The text below is an excerpt from the V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em>, one of the poems preserved as part of a collection known as The Elder Edda<\/em>. Although the text was first written in the 1200s in Iceland in the Codex Regius more than a hundred years after the Viking Age, the V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em> nevertheless has an oral history dating back to the 800s CE.1<\/a><\/sup> The original poet of the V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em> is unknown, but the preserved text offers a poetic narrative of a seer or prophetess explaining what will happen during the end of the world, known in Old Norse as Ragnarok:<\/p>\n \u201cHow fare the \u00c6sir?\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0How do the elves fare? This passage specifically is significant to my project because within my \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d project I wanted to connect between the physical world my character is interacting with (the land, the home, the ship, etc.) with possible social\/cultural stories and myths that a Viking Age man may know due to the oral tradition. I also find the phrase, \u201cSeek you wisdom still,\u201d to be such a terrifying question in regards to what the seer is describing. It made me curious, what would it look like to put a character (i.e. a person) within this scenario of power and what choice would they make? Essentially, what does wisdom look like within the context of the Viking Age \u2013 ignorance or knowledge?<\/p>\n The next primary source I utilized to develop a theme in my project is The Life of Ansgar<\/em>. This book follows the story of Ansgar, a ninth century monk (alive from 801\u2013865 CE), and his work as an \u201capostle\u201d or missionary across Scandinavia, particularly regions regarded as pagan (or in our contemporary eyes, \u201cViking\u201d). While Ansgar was spent his early years in the areas of modern France and Germany, this changed at the beginning of the 820s, and he would spend much of the rest of his life \u201cdevotedly\u201d traveling around Denmark and other areas in God\u2019s name. The book was written by Bishop Rimbert, his proteg\u00e9, fellow missionary, and successor. The text, as can be seen below, might be described as a “highlights reel” illustrating Anskar\u2019s moral fortitude against monstrous pagans, illuminating his own Christian moral standard. Two passages from text that most relate to my project read:<\/p>\n \u201cOur lord and master began also to buy Danish and Slav boys and to redeem some from captivity so that they might train them for God\u2019s service.\u201d3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n \u201cThe enemy then seized the town and plundered it and its immediate neighborhood. They had come in the evening and they remained that night and the next day and night; and when everything had been burnt and destroyed they took their departure. The church there, which had been built in a wonderful manner under the guidance of the bishop [was] reduced to ashes.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n At first glance this work could appear to simply be about Ansgar\u2019s missionary work in a quaint juxtaposition to the mass murder and violence of the Vikings. However, it is critical here to recognize the bias within the piece (written by Ansgar\u2019s successor as bishop). With that framework in mind, I couldn\u2019t help but think about the duality of violence within the Viking Age, how no matter which god(s) you worship, there is blood on all hands. Often in the depiction of Vikings, there is an idea of brutality and violence inherent to them or the Christians\/non-Vikings are depicted as evil or helpless (or both). I wanted to explore within my \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d project the moral gray area of both groups \u2013 of how each illustrates varying ideas of violence and harm.<\/p>\n Speaking of violence and harm, this brings me back to an additional theme I was interested in exploring within my work, albeit on a less obvious scale due to the dual demographics I would like my various projects to engage with\u2014class violence within myth. This brings me to Jackson Crawford\u2019s translation of The Saga of the Volsungs<\/em>. Per his introduction, \u201cThe Saga of the Volsungs<\/em> was first written in Iceland around AD 1250 by an author who had a strong familiarity with the traditional Scandinavian legends about these heroes, but the earliest manuscripts in which a copy of the saga survives was not written until ca. AD 1400.\u201d5<\/a><\/sup> The plot of the Volsungs<\/em> is essentially following a family tree for one mythic Viking family for seven generations. Perhaps the why of the text (i.e. why write this) connects back to Crawford\u2019s discussion of the values the varying stories illustrate, that the stories set a stage (or illustrate) a paradigm of behavior. For my project, I found the class discussion most relevant for my needs echoed some of Crawford\u2019s own comments:<\/p>\n \u201cNorse society also had rigid expectations of different social classes. \u2026 In chapter 12, Queen Hjord\u00eds exchanges clothes with her unnamed servant while they are in hiding, and orders the servant to pretend to be her. But \u00c1lf, who finds them, is suspicious that something is wrong, since the \u201cservant\u201d is more courtly and attractive than the woman he thinks is the queen, and his suspicions are soon confirmed.\u201d6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n This, in addition to the constant utilization of superlatives to describe characters (i.e. most beautiful, most intelligent, etc.) makes me think about understandings of class that cannot simply be illustrated by the quality of one\u2019s clothing or number of animals they own. How does class inform social customs and ideals of humanness that would not be unveiled without The Saga of the Volsungs<\/em>? How did individuals attempt to navigate or internalize these hierarchies? All of these questions inform my \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d story, thinking about how I wanted my main character to position themselves within society, myth, and our contemporary issues with class.<\/p>\n In regards to class as well as issues regarding trade and gender, the final class primary source I will utilize is Ahmad ibn Fadlan\u2019s \u201cMission to the Volga.\u201d Writing during the tenth century, Ibn Fadlan writes about his experiences in present-day Russia with a group of Vikings (\u201cRus\u201d as he calls them here). Writing in a style similar to modern day anthropologists, Ibn Fadlan writes down intricate details about the Rus in order to report back to Baghdad. It is essentially ten pages of him writing in horror about their poor hygiene, human sacrifice, and extravagant displays of wealth. This plays into ideas of class (and class was recognized) and gendered\/structured violence, but (regarding hygiene) also illustrates the common everyday decisions and actions individuals made in this space. While the following excerpt can seem gross, it reveals patterns of behavior that I think are necessary to understand if I want to escape the two-dimensionality often featured within the \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d genre:<\/p>\n \u201cThey are the filthiest of God\u2019s creatures. They have no modesty when it comes to defecating or urinating and do not wash their hands when intercourse puts them in a state of ritual impurity. They do not even wash their hands after eating.\u201d7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n All in all, the goal with all of my sources \u2013 not just the primary sources \u2013 is to look at the multidimensionality of the human experience and create a public recognition of those who lived in the Viking Age as fully human as you or I.<\/p>\n The objects primary to my project are featured in my Buzzfeed quiz and I created a separate document to cite\/examine those resources. Thus, for this document I will discuss four material resources that inspired my \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d narrative, but may not come up explicitly in the text.<\/p>\n The first object is in actuality a reconstruction of a Viking ship: the Sea Stallion.<\/a> Housed at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (and discovered close by the museum as well), the Sea Stallion<\/em> is a \u201creconstruction of the great longship Skuldelev 2\u201d and utilized a vast amount of other materials (wood, fiber, etc.).8<\/a><\/sup> Although the original ship (with its remnants now on display at the museum) was created later in the Viking Age (around 1040 CE) compared to much of my other evidence, it nevertheless provides a true physical and tangible Viking boat experience due to its multiple voyages.9<\/a><\/sup> The reason I find the Sea Stallio<\/em>n reconstruction and Skuledev 2 so convincing is firstly their grand size (a crew of 60-70 people) and how the requirement for such a large crew and materials in the first reveals about a community\u2019s priorities in regards to utilizing labor and goods.10<\/a><\/sup> Additionally, just as my \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d narrative is a \u201creconstruction\u201d of the past, the Sea Stallion<\/em> works to try to understand parts of the past that can\u2019t simply be achieved via non-experimental archaeology.<\/p>\n Similarly akin to violence or raiding is my second material source, \u201cThe Hostage Stone.\u201d<\/a> This stone, which we described in class akin to a child\u2019s drawing, seemingly illustrates what it\u2019s named for: a hostage situation. At least one of the individuals appears to be chained in the image. There appears to be arrows or another form of projectile in the air. There is a war ship with oars not dissimilar from the Sea Stallion<\/em> up above. It is a chaotic scene with questions regarding slavery, violence, and moral agency. It connects back to the work of Ansgar, although he was not based in Scotland, regarding the moral grayness (or the lack thereof) in context of Vikings and the Viking Age.<\/p>\n Moving away from the doom and gloom of the Viking Age, both of my creative projects also look at more of a community and societal builder with (typically) net positive results: food. For my third material resource I am calling in sheep\/animal bones. Although I will discuss the work of Professor Zori and colleagues in further detail in the Secondary Sources section of this paper, I think their research on animal detritus\/bone collection at the Hr\u00edsbr\u00fa farmstead in Iceland provides powerful contextual work on diet and social formation. Who gets to eat what, where, and how much are powerful indicators of class and social commitments.11<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n My final material source extends even further the definition of a \u201cmaterial\u201d as it is an entire house, following in the theme of experimental archaeology (and isn\u2019t that what a Buzzfeed quiz about Viking history really is anyway?). Located at the Kulturen Museum in Lund,Sweden, the house I am considering, the Bosmala Croft, is from the mid-19th century in Sweden, almost a milennium away from the Viking Age.12<\/a><\/sup> Why include it in this discussion? Because the ability to walk through a house and truly experience the nooks and crannies of what it would have looked like to live in this rural farmhouse is the exact same experience I want to convey in my Buzzfeed quiz and \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d narrative can achieve.<\/p>\n The first secondary source from the class my work engages in (although not necessarily directly stated in the adventure itself) is Neil Price\u2019s Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings<\/em>. For my purposes, Price\u2019s work is less important in context of the Viking Age in general (or an attempt to define it) and more so connecting back to my usage of myth and saga. Particularly as my main character in my \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d narrative has an option to go to a raid\/battle, Price\u2019s examination of the role of the Valkyrie provided me an opportunity to direct this scene with an overarching mythic overtone:<\/p>\n \u201cIn the literature the Valkyries are servants of Odin and select the bravest warriors to die in battle. This might hardly seem positive but was, in fact, a compliment to those they chose because it meant they would join the war god in Valh\u00f6ll. \u2026 The Valkyries are described as armed with spear, sword and shield, armored in mail, and sometimes helmeted. In the Eddic poems, Valkyries at times adopt an individual human hero, protecting him in combat and often falling in love.\u201d13<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n Price continues here, expanding how Valkyries have often fallen under the \u201cmale gaze\u201d via popular depictions of little clothing and \u201cvoluptuous bodies.\u201d14<\/a><\/sup> My work will in turn strive to fight against this established gaze and in turn reinterpret the Valkyrie through a mythic lens.<\/p>\n Returning back to the already discussed foodways at the Hr\u00edsbru Farmstead in Iceland, Zori and colleagues analyzed via isotopic data and bone collection not only a high cattle bone ratio (i.e. the people were eating more beef than one would expect) but how this once again communicates an interest in creating and maintaining a high social status.15<\/a><\/sup> This goes back to concerns regarding class, agency, and community labor that I am trying to prod at within the \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d narrative.<\/p>\n Further secondary sources from class that provided context and helped shape the Buzzfeed Quiz and \u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d include: Charlotte Rimstad\u2019s work on textiles,16<\/a><\/sup> Madeleine Walsh\u2019s discussion of dressing for Ragnarok,17<\/a><\/sup> T. Douglas Price and colleagues\u2019 work on the Salme Boat Burial,18<\/a><\/sup> and Olwyn Owen and Magnar Dalland\u2019s work on another burial.19<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n It is crucial also to recognize the \u201cnon-academic\u201d sources that helped create the skeleton of my project. Firstly, Edward Packard\u2019s Viking Raiders<\/em> (Choose Your Own Adventure 128) was instrumental in how to build a story and maintain narrative continuation. Although debatable in regards to historical accuracy, the book provided the narrative cannon for me to move concurrently and parallel to in my own work.20<\/a><\/sup> Similarly, Life as a Viking: An Interactive History Adventure<\/em>21<\/a><\/sup> and The Middle Ages: An Interactive History Adventure<\/em> added additional structural and story contextualization.22<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1<\/a><\/sup> Jackson Crawford, \u201cWhat is the Poetic Edda?\u201d YouTube.<\/em> https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=A_H6FistfHc<\/a><\/p>\n 2<\/a><\/sup> Patricia Terry, trans. \u201cV\u00f6lusp\u00e1,\u201d in her Poems of the Elder Edda<\/em>, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 5.<\/p>\n 3<\/a><\/sup> Rimbert,\u00a0Life of Anskar<\/em>, in\u00a0Anskar, the Apostle of the North,<\/em> trans. Charles H. Robinson (London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1921), ch. 15, p. 56.<\/p>\n 4<\/a><\/sup> Rimbert, Life of Anskar<\/em>, ch. 16, pp. 57\u201358.<\/p>\n 5<\/a><\/sup> Jackson Crawford, trans., The Saga of the Volsungs<\/em> (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2017), ix.<\/p>\n 6<\/a><\/sup> Crawford, Saga of the Volsungs<\/em>, xxv.<\/p>\n 7<\/a><\/sup> A\u1e25mad ibn Fa\u1e0dl\u0101n, \u201cMission to the Volga,\u201d in Two Arabic Travel Books: Accounts of India and China<\/em>, trans. by James E. Montgomery, ed. by Philip F. Kennedy and Shawkat M. Toorawa (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 163\u2013297, at 243.<\/p>\n 8<\/a><\/sup> Viking Ship Museum, \u201cThe Sea Stallion from Glendalough 2000 \u2013 2004.\u201d https:\/\/www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk\/en\/visit-the-museum\/exhibitions\/the-five-reconstructions\/the-sea-stallion-from-glendalough-skuldelev-2<\/a><\/p>\n 9<\/a><\/sup> Viking Ship Museum, \u201cSkuldelev 2 \u2013 The Great Longship.\u201d https:\/\/www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk\/en\/visit-the-museum\/exhibitions\/the-five-viking-ships\/skuldelev-2<\/a><\/p>\n 10<\/a><\/sup> Ibid.<\/p>\n 11<\/a><\/sup> Davide Zori, Thomas Wake, Jon Erlandson, and R\u00fanar Leifsson, \u201cViking Age Foodways at the Hr\u00edsbr\u00fa Farmstead,\u201d in Viking Archaeology in Iceland: Mosfell Archaeological Project<\/em>, ed. by Davide Zori and Jesse Byock (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 163\u201379.<\/p>\n 12<\/a><\/sup> See the Kulturen website at https:\/\/www.kulturen.com\/welcome-kulturens-museums\/<\/a><\/p>\n 13<\/a><\/sup> Neil Price, \u201cThe Home of Their Shapes,\u201d in his Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings<\/em> (New York: Basic Books, 2020), 31\u201363.<\/p>\n 14<\/a><\/sup> Ibid.<\/p>\n 15<\/a><\/sup> Zori et al., \u201cViking Age Foodways.\u201d<\/p>\n 16<\/a><\/sup> Charlotte Rimstad, \u201cEarly Medieval (mostly) Textiles,\u201d Dr. Alexandra Makin<\/em> (blog). https:\/\/alexandramakin.com\/2021\/06\/30\/early-medieval-mostly-textiles-13\/<\/a><\/p>\n 17<\/a><\/sup> Madeleine Walsh, \u201cDressing for Ragnar\u00f6k? Commodifying, Appropriating and Fetishising Vikings,\u201d in Digging into the Dark Ages: Early Medieval Public Archaeologies<\/em>, ed. by Howard Williams and Pauline Clarke (Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing, 2020), 65\u201373.<\/p>\n 18<\/a><\/sup> T. Douglas Price, J\u00fcri Peets, Raili Allm\u00e4e, Liina Maldre, and Neil Price, \u201cHuman Remains, Context, and Place of Origin for the Salme, Estonia, Boat Burials,\u201d Journal of Anthropological Archaeology<\/em> 58 (2020): 1\u201313.<\/p>\n 19<\/a><\/sup> Olwyn Owen and Magnar Dalland, Scar: A Viking Boat Burial on Sanday, Orkney<\/em> (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1999).<\/p>\n 20<\/a><\/sup> Edward Packard, Viking Raiders<\/em>, Choose Your Own Adventure 128 (New York: Bantam, 1992).<\/p>\n 21<\/a><\/sup> Allison Lassieur, Life as a Viking: An Interactive History Adventure<\/em>, You Choose Books (North Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2011).<\/p>\n 22<\/a><\/sup> Allison Lassieur, The Middle Ages: An Interactive History Adventure<\/em>, 2nd ed., You Choose Books (North Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2016).<\/p>\n
\nJotunheim seethes,\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0the \u00c6sir assemble;
\nat the stone doorways\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0of deep stone dwellings
\ndwarfs are moaning.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Seek you wisdom still?\u201d2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\nMaterial Sources<\/h6>\n
Secondary Sources<\/h6>\n
\n