covering ship objects and onlookers and to scent the blood and offal This is not an exercise in gratuitous melo-drama but an attempt to recapture an integral part of the funerary experience for those who were there Violent spectacle seems to be important something confirmed by other recent finds of Viking-Age animal killings in ritual contexts such as the hall at Hofstaethir in Iceland38

A similar pattern is drawn to an extreme in the person of the slave who the Arabic nouns imply is about 14 or 15 years of age As with the role played by the animals this girl does not really seem to be lsquogivenrsquo to anyone or anything through her death she is a component of the action It is hard to tell whether she really volunteered for her fate but Ibn Fadlan seems to have thought so The sexual themes appear central here and they take on a repetitive overtone with respect to the girl Ibn Fadlan mentions that the female slaves were sexu-ally abused by their owners This role is amplified significantly after the slave-girl is marked for a funerary death and the entire mortuary process is in fact punctuated by sexual acts In some manuscripts the girl is referred to as the dead manrsquos lsquobridersquo Finally the preparation of the ship for burning is significant not only for its elaboration but also because it confirms that in this case at least a funeral could involve both inhumation and then cremation and in effect two graves for one person How much of this has been missed in the archaeology This whole ten-day process is continuously accompanied by chanting and music that the Arab unfortunately does not understand

It is important to emphasise the brief nature of the above summary Ibn Fadlanrsquos account of one burial runs to 2000 words and he is a laconic writer Every sentence every Arabic word of his text has meaning and can be glossed or decoded with effort However in seeking to succinctly isolate key factors in the burial rites he describes one could do worse than to focus upon social inclu-sion expenditure effort violence intoxication and not least sexual performance mdash all of these in considerable quantities and expressed conspicuously Animals also seem very significant and certainly not merely as ambulatory possessions (we do not even know who they belong to) Above all we see deliberate complex action performed over time

Ibn Fadlan provides us with a key text the most elaborate eyewitness account of a (probable) Scandinavian funeral that we possess but there are also additional briefer sources that nevertheless contain fascinating points of detail resonating well with what we have so far seen Another Arab writer Ibn Rustah describes an elaborate chamber burial of a leading Rusrsquo man also in what is now Russia with deposits of food drinking vessels and coins39 Echoing the

37 Nicolaysen 188238 Lucas and McGovern 2007 detailed evidence was found here for cattle decapitation in a manner that would

have required two people and which was calculated to produce a dramatic spray of arterial blood39 Jakubovskij 1926

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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138 neil price

complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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144 neil price

fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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136 neil price

grave chamber37 In this as in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description too little thought has been given to what these events would have looked sounded and smelled like The graceful lines of the Oseberg ship as it is currently displayed in Oslo belie the fact that at the time of burial it must have been dripping with blood How did the animals react after the first of their number was killed It is not difficult to imagine the noise to visualise the gore covering ship objects and onlookers and to scent the blood and offal This is not an exercise in gratuitous melo-drama but an attempt to recapture an integral part of the funerary experience for those who were there Violent spectacle seems to be important something confirmed by other recent finds of Viking-Age animal killings in ritual contexts such as the hall at Hofstaethir in Iceland38

A similar pattern is drawn to an extreme in the person of the slave who the Arabic nouns imply is about 14 or 15 years of age As with the role played by the animals this girl does not really seem to be lsquogivenrsquo to anyone or anything through her death she is a component of the action It is hard to tell whether she really volunteered for her fate but Ibn Fadlan seems to have thought so The sexual themes appear central here and they take on a repetitive overtone with respect to the girl Ibn Fadlan mentions that the female slaves were sexu-ally abused by their owners This role is amplified significantly after the slave-girl is marked for a funerary death and the entire mortuary process is in fact punctuated by sexual acts In some manuscripts the girl is referred to as the dead manrsquos lsquobridersquo Finally the preparation of the ship for burning is significant not only for its elaboration but also because it confirms that in this case at least a funeral could involve both inhumation and then cremation and in effect two graves for one person How much of this has been missed in the archaeology This whole ten-day process is continuously accompanied by chanting and music that the Arab unfortunately does not understand

It is important to emphasise the brief nature of the above summary Ibn Fadlanrsquos account of one burial runs to 2000 words and he is a laconic writer Every sentence every Arabic word of his text has meaning and can be glossed or decoded with effort However in seeking to succinctly isolate key factors in the burial rites he describes one could do worse than to focus upon social inclu-sion expenditure effort violence intoxication and not least sexual performance mdash all of these in considerable quantities and expressed conspicuously Animals also seem very significant and certainly not merely as ambulatory possessions (we do not even know who they belong to) Above all we see deliberate complex action performed over time

Ibn Fadlan provides us with a key text the most elaborate eyewitness account of a (probable) Scandinavian funeral that we possess but there are also additional briefer sources that nevertheless contain fascinating points of detail resonating well with what we have so far seen Another Arab writer Ibn Rustah describes an elaborate chamber burial of a leading Rusrsquo man also in what is now Russia with deposits of food drinking vessels and coins39 Echoing the

37 Nicolaysen 188238 Lucas and McGovern 2007 detailed evidence was found here for cattle decapitation in a manner that would

have required two people and which was calculated to produce a dramatic spray of arterial blood39 Jakubovskij 1926

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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144 neil price

fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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137passing into poetry

unfortunate slave of the ship cremation here lsquothe woman he lovedrsquo (not lsquowifersquo as most translations erroneously have it mdash the difference may be significant) is sealed up alive in the grave The same practice is mentioned in connection with Rusrsquo travellers by Ibn Miskaweih40 To turn to a Byzantine source and the writings of Leo the Deacon in 970 he described Rusrsquo warriors cremating their battle dead after a skirmish with imperial forces41 Raising great log pyres on which they laid the slain the rituals were accompanied by the killing of male and female prisoners apparently in some numbers and the slaughter of young animals Cockerels were especially singled out killed and thrown into a nearby river Abundant alcohol was a very clear part of the ceremonies which unfolded to the sound of the Rusrsquo eerie high-pitched howling that terrified the Byzantines and which they compared to noises made by animals All of this took place under the light of the full moon a useful reminder that burials do not necessarily happen in daylight

Ibn Fadlanrsquos report and those of the other Arab writers are describing the burials of elites and it is often these high-status graves that are clearest in the signals they convey because they are more elaborate more intricate and there-fore leave more traces for the archaeologist to detect Like their lives the deaths and funerals of these people are about the communication of power relating a message that was ultimately brought into everyonersquos lives The funerals of more ordinary people will be discussed below but from Ibn Fadlanrsquos description it is possible to glimpse a little of what might have lain behind the bewildering complexity evident in excavated graves of high status It is now necessary to ask how these burials might have worked and to try to understand what it was that Ibn Fadlan was actually describing

DRAMAS OF THE DEAD

Following a line of thought tentatively explored for sites like Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) by Martin Carver as in the epigraph to this paper I would like to suggest here that these funerals did not consist simply of lsquoritualsrsquo (whatever that means in its usual abstract and undefined usage) but that they in fact specifically represented the performance of stories Does the excavated record of burial in fact document the remains of some kind of graveside drama publicly conducted with a public message or several messages aimed in different ways at different segments of the audience

setting the stage

In an earlier paper I have briefly employed an example to explain my thinking which may perhaps seem out of place at first the stage at the end of a production of Hamlet42 This is an image worth revisiting here What does the scene look like when the Dane is dead It is a Shakespeare tragedy so we have several bodies but in material terms these are complemented by their clothes weapons and other props and also the set pieces of the stage itself This is a

40 Arne 1932 21641 Ellis Davidson 1972 2542 Price 2008b

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138 neil price

complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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138 neil price

complicated environment if one imagines it as an archaeological site which is the key point Do the Kaupang graves and Ibn Fadlanrsquos ship-cremation work as exactly that as stage sets at the end of a play The dead person(s) the killed animals all the objects including even the ships and other vehicles are perhaps lying where they have ended up after they have played out their roles in the drama of the funeral itself Returning to Hamlet the scene at the final curtain is complex enough but leading up to it is the rest of the play What of all the actors who are not present in the final scene but who have had major roles in the drama The same applies to all the different settings the hours of dialogue the action the historical narrative the deeper themes of the writing even the humour used to offset the grimmer themes In this light one may think again of Ibn Fadlan and those ten days of actions what were they doing With refer-ence to the archaeology a useful focus is on the notion of the stage considered first in terms of the symbolic overtones of the grave

I have suggested above that Ibn Fadlanrsquos wooden lsquotentrsquo on the deck sup-ports the idea of the grave as dwelling an old notion in early medieval studies reinforced by saga accounts of the dead living in their mounds43 Frands Herschend and Martin Carver have gone further to argue that the ships in par-ticular were intended to precisely reference the hall as the seat of power for their occupiers for the living lord or the dead man buried44 Objects representing particular situated activities mdash such as cooking equipment and therefore a kitchen mdash are spatially located in the boat graves in the same position relative to other such artefact symbols as the area for food preparation in a hall Similar effects are achieved through references to the central and public hearth area (food consumption items objects for display gaming sets) sleeping chambers (bedding) ante-chambers (weapons) and so on The idea works for most of the Valsgaumlrde (Sweden) graves a large part of Sutton Hoo mound 1 and seems to hold up well here but it is far from universally applicable to ship graves In an aristocratic culture of status and display funerary objects may have been laid out to represent not only the different facets of power but the space within which they were employed Were these particular ships lsquohallsrsquo for the dead occupied by leading figures living on in their graves If the storied funeral was a process of passage presumably to Valhoumlll Hel or another afterlife (one of the bigger unknowns of Viking studies) this need not rule out some kind of continued social function for the elites even after death45

If the grave itself might be a symbol what of its qualities as a place in its own right An interesting perspective comes from new work by Terje Gansum on the Oseberg ship46 Reviewing the excavation diaries from the time of the dig linked to a fresh examination of the plans and photographs Gansum revived an interpretation that was virtually unanimous among its original investigators

43 See Price 2002 134ndash544 Herschend 1997 Carver 1998 and 200245 The archaeological evidence provides plenty of contradictions typical of the problems in funerary studies

and also rather characteristic of the Vikings in particular The Oseberg ship might be seen as a symbol of travel but it was moored in the grave with a hawser tied to a large boulder For many of the smaller boat burials including the one described at Kaupang the idea of the funerary ship-hall does not work I return to the issue of representativeness below

46 Gansum 2004

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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139passing into poetry

but which they had not published the Oseberg ship had initially been covered by a mound to only half its length the entire prow section and foredeck pro-truding from the vertical face of the earth piled over the stern (Fig 2) The half-mound bisected the ship across the opening of the burial chamber on its deck leaving the interior accessible It was certainly months and perhaps even a couple of years before the mound was completed and the ship fully buried47 One strong signal of speed at least at one point in the proceedings is the evident rapidity with which the chamber was finally sealed Its open gable was closed with a number of odd pieces of wood nailed up with no attention to care or placement in a manner very different to the neatness of the rest of the chamber The timbers were hammered so fast that several nails were bent and broken but left in place while others were put in around them Indications of this same concern for haste can be found in the great mound of wooden items simply thrown onto the deck in front of the sealed chamber heavy objects smashing others beneath them with no regard for their fine qualities It appears that when access to the chamber was no longer wanted or thought advisable it was felt necessary to seal it and close the grave as fast as possible48

47 The excavation was conducted over a century ago and the detailed records are not suffi cient to resolve this lenses of soil and possible silting imply an extended period when the grave was open

48 This concern for a speedy departure from the burial is interesting in the light of the kindler of the pyre in Ibn Fadlanrsquos description who takes care to protect all the orifi ces of his body when approaching the ship perhaps fearing something in the grave

fig 2

A moonlit reconstruction of the funeral ceremonies for the Oseberg ship burial Norway incorporating the half-mound identified by Terje Gansum Drawing by Anders Kvaringle Rue copy to the artist and used by permission

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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144 neil price

fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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150 neil price

supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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140 neil price

The possibility that other graves may have been left open and accessible for a time has been raised for other early medieval sites with ship burials at Valsgaumlrde perhaps at Hedeby (Germany) and maybe even at Sutton Hoo mounds 1 and 249 If we expand upon the idea of a stage Oseberg was a place of ongoing activity Either it was revisited left open for continued access and activity or it may even have been that the lsquofuneralrsquo itself was considered to last so long The process may have begun with the first preparations of the grave the moving of the ship into the trench and so on maybe beginning even before its intended occupant(s) had died Later still after the mound was closed the chamber was broken into in an episode clearly registered in the archaeology and usually described as lsquorobbingrsquo We know from the excavations that objects and bodies were moved around but we do not know why Given that the mound was re-entered soon enough after the burial that the bodies were still semi-articulated and considering the sheer effort required to dig into the barrow this cannot have been a secret process and must have been enacted with at least some degree of social sanction If not lsquorobbingrsquo then perhaps this too was part of the lsquofuneralrsquo Moving beyond the specificity of a single grave is it possible to see cemeteries as literal lsquotheatres of deathrsquo arenas for these individual acts

stories on stones

In support of the identification of these possible dramas as stories we can turn to evidence from a different medium again that can also suggest what mdash in one precise place and time mdash the stories might have been for How would these funerary plays work and what would they say There are clues to be found in a special form of monument found in a special place the picture stones of Gotland Although they reached their zenith in the Viking Age carved stone memorials to the dead had been raised by Gotlanders since at least the 5th century ad increasing in size over time Typically shaped like a keyhole and standing up to 4 m tall the Viking-Age versions take the form of flat panels of the local limestone engraved or carved in relief with numerous small scenes Some are organised in non-linear groups of images others are more formally laid out in horizontal bands one above the other each containing linear pictures On almost all the Viking-Age stones a large image of a ship under sail occupies most of the lower half of the monument50 The early stones have been found raised either on top of burial mounds or beside them often dotted throughout a cemetery in a small landscape of imagery Many of the Viking-Age stones were set up either singly or in pairs along roadways or at the boundaries of estates The later stones seem to function as memorials and occasionally also as grave markers Sometimes cremations have been found actually packed around their bases enclosed by a box-like structure made up of miniature picture stones The majority of the stones have no inscriptions but towards the end of the Viking Age as rune-stone carving increases exponentially on the mainland we also find similar runic memorial texts on the Gotland stones

49 Valsgaumlrde Herschend 1997 50ndash4 Sutton Hoo Angela Care Evans pers comm50 A complete catalogue was compiled by Lindqvist 1941ndash2 updated by Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 Subsequent

fi nds of picture stones are reported in the annual volumes of the journal Fornvaumlnnen

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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141passing into poetry

Found almost exclusively on Gotland51 in one sense the stonesrsquo limitation to the island matches the individualism of much of the rest of its material culture at this time One particularly interesting idea that has been put forward addresses the fact that curiously for an intensely maritime community at the centre of the Baltic seaways Gotland has no ship- or boat-burials52 Given the prominence of the ship imagery on the stones could it be that they represent the Gotland equivalent of the mainland graves but manifested in pictures rather than objects In a corollary of Herschendrsquos ideas about the ship-grave as hall on the stones perhaps the depicted scenes show what artefacts we usually find in graves signified If correct this would prove a powerful support for the ideas about funerary stories outlined above

Another observation can be made that further strengthens the idea Scholars have debated for decades about what the images on the picture stones might mean They tend to show numerous apparently male and female figures apparently human engaged in a variety of activities accompanied by animals of various kinds Buildings objects and landscapes are shown often enclosed or simply dotted with more abstract patterns that may be decorative or may mean something more Occasionally elements can be discerned that might be con-nected with tales from Norse mythology or the sagas mdash a male seemingly trans-forming into a bird of prey a figure in a pit of snakes a figure on an eight-legged horse and so on53 The same females with raised drinking horns occur here as in the metalwork However in the late 1980s a striking discovery was made of great relevance to my theme here In studying the picture stones of Laumlrbro parish of the form erected at property boundaries Anders Andreacuten noticed that the lower panel of images on one stone was repeated at the top of the next stone as one moved around the limits of the estate54 Furthermore when taken together and lsquoreadrsquo from bottom to top and from one stone to the next he was able to identify the story of Sigurethr the famous hero of Norse legend who killed the dragon Fafnir and a popular subject for early medieval iconography

The implications are literally dramatic First at this one location Andreacuten established an apparent link between stories and monuments to the dead It may be that the Laumlrbro stones were all set up simultaneously or alternatively that they commemorate successive generations of leading members of the same land-owning dynasty Either way this not only suggests some kind of lsquofamily talersquo but also implies that it could form a land claim document the holding was literally bounded by statements about the dead staking title through reference to ancestral presence This assertion seems to have been made by means of a sequential story perhaps with a new lsquochapterrsquo added from one generation (ie one dead person) to the next

The use of this particular story for commemoration also has parallels else-where at the same time Marjolein Stern has recently collected the small number of sculptural stone images from the Viking Age that have been argued to depict

51 The only exceptions are one stone from Uppland two from Oumlland (Sweden) and one from Grobin in Latvia all thought to commemorate Gotlanders who died there Nyleacuten and Lamm 1987 144ndash7 Petrenko 1991

52 Andreacuten 198953 Eg Ellmers 199554 Andreacuten 1993

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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142 neil price

parts of the Sigurethr story consisting of a handful of Swedish rune-stones includ-ing the famous Ramsund carving and also some of the Manx crosses55 She notes that despite difficulties in making unequivocal interpretations it is nonetheless clear that this is the tale in question and that it was used in a commemorative context Present in what may be regional variants the selected elements of the story interestingly all focus on the same themes of heroism the acquisition of wisdom and wealth and the potentially tragic consequences that this could have

funerary motif

This idea of referencing between monuments of some motif in one linking with something similar in a second memorial can also be found in the graves themselves To take a high-status example we can consider Norwayrsquos richest female grave from the Viking Age after Oseberg the so-called lsquoqueenrsquo from Gausel near Stavanger Norway (Fig 3)56 This celebrated find of 1883 unco-vered a finely dressed and appointed woman in an elaborate cist-grave with a varied selection of objects that has enabled researchers to recently narrow the burial date to 850ndash6057 Among the plethora of expensive items was a striking animal element the severed head of a horse laid in the coffin at the womanrsquos feet and still wearing its bridle of gilded bronze The cemetery contains some 22 visible mounds and a further six unmarked graves found through excavation with dates spread throughout the Viking Age In addition to that of the lsquoqueenrsquo three other graves also contained horsesrsquo heads One was found in another womanrsquos grave A-1006 a curious burial placed inside the ruins of a building and covered by a mound it was not possible to date the find more precisely than to the Viking period The other two horse heads caparisoned as before were both found in boat burials containing a single male surrounded by weapons One could again be dated only to the Viking Age but the other grave 3751 was from the mid-9th century and thus contemporary with the lsquoqueenrsquo (Fig 4)

Moving to lower-status burials we can consider a selection of graves found on the Aringland islands situated between Sweden and Finland Unique to this small archipelago with the exception of a scatter of sites along the central Russian rivers that are thought to represent the graves of travelling Aringlanders is the funerary deposition of tiny model animal paws made of clay Placed with cremated ashes either in scatters or in ceramic vessels the paws occur throughout the Viking Age but only in a small proportion of graves58

In comparing the horse heads of Gausel with the Aringland animal paws we find a consistency over time within a specific locale In the absence of DNA analyses we do not know if these rituals relate to kinship groups in the cemeter-ies but whether or not this is the case it is clear that whoever was burying these people chose to make precise links between their graves We do not know the significance of these rites but in the referencing of funerary motifs (the heads and paws) we presumably also see a link between the meanings ascribed to them This suggests that the same process was playing out at Gausel and on Aringland as

55 Stern 2009 see also Liepe 1989 on the Goumlk stone56 Bakka 1993 the grave of the Gausel lsquoqueenrsquo was later renumbered S-188357 Boslashrsheim and Soltvedt 2002 177ndash23658 Callmer 1994

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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150 neil price

supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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143passing into poetry

fig 3

A reconstruction of grave S-1883 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated c 850ndash60 Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

in Laumlrbro parish Gotland but articulated through material culture instead of images three widely separated localities at different points in the Viking Age

Evidence of a similar practice can be found at many other sites including Kaupang returning to the complex ship burial described above There I focused just on the sequence of events within that one grave but looking to its immedi-ate environs raises several further questions The boat burial there is actually one of several ranged more or less side by side along a low ridge at Bikjholber-get outside the main settlement59 Many of them also contain multiple individu-als though with variant body positions accompanying objects and animals and indeed different combinations of human age and sex Here we see a broad consistency of form (several people in a boat) but with the specific variation we have encountered before However under some of these boats are also other burials men interred in relatively simple graves some years prior to the deposi-tion of the vessels on top of them just as in Ka 294ndash6 reviewed above Not only does this expand the repertoire of ritual and motif at Kaupang (several people in a boat with someone else under it) but it also alters the very conception of what a lsquograversquo and a lsquofuneralrsquo were at this place The vital point here is the

59 Blindheim and Heyerdahl-Larsen 1995

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fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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lishe

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Man

ey P

ublis

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(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

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haeo

logy

145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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fig 4

A reconstruction of grave 3751 from Gausel in Rogaland Norway dated to the mid-9th century Drawing by THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson after an original by R L Boslashrsheim copy Neil Price

sequence of events and the staggered deposition over time of bodies and boats Just as we find a motif in this rite of superimposed graves there are also material links between the people under the boats and the graves on top of them in Ka 294ndash6 an lsquoegg-shaped stonersquo was buried with the man under the keel and another was placed beside the woman in the stern of the boat above him60 All this has interesting implications for communal memory and planning the relationship of the living to the dead over tens of years and also the notion of a prolonged funeral There is a reasonable case to be made here that the entire decades-long cycle from the digging of a grave to its capping with a boat burial

60 This example also demonstrates a common problem of recording bias in the interpretation of Viking-Age burials in that these lsquoegg-shaped stonesrsquo were not retained by the excavators and neither photographed nor drawn presumably being thought insignifi cant Part of my point in this paper is that everything in graves must be considered in the total social context of the funeral as meaningful behaviour Peacutetursdoacutettir 2009 makes a similar observation in her examination of Icelandic Viking-Age graves

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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ieva

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for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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145passing into poetry

is part of the same ritual replicated in adjacent plots in yet another localised example of the phenomenon we encounter all over the Viking world Note too that this is not lsquocharacteristic of Kaupangrsquo it marks out only a single small group of graves within one of its cemeteries mdash there are dozens of other groups there too all different

THE FRAGILITY OF STORIES

In examining all these lsquomotifsrsquo linking graves within cemeteries and memo-rials to the dead in the landscape the only one that can actually be identified with any confidence is the continuing story of Sigurethr on Andreacutenrsquos picture stones and at a few other sites However set alongside this there are the hundreds of largely uninterpreted scenes on the rest of the Gotland picture stones and occasional figurative panels on mainland rune-stones There has never been any doubt that they probably represent narratives of some kind and their quantity merely serves to emphasise the sheer range of tales that were probably involved This is relevant if the suggestion of funerary motifs is followed as argued above from iconography to material culture from stone monuments to the contents of graves In this case there is no reason why at least in theory some (or even most) of the detailed patterns found in Viking-Age grave groups each utterly individual could not also have had narratives behind them The fact that the content of these postulated stories is now unknown to us does not mean that they never existed and indeed there is very good evidence that the Vikings lived in an intensely storied world

There is the obvious evidence here of the sagas skaldic poetry and Eddic verse Even when sources from such a wide diachronic and diatopic range are conflated and even when subjected to the most rigorous critique one is left with the unavoidable implication that the period they claim to describe was nevertheless filled with tales At least these have left some trace however faint As a contem-porary indication of all the narratives that are now lost we need look no further than the 9th-century rune-stone from Roumlk (Oumlg 136) in the Swedish province of Oumlstergoumltland This relates whole lists of them in a manner that partly assumes prior knowledge and partly looks beyond it to a deeper level of secret lore locked securely in the minds of a select few Translation is problematic but the text makes allusions to at least eight narratives by means of short phrases perhaps riddles in prose and verse Some are mere hints others may be mnemonics or counting rhymes of some kind and all may be elements in rites of passage or other social practices involving teaching learning or response61 It is worth considering how fragile these tales are even the greatest of them such as Beowulf admittedly an Old English poem but one that is about Scandinavians a Swedish and Danish story that probably originated there It is hard to overstate the degree to which early medieval scholarship takes Beowulf for granted with all that it implies about Northern epic yet it survives in only a single manuscript and is not mentioned in any other text it is literally an archaeological artefact The folio was nearly consumed in the Cotton Library fire of 1731 and if it had not survived then the entire field of Northern literary studies mdash including the scholarly perception of stories in social context mdash would probably be labouring under some quite

61 For a recent perspective on this complex stone see Harris 2006 and 2009 who suggests that it references local variants of the great myths

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erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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Man

ey P

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Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

150 neil price

supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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146 neil price

erroneous misconceptions One might reasonably ask how many lsquoScandinavian Beowulfsrsquo of the Viking Age in oral form did not survive at all However it could also be that they dot the landscapes of the Viking world in precisely placed assemblages of funerary objects and as images on stone

EVIDENCE AND INTERPRETATION

Clearly one must be conscious that much of the scenario presented here is conjecture about what is itself a relatively esoteric aspect of Viking studies namely the shadowy realm of world-views mentalities and perceptions With this in mind it is vital to separate evidence and interpretation and to consider the potential for empirical testing of these ideas

It is at least certain that a very wide range of burial practices were utilised by Viking-Age Scandinavians There is abundant evidence in the graphic form of every excavated cemetery and archaeological comparisons over a massive range of sites As discussed above there are detailed analyses of large discrete data-sets from a variety of contexts from single cemeteries to local mortuary landscapes from farms to villages and towns These have been compared across a broad scale ranging from regions to small polities and ultimately entire nations (at the end of the Viking Age) with a further reach to the whole sphere of Scandinavian activity overseas Decades of archaeological enquiry into mortuary behaviour across many cultures also enable us to be sure that these practices at least to some degree represent material manifestations of ideas about the dead their relationship to the living and their possible destination(s) beyond the grave

In considering what lay behind this variation again there can be little doubt that Viking funerals included long sequences of complex actions Apart from Ibn Fadlan and comparable accounts there are the excavations of countless elaborate graves including ship burials Quite simply at least some of these graves can only have been created through complicated activities of this kind To this can be added Gansumrsquos reinterpretation of the Oseberg mound and the other evidence discussed above for burials left accessible for a time and the opportunities this afforded for continued ceremonies and visitations Other prolonged sequences of ritual over considerable time can be seen in the material lsquomotifsrsquo and the long periods between graves linked either by features of mortuary behaviour or more directly through physical superimposition

There is also a demonstrable association between visualised stories and monuments to the dead but only on a small number of sites However the examples that can be securely identified occur on types of memorials that exist in much greater numbers containing literally thousands of other images that cannot be matched with tales we recognise That there could have once been many more stories in circulation during the Viking Age than have survived in intelligible form today is hardly in reasonable doubt The symbolic transition from meaningful image to equally meaningful combination of objects is not a difficult one to make

From this platform one can move on to more tentative interpretation I have suggested that many perhaps even the majority of Viking funerals involved the material manifestation of stories It is important to note here the elisions between poetry prose and drama Crucially different categories in

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

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ublis

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(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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iety

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Med

ieva

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logy

149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

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supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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ieva

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147passing into poetry

literary critique they are not necessarily formally divided in this funerary con-text All these media communicate narratives and the manner of their expres-sion might well have been fluid From everything known of runic epitaphs and the spirit of skaldic composition at this time it is surely justifiable to speak of a poetic attitude to commemoration From this naturally flows the idea of a poetic passage for the dead regardless of whether the words used at funerals were in verse or not Dramas take many different forms and are rarely consis-tently the same and it would be unwise to search pedantically for a precise term when we have no reason to believe that such definitions were used in this context at the time62 Terminological quicksands aside the crucial concept is that of stories Performance is also a keyword here precisely because the creation of the burials was a physical act involving the manipulation of material culture and not merely words

Whether this interpretation is correct or not and regardless of what exact kind of categorisations were present in the suggested narratives it seems certain that there are linking lsquomotifsrsquo of various kinds among small groups of graves within or between cemeteries Following the idea of materialised narratives I have therefore suggested that these mortuary tales may have been connected to discrete social groups such as families or clans Individuals at the uppermost strata of society may have had more personalised funerals

But is it not the case that what I have termed lsquomaterialised narrativersquo could equally be another scholarrsquos lsquograveside ritualrsquo of a more familiar kind Surely the variations that I suggest might represent different funerary stories can also be interpreted merely as local preference perhaps as family groups develop their own practices mdash and eventually traditions mdash for the disposal of the dead These more conventional readings seem sensible enough at first but on closer reflection it can be seen that such catch-all terms as lsquocustomrsquo actually conceal more than they explain It is one thing to support a proactively vague approach in analysing the archaeology of the intangible and I firmly believe that inter-pretive precision is an impossible illusion in contexts such as these However this is quite different from employing terminology that can essentially mean anything at all privileging observation per se over any attempt to understand the data Resorting to a vocabulary of lsquoburial traditionrsquo actually tells us nothing about what these graves might have meant even conceptually and the presence of such meanings is an inescapable conclusion in acknowledging the funerary variation that archaeology is giving us from all over the Viking world The alternative is absurd namely an assumption that people placed severed ox heads in beds (or clay paws on ashes or boats on top of corpses and so on and on across the thousands of permutations known from excavation) simply because these things seemed like good ideas at the time presumably perpetuated thereafter on the basis that lsquowhat was good enough for granddad is good enough for mersquo

Of course none of this means that my narrative interpretation is neces sarily correct but it does propose a model that addresses the imperative of explaining the variety that can be seen in the graves The model also provides a context

62 A similar problem has arisen in the study of Viking-Age sorcery the subject of an earlier book (Price 2002) To the study of mortuary drama I would apply essentially the same criteria as Daniel Ogden on magic (2008 3) in his wise critique of authors who lsquoconfuse the attempt to give fi nal defi nition to an abstract concept ancient or modern which is self-evidently impossible with the delineation of a coherent core of source-material for studyrsquo

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

150 neil price

supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

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logy

151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

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148 neil price

for the sheer precision and deliberation in the repertoire of mortuary practices few of which appear arbitrary or random Each burial is a conscious act its objects and animals selected with care and deposited with concern Further-more the model allows this variation to be meaningfully located within a broader more standardised framework of funerary behaviour The precise mate-rial treatment of the dead in boats is unique to each grave for example but there is still a recognisable category of lsquoboat burialrsquo in the archaeological record These larger patterns perhaps relate to something not otherwise taken up here concerning where people were thought to go after death Lastly the model incorporates an awareness of the source-critical limitations of the material It might be possible to suggest the existence of these stories perhaps in some instances even guess at their purpose but we are unlikely ever to know their plots

THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORSE MYTHOLOGY

Leading on from this it is lastly appropriate to consider the circumstances in which these postulated dramas mdash in the widest sense of the word mdash may have come into being Were they composed for each separate funeral either in advance or more spontaneously Did they build on existing stories or merely repeat a formula Most realistic is perhaps a combination of all these things As above I would also stress the importance of the material element The funerary objects were not merely placed they were used in the ceremonies indeed they form their very essence because their deposition was the ritual itself But can we find any link between the graves and the lsquobigrsquo narratives of the Norse epics and myths I have explored the physical nature of the stories in these funeral rituals but bearing in mind the motifs used mdash the story of Sigurethr for example and suggestive fragments of interpretation that we can apply to other picture stones mdash are we actually seeing here part of the creation of myths To explore this approach requires some clarifications

Any lsquomythologyrsquo as it exists today is an organic entity and the product of evolution over a long period The stories have been told and re-told on countless occasions elements have been added or fallen away details have been changed or embellished probably thousands of times Sometimes several versions are in circulation at once Many mythologies contain internal contradictions and that of the Scandinavians is certainly no exception There is also the factor of transmission to consider all the copyistsrsquo errors and biases over the centuries as well as the deliberate distortions and suppressions Finally there are the simple vagaries of preservation

Simultaneously it must be acknowledged that any mythology in its 21st-century form is something artificial a construct In a sense the slow process of accretion and redaction has now ceased and the tales have solidified into something that they never really were from the beginning mdash dead static texts very different from the dynamics of true narrative and story-telling Terminol-ogy is deceptive here and in this light it is worth remembering that the Norse themselves did not know about lsquothe Norse mythsrsquo Some of the stories concern semi-legendary figures others relate the activities of gods and supernatural beings while others still purport to describe historical events involving people who actually lived It is important to understand that Viking-Age people need

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iety

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Med

ieva

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149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

150 neil price

supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

149passing into poetry

not have seen any reason to separate these categories and instead may have viewed them as a seamless whole Even in the 13th century when many of our primary sources were either compiled or at least first written down there was no concept of lsquomythologyrsquo in this context The anonymous collector of the poems in the Codex Regius did not categorise them Similarly Snorri Sturluson wrote about stories and poems narratives related to what he claimed to be the spirituality and cultural aspirations of his ancestors Although fully aware of genre and subject he did not make the same distinctions between lsquoheroicrsquo and lsquomythologicalrsquo works that are common in critical editions today63 Over the last few centuries of scholarship these tales (in whatever form poetry or paraphrased prose) have been reorganised and collated into an illusory canon and one that may bear little relation to how whatever lay behind them was actually seen in the Viking Age

If such easy categorisations can be dispensed with there is nevertheless a basic truth so fundamental that it sometimes tends to get lost in the minutiae of scholarly analysis At some point or rather at a succession of such points each individual element of these stories was invented Whether one takes Oacuteethinn giving up his eye or THORNoacuterr losing his hammer or the binding of Fenrir somebody made them up Even allowing for the unfolding creation of tales within the framework of centuries-old traditions or millennia of myth-making traced across the arguable Indo-European paradigm the precise detail of each story within its own cultural context nonetheless must have had specific moments of germination

By this I do not mean primal origins difficult though this is to conceive as in a general sense most mythic cycles have at least some connection back into prehistory Instead I would focus here on details set in an immediate social context I am not arguing that my postulated graveside narratives lsquoacted outrsquo the specific myths we have today nor that all of them included necessarily any lsquomythologicalrsquo element at all64 However in their specifics some of them might have incorporated these instants of inspiration that left very long echoes indeed

The funerary stories could have partly concerned the dead person them-selves perhaps including events from their life their actions and personality On the evidence of rune-stone inscriptions it is surely likely that those doing the burying were prominently featured especially if the lsquofamily sagarsquo idea of the Gotland stones had a wider distribution and validity outside that island I would see these actions as combining everything discussed above the dead their family and relatives the community the folkloric history of all these people and also elements taken from a wider sphere of heroic legend and the doings of

63 For example the standard Oxford edition of the Poetic Edda Dronke 1969 and 1997 which is actually divided into volumes under these headings Despite its modern title Snorrirsquos Prose Edda is nevertheless primarily concerned with poetry and of course includes substantial poetic citation

64 The work of Terry Gunnell on the Eddic poems in the Codex Regius and the AM 748 4to is relevant here (1995 2004 2006 2008) While it has been known for centuries that many of the poems are divided up into a number of lsquospeaking partsrsquo and characters Gunnell has pointed to the presence of what amount to stage directions and marginal notes for actors Focusing on dialogic and monologic works Gunnell has demonstrated a unique interaction between drama place actors and audience within precise physical situations Poems such as Vafthornruacuteethnismaacutel Lokasenna Griacutemnismaacutel and probably Haacutevamaacutel are deliberately set within the space of the pagan hall while others such as Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel Sigrdriacutefumaacutel and Haacuterbarethsljoacuteeth take place in liminal settings outdoors In other words at least in their recorded form in the 12th and 13th centuries these were not just poems to be recited or sung but dramas performed in numinous places of supernatural power The link to the funerary dramas proposed above is suggestive

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

150 neil price

supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

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lishe

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ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

150 neil price

supernatural beings all woven together through material culture and verbalised into something just for this grave this corpse this time and place The blending of genre and tone is part of the point as men or women passed from a narrative of life into the larger one of death

EPITAPHS AND AFFADAVITS

It is naturally hard to credit that this suggested practice of mortuary drama could ever have applied to everyone There were exceptions to everything else in the Viking world and burial is unlikely to have been different in this respect However at the core of this idea is the importance of tales the power of stories (in whatever media they were expressed) and the central place they occupied in the minds of the early medieval Scandinavians as a whole

Much of this paper has been concerned with the burials of elites of one kind or another and their representativity can of course be called into question Our culture too has the equivalents of such rituals but one cannot easily extrapolate from the funerary cortege of Sir Winston Churchill to someone elsersquos 20 minutes in a suburban crematorium65 However appearances can deceive even in an example such as this and there are in fact many points of contact from details to principles In funerary practice the statesman lies in state by definition but an ordinary citizenrsquos body can also often be viewed in an under-takersrsquo mortuary Similarly both funerals essentially conform to the same story-line of Christian burial and resurrection placing different narrative emphases within the same basic parable Politiciansrsquo eulogies may take hours but even private citizens may receive a few words of send-off from family and friends This merely demonstrates that funerals of radically different material investment can have things in common However there is a simple reason why elite burials in the Viking Age should not be set completely apart from those of the bulk of the populace We are not dealing with one or even a handful of prominent peoplersquos graves set against the faceless uniformity of the mob the variations stretch across thousands of burials Differences in status context and the pre-requisites for conspicuous consumption certainly affect the complex elaboration of the graves and one would expect an Uppland farmerrsquos burial to have been different from that of a Danish jarl Even taking graves of similar status the differences are plain If Andreacuten is correct in his reading of stories on the Gotland stones the same formula does not work for all or even the majority of them Not all ship burials can be lsquoreadrsquo as symbolic halls and so on However this realisation not only leaves the model presented here unaffected it actually strengthens the argument by emphasising precisely the variation at its core66 This does not rule out the same basic principle of a lsquopoeticrsquo passage through the medium of story In practice only the scale need differ between the two

Pursuing this sheer diversity of ritual in all this variety how then might ordinary people fit in If the rich linked themselves to the great heroic lays of

65 I thank an anonymous referee for this comparison though I ultimately draw the opposite conclusion to himher

66 This also matches the current scholarly consensus on Norse pre-Christian lsquoreligionrsquo rejecting the latter term with its connotations of orthodoxy in favour of mutable belief systems varying geographically and over time within a discursive space of spiritual practice For key works see McKinnell 1994 and 2005 DuBois 1999 Price 2002 Gunnell 2000 Andreacuten et al 2006 Andreacuten 2007 Schjoslashdt 2009

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

151passing into poetry

the kind they paid others to recite and sing in their halls did the rest become part of the same stories but in minor roles No Sigurethr is entirely alone he lives in a populated landscape he has relatives and followers as do all those he meets The mythological and heroic stories are actually richly inhabited though by people who remain mostly invisible in the core narrative It is not hard to see the proverbial man or woman in the Viking street as part of this greater drama their (to us) anonymity offset by the prominence of the lsquoheroesrsquo higher up the social scale mdash in death so as in life Does every grave tell a story However brief or perfunctory it is entirely possible that it does Because all this was monumen-talised in a landscape of burial in a sense the people of the late Iron Age could be seen to be actually moving through this story literally living in it When they died perhaps they became a kind of eternal cast member

These patterns are also found within the tales themselves If we take Beowulf as an example even with caveats as to its dating and its arguably Scandinavian origins the poem is actually structured around funerals It begins with a ship burial at sea and ends on the burning pyre of Beowulf himself All the burial ceremonies are described in detail each taking up several pages in a modern edition and provide a steady beat of combined actions and objects that gives the poem its rhythm

I would argue that these are stories of memory and a particular kind of constructed history But they are also tales of individuals of ancestry and family and the intimate bond to the land Above all they are stories that seem to speak not just of the desire never to be forgotten but of the need to be remembered well This is of course a well-worn clicheacute of the Viking Age and in line with that it would be conventional to end this paper by giving the last word to the people of the time One could remember the warrior Ful com-memorated on the Aarhus stone Denmark (DR66) who died lsquowhen kings were fightingrsquo or Hastaeligin and Holmstaelign on the Fyrby rock Sweden (Souml56) lsquothe most rune-skilled men in Miethgarethrrsquo or Banke on the Svinnegarn rune-stone Sweden (U778) who lsquohad a ship of his own and steered eastward in Ingvarrsquos hostrsquo67 Whatever its ultimate origins the person who created the Beowulf manuscript presumably found the sentiments of its closing lines appropriate as a poetic send-off for an early medieval king a man lsquokeenest for famersquo

Wonderful though all these words are we should not forget Ray Pagersquos sensible admonition that an epitaph is not an affidavit68 Eulogies of this kind about the lsquoheroicrsquo dead are at least partly the spin version in that death rituals are also about power and the use of power mdash they are spectacles with a message and a purpose Instead I find it appropriate to end with a very different quota-tion relating the observations of an American journalist on the genocide in Rwanda The context is not so distant as it might appear and I trust that its relevance will be obvious in the light of what I have argued above lsquoto a very large extent power consists in the ability to make others inhabit your story of their reality mdash even as is so often the case when that story is written in their bloodrsquo69

67 All inscriptions can be found with further discussion on the Scandinavian Runic-Text Database ltwwwnordiskauuseforsknsamnordhtmgt [accessed 11 June 2010]

68 Page 1985 30969 Gourevitch 1999 48ndash9 Price 2002 389

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

152 neil price

acknowledgements

An initial version of this paper was presented in late 2008 as my Inaugural Lecture for the Sixth Century Chair of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen and a month later was given as the invited Annual Lecture to the AGM of the Society for Medieval Archaeology held in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries in London It develops ideas fi rst sketched in my earlier publication on bodylore and the archaeology of embedded religion70 Subsequent versions have been presented at the Smithsonian in Washington DC and also in academic seminars at the universities of Aarhus Durham Gotland (Visby) Harvard Iceland (Reykjaviacutek) Leicester Nottingham Reading Simon Fraser (Vancouver) St Andrews Uppsala Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and York I would like to thank all those who commented and shared their ideas on these occasions One such meeting in Copenhagen also resulted in a specialised collection on Old Norse religion71 I am very grateful to that volumersquos editor Professor Catharina Raudvere for permission to use parts of the text I thank two anonymous referees for their comments In particular I thank Anders Kvaringle Rue for the use of his Oseberg painting and THORNoacuterhallur THORNraacuteinsson whose reconstruction drawings made for this paper have once again brought Viking-Age graves to life

BIBLIOGRAPHY

70 Price 2008b71 Price in press

Andersson G 1997 Valsta Gravfaumllt 2 vols Stockholm Riksantikvarieaumlmbetet

Andreacuten A 1989 lsquoDoumlrrar till foumlrgaringngna myter En tolkning av de gotlaumlndska bildstenarnarsquo in A Andreacuten (ed) Medelti-dens Foumldelse Krapperup Gyllenstiernska Krapperupsstiftelsen 287ndash319

Andreacuten A 1993 lsquoDoors to other worlds Scandinavian death rituals in Gotlandic perspectiversquo J European Archaeol 1 33ndash56

Andreacuten A 2007 lsquoBehind heathendom archaeological studies of Old Norse Religionrsquo Scott Arch J 272 105ndash38

Andreacuten A Jennbert K and Raudvere C (eds) 2006 Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives Lund Nordic Academic Press

Arbman H 1940ndash43 Birka 1 die Graumlber 2 vols Stockholm KVHAA

Arne T J 1932 lsquoRusrsquo eroumlvring av Berdarsquoa aringr 943 Ibn Miskaweichs beraumlttelse om ett vikingataringgrsquo Fornvaumlnnen 1932 211ndash19

Bakka E 1993 Gauselfunnet og bakgrunnen for det Arkeologiske skrifter Historisk museum Universitetet i Bergen No 7-1993

Bately J and Englert A (eds) 2007 Ohtherersquos Voyages A Late 9th-Century Account of Voyages Along the Coasts of Norway and Denmark and its Cultural Context Roskilde Vikingeskibsmuseet

Bersu G and Wilson D M 1966 Three Viking Graves in the Isle of Man Soc Medieval Archaeol Monogr 1

Beskow Sjoumlberg M Hagberg U-E and Rasch M (eds) 1987ndash2001 Oumllands Jaumlrn aringldersgravfaumllt 4 vols Stockholm RiksantikvarieaumlmbetetStatens Historiska Museum

Biddle M and Kjoslashlbye-Biddle B 1992 lsquoRepton and the Vikingsrsquo Antiquity 66 36ndash51

Blindheim C 2008 Kaupang-funnene B IIc Whetstones and Grindstones in the Settlement Area The 1956ndash1974 Excavations Norske Oldfunn 29

Blindheim C Heyerdahl-Larsen B and Tollnes R 1981 Kaupang-funnene B I Norske Oldfunn 11

Blindheim C and Heyerdahl-Larsen B 1995 Kaupang-funnene B IIa Gravplassene i BikjholbergeneLamoslashya Undersoslashkelsene 1950ndash57 Del A Gravskikk Norske Oldfunn 16

Blindheim C Heyerdahl-Larsen B and Ingstad A S 1999 Kaupang-funnene B IIb Gravplassene i BikjholbergeneLamoslashya Under-soslashkelsene 1950ndash57 Del B Oldsaksformer Del C Tekstilene Norske Oldfunn 19

Brink S and Price N (eds) 2008 The Viking World London and New York Routledge

Broslashgger A W Falk H and Shetelig H (eds) 1917ndash28 Osebergfundet 4 vols Oslo Universitetets Oldsaksamling

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lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

153passing into poetry

Boslashrsheim R L and Soltvedt E-C 2002 Gausel mdash utgravingene 1997ndash2000 AmS-Varia 39

Callmer J 1991 lsquoTerritory and dominion in late Iron Age southern Scandinaviarsquo in K Jennbert L Larsson R Petreacute et al (eds) Regions and Refl ections In Honour of Maumlrta Stroumlmberg Lund University of Lund 257ndash73

Callmer J 1992 lsquoInteraction between ethnical groups in the Baltic region in the late Iron Agersquo in B Haringrdh and B Wyszomirska-Werbart (eds) Contacts Across the Baltic Sea Lund University of Lund 9ndash107

Callmer J 1994 lsquoThe clay paw rite of the Aringland islands and central Russia a symbol in actionrsquo Current Swedish Archaeol 2 13ndash46

Carlsson D 1999 lsquoRidanaumlsrsquo Vikingahamnen i Froumljel Visby Arkeodok

Carver M 1992 lsquoIdeology and allegiance in East Angliarsquo in R T Farrell and C Neuman de Vegvar (eds) Sutton Hoo Fifty Years After American Early Medieval Studies 2 Oxford (Ohio) Miami University 173ndash82

Carver M O H 1998 Sutton Hoo Burial Ground of Kings London British Museum

Carver M O H 2002 lsquoRefl ections on the meaning of Anglo-Saxon barrowsrsquo in S Lucy and A Reynolds (eds) Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales Soc Medieval Archaeol Monogr 17 132ndash43

Carver M O H 2005 Sutton Hoo A Seventh-Century Princely Burial Ground and its Context London British Museum

Chapman R Kinnes I and Randsborg K (eds) 1981 The Archaeology of Death Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Chatwin B 1990 lsquoThe Volgarsquo in B Chatwin What Am I Doing Here London Picador 170ndash91

Crumlin-Pedersen O and Thye B M (eds) 1995 The Ship as Symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia Copenhagen National Museum

DeMarrais E Gosden C and Renfrew C (eds) 2004 Rethinking Materiality The Engagement of Mind with the Material World Cambridge McDonald Institute

Dronke U 1969 (ed and trans) 1969 The Poetic Edda Volume 1 Heroic Poems Oxford Clarendon

Dronke U 1997 (ed and trans) 1969 The Poetic Edda Volume 2 Mythological Poems Oxford Clarendon

DuBois T 1999 Nordic Religions in the Viking Age Philadelphia University of Pennsyl-vania Press

Eisenschmidt S 1994 Kammergraumlber der Wikingerzeit in Altdaumlnemark Bonn Habelt

Ellis Davidson H R 1972 The Battle God of the Vikings University of York Med Monogr 1

Ellmers D 1995 lsquoValhalla and the Gotland stonesrsquo in Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye (eds) 165ndash71

Gansum T 2004 Hauger som Konstruksjoner mdash Arkeologiske Forventninger Gjennom 200 aringr Goumlteborg Goumlteborg University

Gourevich P 1999 We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families Stories From Rwanda London Picador

Graumlslund A-S 1980 Birka 4 The Burial Customs mdash a Study of the Graves on Bjoumlrkouml Stockholm KVHAA

Gunnell T 1995 The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia Woodbridge Brewer

Gunnell T 2000 lsquoThe season of the Diacutesir the Winter Nights and the Diacutesarbloacutet in early Scandinavian beliefrsquo Cosmos 16 117ndash49

Gunnell T 2004 lsquoHof halls goeth(ar) and dwarves an examination of the ritual space in the pagan Icelandic hallrsquo Cosmos 171 3ndash36

Gunnell T 2006 lsquoldquoTil holts ek gekk rdquo The performance demands of Skiacuternismaacutel Faacutefnismaacutel and Sigrdriacutefumaacutel in liminal time and sacred spacersquo in Andreacuten et al (eds) 238ndash42

Gunnell T 2008 lsquoThe performance of the Poetic Eddarsquo in Brink and Price (eds) 299ndash303

Harris J 2006 lsquoMyth and meaning in the Roumlk inscriptionrsquo Viking Medieval Scandinavia 2 45ndash109

Harris J 2009 lsquoThe Roumlk stonersquos iatun and mythology of deathrsquo in W Heizmann K Boumlldl and H Beck (eds) Analecta Septen-trionalia Beitraumlge zur nordgermanischen Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte New York De Gruyter 467ndash501

Herschend F 1997 Livet i Hallen Tre Fallstudier i Yngre Jaumlrnaringlderns Aristokrati Uppsala Uppsala University Press

Hougen E K 1993 Kaupang-funnene B IIb Bosetningsomraringdets Keramikk Norske Oldfunn 14

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

154 neil price

Haumlgg I 2009 lsquoOm vikingatidens vagns-korggravarrsquo Saga och Sed 2009 91ndash9

Iversen M (ed) 1991 Mammen Grav Kunst og Samfund i Vikingetid Aarhus Jysk Arkaeligologisk Selskab

Jakubovskij A J 1926 Ibn-Miskaviech o pochade rusov v Berdaa v 332g = 943 4g Leningrad Vizantijskij vremenik 24

Liepe L 1989 lsquoSigurdssagan i bildrsquo Fornvaumlnnen 1989 1ndash11

Lindqvist S 1941ndash42 Gotlands Bildsteine 2 vols Stockholm Wahlstroumlm and Widstrand

Lucas G and McGovern T 2007 lsquoBloody slaughter ritual decapitation and display at the Viking settlement of Hofstaethir Icelandrsquo European J Archaeol 10 7ndash30

Lund Warmind M 1995 lsquoIbn Fadlan in the context of his agersquo in Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye (eds) 130ndash5

McKinnell J 1994 Both One and Many Essays on Change and Variety in Late Norse Heathenism Rome Editrice Il Calamo

McKinnell J 2005 Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend Cambridge D S Brewer

Miller D (ed) 2005 Materiality (Politics History and Culture) Durham Duke University Press

Montgomery J E 2000 lsquoIbn Fadlan and the Rusiyyahrsquo J Arabic and Islamic Stud 3 1ndash25

Montgomery J E 2004a lsquoPyrrhic scepti-cism and the conquest of disorder pro-legomenon to the study of Ibn Fadlanrsquo in M Maroth (ed) Problems in Arabic Literature Piliscsaba Avicenna Institute of Middle East Studies 43ndash89

Montgomery J E 2004b lsquoTravelling autopsies Ibn Fadlan and the Bulgharrsquo Middle Eastern Literatures 71 4ndash32

Montgomery J E 2006 Ibn Fadlan and the Caliphal Mission Through Inner Asia to the North Voyaging the Volga Introduction and Translation (unpubl MS)

Montgomery J E 2008 lsquoArabic sources on the Vikingsrsquo in Brink and Price (eds) 550ndash60

Muumlller-Wille M 1970 lsquoBestattung im Boot Studier zu einer nordeuropaumlischen Grabsittersquo Offa 2526

Muumlller-Wille M 1976 Das Bootkammergrab von Haithabu Berichte uumlber die Aus-grabungen von Haithabu 8

Nicolaysen N 1882 Langskibet fra Gokstad ved Sandefjord Kristiania Hammermeyer

Nyleacuten E and Lamm J P 1987 Bildstenar Stockholm Gidlunds

Ogden D 2008 Nightrsquos Black Agents Witches Wizards and the Dead in the Ancient World London Continuum

Olsen B 2003 lsquoMaterial culture after text mdash re-membering thingsrsquo Norwegian Archaeol Rev 362 87ndash104

Page R I 1985 lsquoReview of The Vikings edited by RT Farrellrsquo Saga-Book 21 308ndash11

Parker-Pearson M 1999 The Archaeology of Death and Burial Stroud Sutton

Pentz P Baastrup M P Karg S et al 2009 lsquoKong Haralds voslashlversquo Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark 2009 215ndash33

Petrenko V P 1991 lsquoA picture stone from Grobin (Latvia)rsquo Fornvaumlnnen 1991 1ndash10

Peacutetursdoacutettir THORN 2009 lsquoIcelandic Viking Age graves lack in material mdash lack of interpretationrsquo Archaeologia Islandica 7 22ndash40

Price N 2002 The Viking Way Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia Uppsala Uppsala University Press

Price N 2008a lsquoDying and the dead Viking Age mortuary behaviourrsquo in Brink and Price (eds) 257ndash73

Price N 2008b lsquoBodylore and the archae-ology of embedded religion dramatic licence in the funerals of the Vikingsrsquo in D M Whitley and K Hays-Gilpin (eds) Belief in the Past Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion Walnut Creek Left Coast Press 143ndash65

Price N in press lsquoMythic acts material narratives of the dead in Viking-Age Scandinaviarsquo in C Raudvere (ed) More Than Mythology Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Old Norse Religion

Ramskou T 1976 Lindholm Hoslashje Gravpladsen Copenhagen Herm Lynge

Ringstedt N 1997 The Birka Chamber-Graves Economic and Social Aspects Stockholm Stockholm University

Robbins H 2004 Seated burials at Birka a select study (unpubl MA thesis University of Uppsala)

Roberts H 2009 lsquoJourney to the dead the Litlu-Nuacutepar boat burialrsquo Current World Archaeol 32 36ndash41

Roesdahl E 1977 Fyrkat en Jysk Vikingeborg 2 Oldsakerne og Gravpladsen Copenhagen Nordiske Fortidsminder

Rundkvist M 2003 Barshalder A Cemetery in Groumltlingbo and Fide Parishes Gotland Sweden

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

154 neil price

Haumlgg I 2009 lsquoOm vikingatidens vagns-korggravarrsquo Saga och Sed 2009 91ndash9

Iversen M (ed) 1991 Mammen Grav Kunst og Samfund i Vikingetid Aarhus Jysk Arkaeligologisk Selskab

Jakubovskij A J 1926 Ibn-Miskaviech o pochade rusov v Berdaa v 332g = 943 4g Leningrad Vizantijskij vremenik 24

Liepe L 1989 lsquoSigurdssagan i bildrsquo Fornvaumlnnen 1989 1ndash11

Lindqvist S 1941ndash42 Gotlands Bildsteine 2 vols Stockholm Wahlstroumlm and Widstrand

Lucas G and McGovern T 2007 lsquoBloody slaughter ritual decapitation and display at the Viking settlement of Hofstaethir Icelandrsquo European J Archaeol 10 7ndash30

Lund Warmind M 1995 lsquoIbn Fadlan in the context of his agersquo in Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye (eds) 130ndash5

McKinnell J 1994 Both One and Many Essays on Change and Variety in Late Norse Heathenism Rome Editrice Il Calamo

McKinnell J 2005 Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend Cambridge D S Brewer

Miller D (ed) 2005 Materiality (Politics History and Culture) Durham Duke University Press

Montgomery J E 2000 lsquoIbn Fadlan and the Rusiyyahrsquo J Arabic and Islamic Stud 3 1ndash25

Montgomery J E 2004a lsquoPyrrhic scepti-cism and the conquest of disorder pro-legomenon to the study of Ibn Fadlanrsquo in M Maroth (ed) Problems in Arabic Literature Piliscsaba Avicenna Institute of Middle East Studies 43ndash89

Montgomery J E 2004b lsquoTravelling autopsies Ibn Fadlan and the Bulgharrsquo Middle Eastern Literatures 71 4ndash32

Montgomery J E 2006 Ibn Fadlan and the Caliphal Mission Through Inner Asia to the North Voyaging the Volga Introduction and Translation (unpubl MS)

Montgomery J E 2008 lsquoArabic sources on the Vikingsrsquo in Brink and Price (eds) 550ndash60

Muumlller-Wille M 1970 lsquoBestattung im Boot Studier zu einer nordeuropaumlischen Grabsittersquo Offa 2526

Muumlller-Wille M 1976 Das Bootkammergrab von Haithabu Berichte uumlber die Aus-grabungen von Haithabu 8

Nicolaysen N 1882 Langskibet fra Gokstad ved Sandefjord Kristiania Hammermeyer

Nyleacuten E and Lamm J P 1987 Bildstenar Stockholm Gidlunds

Ogden D 2008 Nightrsquos Black Agents Witches Wizards and the Dead in the Ancient World London Continuum

Olsen B 2003 lsquoMaterial culture after text mdash re-membering thingsrsquo Norwegian Archaeol Rev 362 87ndash104

Page R I 1985 lsquoReview of The Vikings edited by RT Farrellrsquo Saga-Book 21 308ndash11

Parker-Pearson M 1999 The Archaeology of Death and Burial Stroud Sutton

Pentz P Baastrup M P Karg S et al 2009 lsquoKong Haralds voslashlversquo Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark 2009 215ndash33

Petrenko V P 1991 lsquoA picture stone from Grobin (Latvia)rsquo Fornvaumlnnen 1991 1ndash10

Peacutetursdoacutettir THORN 2009 lsquoIcelandic Viking Age graves lack in material mdash lack of interpretationrsquo Archaeologia Islandica 7 22ndash40

Price N 2002 The Viking Way Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia Uppsala Uppsala University Press

Price N 2008a lsquoDying and the dead Viking Age mortuary behaviourrsquo in Brink and Price (eds) 257ndash73

Price N 2008b lsquoBodylore and the archae-ology of embedded religion dramatic licence in the funerals of the Vikingsrsquo in D M Whitley and K Hays-Gilpin (eds) Belief in the Past Theoretical Approaches to the Archaeology of Religion Walnut Creek Left Coast Press 143ndash65

Price N in press lsquoMythic acts material narratives of the dead in Viking-Age Scandinaviarsquo in C Raudvere (ed) More Than Mythology Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Old Norse Religion

Ramskou T 1976 Lindholm Hoslashje Gravpladsen Copenhagen Herm Lynge

Ringstedt N 1997 The Birka Chamber-Graves Economic and Social Aspects Stockholm Stockholm University

Robbins H 2004 Seated burials at Birka a select study (unpubl MA thesis University of Uppsala)

Roberts H 2009 lsquoJourney to the dead the Litlu-Nuacutepar boat burialrsquo Current World Archaeol 32 36ndash41

Roesdahl E 1977 Fyrkat en Jysk Vikingeborg 2 Oldsakerne og Gravpladsen Copenhagen Nordiske Fortidsminder

Rundkvist M 2003 Barshalder A Cemetery in Groumltlingbo and Fide Parishes Gotland Sweden

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

155passing into poetry

c AD 1ndash1100 Stockholm Stockholm University

Schjoslashdt J P 2007 lsquoIbn Fadlanrsquos account of a Rus funeral to what degree does it refl ect Nordic mythsrsquo in P Hermann J P Schjoslashdt and R T Kristensen (eds) Refl ections on Old Norse Myths Turnhout Brepols 133ndash48

Schjoslashdt J P 2009 lsquoDiversity and its con-sequences for the study of Old Norse religion what is it we are trying to recon-structrsquo in L Slupecki and J Morawiec (eds) Between Paganism and Christianity in the North Rzeszow Wydawnictwo Universytetu Rzeszowskiego 9ndash22

Shepard J 2008 lsquoThe Viking Rus and Byzantiumrsquo in Brink and Price (eds) 496ndash516

Shetelig H 1912 Vestlandske Graver fra Jernalderen Bergen Museums Skrifter nye rekke 21

Skre D (ed) 2007 Kaupang in Skiringssal Norske Oldfunn 22

Skre D (ed) 2008 Means of Exchange Dealing with Silver in the Viking Age Norske Oldfunn 23

Skre D and Stylegar F-A 2004 Kaupang the Viking Town Oslo Kulturhistoriskt Museum

Steinsland G and Vogt K 1981 lsquoldquoAukin ertu Uolse ok vpp vm tekinnrdquo En religionshistorisk analyse av Voumllsathornaacutettr i Flateyjarboacutekrsquo Arkiv foumlr Nordisk Filologi 97 87ndash106

Stern M 2009 lsquoSigurethr Faacutefnisbani as com-memorative motifrsquo in A Ney H Williams

and F Charpentier Ljungqvist (eds) Preprint Papers of the 14th International Saga Conference 2 Uppsala 898ndash905

Stolpe H and Arne T J 1912 Graffaumlltet vid Vendel Stockholm KVHAA

Stylegar F-A 2005 lsquoKammergraver fra vikingtiden i Vestfoldrsquo Fornvaumlnnen 100 161ndash77

Stylegar F-A 2007 lsquoThe Kaupang ceme-teries revisitedrsquo in Skre (ed) 65ndash126

Svanberg F 2003 Death Rituals in South-East Scandinavia AD 800ndash1000 Stockholm Almqvist and Wiksell

Soslashrensen A C 2001 Ladby A Danish Ship-Grave from the Viking Age Roskilde Roskilde Museum

Thunmark-Nyleacuten L 1998ndash2006 Die Wikingerzeit Gotlands 4 vols Stockholm KVHAA

Tollnes R 1998 Kaupang-funnene Bd IIIa Undersoslashkelser i Bosetningsomraringdet 1956ndash1974 Hus og Konstruksjoner Norske Oldfunn 18

Williams H (ed) 2003 Archaeologies of Remembrance Death and Memory in Past Societies New York Kluwer

Williams H 2006 Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Abbreviations

AmS Arkeologisk Museum Stavan-ger (Norway)

KVHAA Kungl Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien (Stock-holm)

Reacutesumeacute

Passage dans la poeacutesie la dramatisation mortuaire durant lrsquoegravere des Vikings et les origines de la mythologie norroise par Neil Price

Les inhumations en Scandinavie durant lrsquoegravere des Vikings (avant la christianisation) entrent dans plusieurs cateacutegories de base chacune englobant une riche gamme de comportements funeacuteraires Cet article propose un modegravele permettant drsquoexpliquer de telles variations Il analyse la preacutecision et le soin visiblement accordeacutes agrave la seacutelection et au placement des objets et au traitement des animaux (et parfois des humains) sacrifi eacutes dans le cadre du processus funeacuteraire Il est suggeacutereacute que les inhumations de lrsquoegravere des Vikings ont peut-ecirctre compris des eacuteleacutements complexes de dramatisation mortuaire avec lrsquointerpreacutetation de reacutecits rituels autour de la tombe afi n de poeacutetiser le passage du deacutefunt dans un univers drsquohistoires ancestrales Plusieurs eacutetudes de cas archeacuteologiques et litteacuteraires sont analyseacutees dont les funeacuterailles agrave bord de navires afi n de souligner lrsquoimportance centrale des contes dans la maniegravere dont les Norrois appreacutehendaient le monde Il reste agrave savoir si le mateacuteriel narratif des rites funeacuteraires formait lrsquoune des infl uences creacuteatives sous-jacentes agrave la mythologie norroise telle que nous la concevons de nos jours

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

156 neil price

Zusammenfassung

Uumlbergang in die Dichtung Begraumlbnisdramen der Wikingerzeit und die Urspruumlnge der nordischen Mythologie von Neil Price

Die Begraumlbnisse im vorchristlichen Skandinavien der Wikingerzeit lassen sich grob in eine Reihe grundlegender Kategorien einordnen wenngleich innerhalb dieser Kategorien die Bandbreite individuellen Ausdrucks im Begraumlbnisverhalten ungeheuer groszlig ist Dieser Aufsatz schlaumlgt ein Modell vor mit dem sich diese Variationen erklaumlren lassen wobei er sich auf die offenkundige Absicht und Sorgfalt konzentriert die sich in der praumlzisen Auswahl und Platzierung von Gegenstaumlnden und in der Behandlung von Tieren (und manchmal Menschen) zeigt die im Laufe des Begraumlbnisvorgangs getoumltet wurden Es wird vorgeschla-gen dass die Begraumlbnisse der Wikingerzeit unter Umstaumlnden komplexe dramatische Begraumlbniselemente umfassten wobei rituelle Erzaumlhlungen die buchstaumlblich am Grab aufge-fuumlhrt wurden dem jeweiligen Toten einen poetischen Uumlbergang in die Welt der Ahnenge-schichten ermoumlglichten Eine Reihe von archaumlologischen und literarischen Fallstudien werden besprochen darunter Schiffsbestattungen die die zentrale Bedeutung der Erzaumlhlung im nordischen Weltbild betonen Es wird die Frage aufgeworfen ob die materiellen Erzaumlhlungen der Begraumlbnisriten eine der kreativen Adern gewesen sein koumlnnten die zu dem beitrugen was wir heute als nordische Mythologie kennen

Riassunto

Un trapasso poetico la drammatizzazione funeraria di etagrave vichinga e le origini della mitologia norrena di Neil Price

Le sepolture della Scandinavia precristiana di etagrave vichinga si possono suddividere in linea di massima in diverse categorie fondamentali ma allrsquointerno di queste le variazioni dellrsquoespressione individuale nel comportamento funebre sono innumerevoli Questo studio propone un modello per spiegare tali variazioni concentrando lrsquoattenzione sullrsquoevidente pon-deratezza dimostrata dalla precisa selezione e collocazione degli oggetti e dal trattamento del sacrifi cio animale (e talvolta umano) che faceva parte del rito funebre Si propone la tesi che le sepolture di etagrave vichinga comportassero complessi elementi di teatro funebre racconti rituali rappresentati letteralmente presso la tomba che fornivano al singolo defunto un trapasso poetico in un mondo di storie ancestrali Si discutono diversi esempi della casistica archeologica e letteraria comprese le sepolture nelle navi dando risalto allrsquoimportanza fondamentale dei racconti nella visione del mondo degli antichi Scandinavi Ci si domanda se il materiale dei racconti dei riti funebri possa essere uno dei fi loni creativi che sono allrsquoorigine di quella che oggi chiamiamo mitologia norrena

Pub

lishe

d by

Man

ey P

ublis

hing

(c)

Soc

iety

for

Med

ieva

l Arc

haeo

logy

156 neil price

Zusammenfassung

Uumlbergang in die Dichtung Begraumlbnisdramen der Wikingerzeit und die Urspruumlnge der nordischen Mythologie von Neil Price

Die Begraumlbnisse im vorchristlichen Skandinavien der Wikingerzeit lassen sich grob in eine Reihe grundlegender Kategorien einordnen wenngleich innerhalb dieser Kategorien die Bandbreite individuellen Ausdrucks im Begraumlbnisverhalten ungeheuer groszlig ist Dieser Aufsatz schlaumlgt ein Modell vor mit dem sich diese Variationen erklaumlren lassen wobei er sich auf die offenkundige Absicht und Sorgfalt konzentriert die sich in der praumlzisen Auswahl und Platzierung von Gegenstaumlnden und in der Behandlung von Tieren (und manchmal Menschen) zeigt die im Laufe des Begraumlbnisvorgangs getoumltet wurden Es wird vorgeschla-gen dass die Begraumlbnisse der Wikingerzeit unter Umstaumlnden komplexe dramatische Begraumlbniselemente umfassten wobei rituelle Erzaumlhlungen die buchstaumlblich am Grab aufge-fuumlhrt wurden dem jeweiligen Toten einen poetischen Uumlbergang in die Welt der Ahnenge-schichten ermoumlglichten Eine Reihe von archaumlologischen und literarischen Fallstudien werden besprochen darunter Schiffsbestattungen die die zentrale Bedeutung der Erzaumlhlung im nordischen Weltbild betonen Es wird die Frage aufgeworfen ob die materiellen Erzaumlhlungen der Begraumlbnisriten eine der kreativen Adern gewesen sein koumlnnten die zu dem beitrugen was wir heute als nordische Mythologie kennen

Riassunto

Un trapasso poetico la drammatizzazione funeraria di etagrave vichinga e le origini della mitologia norrena di Neil Price

Le sepolture della Scandinavia precristiana di etagrave vichinga si possono suddividere in linea di massima in diverse categorie fondamentali ma allrsquointerno di queste le variazioni dellrsquoespressione individuale nel comportamento funebre sono innumerevoli Questo studio propone un modello per spiegare tali variazioni concentrando lrsquoattenzione sullrsquoevidente pon-deratezza dimostrata dalla precisa selezione e collocazione degli oggetti e dal trattamento del sacrifi cio animale (e talvolta umano) che faceva parte del rito funebre Si propone la tesi che le sepolture di etagrave vichinga comportassero complessi elementi di teatro funebre racconti rituali rappresentati letteralmente presso la tomba che fornivano al singolo defunto un trapasso poetico in un mondo di storie ancestrali Si discutono diversi esempi della casistica archeologica e letteraria comprese le sepolture nelle navi dando risalto allrsquoimportanza fondamentale dei racconti nella visione del mondo degli antichi Scandinavi Ci si domanda se il materiale dei racconti dei riti funebri possa essere uno dei fi loni creativi che sono allrsquoorigine di quella che oggi chiamiamo mitologia norrena