The Viking Age (c. 700-1100 CE) in northern Europe is a bit of a “dark age” inasmuch as very, very few written documents survive. We know that the Norse people of Scandinavia and Iceland wrote things down using the runic alphabet, but oftentimes they used strips of tree bark that are quite biodegradable and thus only very few survive. Massive runestones like the ones that dot the landscape of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden were expensive to make, so they are generally reserved for the most elite or wealthy members of society. The Icelandic sagas, while potentially a much older oral tradition, were not written down until the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries and much more representative of those times than the earlier centuries they supposedly describe.

One exception to this lack of sources is what scholars now call skaldic poetry. Skáld in Old Norse (the language of the Vikings) just means “poet,” so this genre is really just “poets’ poetry.” Icelanders, especially, became famous in the tenth and eleventh centuries for the complicated poetic metres that make up this genre, the best supposedly being able to compose on the spot. The most common form these poems take is now dubbed dróttkvætt (“court metre”), so-called because kings would sponsor poets who worked in it. Dróttkvætt has very strict rules of internal rhyme and alliteration—so strict that changing even a syllable in a word throws off the whole thing. Because of these conventions, we can be fairly confident that the written forms of these poems, usually included in those later sagas, are very close to their original spoken form, and so, a source that goes back into the Viking Age. Skaldic poems often revolve around the exploits of a powerful warlord or king. The poem included below is no exception. It was composed by an Icelander named Valgarðr, possibly from Völlur in southern Iceland, sometime in the middle of the eleventh century. It honors the exploits of Harald Sigurdsson, a Norwegian king usually known by his nickname harðráði or “hard-ruler,” who died fighting Harold Godwineson for the English throne in September 1066. This poem explores the aftermath of a raid Harald conducted in Denmark, and shows us one of the main commodities he was after: women to enslave.

Translated from Old Norse by Jacob Bell. After the edition in Kari Ellen Gade, ed., “Valgarðr á Velli, Poem about Haraldr harðráði 9,” in Kari Ellen Gade, ed., Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2009), 307-08. This translation CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The crowd was sadly separating,

those still-living Danes were fleeing.

From those who were delayed,

fair women were taken as booty.

Locks held the ladies’ bodies,

[driven] before you to the ships.

Many women were led,

bright shackles eagerly bit flesh.

Discussion Questions

  1. What can this poem tell us about the values of the Norse world that produced it? What is important to them, in your opinion?
  2. Enslaved women are not the focus of this poem—Harald is. How can we use sources like this to help us understand slavery in the medieval past?
  3. Does the genre of this source (poetry) impact how we interpret it? Is it a reliable source?

Related Primary Sources

Related Secondary Sources

  • Margaret Clunies Ross, “What is Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages?” In Diana Whaley, ed., Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), xiii-xviii.
  • Ben Raffield, “The Slave Markets of the Viking World: Comparative Perspectives on an ‘Invisible Archaeology,’” Slavery & Abolition 40, 4 (2019): 692-705.
  • Janel M. Fontaine, “Early Medieval Slave-trading in the Archaeological Record: Comparative Methodologies,” Early Medieval Europe 25, no. 4 (2017): 466-88.

Themes

Religion, Sexual Slavery, Trade, Women