Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
VIKING RELIGION
Though a few Vikings may have been Christian, the majority believed in the
Norse gods
, the
Æsir, which included
Óðinn
, the creator of mankind; his wild and adventurous hammer-
wielding son
Þór
; and
Freyr
, the god of fertility and farming. The Æsir themselves were
children of the first beings, the Giants, who had also created dwarfs and elves; they lived above
the world in
Ásgarður
, where the great hall Valhalla housed the souls of Champions, men
killed in warfare. The Champions awaited Ragnarok, when they would join the Æsir in a final
massive battle against the Frost Giants, in which the world would be totally destroyed.
Fearsome in battle, honour was everything to the Vikings, and the faintest slur could start a
century-long blood feud between families.
which he was led to by following his pet ravens - hence his other name, Hrafna-Flóki,
Raven-Flóki. But a hard winter in the northwest killed all his livestock; climbing a
mountain he saw a fjord on the other side choked with ice and, frustrated, he renamed
the country
Ísland
, Iceland, and returned to Norway.
Settlement
Despite Flóki's experiences, the idea of so much free space proved tempting to two
other Norwegians,
Ingólfur Arnarson
and his brother-in-law
Hjörleifur Hróðmarsson
,
who had lost their own lands in Norway as compensation for killing the son of a local
earl. Around 870 they set sail with their households and possessions for Iceland,
intending to settle there permanently. When they came within sight of land, Ingólfur
dedicated his wooden
seat-posts
- the cherished symbol of his being head of a
household - to his gods and threw them overboard, vowing to found his new home at
the spot where they washed up. While his slaves searched for them, Ingólfur spent three
years exploring Iceland's southern coast, wintering first at Ingólfshöfði (near Skaftafell),
Hjörleifshöfði (just east of Vík), and then at Ingólfsfjall (Selfoss). The posts were duly
found in a southwestern bay and there Ingólfur built his homestead in 874, naming the
place
Reykjavík
(“Smoky Bay”) after the steam rising off nearby hot springs, and
becoming Iceland's first official resident.
Although Hjörleifur had meanwhile been murdered by his own Irish slaves, things
went well for Ingólfur and this attracted other migrants to Iceland, who spent the next
sixty years snapping up vacant land in what has become known as the
Settlement
, or
Landnám. These first Icelanders, who were mostly Norwegian, were primarily
farmers
,
importing their pagan beliefs along with sheep, horses, and crops such as barley, while
also clearing forests to create pasture and provide timber for buildings and ships. While
it was available, a man could take as much land as he could light fires around in one
day, while a woman could have the area she could lead a heifer around in the same
time. Landowners became local
chieftains
, whose religious responsibilities earned them
the title of
goðar
, or priests, and who sorted out their differences through negotiations
at regional
assemblies
(
þing
) - or if these failed, by fighting. Conditions must have
been very favourable compared to those in Norway, however, as by 930, when the last
areas of the country were claimed, an estimated sixty thousand people already lived in
Iceland - a figure not exceeded until the nineteenth century.
930
980
1000
1056
1104
The Icelandic
Commonwealth is
established by the
country's chieftains
Erik the Red is
outlawed and sails
for Greenland
Iceland becomes
Christian
Iceland's first
bishop, Ísleifur, is
appointed
Violent eruption
of Hekla
