Viking Weddings, Part 1

[Gunnora Hallakarva]

Courtship, Love and Marriage in Viking Scandinavia
Part I -- Forward and Introduction

Forward
===================================================
        Some time ago, some friends of mine came to me and asked me to tell
them how a Viking wedding was conducted.  Although I write a column entitled
"The Viking Answer Lady" for my local SCA newsletter, I hadn't a clue as to
the answer.  When I turned to the sagas, they didn't tell me, either.  Thus
began the start of a massive research project that has produced the work you
are about to read.  The study is still not over...  I am still dicovering
new information as the number of scholars in the fields of Viking history
and Scandinavian womens' studies increases.  Whenever I discover new
information, I either correct or augment my work, so it is as current as I
can make it.

        The long and short to the problem is this:  even in sappy modern
romance novels, how many times is an entire wedding ceremony actually
*described*?  You can discover that brides wear white dresses, often with
veils, that there was a groom, a best man, a matron of honor, bride's maids.
You'd find out that the words "I do" and some rings fit into the picture
somewhere.  But since each and every one of us has seen or heard about
weddings, the novelist doesn't have to include all the details.  Only an
ethnographer or an anthropologist is likely to record the type of full
details that would enable someone from another time or culture to really
understand a modern American wedding.  Similarly, the authors of the sagas
did not provide complete details, nor did contemporary commentators or
historians from other cultures.

        So here is *my* answer to the question of "How did the Vikings
conduct a wedding?"  I feel that I have made a good approximation.  My
friends, Lord Bjorn Haraldson and Lady Leidrun Leidulfsdottir, enacted the
wedding as I describe it  here:  as all the guests, and the couple
themselves will tell you, everything felt *right*.  It was like
participating in a folk ritual in a foreign country, where you know that
each action has millenia of tradition behind it.  I take little credit for
the success of the event, as Ledirun is a formidable general who knows how
best to marshal her friends and assemble her resources to stage a coup:
this wedding was the closest I have ever felt to the sensation of "YOU ARE
THERE."

        As with any piece of scholarship, you the reader must judge my
research upon  its merits and decide if you agree with my conclusions.  If
you have access to information which corrects or elaborates upon my own,
please feel free to contact me:

gunnora at bga.com

Gunnora Hallakarva
10408 Little Pebble Drive #A
Austin, TX 78758-4927
USA

I.  Introduction
===========================================
        This paper seeks to examine marriage and related topics as they
existed in Viking Scandinavia.  Primarily, marriage was a contractual
arrangement between the families of the bride and groom in the Viking Age,
just as it was throughout other areas of medieval Europe.  However, in
addressing the topic of marriage, I have also briefly examined love, sexual
conduct, mythical-religious aspects, and divorce in order to provide context
for understanding the sociocultural background in which marriages were made.
The focus of this research is the pagan era of the Vikings, although due to
the lateness of the period legal codes and literary sources, some
information is undoubtedly more reflective of medieval Scandinavia (ca. 1000
- 1400 CE).  It should also be mentioned that since much of the information
we possess today about the Viking Age originated in Iceland, the information
presented in this paper may reflect Icelandic practices only, for there were
wide differences in laws. society and religion throughout the various
Scandinavian countries, and thus there was no such thing as a single,
universal "Viking culture."  The primary sources for the Viking period come
from archaeology, runic inscriptions, and contemporary literary evidence
provided by Arabic travelers and German chroniclers such as Adam of Bremen.
Additional sources whic may be used to complete a picture of the Viking Age
date from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries:  these are the Scandinavian
chronicles, sagas, and laws.  In utilizing these later sources, the
researcher must use caution in accepting as confirmed truth whatever he or
she finds there.  The sagas are concerned with personalities and political
maneuverings rather than with social history, and may reflect most
accurately the social conditions of the author's lifetime instead of those
of the historic figures that people the sagas, just as medieval artists
painted historic figures such as King Arthur in the armor of the late Middle
Ages rather than in the proper historical gear.  The legal codes of medieval
Scandinavia are perhaps more factual in orientation than are the sagas,
however their chief value to the researcher is to provide "normative
history," describing how lawmakers wanted their society to operate, rather
than the actual workings of day-to-day life.  Further, the extant law codes
we possess (*Gragas*, the Gulathing Law, Frostathing Law, *Jyske Lov* etc.)
were all redacted and written down after the close of the Viking Age, when
the establishement of Christianity and canon law could influence these codes.

        Unless one day we recover and revive some hapless Viking who has
been preserved frozen in glacial ice, and are able to extract from him a
detailed account of his life and culture, it is unlikely that modern
historians will ever be able to present an absolutely accurate and
authoritative description of the life of the Viking Age.  The Saga Time has
passed away, and like the Golden Age of Homer, may only be recovered in bits
and potsherds, in romanticized rememberances and distant echoes.  In order
to re-create the society of the Vikings within recreationist organizations
such as the S.C.A., or to resurrect the religious beliefs and tenets of the
pagan Scandinavians as do the Asatruar, we frequently blend together a mix
of historical fact, period fiction, and the creativity of our own
imaginations in order to create a new reality which we hope is not too far
from the truth of history.  With this in mind, we can let the information
contained in these pages teach us what the Viking marriage was, or at least,
might have been.

=====================================================
See the next post for Part II:  The Function of Marriage in Viking Scandinavia

If you wish to print any or all of this paper in a newsletter for the S.C.A.
or Asatru, please contact me for permission first.  In general, I will grant
permission so long as a copy of the publication that my work appears in is
mailed to me for my files. 

::GUNNORA::


Gunnora Hallakarva
Herskerinde
===========================================
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