The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women by Nancy Marie Brown

Author:Nancy Marie Brown [Brown, Nancy Marie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Europe, Scandinavia, Medieval
ISBN: 9781250200839
Google: 08D3DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2021-08-31T00:02:14.074523+00:00

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Writing about the route the Rus slavers took from Kyiv to Byzantium in the mid-tenth century, the emperor Constantine VII paints a dark picture of slave trading in action: To negotiate the largest of the river rapids, he wrote, the Rus first put ashore sentries to guard against attacks by the nomads. Then, while some of the Rus portage the ships, “the rest of them, picking up the things they have on board the ships, conduct the wretched slaves in chains six miles by dry land until they are past the barrier.”

The Icelandic sagas mention slaves in chains or fetters as well—in stories of heroic escapes. When his guards fell asleep, one saga hero, captured in battle, “rolled over to where an axe lay, and was able to cut the rope off his hands. Next he knocked off his fetters, though it required taking off both heel bones too. Then he killed all the guards. He dove into the sea and swam to land.” Given the damage to his feet, these fetters seem to be iron rings or shackles clasped around his ankles, joined by a chain. (A page later we read that his heel bones “healed so well that nothing stood in his way.”)

The same plan works for two brothers in a more realistic saga: “There was an axe on the ground with its edge turned up. Grim crawled over to it; he succeeded in cutting the bowstring off himself with the axe, though he wounded his hands badly.” Then he freed his brother and they slipped overboard. They made it to land, managed to break off their fetters, and walked some distance, before being rescued by Vikings they knew.

If slavery was the economic driver of the Viking Age, I’d expect as many iron ankle shackles to turn up in excavations as swords, but they do not. A set of iron chains was found in Ireland, attached to a heavy iron neck collar. Iron shackles were found in Dublin too, as well as in Birka, Hedeby, and along the East Way, but the finds are few.

Were Vikings not buried with these tools of their trade? Or did slavery not require shackles and chains? Rope works just as well to bind a captive (unless you leave axes lying around), and spare rope was always available on a Viking ship. In a pinch, it seems, a bowstring will do.

The Vikings also invoked magic to bind or loose a captive. In Norse myth, the evil wolf Fenrir, who will eat the god Odin in the last battle, was bound by fetters made from “the noise of a stalking cat, a woman’s beard, a mountain’s roots, a bear’s sinews, the breath of a fish, and the spit of a bird.” All but the bear sinews are impossibilities, but fear might work as well to psychologically bind a captive. Valkyries in battle were said to be able to cast “war-fetters” to paralyze their foes with shock. They could also use charms or runes to break the fetters that bound them or their friends.

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