The deliberate inclusion of ship imagery in the sagas indicates not only the political, social, and economic relevance ships have in Norse culture, but also the significance of ships as a symbol for an idea that the author intends to convey. It is intuitive to assume that Iceland, an island in the North Atlantic with strong migratory ties to Norway, would rely heavily on ships. Establishing strong political ties to kings and earls in Scandinavia from Iceland would certainly require sea travel. Furthermore, Scandinavia as a whole, with plentiful coastlines and generally poor farmland would demand advanced shipbuilding to exploit their resources at sea, but also supplement their agrarian production with raids abroad (Richard W. Unger). Scandinavia’s real-world dependence on ships to transport people and goods manifests itself in the sagas as an abstract need for mobility and transition, regardless of the context of its depiction. In spite of the varied events in which ships appear in “Gisli Sursson’s Saga” and “Eirik the Red’s Saga,” they fulfill a specific abstract role in the cultural framework of the Norsemen that mimic its concrete role in Iron Age and medieval Scandinavia. Throughout the sagas, heroes sail abroad, from Iceland to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the British Isles, where they either raid for riches or stay at the court of some landed lord or king and part with their gifts and favors. The sagas portray these voyages frequently, suggesting that they were commonplace and well-established routes and patterns of behavior, despite the Norsemen’s lack of “drawn maps…and the magnetic compass” (Martina Sprague, 123). Instead, their navigation relies heavily upon the behavior of the wildlife, sea birds and whales, familiar landmarks, wind and water currents, and stars (Sprague). This strong reliance on familiarity and practiced skill favors the formation of a close-knit Scandinavian network with practiced routes and reliable patterns for navigation, adding an element of suspense and adventure to explorations of lands unknown. The likely symbolic relevance of the ship emerges here: the ship, as a mode of transportation, represents the expansion of Norsemen overseas, between Scandinavian lands, vessel and culture both efficiently mobile.
“Gisli Sursson’s Saga” examines this Norse trading coalition in its early chapters. Brothers Thorkel and Gisli, accompanied respectively by Thorgrim and Vestein, part ways on trips east to Norway. Thorkel and Thorgrim arrive at King Harald Grey-cloak’s court in Norway, pledge their fealty, and part on good terms, “wealth and well-established” (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 8). Gisli and Vestein are not as lucky—after “fifty days and nights” at sea, they “[run] ashore at Hordaland,” their ship “wrecked,” but crew and goods intact (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 7). Even so, their trip abroad ends lucratively, Gisli having sailed Scandinavia via trading ship with Beard-Bjalfi, “they became wealthy and well-respected men” (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 8). Vestein, who parted ways with Gisli and Bjalfi, returns with “a tapestry sixty ells long…a head-dress…with three gold strands…and three finger bowls worked with gold,” tokens of his new wealth (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 12). Gisli and Vestein, and Thorkel and Thorgrim are but a small sample of men who take to sea to seek their fortunes in the sagas, showing a powerful association between foreign wealth and seafaring. Specifically, they become wealthy not on trade goods but on gifts they receive abroad. While it is unclear what Gisli and Bjalfi carry on their “cargo vessel,” it is safe to infer that Thorgrim and Thorkel return with precious treasures and tokens from King Harald Grey-cloak and not bulk goods (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 8). Richard W. Unger explains this phenomenon well: “All Viking ships...[were] light and fast and…typically the goods freighted were luxuries” and that even cargo ships “had relatively small carrying capacities” (Richard W. Unger, 82). Gisli, Vestein, and Bjalfi, and Thorkel and Thorgrim capitalize on the relative efficiency of travel within the Nordic lands, and have the incentive to carry back luxuries, adhering to the constraints of their vessels.
Throughout the sagas, men gift such luxuries to peers, tightening horizontal bonds—quantity of luxuries directly affects the Norseman’s networking potential. In Iceland, Vestein offers his treasures from abroad to Gisli to give to Thorkel Sursson. Thorkel denies these gifts because he “‘cannot see how they will be repaid,’” suggesting that Thorkel is still unwilling to pledge himself to Vestein’s companionship (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 12). Recall that the Sursson brothers, Thorgrim, and Vestein previously fail at a blood-brotherhood ritual. Vestein attempts to ameliorate their broken pact with precious gifts, trying for a relationship of stronger horizontal character, held by generosity than blood oaths. Although Thorkel refuses the gifts, the very practice suggests that in Norse society, horizontal relationships can be quantified and commoditized: the wealthy can afford to buy friendships, and those who can travel abroad have more opportunities to increase their social standing in this way. Thus, the ship plays a significant role in increasing the Norseman’s interpersonal connections and business network. Vestein travels overseas by ship and intends to increase his social standing through gift-giving, showing that in this aspect of Norse culture, the ship directly influences social mobility.
The relationship between the Norseman and his ship is full of contradictions—to understand this unique relationship, it is important to comprehend the advantages and disadvantages inherent in these vessels. Unger and Sprague exhaustively describe the engineering and design of the Viking ships: their “dual option of sails and oars,” a clinker-built hull, and identical bow and stern, convenient for quick reversals of direction, made the ships fast, light, and flexible (Sprague, 91). Unger argues that this versatility and efficiency gave Scandinavia “superiority in fighting” and “an advantage in commerce,”—goods could be moved at a lower cost, increasing profits and thus “[promoting] the full integration of Scandinavia into a…trading network” (Unger, 94). In spite of these advantages, the Viking ship had numerous drawbacks. They were small and often lacked “…quarters for the crew…” and required nightly stops to camp (Unger, 94). The agility and small capacity of these ships favored hit-and-run raids, which allowed Vikings to launch frequent and plentiful attacks over a smaller swath of land. From these advantages and disadvantages, Unger suggests that Viking ships were an integral instrument in forming a collective Scandinavia, strengthening a Norse identity, but were “capable of only limited services” and were thus restrained in their scope of martial and economic influence, and fell before larger cargo ships as technology advanced (Unger, 95). The advantages and limitations of the Viking ships incentivize the development of mid-scale and personal networks—the whole of Scandinavia, regional affairs in Iceland—but narrow the extent and efficacy of establishing similar bonds over larger distances.
This localized networking becomes apparent in the actions of Gisli and his brothers, both filial and fictive—they return to Iceland with foreign treasures and establish themselves as landowners, or use their wealth to strengthen horizontal bonds. Conversely, the heroes of “Eirik the Red’s Saga” oppose the precedent set by Gisli, Vestein, and other saga figures, and explore the North Atlantic beyond Scandinavia. The journeys of Eirik to Greenland, and then Leif Eiriksson, Bjarni Grimolfsson, and Thorfinn Karlsefni to Vinland represent a use of ships in exploration that seemingly contradicts Unger’s and Sprague’s findings. The Greenlanders strategize around the limitations of their vessels. Their fleet hugs coastlines when possible, and is on open water for a maximum of two days at a time (Eirik the Red’s Saga). Mats Larsson’s “The Vinland Sagas and Nova Scotia: A Reappraisal of an Old Theory” elaborates on the alleged Vinland coastline: “the eastern coast…is characterized as…harborless…with long beaches and sands stretching south from the promontory Kjalarnes” (Mats G. Larsson, 308). The bountiful bays and islands of Nova Scotia corroborate with the Greenlanders’ stop-and-go sailing as the saga describes (Larsson). This behavior is consistent with Unger’s and Sprague’s descriptions of the ships’ limitations of space and shelter. Furthermore, Karlsefni and Bjarni demonstrate a cleverly responsible attitude towards exploration—they are cautious in the unknown waters, careful not to put their crews through unnecessary duress (Eirik the Red’s Saga, 8). When the Greenlanders encounter the natives, their disadvantage in manpower eventually drives them home: Thorvald Eiriksson says ‘“We’ve found a land of fine resources, though we’ll hardly enjoy much of them”’ (Eirik the Red’s Saga, 12).
This further illustrates the disadvantages of the Viking ships: their limited capacity inhibits large-scale settlement of Vinland. While Eirik is capable of mobilizing Icelanders to colonize his newly discovered Greenland, North America is simply too far for a small-scale founder group to effectively take hold. Geraldine Barnes, in “Vinland the Good: Paradise Lost?” examines the blend of “probably fact and likely fiction” of the Viking landings in North America, closely following and analyzing the alleged sites that Karlsefni, Leif Eiriksson, and Bjarni describe on their journeys. Utilizing Eirik’s saga and the Greenlanders’ saga, descriptions of alleged Viking outposts in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and the unverified Vinland maps, she debates the validity of the sagas, ending with “their failure to make capital of [their discoveries] left Vinland’s shores undisturbed for almost…five hundred years” (Barnes, 95). Larsson believes that the archaeological sites of allegedly Norse origin may not necessarily be those described in Eirik’s saga, but insignificant enough to have been neglected or forgotten in the oral saga tradition, but no less valid for those reasons (Larsson). It is entirely possible that the sites found in Canada’s Maritime Provinces simply withered away due to lack of sufficient sea power to send back to Greenland for more colonists or aid. These small, unauthenticated outposts on the frontier of Norse exploration represent the long but feeble arm of their influence, due in great part to the limitations of their ships. In spite of the frailty of these peripheral settlements, the ships that bore their founders from Greenland strongly represent the mobility of the Norsemen, and the expansion of their influence.
The fragility of their long-range influence, in part, facilitates a stronger short-range bond. Just as Gisli and Vestein use their travel gifts to construct a social network home in Iceland, the Greenlanders form their own network between and within ships. Twice the saga portrays ships as the unit of society in the exploratory group to Vinland: first, Karlsefni’s group parts ways with Bjarni’s, and the next, a boat splinters off from Bjarni’s ship on the sea of worms. In the second instance, shipworms burrow into and compromise the ship’s integrity, dooming the party to death. The crew, facilitated by their skipper Bjarni, decides to split apart, one half to take a safe boat back to Greenland, the other to die at sea. Here, the ship becomes a safe haven for Bjarni’s crew, and its significance shifts from the concrete, social and economic realm in Gisli’s saga to a more abstract, symbolic one.
A symbolic analysis of the ships present in “Eirik the Red’s Saga” begins with a discussion of the context of the ship. In “Ships, Society, Symbols, and Archaeologists,” Zbigniew Kobylinski proposes that the ship in Norse culture is an archetypal symbol, that the ship contains a common meaning throughout cultures, universally significant, regardless of cultural variation (Zbigniew Kobylinski). While Kobylinski’s archetypal symbol suggestion is weak and overgeneralized from lack of non-Scandinavian evidence, his approach is useful for analyzing the Vinland voyages. The first point of the archetypal ship symbol is its connection to water: this can hardly come as a surprise, as a ship’s pragmatic role is on water (Kobylinski). The journeys of the Greenlanders to the new world differ tremendously from the journeys of Gisli and Thorkel to Norway and Denmark—one is an excursion into the unknown, the other is a well-traveled route in familiar waters. The context differs; the seas that the Greenlanders sail are dangerous and untrustworthy, capable of belching forth poisonous whale carcasses and hordes of ship worms. The Vinland waters represent a tumultuous, unholy unknown that the ships, crafted by human hands, and as such, “the boat brings human order into the chaos of water, [securing] orientation in space” (Kobylinski, 13). While Bjarni’s ship fails him, there is nothing inherently wrong with its construction, only that there happen to be shipworms in their path: the ship is the only barrier between life and certain death, but also facilitates the transition between the mortal world and Hel. The overwhelming message is that the archetypal ship symbol embodies elements of its physical function of transporting men and good.
Bjarni’s particular example suggests that the ship is the transport to death—Kobylinski states “the boat of the dead is a symbol connected with the symbolism of water and…the transport symbolism of a journey involved in every rite of passage from one stage to another” (Kobylinski, 13). This aspect of boat symbolism is blatantly apparent in the Norse custom of ship burials. While Kobylinski cites the “chariot burials of the early Celtic peoples” and similar practices in ancient Egypt as evidence for the universality of the symbolic meaning of ships, another scholar, Jens Peter Schjodt, disagrees (Kobylinski, 15). According to Schjodt, it is imperative to “[investigate] the symbolism of ships in Scandinavia…[by looking] to the mythic framework,” the sagas in particular (Jens Peter Schjodt, 22). The ship burials in Gisli’s saga indicate the significance and peculiarity of this custom in medieval Icelandic society. The first grave is Vestein’s: “Gisli and all his men prepared…a mound for Vestein in the sandbank that stood on the far side of Seftjorn pond by Saebol” (The Sagas of Icelanders, 516). Although the text does not explicitly mention a ship, the shape of the burial site and its location by a body of water suggest that indeed Gisli inters his good friend in a boat. During the funeral, Thorgrim, who is involved in Vestein’s murder, ties the deceased’s Hel-shoes, for ‘“it is custom to [wear them]…on their journey to Valhalla” (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 14). Seftjorn pond separates the grave site from the farm of Saebol: Kobylinski describes this practice “the natural…fear of the corpse…combined with the transitory character of death, led to the custom of locating burial places…some distance from the dwelling…often behind a water barrier” (Kobylinski, 14). In The Viking Ships, A. W. Brogger and Haakon Shetelig reinforce this with archaeological evidence: “[the Tune mound] lay at the top of a slope going down to the river Glomma” (A. W. Brogger and Haakon Shetelig, 81). Brogger and Shetelig examine the excavated mounds of the Tune, Gokstad, and Oseberg ships—in spite of the great variation between the design of ships interred, the quantity and quality of the grave goods, and the remains within, they all point towards the sea (Brogger and Shetelig). As such, Vestein’s burial corroborates with physical evidence that the dead intend to travel by ship, and that Hel lies somewhere beyond the sea. This conclusion presents the Greenlanders’ journey in Eirik’s saga in a different light: their ventures into the unknown western oceans and beyond represent a trip into the afterworld. The archaeological evidence confirms the saga’s portrayal of ships as transport for the dead, which extends beyond the practical functions of a ship to take on a more sacred character, representing the transition state between life and death as a whole.
In Thorgrim’s funeral, Gisli deliberately corrupts this transition state. He finds a boulder by the river near the burial site and “[drops] it into the boat with such a resounding crash that almost every plank of the wood [gives] way” (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 18). Gisli damages the burial boat, ending that particular ship’s functionality as a symbol of transition and mobility. Furthermore, “the snow never settled on the south-west of Thorgrim’s burial mound…people suggested that Frey had found the sacrifices Thorgrim made to him so endearing that the god had not wanted the ground between them to freeze” (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 18). The lack of snow or frost on part of the grave signifies an open channel between Frey and Thorgrim, which, coupled with the broken planks, solidifies a vertical connection between Thorgrim and the gods. In this sense, Thorgrim’s ship will not be sailing anywhere, for it is secured both by a god’s hand and Gisli’s interference—Thorgrim exists in a plane between life and death. Gisli’s part in facilitating this liminal state of existence emphasizes his own state of ambiguous existence: his outlawry condemns him to a life on the run, wobbling between physical threats of Eyjolf and Bork, and his turbulent and disturbing dreams. Gisli’s disruption of the ship’s task of properly conveying Thorgrim through the “rite of passage” that is death facilitates his launch into outlawry.
In Gisli’s outlaw years, his interaction with ships becomes less concrete and more abstract. It is no longer feasible for him to sail overseas and seek his fortune, a deliberate state of motility, but rather is forced into a life perpetually wandering the fringes of civilization, chaos and order. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough’s “Inside Outlawry in Grettis saga Asmundarsonar and Gisla saga Surssonar: Landscape in the Outlaw Sagas” examines the relationship between the physical context of the outlawry and the forced transience of the outlaw himself. Barraclough catalogues Gisli’s hideouts: “beneath the houses…in the cliffs and woods above the valley settlements,” all of which he uses to evade detection from Eyjolf and Bork (Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, 378). Gisli’s most dire moment occurs when he stays with farmer Ingjald and his wife (Barraclough, 378). Ingjald “[sees] a ship sailor from the south” belonging to Bork the Stout, and Gisli conjures a plan to row out with Ingjald’s wife Bothild in order to trick Bork’s men away (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 26). This ruse begins well—they row close to Bork’s ship, exchange words, all while Gisli “[sits] on the prow [mimicking the fool slave]…[wrapping himself] up in tackle and [hanging] overboard a few times”—and Gisli and Bothild are able to swiftly row to safety while their trick holds (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, 26). Contrary to Barraclough’s listed “marginal pockets,” Gisli hides in plain sight, keeping up his trickery on open water, while he literally rows past Bork towards safety (Barraclough, 378). The ship here plays a dual role: Gisli uses it as a prop in his ruse, and it conducts him towards safety, carrying out the transition from peace to potential conflict again to peace. This is reminiscent of Kobylinski’s idea that water represents chaos, and ships, which separate Gisli and Bothild from Bork and his men, are the discrete units of human order in that chaos (Kobylinski). This narrow escape by boat emphasizes Gisli’s perpetually transient existence as an outlaw, therefore emphasizing in turn the ship’s role as a symbol of mobility and transition.
The themes of transition, passage between physical lands and metaphysical states of existence, associate strongly with the ship symbolism in Gisli’s and Eirik’s sagas. These themes that ships embody mimic the pragmatic functionality of the ship in real life—they bear objects from one point to the other, and just as they carry Gisli from Iceland to Norway, they carry Thorgrim from Midgard to Hel. The Icelandic sagas portray ships in varied contexts, from practiced voyages to Norway and Sweden, to exploratory ventures to the frontier of their world and grave sites for their distinguished figures. Each of these experiences depicts a different aspect of the ship's significance in Norse culture and society, the culmination of which presents a multi-faceted manifestation of their world.
Works Cited
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