The Saga of the Jomsvikings

 Introduction

Opening Passage:

Gorm was the name of a king who ruled over Denmark and was called the Childless. He was a mighty king, and popular with his subjects. He had long governed his kingdom when the events to be told happened. At that time there was in Saxland an earl called Arnfinn, who held his land in fief from King Charlemagne. Arnfinn and King Gorm were good friends and had been on viking expeditions together. The earl had a beautiful sister, and he was fonder of her than he should have been and begot a child with her; the child was kept hidden, and then the earl sent men away with it but bade them not to desert it before they knew what would befall it.

They came to Denmark and to a forest. They were aware that King Gorm was in the forest hunting with his followers. They laid the child under a tree and hid themselves. (pp. 27-28)

Summary: King Gorm discovers a child, whom he names Knut, in the forest, and arranges to have him fostered and eventually makes him heir to the kingdom; when Knut becomes king, he has a son, also named Gorm, who becomes king. In the second Gorm's day there was an earl, known as Klak-Harold, who had a daughter, Thyra, who was able to interpret dreams. Gorm had several dreams, and Thyra was able to interpret them (as foretelling the decline of Denmark, but not yet); in return, Gorm married Thyra, and they had two sons, Knut and Harold; by the happenstance of events, Knut dies and Harold becomes the new king. King Harold Gormsson and one of his earls, Earl Hakon, plot against the king of Norway (also called Harold), and it is within the context of this conflict that the rest of the tale takes place. This stage-setting is not mere stage-setting; part of the anonymous author's point, I think, is that the broader context is playing a significant role in the story. This is specifically a tale of Norway versus Denmark, and we are learning how Denmark sets itself up to fail at the same time that it appears to be succeeding.

King Harold Gormsson gets involved in a feud between two brothers named Fiolnir Tokason and Aki Tokason, leading to the death of the latter; the youngest brother, Palnir, is perplexed as to how to get vengeance for Aki's death given that the perpetrator is king of Denmark, and thus one of the most powerful people in the known world; but the woman he marries, Ingeborg, has a dream that suggests that King Harold will, along with many others die. They have a son, Palnatoki, who grows up and makes important connections. He also is clever to take up any opportunity that might come about; he discovers an illegitimate child of the king's, named Svein, and sees to his fostering. Svein grows up to be a thorn in King Harold's side, and in the disputes between them Palnatoki is able to seize a chance to kill King Harold in secret. Svein becomes king, but when he discovers that Palnatoki killed his father, he attemps to arrest him. (King Svein definitely does not want people to think that he was behind the regicide, and he even more definitely does not want people to think that regicide can be rewarded.) Palnatoki leaves, and because of his connections is able to mass a significant fleet. They harry some islands in the Baltic and the local king, Burisleif, recognizes that this cannot go on; King Burisleif offers Palnatoki a deal: he will give Palnatoki the island and fortress of Jomsborg, on the condition that Palnatoki will defend the king's lands. Thus is the beginning of the Jomsvikings, a military fraternity devoted to battle and deeds of extraordinary martial courage.

We then get the tale of some of the famous last members of the Jomsvikings -- the violent prodigy Vagn, who at the age of twelve is so competent in battle that he convinces the Jomsvikings to make an exception to their rule that no one can join before the age of eighteen; Sigvaldi and Thorkel, devious and cunning brothers who have come to test their mettle; bold Bui, famous for his resoluteness and brazenness. After Palnatoki's death, Sigvaldi becomes administrator of the laws of the Jomsvikings, but he is too devious by half and his scheming in an attempt to get a marriage to Burisleif's daughter leads him to kidnapping King Svein. It ends well, but of course it is a red flag that things are not too stable. When the father of Sigvalid and Thorkel dies, King Svein uses the occasion to pressure Sigvaldi and others into making terrible vows while drunk. However, vows are vows, and Sigvaldi intends to follow threw on his vow, which is to seize Earl Hakon's lands, or kill Earl Hakon, or die himself; the other Jomsvikings intend also to follow through on their related vows, and King Svein pledges twenty ships to help them. They intend to set upon Earl Hakon before he knows what's happening, but Hakon is alerted to the impending invasion, so it becomes a straightforward sea battle. 

The Jomsvikings might well have won under most circumstances, but Earl Hakon makes a pact with the pagan goddesses, Thorgerd and Irpa. We don't really know anything about Thorgerd and Irpa, although they show up occasionally throughout Scandinavian literature; they seem to have been goddesses who were particularly open to making a deal, or at least giving a bit of luck to those who make the right sacrifice for it. Earl Hakon sacrifices his seven-year-old son to them, which seems to have been the right sacrifice for what he wanted, because a storm comes up whose winds, rain, and hail put the Jomsvikings at a disadvantage, and the goddesses show up themselves sending forth arrows from their fingers that kill man after man after man. Sigvaldi and his followers and allies withdraw. The rest of the Jomsvikings are defeated, and the leaders are seized and begin to face execution. But each one dies fearlessly with a joke on his lips, and Vagn even manages to impress them so much that he wins life for himself and those who haven't died yet. We then get the 'what happened after' to the survivors: Vagn becomes wildly successful, Sigvaldi becomes successful, Bui becomes a dragon. Earl Hakon rules Norway, but not for long, for things are changing: Olaf Trygvasson comes along, Earl Hakon is murdered, and eventually King St. Olaf converts Norway to Christianity, and a new and different age begins.

The whole story, particularly where concerned with the battle, is well done. No one in this tale is what you could call a good person; every one of them is a nasty piece of work. Some of them, like Vagn, seem sociopathic. But they are not without their admirable features, and the sacrifice of Earl Hakon gives a twist that makes them almost heroic despite their obvious vices. Before, the Jomsvikings were basically ruthless pirates, admirable only for their competence and brotherhood, but they fight gods fearlessly, they face death fearlessly, and they laugh in the face of anyone who attempts to intimidate them. They are folk heroes, not because they are good but because they are, even in hopeless defeat, humanity at its most indomitable. It's a very Scandinavian-saga attitude; most of our sagas were written by Christians who pretty clearly admired the pagan indomitability of their ancestors despite recognizing that Christianity had improved life overall. The author of this saga seems particularly taken with the idea of the Fearless Viking. He is also a skillful enough to convey what is attractive about it to the reader, which is an impressive feat.

Favorite Passage:

Then Palnatoki established laws for Jomsborg, with the assistance of wise men, to the end that the renown fo the men of Jomsborg should spread most widely and their power should wax greatly. The first of their laws was that no one might join the company who was over fifty or under eighteen. All members were to be between these ages. Kinship must not weight when considering for membership a man who wished to join. No member was to flee from any man who was his equal in bravery and as well armed as himself. Each member must avenge any other member as though he were his brother. No one was to utter words of fear or be afraid of anything, however hopeless matters looked. All the booty brought in from their expeditions was to be carried to the standard -- of whatever value, big or small -- and anyone not abiding by this rule was to start a quarrel. And if news of importance came to any man's knowledge he was not to have the temerity to make it known to all, because Palnatoki was to announce all news. No one was to have a woman within the fort, and no one was to be away for more than three days. And if it became known after a man had been admitted into the company that he had earlier slain the father or brother or some other near kinsman of a member, Palnatoki was to be the judge, as he was to be also of whatever other differences arose among them. (pp. 63-64)

Recommendation: Recommended.

****

The Saga of the Jomsvikings, Hollander, tr., University of Texas Press (Austin: 2022).

Evening Note for Friday, September 20

 Thought for the Evening: Dwarven Economies

How does one have an underground -- as in literally underground -- economy? This is a question that is often raised with regard to Dwarves in fantasy fiction, and Rings of Power has had an entire plotline, to the extent that it has plotlines, tied up with the economy of Khazad-dum, so it has been on my mind.

The puzzles of the question are largely tied to the fact that fantasy readers have tended to be fascinated by great underground Dwarven cities. These are not the only kinds of Dwarven dwelling that we find in fantasy fiction, however. For instance, in The Silmarillion, Turin Turambar and his band of outlaws make an agreement to share the halls of a 'Petty Dwarf' named Mim. It's pretty clear that while the halls of Mim are spacious, taking up much of a large hill or small mountain, that they are not a huge city; it basically supports Mim, his dwindling family, and the outlaws. Their food is primarily from hunting and foraging. And this is, despite what one might think, scalable. It's not common to have big cities based on hunting and foraging, and it obviously requires the right location, but such cities have existed.  The earliest urban settlements were almost certainly still heavily grounded in hunting and foraging practices, supplemented by the slow rise of animal domestication and farming, which it is tempting to see as regularized and systematized versions of hunting and foraging themselves. (In fact, if you look at sophisticated foraging practices, they start blurring into something like horticulture, as foragers start encouraging the growth of the kinds of plants they forage.) One would expect there to be lots of cases like this in a population of Dwarves.

Of course, there's more of a puzzle with large Dwarven cities, because of their sheer size. But this is not a distinctively Dwarven problem; urban settlements are by their nature not self-sustaining. This tends to be blurred with the English word 'city', which talks about urban settlements as if they were their own distinctive things. The ancient Greek term, polis, was more honest; 'polis' is often translated as 'city' or 'city-state', and so it was, but it was the relatively self-sufficient unit, not just the urban center. The polis of Athens included not only Athens proper, but its silver mines to the north, its harbors to the south, and all of the farmlands around the city walls. During the Peloponnesian War, faced with regular Spartan raid and pillaging, the Athenians passed an unusual law requiring pretty much all Athenian citizens to live within the Long Walls. But when it was safe, the farmers would go out to their farms outside the city. It seems odd to us, perhaps, for farmers not to live permanently on their own farms, but it's not unheard of; Socrates's friend, Crito, was a farmer who lived in Athens and did very well as a farmer. Xenophon's dialogue, Oikonomikos, has a character, Ischomachus, who lives in the city and goes out every morning to his farms; to be sure, he has servants who take care of things, and presumably they sometimes have to stay the night to look after things, but it seems plausible (although we do not know) that they took turns rather than all staying at the farm all the time. One could well imagine a Dwarven polity that worked much like this; there might be lots of Dwarven farmers, but they live in the underground city and just regularly go out to take care of their mountain farms and gardens. This is actually a potential advantage of an underground city -- you could have terrace farming right above the cave system, so it might not be a long distance at all. Terrace farming is usually thought of as labor-intensive, but much of the labor is the engineering and maintenance, for which Dwarves seem ideally suited. The Incans lived in mountain cities (above ground, of course) that were sustained almost entirely by terrace farming on extremely steep mountainsides. For security reasons the Dwarves would want to control the land above their heads, and that's a land, even in mountainous country, that can be used to farm.

Of course, one would expect a great Dwarven urban settlement not to be sustained entirely by its own farming at all. Large urban centers are the ideal places for two things that provide another option entirely: big markets and hard-to-get goods. Cohokia Mounds is an ancient North American city (in modern-day Illinois, near St. Louis) that existed from about the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries; it was an urban settlement that might have had around 20,000 people or so, perhaps up to 40,000 at its height, largely due to a handicraft monopoly or near-monopoly on stone implements which were trading far and wide through the river system. Dwarves in fantasy are always famous for their craftsmanship and aristanship; at the lower end, they are major suppliers of necessary tools, and at the higher end they have a near-monopoly on many kinds of luxury goods that few others, if anyone, can make. Even setting that aside, they control high-demand raw materials like gold, silver, and gems. Thus over time they grow fantastically wealthy, every Dwarven city becoming a major hub in a large trading network.  In the Peloponnesian War, there were significant periods, in which almost all the food in Athens was shipped in; it was a central feature of why the Spartans couldn't choke Athens into submission despite regularly destroying its farmlands. It was immensely expensive; in Athens's case, it was funded by the city's notorious appropriation of the Delian League treasury and tribute system for its own use. But if you have the money, you can do it -- as indeed, all major modern cities mostly do. You wouldn't want to rely only on it, unless you can always guarantee your far-flung supply lines, but most of the time Dwarves could easily trade for anything they want, in any quantity they want.

You can imagine features that Dwarven cities in particular might have to make themselves more sustainable. Plants need some form of sunlight, and the kinds of plants that can rely on very dim light near cave openings or from lantern-like light sources are not robust enough to sustain many people. Rings of Power shows the Dwarves constructing large underground gardens by bringing the sunlight down with mirrors -- a neat idea, and one suitable to the Dwarves, but also one that could not conceivably maintain a city on its own. But there is an important source of food that does not require photosynthesis at all: fungi. It would not be difficult to have mushroom gardens in Dwarven cities. Les Caves Champignonnières des Roches, in the Loire Valley, is a cave system that is used to grow mushrooms. It's a mixture of caves and old linked mines. There is something like 75 miles worth of caves and tunnels there, used mostly for mushroom growing. There is even an underground 'village' -- actually a sculpture of a village by the original miners (it's worth seeing pictures) -- but one could imagine Dwarves actually having little underground villages that oversee mushroom farming on the outskirts of their cities. They can also have fish from underground rivers and lakes.

And of course, Dwarves are not Men. Dwarves in fantasy usually seem to eat quite heartily, but they also tend to be a hardy folk that can easily endure deprivations that would be hard for us. They might not have anything like the food requirements we do, being more efficiently built, or they may live on a much less consistent schedule of eating than we do, most of the time alternating long periods of fast with small meals, but occasionally making up for it with huge feasts. One suspects that Dwarves are the sort of people who get so caught up in their work that they forget to eat, then impatiently chomp on a handful of something before getting back to what they were doing.

Various Links of Interest

* William Vallicella, Are the Souls of Brutes Subsistent?, at "Philosophy in Progress"

* Helen De Cruz, Friendship with the ancients (PDF)

* E. J. Green, Newly Sighted Perceivers and the Relation between Sight and Touch (PDF)

* James Chastek, We have met the human non-person, and..., at "Just Thomism"

* Camilla Kronqvist, A Personal Love of the Good (PDF)

Currently Reading

The Saga of the Jomsvikings
Wolfram Kinzig, A History of Early Christian Creeds

In Audiobook

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (narrated by Rob Inglis)
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (narrated by Douglas Gresham)
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer (narrated by Ralph Cosham)
C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (narrated by Simon Vance)
Deborah Harkness, A Discovery of Witches (narrated by Jennifer Ikeda)

Blue and Green

 A very interesting website that gives an approximation of where you draw the line between blue and green, which varies widely: ismy.blue . My results (click for larger view):

"Your boundary is at hue 176, bluer than 68% of the population. For you, turquoise is green."

Trying to interpret this is interesting; how much of this is actually a difference of perception, and how much is a difference of classification? I'm pretty sure my results are partly classification -- I think I tend to treat green as a 'messier' color than blue, so am more likely to treat marginal cases between them as green than blue, being stricter about blue classification than green classification -- but perception certainly is involved, and of course there is the question of how much the classificatory difference is rooted in perceptual difference. There are also issues of classifying in vague situations. For instance, I don't actually find the pure hue turquoise to be strictly green; if bluish green is more green than greenish blue, you could say I find it to be bluish-greenish rather than greenish-bluish. Most of the choices in the quiz I found very difficult to make because of this. (Actual turquoise gems, on the other hand, I usually find definitely blue but sometimes definitely green, and almost never ambiguous.) Comparison is also a relevant point. There are certainly circumstances in which I would set the line further to the left or to the right; if you asked me a choice between blue and yellow, for instance, I would classify as blue hues that are well into the green on this particular chart.

The Innate Debility of Human Nature

 As Christians, we cannot forget how Scripture speaks of the world, and all that appertains to it. Human Society, indeed, is an ordinance of God, to which He gives His sanction and His authority; but from the first an enemy has been busy in its depravation. Hence it is, that while in its substance it is divine, in its circumstances, tendencies, and results it has much of evil. Never do men come together in considerable numbers, but the passion, self-will, pride, and unbelief, which may be more or less dormant in them one by one, bursts into a flame, and becomes a constituent of their union. Even when faith exists in the whole people, even when religious men combine for religious purposes, still, when they form into a body, they evidence in no long time the innate debility of human nature, and in their spirit and conduct, in their avowals and proceedings, they are in grave contrast to Christian simplicity and straightforwardness. This is what the sacred writers mean by "the world," and why they warn us against it; and their description of it applies in its degree to all collections and parties of men, high and low, national and professional, lay and ecclesiastical.

[St. John Henry Newman, Sermon 14, "In the World, but not of the World".]

Sibyl of the Rhine

 Today is the feast of St. Hildegard von Bingen, Doctor of the Church. From The Book of Divine Works (Part I, Vision 2, Section 26), on how the virtues reflect divine attributes even in the most animal of human contexts:

For as good works follow upon a good will, in the same way, because they exist within the knowledge of God, the virtues bend toward the knowledge of God and lead humankind equally to all justice and to the rightness of heaven. For all of the virtues run swiftly alongside the salvation of humankind, although they may not all appear equally in any individual human being. For God's judgment both terrifies humans and examines them, and no human deed remains unscrutinized by God's judgment, for the just judgment of God adjudicates all things justly. Prudence, moreover, unleashes its powers upon humans with providence, so that, as they prudently cast aside the lust of the world, they might embrace chastity. Patience, meanwhile, touches them with gentleness, patiently to endure too the temptations of the flesh; for in both the male and the female sex, the ardor of carnal desire must be stilled by these virtues without any neglectful delay. For this reason, none of the faithful should regard these virtues dismissively, lest the virtues leave them parched in aridity or choked by lustful desires. Rather, they should imitate them with good works, so that the virtues might preserve them in all holiness.

[St. Hildegard of Bingen, The Book of Divine Workds, Campbell, tr., The Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC: 2018) pp. 76-77.]

Aquinas on the Right II

Summa Theologiae 2-2.57.2, my rough translation. The Dominican Fathers translation is here, the Latin is here. The Isaiah quote is interesting; leges iniquas would usually be translated as 'wicked laws', but iniquas literally means 'unequal', i.e. preventing things from being even or level. Thus the laws in question are those that are not adequated to other so as to be equal, and therefore require a work inconsistent with the just or right. The reply to the third objection seems to me to be probably influenced by the Jewish dispute over reasons for the precepts of Torah, filtered through Maimonides, with Aquinas taking a position intermediate between Maimonides and his opponents; but there's not enough here to be definitely sure that this is what Aquinas specifically has in view.

*****

It seems that the right [ius] is not appropriately divided into the naturally right [ius naturale] and the positively right [ius positivum]. For that is natural that is immutable and the same for all. But such a thing is not found in human matters [in rebus humanis], because every rule for the human right in some cases falls short [deficiunt], nor does it have the same force everywhere. Therefore there is not anything that is the naturally right.

Further, that is said to be 'positive' that proceeds from human will. But something is not the just [iustum] because it proceeds from human will, because otherwise human will would not be able to be unjust. Therefore, since the just is the same as the right, it seems that nothing is the positively right.

Further, the divinely right [ius divinum] is not the naturally right, because it exceeds human nature. Likewise, it is also not the positively right, because it is not originated by human authority, but divine authority. Therefore it is inappropriate to divide the right into the naturally so and the positively so.

But contrariwise is what the Philosopher says, in V Ethic., that the politically just is either natural or legal, that is by positive law.

I reply that it must be said that, as was said, the right, or the just, is some work adequated to the other according to some way of being equal. But there are two ways a man can be adequated to something. In one way from the nature of the thing, as when someone gives so much so as to receive so much. And this is called the naturally right. In another way, something is adequated to or commensurated with the other from agreement or from common consent, as when someone counts himself satisfied if he receives so much. And this is able to be done in two ways. In one way, by some private agreement, as when it is established by some contract between private persons. In another way, from public agreement, as when the whole people consent to something being as if adequated or commensurated to the other, or when the prince who has the care for the people and governs on their behalf [eius personam gerit] ordains it. And thi sis said to be the positively right.

To the first, therefore, it must be said that that which is natural to one who has an immutable nature, ought to be so always and everywhere. But human nature is mutable. And so that which is natural to man can in some way fall short, as when natural equality involves the deposit being returned to the depositor, so that if human nature were always right [recta], this would always have to be done. But because it can happen that the human will is corrupted, there are cases in whcih the deposit is not to be returned, so that it is not used for evil by a man having a perverse will,  as when a madman or enemy of the common good [reipublicae] demands his deposited weapons [arma].

To the second it must be said that human will from common agreement is able to make something the just insofar as it does not involve something repugnant to natural justice. And in this is the place for the positively right. Wherefore the Philosopher says, in V Ethic., that the legally just is that in which originally there is nothing that makes a difference one way or another, but when it is put forward, makes a difference. But if something from itself involves repugnance to the naturally right, human will cannot make it to be the just, as when statute permits the committing of theft or adultery. Wherefore it is said in Isaiah X, Woe to those who make unequal laws [leges iniquas].

To the third it must be said that the divinely right is said of that which divinity promulgates. And such things are partly those that are naturally the just, but the justice of them is hidden to human beings, and partly those that are made the just by divine institution. Wherefore the divinely right can be distinguished according to these two, just as the humanly right. Therefore in divine law there are some enjoined [praecepta] because good and prohibited because bad, and also some good because enjoined and bad because prohibited.