Thor the dark world poster.jpg
An image from "Thor, the Dark World," which opened in U.S. theaters on Friday.
By Robert Wheelersburg
The History Channel's highly watched series Vikings will soon start a second season, and the release of Thor: the Dark World shows how popular the Vikings remain today.
The Norse culture supporting the maritime raiders, called “Vikings” in Old Norse, was based upon a pantheon of gods whose sayings and deeds provided their cosmology (supernatural phenomenon influencing natural events) and normative ideology (how people treated each other).
Ironically, the History Channel’s successful series The Bible, shown at the same time, covered the birth of Christianity, which ultimately destroyed the Vikings.
While believing in sons of almighty fathers, Thor and Christ, the Vikings changed the Western world forever as they raided and traded their way from Byzantium to Newfoundland, creating countries (Iceland, Russia) and founding multi-national dynasties (Tsardom of Muscovy [Russia] and House of Fairhair [Norway]).
Christian Vikings “discovered” the New World 500 years before Italian and Spanish explorers. Scandinavian kings based their legitimacy on descent from Odin but their dynasties continue today as a result of conversation and the Reformation.
Norse Runes don’t tell the whole story and Biblical scholars gave us knowledge of the Vikings, when Icelandic poet priests recorded the oral sagas during the 12th and 13th centuries. The pagan Vikings who plundered Christian monasteries and the Christian clerics who recorded their deeds and religion centuries later formed one of the most paradoxical relationships in history.
Norse acceptance of Christianity was swift, perhaps because in the Christian Trinity they had multiple gods as they believed in with the Viking gods, something saga scholar Jonas Kristiansson acknowledges as possible.
Similarities included the early warrior god Yahweh who was a model for Odin, and Jesus equated to Thor as divine son of the powerful god. Valkyries, winged goddesses who transported those killed in battle to Vallhalla mirror the semi-divine angels who helped humans travel between earth and heaven.
Arguably Satan and Loki were the closest parallel between the two religions. Both were semi-divine beings banished from heaven who brought evil and mischief to the mortal world. Like the shape shifters they depicted, writings about Satan and Loki in the Bible and sagas changed over time.
According to Biblical scholar Christina Bucher, Satan “is described as a member of God’s court in Job 1-2.” In the Old Testament he “is ‘THE Satan,’ a title meaning ‘adversary,’ not a name.” Only in the New Testament does Satan morph into the devil. Originally one of God’s angels, Satan created mischief like afflicting Job with sores over his whole body when forbidden from killing him. The trickster Loki also had a confusing persona as both a high god (Aesir) and outcast from Asgard.
Not a true devil, Loki was considered an adversary of both gods and humans, alternating between causing trouble and helping, depending upon his whim. Both Satan and Loki fought final battles with the gods for control of heaven; in the Apocalypse when St. Michael and his angels cast Satan into the pit or the Ragnarök that saw Odin, Thor and the other gods killed by Loki’s three monstrous offspring including the gigantic serpent Jörmungandr.
One aspect of Viking religion not seen since the Old Testament, human sacrifice was demanded by Odin as late as the 11th century. As in the series episode, Sacrifice, only true believers in the Norse gods had their throats slit by petty kings with the blood collected to spread on farm fields.
Sacrifices were portrayed as eager volunteers because passing from Midgard (the human realm) to Valhalla was the goal of Odin’s true believers. Two centuries later, absolutist kings Vladimir in Russia and Olaf Tryggvason who ruled Norway and Iceland executed non- believers in Christ.
Leaving Iceland in 1,000 A.D. to escape religious persecution after the Althing (parliament) voted to convert to Christianity, Eric the Red, a pagan, fled to Greenland seeking religious freedom. Yet, the Norse gods would not outlast him as Eric’s son Leif converted to Christianity prior to his voyage to Newfoundland.
What happened to the Vikings? Without its pagan religion, Norse culture passed into history. In Denmark, Norway and Sweden, egalitarian Norse society based upon petty chieftains changed to stratified societies with one king like other European feudal societies. Landless peasants bound by law to do farm work were unable to drop their plows, board ships and go raiding.
In Iceland, Christian Norse laid down their swords forever for the rule of law. In areas like Britain and France, Norse simply disappeared into local populations.
Vikings survived for a time on Greenland. Archaeologist Thomas McGovern estimates their peak population at 5,000 residents supported by dairy farming and trade with Norway. Europe’s Little Ice Age brought the frigid temperatures once caused by mythical Frost Giants to Greenland long after the Norse believed in them.
The Norse economy failed as the delicate northern pastures succumbed to cold and the frozen North Atlantic (along with the Hanseatic League) stopped Norwegian trade ships with their desperately needed cargo. It was a cold and hungry group of Christians who manned the last bastions of Norse society in the early 14th century.
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Although they held on for another century, Viking descendants on Greenland ate their dairy cattle in a desperate attempt to survive. Curiously, the Norse refused the clothing, sea mammal hunting technology and diet of their Thule (ancestors of today’s Inuit or Eskimos) neighbors long adapted to Arctic survival.
Scholars suggest Norse refused the pagan Inuit lifestyle preferring their Christian ways. Thus, late Greenlandic Norse religion came from the Bible not pagan mythology, meaning true believers went to heaven, not to Valhalla as the characters portrayed in the Vikings thought hoped.
Robert Wheelersburg teaches a course in Scandinavian Studies at Elizabethtown College.
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