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The Social Ideas Of Vikings Life And Death Through Egil's Saga

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Vikings’ life and death shown through Egil Saga
The social ideas of the Vikings were very different from those of today. A source from The Viking Age: A Reader shows what the life of a viking was like, especially, how they conceived their death. Egil’s Saga is a saga from Iceland, written during the viking age. The source shows how vikings lived, focusing on a viking named Egil’s life. Two stories within the saga help understand the Viking society at the time.
The story begins with Egil and Thorolf spending the winter at Thorir’s house and getting prepared for a journey. In the spring, they got a large long ship and gathered crew and in the summer, they raided the places and got a great deal of plunder. One day, they stopped at a broad river …show more content…

Courland is the area where Egil’s group traded the things. Since vikings were vigorous, it is often considered that vikings will earn more wealth within piracy than trading. Then why did they start trading instead of raiding? There are various assumptions. First, vikings might have realized that trading is less deadly, so they can preserve their population. However, the first assumption is not supporting the idea of vikings’ warrior culture. They have to die to be honored. The second conjecture is that, by trading, vikings can make more allies, not enemies. By making allies, vikings get to both raid and trade more effectively. Their allies can be supporters when the vikings get in a fight, or they can also trade each other. Lastly, trading brings taxes. Every town could have a tax on merchants, which acquired more wealth for the town. Towns expanded more and set up more places for trade. Thus lots of wealth came from trading rather than …show more content…

Dying in a battle is the most glorious death, and they craved it. The quote in the Egil Saga says “This is no way for warriors to behave. We’ve stolen the farmer’s property, but he doesn’t know a thing about it-We should be ashamed of ourselves.” In this situation, Egil and his companions were raiding the farmers’ property as a sort of revenge after they escaped. However Egil resisted to raid the place thinking that it was not a heroic act. In a modern view, it looks like Egil did something righteous because he stopped raiding. However, in the part “the farmer doesn’t know a thing about it” shows that vikings don’t consider raiding without noticing them and fighting against them is not honorable. Thus, the reason why he mentioned the “warrior-like act” is not because he felt ashamed about raiding, but because he didn’t fight them before he took them. After saying the quote, Egil set the fire and finished his raiding, also supporting the idea that the vikings have to

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