The ‘ethical Viking’

For any scholar of Northern antiquity, there is no escaping the fact that the peoples of early medieval Scandinavia, and the vast diaspora they helped create, have borne a greater freight of stereotyping, misappropriation, abuse, and general misunderstanding than almost any other past civilisation. The generalising notion of a time of the Vikings has a long pedigree, and an ideological crush on the Vikings can be traced in a disturbingly unbroken line from at least the eighteenth century through to the Victorians, with an even darker floruit under the Nazis that continues among today’s white supremacists. At the same time, a very different version of the Viking image remains uniquely popular with the general public. In response, some scholars issue correctives, while others now try to push a counter-narrative of the Viking Age as a period of multi-racial harmony and proto-feminist gender equality, which is just as much a contemporary projection as the rest, albeit well-intentioned. In the face of this centuries-long tsunami of disinformation, what should Viking scholars do (and ‘nothing’ is not a defensible option)?

Some researchers have suggested that the entire concept of a Viking Age and the Vikings at its nominal core are nothing more than products of later, colonial imaginaries. Against the current background of emboldened far-right groups adopting ‘Viking’ imagery and themes with increasing confidence, there are calls to retire these historiographical vocabularies altogether – at a blunt extreme, in 2022 one historian declared that “the Vikings never existed; it is time to put this unhealthy fantasy to bed”. While some scholars might agree in principle, most are resigned to a collective term of convenience that is so firmly entrenched in the general consciousness that we must simply deal with it, problems and all. In particular, it seems wise to remember that none of these problematic vectors of latter-day admiration say anything at all about the lived experiences of the early medieval world, only about their subsequent politicisation.

At WIVA, we believe that the past can be reclaimed from appropriation, rather than surrendered or abandoned to it. Our Centre’s mission presents us with an opportunity to reimagine the ‘Vikings’, with appropriate caution as to that term. The act of imagination is important, because there is always a sense in which the writing of history is unavoidably a kind of speculative fiction, creatively extrapolated from the facts as we have them. This is not to project our own concerns and preoccupations onto the past, but instead to engage with it seriously, all the while acknowledging the uncertainty of the endeavour. The idea of the Norse at a disadvantage is crucial: the extended geography of their diaspora that WIVA embodies is not to imply some kind of delusional ‘Viking empire’ or colonialist endeavour. Those travelling the Silk Roads far into Asia did so in small groups, or even as individuals, not as raiders and armies. Let’s try to follow them there, and see where those paths lead.