Vikings and Goths: A History of Ancient and Medieval Sweden by Peterson Gary Dean

Author:Peterson, Gary Dean [Peterson, Gary Dean]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2016-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

24

The Swedish People of the Viking Age

We have traced the lineage of the kings of the Svear, Gauts and other peoples who eventually became the nation of Sweden as best we could. We’ve seen the chiefs of tribes develop into kings of minor states and minor states evolve into major kingdoms; these kingdoms, in turn, struggled for dominance. But what of the people, the farmers, fishermen and tradesmen who became the merchants, marauders and conquerors of the Viking Age? Who were these people, how did they live, and what propelled them to leave their native Sweden and embark on journeys fraught with peril?

Ethnically, Swedes are Teutonic.1 The Swedish language is Germanic, but in the Viking Age Swedes spoke Old Norse, a language more or less common to all the Scandinavian peoples except the Finns and Lapps. Sometimes referred to as the “Danish tongue,” it was distinct from other Germanic languages to the south and certainly the Slavic languages of the Wends.2 Judging from the sagas, the various Viking traders and raiders did not seem to have any problem communicating with one another, whether they were from Uppland, Jutland, Trondelag or Iceland. The spoken Old Norse seems to have varied more in dialect and accent from community to community than from country to country.

Racially, the peoples who would become Swedes were a mixture, as we’ve seen in earlier chapters. It has long been recognized that there are two main physical types of Scandinavians. This dichotomy was recognized in the Viking Age and is emphasized in the sagas. Egil of Egil’s Saga is described as “just as black-haired and ugly as his father.”3 Yet Egil had a son characterized quite differently:

Thorstein Egilsson grew up to be an exceptionally handsome man. He was fair-haired and fair-complexioned, and tall and strong though not quite in his father’s way.4

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