Vikings Cultural Values

Our beliefs, religions, and entertainment reveal what we value as a society. This is true for any society existing at any time. Pertaining to Vikings, one can better understand what the Norse truly value by looking within their pagan religion. Although Norse mythology has been partly altered by Christianity and by scholars, one can discern what values were still important to the Norse through common themes throughout each tale. For example, a theme that comes up time and time again in all the stories present in Gaiman’s novel Norse Mythology is the idea of honor. Using honor in a broad sense, one can see how it permeates throughout all aspects of Norse mythology and thus prove its importance to the Vikings culturally.

The most obvious example

Skadi, the daughter of Thiazi the giant, comes back to avenge her father’s unjust death at the hands of Loki through killing. Instead, the gods gave a compensation for the damage done to Thiazi’s family. Their way of honoring him was to create “twin stars, one blazing beside the other. Those two stars are Thiazi’s eyes. They are shining still.” Through these actions, the gods are honoring the memory of Thiazi and making him immortal, as storytellers and listeners could always look to the sky and marvel at Thiazi’s eyes. With the story of Balder, his vengeance is served by other means. The death of Balder by Hod through the manipulation of Loki ended with a son to replace Balder named “Vali… the son of Odin and the goddess Rind. Before he was a day old, the baby found and slew Hod.” In doing so, Vali avenged Balder’s death, and the reader sees that even gods are subject to this custom within their own families. This motif is also repeated in Egil’s Saga, where Egil must avenge the death of his family member by the hands of King Harold. Relating this to real life, one could speculate that should such a conflict as Skadi’s or Balder’s rises, the two opposing sides could either kill one another to achieve vengeance or sacrifice something of their own to compensate for the other’s loss. This sort of recompense is prolific throughout Norse tales and plays

Rarely does anyone in the mythos go back on their word. When they do, it is assumed that it always comes to the liar’s detriment. Take, for example, the story of the wall. When the stranger and the gods swear upon “Gungnir, Odin’s spear, and an oath sworn on Gungnir was unbreakable” the gods and the stranger understands that breaking this oath would lead to punishment. Yet both the gods and Bragi, the giant disguised as a stranger, cheat on one another, leaving the wall unfinished for the gods and Bragi dead. Strangely enough, none of them technically went back on their promise, as Bragi was not able to finish his wall, and no one aided him in finishing the wall, so it was fair. This promise played to the favor of the gods, and we see often that even those such as Aegir who have no wish on serving a banquet to the gods also never go back on their word for the fear of what that consequence may bring. Seeing as how often these unbreakable promises and blood oaths come up in these stories, one could safely assume that oaths were commonplace in Viking culture. This is proven true by Anne Riisøy in her article Performing Oaths in Eddic Poetry: Viking Age Fact or Medieval Fiction; through her study of linguistics, archeology, sources outside of Scandinavia written during the era of the Vikings, and