My Favorite Viking!

The person that I choose from all the sagas that we have read is Egil, and yes it is cliché because he is the stereotypical Viking. But this is exactly why I choose him, he seems to match the cultural depiction of Vikings, almost too well. I believe that our views on Vikings may have been based on Egils saga period. The stereotypical Viking does not show any cleverness, as in ref the sly, it is simply brute force and ignorance, all of which is embodied in Egil. He is a very “successful” person, at poetry, at maintaining his honor, and staying alive period. Egil was the person that the Christian Church was looking for, to demonize the Viking people, and it was this person whom they feared. Not to mention that Egil himself was just a cool guy. I think it shows a lot of his personality that he killed someone before he was a teenager, and managed to get himself out of certain death at the hands of the king of England. He is just a cool character. No wonder Snorri was fascinated with him, not to mention a relative of Egils’.

Ref The Sly

I thought that it was comical that Ref had a ship in his fortress that had wheels on it, and that they used it to escape. Perhaps this is a bit of imagination on the writers part, it doesn’t seem very practical, but it is cool nonetheless. But I guess that it is plausible to an extent, in the “unconventional” manner that Ref goes about things, and his out of the box thinking, I think that it is plausible, unlikely, but possible that this invention may have actually existed. I also thought that it was interesting that Ref claimed to never have crafted a ship, yet on his first try he made a grand ship, perhaps this is his “out of the box” thinking. The saga references several times that his fortifications looked like they were made of one large piece of wood, not a bunch of slabs, I think that this was his revolutionary out of the box thinking showing through. He pursued things in an unconventional manner and because so it awed the people of his time.

Vinland sagas!

The Vinland sagas were interesting and an enjoyable read. I thought that it was cool that both sagas refer to each other, not just that but accurately. They refer to Vinland and the plentiful of grapes and forest. This reassures me of the historical accuracy of these sagas. Not to mention that there were a few points that I thought were interesting. One of which was the natives, they were afraid of everything that the Vikings did, they were afraid of the Bull, and that part were Freydis hits her own breast with a sword and the natives run away terrified. Even though they had an army against her, not to mention she was pregnant. All of which suggest that she would have been a fairly easy target to capture or kill. But then again, if she was a very masculine woman, then maybe the natives might have been confused and as a result scared. Another brief thing I thought was cool was that in my book, on pg. 93 it mentions that the Vikings played chess to pass the time. I don’t know if this is a slight translation issue, but it says in a foot note that ivory chess pieces were found in Viking settlements. Chess, another Viking connection to the modern world.