Viking Funeral Essay

Death rituals are an important part of concluding a person’s life in nearly all faiths, so the person can be remembered in a special way as he/she parts the world from his/her family and friends. This report will explore death rituals in both Catholic and Islamic faiths. The writer will discuss the belief of the death ritual through celebration, belonging, symbols, purification and the transition into a new existence. As the report continues, theorists of Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner and Terence Lovat will applied throughout the report which all will be related to the hypotheses’ accuracy.

It was a normal day in the castle of Goranson. All the townspeople were tending to their work when an explosion made a loud sound that ran throughout the castle. Townspeople stood there shocked as the castle stood in silence. After the seconds of silence another loud explosion shook the castle followed by arrows flying throughout the castle and vikings screaming as they charge in. Everyone ran to get to safety and the vikings never followed. They only had one mission, to get the king and destroy the castle. When all the noise had stopped and all the screams were silenced the townspeople went to look outside to see that the castle was all burnt down. One farmer had said “Quick find the king”. They all rushed into various buildings only to find the king was not there.

The era of history known as the Viking age lasted from the late eight century to the late eleventh century A.D. The society to which we refer to as Vikings represented different groups of merchants, warriors and explorers, including the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes, who were often divided into smaller kingdoms. Vikings were people who spent most of their time on the ships, and thus the history usually describes them as the masters of the sea. They are considered as the ruthless and fierce pirates, pagans, ravagers and despoilers who inhabited Scandinavian territory during the medieval times. However, it is important to say that the view of Vikings is sometimes usually misunderstood and misinterpreted. Although they were ruthless raiders,

Initially, the Vikings set sail towards the West in search of ‘booty’ (treasure) as a means of supplementing their income. Their ships, the Longboat, were central to the Viking warrior culture: A master builder would build a boat from memory, entirely by eye, and carved a dragon head on the bow of the ship to protect against evil spirits of the sea. An average boat would require wood from more than a dozen trees, mostly species of oak, spruce, and pine. Moreover, the prominent curves of the stem and stern created an ingenious design element: the Vikings, with the use of either sails or oars, could quickly change direction without turning around. Also, with the shallow draft of the ships being as little as 20 inches under the water, they were able to navigate shallow rivers, perform beach landings and portage their ships

For a Viking a death for them would into a afterlife and into of the Viking realms. It was this belief that led all of the Vikings to take their time on the funerals and burials. Trying their hardest to send everyone such as friends, family or fallen comrades to a successful afterlife. There are two alms in Norse or Viking mythology that was commonly associated with the religious practices of funerals and burial were Valhalla and Helheim. Valhalla was a place for fallen warriors.

The "Vikings" were an ancient people that inhabited Northern Europe and Scandinavia known as the Norse (also known as Northmen or Norsemen). The Norse people were spread across Northern Europe, particularly in the regions known today as: Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, and Finland), Germany, Denmark, Poland, Netherlands, the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Ireland, and the surrounding islands), Iceland, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

The Vikings are often represented in modern culture as burly, horn-helm wearing savages, who ruthlessly plunder and destroy towns and countrysides, and while this might be an exaggeration, it is not completely untrue. In the 9th century, the Vikings from Scandinavia exposed the weakness of Charlemagne’s self-confident regime, they sought to loot the now-wealthy Franks and replace them as the dominant warrior class of northern Europe. It was their turn to extract plunder and to sell off slaves across the water. They succeeded because of a deadly technological advantage, ships of unparalleled sophistication, developed by Scandinavian sailors in the Baltic Sea. They were light and agile, with a shallow draft, which allowed them to penetrate

Question 2: what have you discovered about Viking behaviour and why the Vikings acted this way?

This time period is commonly known as the Viking Age of Scandinavian history. A Viking's most treasured weapon was his sword. They were handed down generations because of inheritance, they were often named and could be inscribed with writings by talented blacksmiths to magically increase their powers. The Vikings had no professional standing army and tactics and discipline seemed to have little to no development. They did not fight in regular formations. Aspiring warriors wanted armed service so they fought next to famous fighters in order to be rewarded with weapons and fame of their own. The houses the Vikings lived in were made out of wattle which is sticks. Many people believe the Scandinavian people were big and muscular, but that was not the case. Due to the short summer seasons, growing crops was difficult and resources were always scarce. As a result, many of the Scandinavian people were much smaller than commonly depicted due to limited food sources. The Vikings were a special culture compared to many others before and after

The Vikings were known for being a very brutal people. They liked to pillage and raid countries and it has been recently discovered that they’d bury slaves alive as burial gifts. Found in the Journal of Archaeological Science it is stated that ten Viking age carcasses found in Flakstad, Norway were tested for stable Carbon and Nitrogen isotopes (delta) δ13C, δ15N and mitochondrial DNA (Naumann). It was discovered that the individuals were not maternally related nor were they from the same class of society. It was believed from the isotopical analysis that slaves were buried with their masters as gifts. The Viking Age was characterized by vast differences in burial customs, including burial form, grave gifts and treatment of the body (Naumann). While having more than one person in

“Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race. … Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert, spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all

As quoted from “A Traveller’s History of England”, “The Vikings were Scandinavian people who, because of population increase and political instability, sought their fortune throughout Europe.” The Vikings were often found invading and raiding other kingdoms, including Wessex and East Anglia. “The Vikings…were portrayed as ruthless raiders and pillagers who came, slaughtered, and left”, “A Traveller’s History of England” writes. In the thirteen century, this community became known as “Danes” because of the involvement of the Danish king. The Viking society was structured around their infamous attacks and intrusions on many of the other kingdoms. Usually, when the Vikings invaded other kingdoms, they eventually became integrated into the kingdoms’

and more resistant to decomposition replaced previous species. (Hansen 2016) The accumulating peat thus increased the deposition of bog iron and available supplies for Vikings to then transform into the spears, axes, swords, helmets, and armor that they needed to conduct extensive raiding of settlements and battle effectively against larger European forces. More importantly, Scandinavia’s iron resources enabled the creation and widespread adoption of shipbuilding technologies that facilitated territorial expansion overseas, in particular the infamous Viking longship. (Sharpe 1991)

The Vikings were well-known for their creation which integrated metal works, woodcrafts, figurines, tusk, earthenware, crystal, as well as books. In Zemljanoe Gorodishche, there are many specimens of trinket, adornment, apparel, comb, recreation collections, sacred objects, stallion harnesses, armaments and objects with decay, which contain the legendary dragon head, a diminutive statue of a female, as well as two charms with mysterious engraving. Parallel discoveries happened at Jorvik which produced kitchenware, basins, recreational fragments, adornment also horn combs. Archaeological site of Viking Dublin consist of timber mixer, trowels, cords of tree twigs, barriers of thicket fences, blades of lumber, intertwining slabs of ivory, in addition

The 2nd method the Vikings used was Inhumation where the body was bury in its current state under the ground, and then either place earth, dirt or stones on top of the body.With the conversion from Pagan to Christianity around the late 10th century inhumation (burial with grave goods), replace cremation as the method of burial everywhere in the Vikings World. Although, inhumation was accepted by some of the Scandinavian countries since the early Viking Age such in southern Jutland (By the North Sea Peninsula) it was common prior to the conversion of Christianity. With the conversion to Christianity it brought some dramatic changes to the burial customs of the Vikings. One change was that the Vikings moved away from cremating the dead.