Oct
7
By Rita Button
Until November 11, the Viking installation is yours to enjoy at the Royal Victoria Museum. Not only will you will learn a lot about the valiant, daring Norse people as you walk, read and observe your way through the display, but you will also come away motivated to learn more.
What amazed me most was the breadth of the Vikings’ travel—red beads from the Black Sea area, pots from Greece, iron works and all sorts of things from monasteries in Great Britain—but not from the part that’s nearest the Scandinavian countries—instead from the western part, near Europe where they also entered the area we now know as Germany. Imagine the daring, the fearlessness of these men sailing in open boats without a navy system! It’s amazing!
In contrast to that daring character is the artist whose creations of brooches and necklaces, bracelets and rings are on display—some are replicas and some are authentic artifacts. The detail in the works reveals painstaking patience along with artistic vision. The result, of course, is beautiful—and you can see many displayed at the Museum.
Drinking horns, swords, cooking pots, axe heads, cutlery, forks to remove food from cooking pots, and a most wonderful hanging cauldron that would have hung above the fire while whatever meat and vegetables inside cooked their way into our nostrils and finally into our stomachs paint a picture of the kind of life the Norsemen lived. The holes in the pot make it appear authentically old. Someone beside me said, “It looks too real to be real!”
And that’s the kind of feeling you get as you walk through. There’s a lot of information—but the creators of the display also know that people learn by doing. Interactive displays allow the seekers to play the game, to dress the warrior or the un-free person, or to arrange the body and the rest of the required elements for a burial on a boat.
One part of the death area is a bunch of rivets hanging on nylon strings—what is it? I wondered as I stared—but very soon I could see that the rivets had been arranged into the shape of the boat from which they had fallen in a burial site where burning the boat was not a part of the burial ceremony.
For the living, a myriad of keys amazed me with their variety and complexity. At that time in that country, the law was harsher on a person who had stolen from a locked box than from an unlocked one. The intricacy of the locking mechanism and the boxes they made into which they placed their valuable items showed skill and artistry.
As well, combs abounded. Most graves had one inside the coffin; some combs were personalized with love notes. I had a hard time visualizing the tiny combs making their way through the massive hair I always imagine the Vikings to have, so they must have had patience to work through their hair lock by lock—especially after a hard windy journey at sea.
The replica of a sail is simple, yet it stays in my memory. It’s a very large interwoven fabric—pieces of fabric the size of a tablecloth are woven back and forth through others—imagine making a placemat, but with larger pieces. More than two hands would have been required.
The replica of a sword is available to lift but, thankfully, not to remove from its cradle! The weight and balance can be discerned through this motion. I wished I could have taken it out since I’ve always wanted to understand the strength of warriors who fought with swords. But I am glad that experience was denied since I’m not sure I would have been agile enough to avoid hurting someone even in the simple movement of putting it in my hand.
Runes—the alphabet tiles—are displayed to show the translation of each symbol into our current form of English, and there’s a place where you can manipulate the tiles to spell your name or to leave a message!
The Norse believed in certain gods and followed a code of conduct—these two elements organized their communities. However, they had no holy book to which they would refer in terms of making the law or the code of ethics. Free men would attend a meeting known as “the Thing” where justice and overriding concepts were created and agreed upon. Women did not attend the meetings. They ran the household and had control of the keys. And since the Norse were, in large part, farmers and landowners, the women controlled a significant part of the home community. Evidence of their legacy is not easily available since their work was mostly with textiles and textiles do not survive for long periods of time.
The coming of Christianity is a part of the display as well. The two codes of conduct and ethics seem to have co-existed; some crosses have images of the Norse gods carved into the metal.
The belief that Vikings wore battle helmets with horns is exposed as a myth. The battle helmets are smooth steel as shown by the smooth replica on display. You’ll have to go to the museum to discover the myth about the Viking horns!
This is an excellent overview of the Norse world. I have only one wish for change: the displays that are on a counter can be seen by people in wheelchairs, but the descriptive text cannot be read because it is written on the flat counter surface. If the text were tilted on an angle, it would be accessible to all. Meaning is always clearer when all the information can be digested.
I haven’t told you everything, so to get the whole story, travel with the Vikings by heading out to the Museum!