Did the Vikings Have Standardized Godhouses?

Posted on October 19, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

IKEA is a popular, if not always beloved, Scandinavian indoor furnishing company know for the standardisation of its furniture. A recent archaeological discovery in Norway suggests that Vikings may also have had standardised temples of sorts.

In the village of Ose in southwestern Norway, the remains of a 8th century “godhouse” have recently been unearthed. While being the first such find in Norway, it closely resembles similar structures excavated in Tissö, Denmark and Uppåkra, Sweden. This is seen as the best example of such a place yet.

The godhouse is thought to have been used for midsummer and midwinter solstice ceremonies in honour of the gods. Remnants of meat cooked for Odin, Thor and Freyr, thought to have been represented by figurines while the feast was eaten by the human participants, have been unearthed. The figurines are still missing, but in 1928 a phallus stone was found in the same spot.

If the standard godhouse design reached to the lands of the Rus awaits further discoveries. Meanwhile, the first functioning hof, or pagan temple, to be constructed since the Viking Age awaits completion in Reykjavik. Land has been donated to the Asatru society by the city of Reykjavik on the Öskjuhlíð Hill and a design by architect Magnús Jensson was selected, looking a little like an upturned longship. The sun’s path and the number 9, representing the 9 worlds of the old religion, are will be reflected in the structure. However, the project has had various delays, including the banking collapse of 2008 and the refusal of a bank loan in 2019. Construction began in 2015 and was planned to take a year but little progress has been made. Perhaps it will take 9 years, all in all, for the new hof to the old gods to rise.

For more on the Ose find, see here:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/norse-godhouse-site-found-norway-180976075/

For more on the Hof, here is an article from 2015:

https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2015/01/27/asatru_temple_rises_in_2016_2/

The Next Frontier in Viking Studies

Posted on October 7, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

In his very interesting online talk, Dr. Neil Price of the University of Uppsala suggested that the Eastern Vikings are the next frontier in Viking studies. Whereas 20 years ago it was unproven that they had gone east of the Urals, it now seems that they went as far as Central Asia and even to western China. Dr. Price even mentioned that the Chinese character in season 4 of the Irish/Canadian TV show Vikings was not at all unpalatable.

He further said that one of the reasons why the eastern Vikings have been under researched so far was due to the Cold War. It was very hard for western scholars to be granted access to the Soviet Union and even to communicate with people there, which has led to an overemphasis on the raids, trade and settlements in the west, rather than on a Viking worldview that stretched from North America to China.

Among his other points was that the first documented Viking raid took place not in Lindisfarne in England in 793 but on the Estonian island of Saaremaa in 750. What we now call the Viking Age probably had its roots in around 500 CE, with the major shifts that occurred with the end of the Western Roman Empire.

For more information, his book Children of Ash and Elm is widely available and the Facebook page for the talk can be found here

Viking Lecture with Neil Price Online

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

The inimitable Neil Price will be giving an online lecture on Wednesday, October 7th, at 13.30 Co-ordinated Universal Time, which is happily also Iceland time (although for some reason the atom clock is set by Greenwich and not Reykjavik). The lecture is hosted by the Institute of Northern Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland.

Dr. Price will base his lecture on Children of Ash and Elm: A New Look at the Vikings, which is his latest work. Price is also associated with the Legends of the Eastern Vikings program, for further information see his profile on “The Project and Its Participants” page. For residents in Iceland, the book is available in the University book store (Bóksala stúdenta), which remains open although the University library and most of the premises are closed due to Covid.

The lecture will take an hour and a half and is free of charge. If you want to join, please sign up here.

Björk’s Salmon Inspires Viking Film

Posted on September 22, 2020 by Valur Gunnarsson

Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgaard and Willem Dafoe are among the actors in the eagerly awaited Viking epic The Northman. The idea for the film, which is apparently about a Viking prince seeking revenge in Iceland, can be traced to a dinner party that Björk held some years ago. Director Robert Eggers and his wife were on a trip to Iceland and, like anyone would, expressed interested in meeting Björk. Unlike most people, however, they were summarily invited for salmon at the Björk residence, even if they had never met before. Björk also invited her friend and sometime collaborator Sjón to the dinner. It turned out Sjón was a big fan of Eggers debut film The Witch, and Eggers was similarly a fan of Sjón’s 2008 novel In the Mouth of the Whale. Both, as it happens, are about 17th century belief in magic, where the supernatural is ingrained in the world view of the characters. This led to the two collaborating on the screenplay for the upcoming film where, as previously mentioned, Björk will play the role of a Slavic witch. This marks the songstress’ first foray into acting since Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark from 2000, and one of few examples of Vikings interacting with Slavs on the big screen. In an interview with Icelandic National Radio, Sjón said he would rather fail to do a Viking film with Eggers than anyone else. The film will no doubt attempt to capture the Viking mindset in a manner not previously seen.

You can hear the interview here, where Sjón also talks about the movement of myths from east to west, from Asia to Europe, in the past 8000 years (Icelandic only). https://www.ruv.is/utvarp/spila/lestin/23619/923ea3