Funeral Rites

The greatest material legacy vikings have left us can be found in their tombs. Here is the main information source for historians and archeologists, and has helped complementing the bloody viking concept with the trader and traveller, thanks to the big number of objects from far lands thet were left with the dead.

Vikings had a great variety of funerals. Before the viking era, and in some cases afterwards, vikings incinerated the dead, placing the ashes in a clay vessel that was buried under a stone pile. When they changed their ideas, they buried the dead, both men and women, with their usual clothes and objects they'd need in the other life, like weapons, board games, jewels or coins.

Burials were not all the same, leaders and important men were buried with their ships and provisions, as well as animals and slaves, because everything should be recovered in the other life. We know of a tomb that contained the deceased's clothes, a cauldron, six beds, three boats, a sleigh, structures for tents and the skeletons of twelve horses, six dogs and a peacock; other times, only a stone pile was placed over the dead. With the arrival of Christianism, burials were simplified and there were no offerings.

According to their beliefs about the "farther", the deceased could begin another life, where they patiently waited for the Ragnar�k, in one of the different god homes. Not everyone deserved the same, but depending on the kind of death and personal life, dead could go with:

• Odin: Half of the brave warriors died in combat.
• Freya: The other half.
• Thor: The countrymen.
• Frigga: Loving couples.

The negative part was divided between two not very appreciated goddesses:

• Hel: The ones that had died naturally. It was not hell, but a kind of boring waiting room before Rangnar�k, even though there was a special gloomy place for traitors and perjurers.
• Ran: The ones who had drowned because of a storm.

As death for the Vikings meant a journey to another world, the dead were either burned in order to gain immediate access to Valhalla or buried, ready to make miraculous journeys into the realm of the gods. Kings, heroes and peasants wished to have with them those goods that could be useful in another world, and the Vikings therefore evolved funeral rites that struck foreign travelers with quite a bit of impact. It is to the Arab chronicler Ibn Fadlan that we owe this account of the cremation of the remains of a Russian chief on the banks of the Volga in A.D. 992.

It was related to me that, when their[the Rus] chieftains died, the cremation was the least part of their funeral practices and, consequently, I was very curious to know what exactly went on there.

One day I learned that one of their chieftains had died. He was placed apart in a grave which was covered over for 10 days until clothing for him had been cut out and stitched. If the dead man were poor, a small boat was made, in which the corpse was placed and then burned. But if he were wealthy, his property and goods were divided into three portions: one for his family, another to meet the cost of his clothing, the third to make nabid (without doubt erfi�l, or funeral beer) which was drunk on the day when the dead man's (female) slave was burned with him...

When one of their chiefs died, his family demanded of his men and women slaves: "Which among you wish to die with him?" Then one of them would say, "I will," and whoever said that would be forced to undergo it, it was not possible to withdraw. If she wished to do so, it would not be allowed. Those who volunteered were nearly always female slaves.

So it was that when this man died, the slaves were asked: "Which among you wishes to die with him?" One of the female slaves replied: "I will." From that moment she would be under constant guard by two other servants who took care of her to the extent of washing her feet with their own hands. Preparations were made for the dead man, his clothing made, etc., while every day the condemned girl would drink and sing, as though in preparation for a joyous event. When the day arrived for the chief and his slave to be burned, I went to the river where his boat was moored. It had been hoisted up on to the bank... Then there were placed around it something which looked like a great scaffolding of wood...

People began to walk around it speaking in a tongue unknown to me, but the corpse was lying all the time in his grave; they never disturbed it again. They then brought a bier, placed it on the boat and covered it over with carpets and cushions of dibag (brocaded silk) from Byzantium. Then there arrived an old woman whom they called the "Angel of Death," and she spread the cushions on the bier. She, too, was in charge of the whole ceremony, from the dressing of the cadaver to the execution of the slave.

I noticed that the Angel of Death was a strapping woman, massively built and austere of countenance. When they arrived at the grave the earth was removed from the wooden lid and then the wood itself was taken away. Next the corpse was stripped of the garments in which he had died. I noticed that his body had turned black from the intense cold.

When they had placed the body in the grave, they had also put there beer, fruit, and a lute, all things which they now took away. Most surprisingly, the corpese has not changed at all save for the color of his flesh. They took a pride in their duty of clothing him in drawers, trousers, boots, a tunic and cloak of dibag and sable; then he was carried to a tent set over the boat... Nabid, fruits, and aromatic herbs were then brought and placed all around his body; they also brought bread, meat, and onions which they threw down before him.

That done, they took a dog and, after cutting it in two, they threw the pieces into the ship. Afterwards they brought all his weapons and laid them by his side. Then they took two horses, drove them til they sweated, and then cut them in pieces with swords and threw their flesh into the boat; the same was done with two cows. Next they killed a cock and a hen and threw them in too.

Meanwhile the slave who had volunteered to be killed went hither and thither, entering each tent in turn, and the master of each household had sexual intercourse with her, saying: "Tell your master that I do this thing for the love of him."

When Friday afternoon came, they led the slave girl to something they had made which resembled a door frame. Then she mounted on to the palms of the men's hands high enough to look over the framework, and when they lowered her again she said something in a strange tongue. They liftered her up again and she behaved exactly as before. They lowered her again, then once more raised her up and she repeated what she had done the first and second times. Then they gave her a hen; she cut off its head and threw it away; they took the hen and threw it into the boat.

I asked my interpreter what she had said. He replied: "The first time she was lifted up, she said: 'Look. I see my father and mother!' The second time: 'Behold, I see my dead relatives seated around' The third time, she had said: 'Behold! I see my master in Paradise, and Paradise is green and fair, and with him are men and young boys. He is calling me. Let me go to him!'"

Then they led her towards the ship. Next she took off two bracelets she was wearing and gave them to the old woman, the Angel of Death, who was going to kill her. She then took off the two finger-rings she was wearing and gave them to the daughters of the Angel of Death.

Then they raised her on to the ship, but they did not let her enter the tent. After that many men came with wooden shields and she was given a beaker of nabid. She sang as she drank it. My interpreter told me then: "It is thus that she bids farewell to her friends." Then she was given a second cup. She took it and sang for a long time: but the old woman told her to make haste, to drink up, and go into the tent where she would find her master. I looked at her at that moment and she seemed completely bewildered. She wanted to enter the tent but only managed to put her head between it and the ship. The old woman took hold of her head and made her enter the tent, following her in.

Then it was that the men began to beat their shields with wooden sticks, to stifle the cries of the slave girl, so that the other girls would not take fright and refuse to die with their masters. Six men then entered the tent and all had sexual intercourse with her. Then they made her lie at the side of her dead master. Two held her hands, and two her feet, and the Angel of Death wound a noose round her neck ending in a knot at both ends which she placed in the hands of two men, for them to pull. She then advanced with a broad-bladed dagger which she plunged repeatedly between the ribs of the girl while the men strangled her until she was dead.