Iceland was known to sea-faring Irish monks quite early on; but it was not until 867 that a Norwegian Viking, called Naddodd, discovered the island, when his longship was driven off-course on the way to the Faroes.
After that, Vikings (or ‘wanderers’) from all parts of Scandinavia, the Hebrides, and Ireland went to settle there, to farm and to fish, and often to escape punishment for crimes they had committed elsewhere!
Between the years 930 and 1260, these independent ‘Icelanders’ created a form of rough law and self-government that was quite amazing—especially when we remember that they did not become Christians until the year 1000.
We can learn all about this from the Icelandic stories called sagas. I have tried to write Horned Helmet in the style of the sagas, as far as possible, so that you can get the feel of these old tales.
The Northmen, whether they came from Scandinavia or Iceland, were often very intelligent people, with a rough dry sense of humour. They did not like to show their feelings too much, so they spoke in a short sharp sort of way, leaving much unsaid, as I try to do in this book. Of course, they were usually very brave, and didn’t mind dying in battle as long as they could kill some of the enemy as well! They thought this was a good bargain—and these Vikings were great bargainers in everything. They even bargained about whether it was better to pray to Christ or to Odin and Thor, and they were always arguing about which religion was the more useful to them. Horned Helmet is set about the year 1015, when officially Iceland had been converted for fifteen years; but there were still quite a number of Northmen who were not quite convinced that Christianity was the best religion.
When we talk of the Northern World in the year 1015, we mean not only Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Lappland, but also Iceland, Orkney, the Shetlands, the Hebrides, together with parts of Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Russia, and even northern France! These Viking Northmen seemed to get everywhere in their longships; and that is the impression I want you to receive from this story. Sometimes, it seems a little confusing, I know—but that is just how it was in those days. You see, one race married another, and then they shared languages, religions, and stories. Why, a year after our story begins, England even borrowed a Danish king—the famous King Canute who is supposed to have tried to turn the waves back!
The helmet in this story is not the sort of Viking helmet with horns on it that one often sees. It is an ancient Celtic helmet like the one that was found in the Thames. At the time of our story, this helmet would be at least a thousand years old—which is one reason why Starkad set such great store by it. It was an ‘heirloom’, as they used to say then, to be passed on from one to another as long as it lasted. Swords were regarded like that, too. They went on and on for generations, and sometimes, when they broke at last, they were made into spear-heads so that they could carry on the good work a while longer!
The Jomsvikings were a fierce body of seafarers whose home was at Jomsburg, on an island in the Baltic, at the mouth of the river Oder. They were gathered together into a great band by the Danish king, Harald Gormsson, whose nickname was ‘Bluetooth’. This King Harald began as a heathen, but after he was converted himself, he tried very hard, and very ferociously, to make all the other Danes Christians. In 988, his son Swein got so tired of Bluetooth’s religious frenzy, he organized a revolt and had his father turned out of his kingdom! Then the Jomsvikings fought for Swein instead. They were still foraging about the seas and rivers well into King Canute’s reign; sometimes following one leader, sometimes another—and sometimes just pleasing themselves!
Some of them, like Jarl (Earl) Skallagrim, went as far afield as Constantinople, which they called Miklagard, to serve in the Greek Emperor’s Varangian Guard and to live among people who followed the teachings of the Greek Orthodox Church. As long as there was a profit in it, they did not mind where in the whole of the world they went.
A word about Beorn, the boy-hero of this story; his name should really be spelled Bjorn, but that looks clumsy, so I have spelled it as it sounds in English.
Incidentally, his silly song about Snorre the Pig is really a sarcastic sneer about an Icelandic chieftain of those times, who often tried to get his own way by force or even treachery. Snorre is described in Njal’s Saga.
Beorn also tells about another Icelander, Grettir, whom he claims as a relative. In those days, Icelandic families were so intermixed that many folk must have been related to Grettir. This Grettir, whose life-story is told in Grettir’s Saga, was born in 997, that is, three years before Iceland became partially converted to Christianity, and eighteen years before our story starts. Grettir was a big, strong, rough Icelander who robbed a dead king’s burial mound, and who voyaged and fought in many parts of the Northern World.
The incident of the cloak-pin in Chapter 9 is borrowed from Olaf Tryggvason’s Saga, and it really did happen to two Jomsvikings.
The verse that the priest, Alphege, speaks on page 88 is a translation of The Dream of the Rood, written first in Anglo-Saxon by Cynewulf of Northumbria. And the verse spoken by Katla on page 103 comes from another Saxon poem called The Battle of Maldon, fought in 991; that is, twenty-four years before our story begins.
HENRY TREECE