Wonderful podcast! Octavia has a new follower as well. I have a question about the stone depicting human sacrifice. How do modern day scholars know it was voluntary (I’m assuming that is the case) as opposed to a form of sentencing or banishment?
Hi Aimée! Thanks so much for watching the interview and the comments. When the stones do not have inscriptions telling us specifically, we must corroborate what we are seeing with other sources and evidence. In the case of human sacrifice, it is well documented in both written and archaeological forms for the Viking Age. Banishment was a known form of punishment (for instance, it is spelled out in some law codes that survive), but it was known as "outlawry" and was a form of exile from the country, not execution. Probably the most famous written account we have of a "voluntary" sacrifice comes from the Muslim chronicler Ibn Fadlan, who wrote about this when documenting his encounters with Vikings in the eastern lands (now Russia) in the early 10th century. In his account a slave girl volunteers to go with her deceased chieftain into the afterlife. Of course, as an enslaved person we have to question the validity of the word "volunteer." Fadlan makes it sound like she does, but we can't be certain there was really any choice. You can read it for yourself here: http://viking.archeurope.com/settlement/russia/ibn-fadlan/risala-of-ibn-fadlan/. Fair warning; it's a graphic depiction.
Thank you for explaining and link to Fadlan’s documentations. I am not a scholar in this but find these topics fascinating. I just finished reading a compilation of Icelandic Sagas in which degrees of banishment were explained very well.
You're very welcome! Please do check out our other interviews. We've had lots of top scholars talking about various aspects of Viking Age life, with more to come!
Wonderful podcast! Octavia has a new follower as well. I have a question about the stone depicting human sacrifice. How do modern day scholars know it was voluntary (I’m assuming that is the case) as opposed to a form of sentencing or banishment?
Hi Aimée! Thanks so much for watching the interview and the comments. When the stones do not have inscriptions telling us specifically, we must corroborate what we are seeing with other sources and evidence. In the case of human sacrifice, it is well documented in both written and archaeological forms for the Viking Age. Banishment was a known form of punishment (for instance, it is spelled out in some law codes that survive), but it was known as "outlawry" and was a form of exile from the country, not execution. Probably the most famous written account we have of a "voluntary" sacrifice comes from the Muslim chronicler Ibn Fadlan, who wrote about this when documenting his encounters with Vikings in the eastern lands (now Russia) in the early 10th century. In his account a slave girl volunteers to go with her deceased chieftain into the afterlife. Of course, as an enslaved person we have to question the validity of the word "volunteer." Fadlan makes it sound like she does, but we can't be certain there was really any choice. You can read it for yourself here: http://viking.archeurope.com/settlement/russia/ibn-fadlan/risala-of-ibn-fadlan/. Fair warning; it's a graphic depiction.
Thank you for explaining and link to Fadlan’s documentations. I am not a scholar in this but find these topics fascinating. I just finished reading a compilation of Icelandic Sagas in which degrees of banishment were explained very well.
You're very welcome! Please do check out our other interviews. We've had lots of top scholars talking about various aspects of Viking Age life, with more to come!