Civilization #36: Memory of the Norse

good morning um so today we continue the Vikings and this morning we will look at their world view their cultural system and um as I mentioned last class I do believe that the Ving culture is truly one of one of the outstanding cultures in western civilization the problem though is we know actually very little about the Ving culture and there are certain reasons for that the first reason is that they were purposefully an oral tradition so um it is our prejudice it is our belief that um a literary culture is superior to an or tradition it's harder to read and write but what we forget is that when we transition from our old tradition to our literary culture we lose a lot in the process and there are many cultures that had the capacity to read and write but they chose not to because for them it was much more important to preserve the old tradition um than it was to adopt literary culture and as I explain in today's lecture there are many actually good reasons why you would want to preserve an or tradition okay that's the first reason the the Vikings were purposely an oral tradition culture the second reason is that that eventually the Vikings would convert to Christianity and in this converstion process which would take Generations they had to abandon a lot of their tradition and Heritage including their mythologies and their historical memory um the Vikings were perceived as barbarians by the Christians and because of the traumatic Viking encounters with Europe there was an intention or purpose in trying to eradicate the Viking memory um okay so um please keep in mind that we don't know that much about the Vikings what we do know about the Vikings comes from two sources the first is archaeology we basically duck up their graves some of their graves not all their graves and have and through their graves were able to reconstruct some of their culture but um the main source of our understanding is through Norse mythology um unfortunately we only have a fraction of their entire mythology their mythology it's vast it's Grand it's epic it's beautiful but we only have a fraction of that that and unfortunately over time Christians uh Christian intellectuals want to sanctify or purify the Norse mythology because the Norse mythology is extremely violent and sexual and so they basically clean it up uh which means that a lot of what we have has been interpreted through Christian lens uh so please be careful about that okay so I will try my best to reconstruct the Viking worldview But please understand there are severe constraints and limitations and the way I will reconstruct the Viking worldview is by comparing contrasting it with other mythologies other civilizations other cultures and by um using literary interpretation um and ultimately by using my imagination okay so please take what I what I say with a grain of salt be skeptical be suspicious ask questions challenge me where you feel you need to okay all right so let's get started all right um let's look at the Viking tradition in contrast to the Greeks and the Romans okay so the Greeks how do they see the world remember um their idea of the community was the idea of the polus the polus is uh gives us our word for politics and the idea is that a community is a group of men only men who come together to debate and argue of the future of the community and as such the individual is someone who stands out okay the word they use is yonia or ar okay udonia means flourishing you can only flourish if you're standing out among a group of men a is proving Your Excellence among a group of men and so um I'll give you two examples of this G Greek worldview so the first is Achilles from The Iliad remember in The Iliad Achilles tells everyone I am in Troy to seek personal Glory I don't care about the Greeks I don't care about Helen or Troy I don't care about what others think I just want to stand out I care about my own personal glory and that's why he's willing to let Hector and the Trojans almost destroy the Greek army okay so that's one example another example is from Herodotus his book histories and it has to do with the Athenian uh leader fasic okay so this is a year for 80 uh BCE and in the year 480 bc. the Persians are invading the Greek mainland Sparta Athens have United against um the Persians the Persians burned down Athens and the Athenian people are on their ships and at this point the Spartans uh who are who is who are in command of the military and Athenians have a huge argument the Athenians want to challenge the Persians uh uh on the sea and defeat them um and defeat their Navy the Spartans want to use their Navy to protect their Homeland the pipines against the Persian Invasion and they cannot come to an agreement so what theic does is he sends a spy a servant to the king of the Persians and tell him hey the entire Greek navy is stationed in salamis okay and but they're about to run away from you so here's a great chance to send your entire Persian navy to crush the Greek navy once and for all and that's what the king does and at the Battle of Salamis the Athenians and the spans destroy the Persian navy and turn the course of not only the war but of Western history because if the Persian had won that day then we would be living in a Persian influenced world as opposed to a Greek influen World okay when you think about it what ailles and F are doing um is what we would call sedition or treason or betrayal okay but that's just the Greek worldview the Romans had EXT had a very different perspective the community as fundamentally about tradition and as such the individual had to be Pious to the tradition had to be loyal to the to the tradition they Ed the word piety now in China we have a concept called filial piety guys this is very important completely opposite okay in China filial piety means obedience to your father what your father says is right okay that's what it means but in Rome piety means loyalty to the to the traditions of Rome so the classic example is Julius Caesar Julius Caesar want to be king he was about to break a lot of Roman Traditions so his friends including his biological son Marcus Brutus killed him it was more important for Marcus Brutus to be loyal to the traditions of Rome than to the Lo than to be loyal to his father okay so that's the Roman tradition then you have the Viking tradition for the Vikings and this is very interesting the community is a set of stories okay and stories are not the same as tradition tradition is what is passed it is what is written down stories are memories that are living that which a community tells about itself and therefore there's a flexibility to these stories they can be reimagined over and over the basic structure the outline is the same but the community has to constantly relive and reimagine these stories and therefore the individual is a person who acts out out these stories okay acts out these stories and he acts out these stories by either through ritual either through Adventure or exploration okay so this is hard idea understand okay how is this different from the Roman tradition but let me tell you a story to illustrate this Viking culture okay so 30 years ago a long time ago I was having lunch with a new friend and he went to a very good school called Georgetown it's based in Washington DC and it's where Bill Clinton went okay this is where the a lot of the Washington uh foreign policy Elite uh go to school and he told he told me that at Georgetown there's a tradition a competition among undergraduates and the competition is who can go the furthest to do the most useless thing and a lot of undergraduates participate in this competition so what my friend and his friend did was one day they got in a car they drove 12 hours to Canada the Canadian border they crossed the Canadian border then they got out of the car and went into the forest to take a piss then he got back in the car and drove all the way back to Georgetown they spent 24 hours driving so that they could so that they could take a piss in Canada okay now you think this sounds really stupid but the most interesting thing about the story is that it is memorable right memorable and what this means is that 50 years after they graduate from Georgetown people will still remember what they did not only that but they'll tell their friends they'll tell their colleagues they'll tell their children so this memory will persist over time no one can remember who got the best grades at Georgetown that year no one's going remember who had the most money who made the most money in his or her life okay but everyone going remember these two guys who got in their car in 24 hours just so that they can take they can go to Canada to take a piss all right so that is Viking culture it's not about winning Glory or protecting tradition it's about doing what is shocking what is new what will add to the imagination and the memory of the community okay does that make sense all right so their main memory is of course their mythology Norse mythology and Norse mythology I would argue is the greatest mythology in human history we still have it today okay you might have seen these Marvel movies right Thor the th series um there are a lot of TV shows based on the Vikings so the Viking culture the Norse mythology is still celebrated today okay so let me explain to you why I would argue that Norse mythology is probably the greatest uh cosmological system we have okay so first it's Grand in this mythology there are nine Realms okay 1 2 3 4 five 6 7 8 nine and it's all connected by a world tree called idell okay no one knows what this world tree looks like but it's basically the equivalent of God in this system okay and in and in this uh in ell there are three uh Gods who control the fith and Destiny of the world called the nons okay so it's very Grand and epic also what's important to understand is there's something outside this universe okay this is it second is that it's complete what what I mean by that is it has a beginning and has an end okay the beginning is there's a rift and from the rift steps steps a frost giant named imar and then comes a cow a cosmic cow who then licks the eyes and that releases another God who will eventually give birth to another God who will give birth to the three major Gods including Odin and these three major Gods will kill imar and from im's carcass they will build the universe okay that's the beginning but there's also an n and the N is what we call which what they call Ragnarok Ragnarok and Ragnarok Ragnarok is the end of everything it is a final battle between the gods we call the is here okay so Odin is the um all father the main God but in all children call the Acer okay the Acer will fight a final Cosmic battle between them and their enemies and in this final battle everything will die nothing will be left okay then that's it now as I mentioned the Christian uh tradition will take the story and adapt it for its own ends so in the Christian tradition RAR does happen but guess what after the end of the world two humans a man and a woman will emerge from the destruction and reconstitute the world okay that's the Christian tradition in the nor in the north tradition as ants and you may think to yourself oh well this sounds extremely pessimistic that's only because we're looking at it from our perspective from the perspective of the Vikings the end of the world means that you must cherish every single day live with honor live with Glory live with courage cherish every moment okay okay and that's the idea the third thing about nor mythology is that is Unified so all the characters everything that happens is contained within this mythology and contributes to development of this mythology so this mythology not only includes Gods but also includes humans okay who are champions of the Gods so very there's a very famous Love Story within this mythology between um a human named cigar and a valkyrie uh who is what who is a Serv of the Gods named um buildi um eventually what will happen is that there'll be a very famous German composer named Wagner who will take the story of cigar bohimi and this entire Norse mythology and construct something called the ring cycle which is the most famous opera in German history and this becomes one of the foundations of modern German culture this Norse mythology will also become the inspiration for tokens epic called Lord of the Rings okay so these are the two most obvious examples of how norise myology um still impacts our world today okay and as we go along the semester I will show other influences all right so what nor mythology is trying to do is create Community among the Vikings and instill certain values okay the three major values that these stories manifest and express our courage the courage to explore the courage to seek what is new and unknown to venture forth into the unknown because Vikings are mainly explorers and adventurers raiding is only a small part of their Community okay second is the idea of loyalty and this is a very important concept when you go out on New Adventures you're usually going out with your brothers your friends okay it's like a Band of Brothers so you have to survive you have to be willing to die for them you have to die for each other if it requ if the survival of the group requires you to make the sacrifice you have to do so a loyalty Loyalty means love for each other it does not mean obedience remember the Viking world it is very egalitarian there's very little hierarchy okay there are high status people but they're high status because they Prov themselves worthier than the others because they're braver because they are stronger because they're more clever okay the last Viking value is resourcefulness so the idea here is when you venture off into the unknown you cannot know what to expect you can't plan ahead you can't be strategic so you can only be resourceful meaning you must respond to the danger as it arises you have be very what we call quick witted you have to have Street smarts okay so these are the three main values or ideas that norish mythology is trying to express and instill in the people okay so that's a general introduction to Viking culture now what I will do is I will provide evidence and examples for this argument okay all right but is this clear to you guys okay all right so so so now let's do the PPT um and uh look at the evidence and the examples okay all right the the Viking worldview all right first thing I need you guys to understand is that every culture every society fundamentally ask itself three questions that this painting from Paul Goan captures okay where do we come from where what are we where are we going every culture is trying to Grapple with these three questions Paul go gain I'm not sure if you know who he is he is a very famous French artist he started off actually as a financier a stock broker and then he basically became disgusted with the material lifestyle of mar Society so he got on a boat and went to Tahiti where he painted he inter he he interacted with the natives and through this interaction he began to Grapple with what it means to be a human what is the human project and what he believes and what most actually anthropologists believe is to be human is to ask these three questions where do we come from why are we here where we going okay and that's ultimately what Norse mythology is trying to Grapple with as well okay so again we know our evidence or understanding of the Vikings comes from archaeology so we are able to dig up their graves and what we discover is and it's very interesting is that each grave is unique okay and it seems that each grave in its own way is telling telling a story about who this person is it's like this grave was not meant just to send this individual into the afterworld but also to remember him or her and his or her achievements and life okay so um let's look at some reconstruction of these Graves okay and you can see this woman is buried with tools an arrow as well as a dead horse so we're not able to reconstruct her story but obviously those who knew her uh knew exactly what the story represented okay this is another example where man is buried with his ship the Vikings are the only Society to bury people in ships um another example and as you can see they're all unique in fact what's really interesting for us is to appreciate that funerals were the most important aspect of Viking Society it's what brought the community together and it was what they remember the most it is funerals are what contributed to historical memory in the liking world as you can see this funeral is extremely elaborate involving a lot of animal sacrifice these horses are being gathered up to be sacrificed there's also human sacrifice and these funerals can last for a long time 10 days okay so again because the Vikings never wrote anything down we actually don't know that much about these funerals in fact we only have one historical record of a funeral okay and this happened in the Viking Roose okay so this is Eastern the Eastern World near the vogga and it was written down by a Muslim Diplomat and traveler by the name of Ahmad ibin fadlin okay and he is from the Abbasid cipit and he is in the Viking World in order to negotiate a treaty of trade okay the bassets and the Vikings traded a lot and as an honored guest the Vikings invited him to a funeral of a deceased Chieftain or King all right now there are certain things about this funeral that's important for us the first thing is that it would last 10 days okay it's a very elaborate Affair that requires a lot of CH choreography and coordination the second thing is that a third of the men's wealth were spent on the funeral expenses so basically A Feast for everyone okay a third was spent on his funeral clothes that was Taylor Made for him so the so this is like the best clothes and the third was given to his wife what this tells us is first of all this man even though he was high status he didn't have that much wealth right and second of all uh the Vikings are very egalitarian society the third thing that's important for us they didn't care that much about wealth period right they spent a third on the funeral they just burn away the money okay so what's also important for us to remember is there is a funeral director there's a woman who uh ibben fadlin calls the angel of death who was coordinating and orchestrating this funeral during the course of this funeral there are things that happened that actually disgust him okay so so before we continue let please keep in mind that ibben Fallon he's an observer he doesn't speak the Lang language he doesn't know culture so he doesn't exact exactly know what's going on second of all he's a Muslim so he has he has his own cultural worldview that's that is in conflict with a viking worldview the third thing is he is writing this down after the fact and if you do that what often happens is that you will misremember a lot of things so please take his description with a grain of salt with some skepticism but also so please remember that we have no choice in the matter because this is the only written record of a Viking funeral from this time okay so we have we have absolutely no choice in the matter so let's let's look at what he writes and then try to reconstruct the Viking culture and understanding okay so first thing he says is they cut a dog into and threw the halves into the boat and place the man's weapons beside him okay so again they are celebrating his life they are memorizing his life they had two horses run themselves sweaty cut them to pieces and threw the meat into the ship finally they killed two cows a hand and a CL and did the same with them okay so not only are they remember him but they're giving him supplies to help to sustain him as he Ventures and voyages into the afterworld okay now this is interesting they asked for a human sacrifice and a slave girl volunteers volunteers okay clearly she didn't volunteer but she volunteers and let's see what what happens meanwhile the slave girl went from one tent to the other and had sexual intercourse with the master of each every man told her tell your master that I have done this purely out of love for you okay it's not this this is incorrect it should be for him all right so this is really confusing for us it's a funeral and they're having sex with the woman who who is about to sacrifice so we don't have we absolutely no idea what's going on but I'm going to make a guess I'm going to use my imagination okay first it's important for us to understand who the slave girl is she's not a normal person I believe I would argue that she must be the lover of the deceased Chieftain why okay here's the logic um Remember The Iliad okay in The Iliad the ENT enire Story begins with a problem the problem is that egam Menon the leader of the Greeks he has kidnapped a girl who happens to be the daughter of a high priest to AP poloo and the king and the priest comes to him and says I I will give you all the gold in the world but please give me back my daughter and all the Greeks are said oh you should do that egam Manan please give back the daughter okay that's that's just the custom of War a father can Ransom the daughter you have to return her but egim Manan says this I'm not going to return her because I love her I love her more than my wife and as a result the high priest prayed to Apollo who unleashes a deadly plague among the Greeks the Greeks are dying so finally Achilles steps up and says to a Manon you have to return the girl all right now EG Manon has lost face so he says to Achilles fine I will return the girl that I love more than anything else in the world but you must give me your girl your slave girl and achilles gets so angry about this that he refuses to fight for the Greeks which leads to the disaster of the chosen War okay so what is this telling us this is telling us that in this world where these men are far from home and they kidnap these slave girls they fall in love with them and in the process of falling love with them these Great Men conf First Status and power onto these slave girls okay does that make sense all right I I know this is hard to understand but the slave girl is not a normal girl she is the lover the mistress essentially the wife of the chiefton who's died okay so another question then is why has she volunteered to kill herself okay well if we continue the logic then I would argue that it's because without the man she has no status and Power in the community she'll go back to being a slave and she might be ostracized so by volunteering and sacrificing herself she will win status and power and honor for her children and for her relatives in the community she will make her family part of that community okay that's why she does this now then the question then is okay I don't get it now because if in fact the slave girl is the chieftain's favorite mistress and if this slave girl does in fact love um this man why is she having sex with everyone okay and the answer is in this world gifts are very important basically if you go to war and you win things you have to share with everyone okay so what this deceased man is saying now that I'm dead I give you one final gift and it's most the greatest treasure that I can possibly give you which is the woman I love okay and that's why each man is forced to have sex with her and they tell this girl when you go to your master tell him I only do this out of my love for him not for you I don't have sex with you I do not want to have sex of you but I will in order to celebrate him to honor him to love him yes so Jun that's a great question in their imagination are they having sex with the Dead Master and um yes you can make that argument okay because remember in this world homosexuality is not it just doesn't exist it's very it's okay for men to have sex with each other it's okay for uh men to have sex with together with one woman okay and that's how they create intimacy and bonding because remember when you're out in war you have to be able to make the ultimate sacrifice so you have to bond with your fellow soldiers and the best way to bond is through sex okay sex with each other but also sex with other woman okay so so yeah so you can make that argument okay I again I don't know it goes on their heads but if you extend the logic yes then they think they're having sex with a master through the girl all right and that's why they say I'm only doing this out of my love for for him not for you but for him okay um so let's continue okay in the afternoon they moved the slave girl to something that looked like a door frame where she was lifted on the palms of the man three times so the doorf frame represents access to the afterworld okay so she's being sacrificed now the first time she saw her father and mother that second time she saw all her deceased relatives and the third time she saw her master in Paradise okay so what this is is she the slave girl who is not who is not part of the community what she's really doing is implanting her personal memory into the community as a whole she's making her family part of the community now right she's talking about her past and everyone again this is a community event everyone's observing every can hear her all right so they know that after she dies they must honor her memory by honoring her relatives and family okay there there it was green and beautiful and together with him she saw men and young people she saw her master beckon to for her then she was brought of chicken which she which she decad and which was then thrown on the boat okay again this some some some strange ritual that I have say no idea uh what it means but it must mean something okay often what they do is they reenact mythologies okay so there must have been a famous story where a woman decapsulates a chicken for some reason okay and she's doing that they are reliving mythologies all right let's continue there after the slave girl was taking away to the ship she removed her bracelets and gave them to the old woman okay she she she took what was most valuable to her and gave her to the old woman who is the Angel of Death the funeral director so what she's doing is giving thanks to the old woman right she's paying up she's giving her a gift she's bribing her for the honor of being sacrificed there after after she removed her anklets and gave them to the old men's two daughters then they took her abroad the ship but they did not allow her to enter the tent where the dead Chieftain lay okay she's about to she's about to be sacrificed the girl received several vessels of intoxicating drinks and she sang um these intoxicating drinks are often uh psychedelics okay all right so so the psychedelics is are meant to enhance her visuals okay now she's singing before the old woman urged her to enter the tent I saw that the girl did not know what she was doing notes ibben Fallon okay so iben Fallon is completely confused by this but what we need to understand is this is highly choreographed right every person knows what to do in this process it's a ritual meaning that there's a script in place and meaning that the chieftain and the slave girl and the old woman all discuss this beforehand okay that's the only way this makes sense then the girl was pulled into the tent by the old woman and the men started to beat on their Shields with sticks so her screams could not be heard okay so the t is being surrounded by warriors with shields okay six men enter the tent to have intercourse with the girl after which they laid her onto her master's bed beside him all right so six men basically rape her together and what this is doing is reenacting the memory of being with their Chief right going out in raids sacking a city and then raping the woman together guys I know this is terrible I know this is terrible but again we have to try to understand their worldview and their practice the two two men grabbed her hands and two men her wrists the angel of death looped a rope around her neck and while two men pulled the Rope the old woman stabbed the girl between her ribs with a knife okay she's being sacrificed by the angel of death and that's how she dies all right thereafter the closest male relative of the Dead Chieftain walked be backwards naked covering his anus with one hand and a piece of buring wood with the other again this must come from a certain mythology okay that that's the only way we can explain this practice why is he why is he going around naked he ship the ship of flame after which other people added wood to the fire okay and that's how he dies right again this sounds gruesome what they're doing is they are celebrating the man and implanting his memory into the community because everyone participates in this funeral the man his memory is now part of the community's collective Consciousness okay he has become a story within the community and therefore will be remembered forever for his achievements okay does that make sense guys all right so this is again a depiction of the funeral and again the Greeks and the Romans had equivalents so that and we'll discuss these equivalents so you better understand what's going on for the Romans that's something called the Triumph the Triumph was the highlight of Roman uh life it was basically a general who won great conquest and so he came back in a milit military parade the parade would offer a lot of things it would offer some pictures of the conquered territory it would it would parade uh Treasures like Elephants or gold captured from the conquered people it will also parade slaves um and captured people like usually King and it would feature the soldiers as well as the triumphant General okay what's important for us to remember is at the end of this parade they go to the Temple of Jupiter their God and they will sacrifice these slaves and these captured Kings to the god to the god Jupiter okay so it's very similar to the funeral guys um the Greeks on the other hand had theater to build the community's collective Consciousness right the community all participated in the theater so there were no professional actors it was it was community members that participated in the theater and the um the community The Spectators would judge which theater was the best it was a highlight of the community to pick the best playr for that year it was the greatest honor it's like winning the Nobel Prize um basically okay um the theater was it's very different they didn't practice any human sacrifice they didn't parade slaves around what they did was often was write about war from the perspective of the enemy okay so Ides wrote something called uh children woman where he wrote about uh the the the the children woman who are r and captured and kidnapped by the Greeks and isal wrote about the Persian uh laws okay and that's why the Greek civilization is considered the most imaginative in human history because because it practices empathy it changes perspectives it's willing to celebrate everyone okay so that's that's the Greek World okay all right let's talk about a little little about Norse mythology remember what I said was that Norse mythology its purpose is to express and promote three values courage loyalty and resourcefulness right so the example of Courage is Odin at the beginning of the world Odin who's a god of knowledge he wants to seek all knowledge so he flies around ell the world tree and he goes into different Realms and he meets a god what something call the wealth Cosmic knowledge if you drink from the soup you gain Cosmic knowledge so Odin wanted to drink it but he had to make an offering so he he offered what was most valuable to him which was was his eye guys okay his eye so he plugged out his eye gave it to the God and drank from The Well of cosmic knowledge but once he drank from from the well and learned Cosmic knowledge he became more curious about the universe and so he started to venture into more unknowns eventually he went into through the the realm of death and no matter how hard he try he could not penetrate this world there were too many winds there are too many barriers so he killed himself right because that's what you do if you want to enter death world you have to kill yourself so he killed himself and he was dead for a long time but in his death he was able to see all the secrets of the universe and then afterwards he resurrected himself okay so Odin personifies the idea of courage in the Viking world to seek the unknown relentlessly okay even if if it cost you your life and your eye right okay the idea of loyalty all right so um in the Norse World there'll be a Ragnarok and there's a wolf Fenris who will um foreshadow the Rival of Ragnarok he's very dangerous but when he's born he's just a little pup so the esar the gods um basically decide to adopt him as a pet okay they think he's harmless and his master is tier who is the God of War among the aser and but very quickly fenus grows to be huge and now the gods see him as a menace so they try to time up but no matter how hard they try they can't time him up and it becomes like a game like and ferah think this is really funny okay but the gods become really worried so they go to the dwarfs um and they ask the dwarfs to create a magic rope which they do and tier goes back to F says hey let's continue this game of you us trying tie of us trying to tie you up f is like okay but how do how do I know that you will release me if I can't get out here put your hand in my mouth and if you don't release me I'll take your hand all right so the gods discussed this and tear volunteers to do this knowing that he's going to lose his hand all right and that's what happens they tie f fenus up and FIS gets wants to be released the gods refus because he's a menace and then fenus just cuts off um B off the hand okay that's of loyalty loyalty to your friend right resourcefulness okay so the gods are always at war with a frost Giants one day a man named the Builder comes to the comes to them and says I can build you a wall to protect you from your enemies for in 18 months okay this is Asgard the home of the Gods um and the Builder says I will do this but I want three things I want the sun I want the Moon I want the beautiful goddess Freya in marriage and Odin the Gods like no that's a stupid deal but Loki who is the god of mischief and the blood brother of Odin says to Odin take the deal but make it six months give him six months that way he'll get up he'll finish about a third of the wall and we can finish the rest and all thinks that's a great idea okay and the Builder agrees to this deal on one condition that he's allowed to use his horse in order to carry the bricks in the concrete okay and the the gods agree what they don't know is the horse is a magic horse and the horse is able to travel as fast as light itself and so the Builder is able to really quickly Build That Wall and he's about to finish the wall Odin says Loki you got us in you got us into this mess get us out of this mess or I will kill you so what does Loki do Loki thinks and he and he he's a shape shifter right and he SW and he's able to shap shape shift into a m a beautiful horse okay like this The Bu horse sees the m and becomes really excited right and he runs off and the Builder is not able to finish the wall and Loki gives birth to a horse a baby horse that then becomes Odin's horse okay okay that's the idea of resourcefulness there are some really funny stories with in noris mythology okay one of the funniest is this Thor has a magic H Hammer named moire he loves it he loves it so much that he sleeps with it he puts it under his pillow one day he wakes up and finds it missing so of course he thinks it must be Loki because Loki is always playing these tricks on the gods but Loki says I didn't do it and I'll will find out for you who did it so Loki explores and he finds out that it was the frost shine King who stole the hammer the FR King will only return the hammer if the gods give him frea um as a wife Loki goes back and Freya says screw off I'm not I'm not going to do this so Loki says to Thor I have a plan the plan is he's going to dress th up as Freya he's going to put a wedding dress and a veil uh on Thor and Loki will disguise himself as a as a bridesmaid okay stupid plan but they do this they go off and the frost shine King doesn't really notice that that Freya is a huge man they have this huge feast and unfortunately Thor loves to eat and he loves to drink so basically this huge feast Thor is eating this oxen he's drinking all this beer and he's burping the process so Frost giant king is kind of like confused but he's also really excited at the wedding the frost giant king presents the hammer moaner to Thor and he lifts the veil to kiss Thor and that's when he realized is that it's actually a man then Thor gets his hammer and beats a crap out of the king okay so there are many stories like this which are really funny and imaginative um what do these stories tell us about the understanding of the individual in the Viking world uh this is Neil price and to prepare for this lecture I did a lot of research including listen to his YouTube lecture which has over about a million views on YouTube but he's a viking expert he's an AR he's an archaeologist I highly recommend that you um listen to his YouTube videos if you're much if you're interested in this material okay but this is what he has to say about the Viking worldview the Viking the individual is shaped by four forces okay first is the hammer the hammer is basically the shell or the shape of the person okay the out the outer uh being so it may not be the body actually but it's the shell okay second is the idea of the humming J the humming J think of it as a pet who follows you around and it personifies luck okay and because it's a pet you can you can either nurture the pet or not nurture it okay you nurture it by showing courage right so in battle if you run off uh if you enter the Battle of Courage the pet will be with you but if you run away and you hide yourself the pet might run away and in the liking world all that matters is habing J okay you win if you get lucky not not because you're stronger the third idea is Huger and hugar is your essence your soul okay who you are really the last idea is fij okay and fija is what you inherit from your family it is the guarding Spirit of your family so think of it as the collection of your ancestors who whisper you advice in your dreams today we would call this concept intuition right intuition that's what it that's what it represents so as you can see uh Neil price and other experts are showing us that we think of the Vikings as barbarians but in fact they have very complicated and Nuance understanding of themselves and the world all right okay so another question then is how are the Vikings able to do this my argument to you is it's because of the oral tradition we are simply not as creative as people people who tell stories every day and who make Stories the heart and center of the community okay so um this is an over generalization an oversimplification but I want us to understand this graft before people lived in the old tradition what this meant is they told stories when you tell stories you need at least two people you need the speaker and you need the listener you can't do otherwise okay you can't tell a story to yourself so you need at least two people but often it was a whole community that participated in the stories and what this meant is that the stories were living things they were things that you played with that were flexible they were a clay you can change the stories over and over each person who told the story would tell it different so there are like millions of different versions of these North stories that I just told you okay because each person can interpret that story differently so these are living memories and that and that means that each story is unique now there's a concept in cultural Theory called the aura okay the essence the soul and each story has its own soul if you think about it right let's contrast this with literary culture in literary culture reading and writing you have to do it by yourself you cannot not right with a friend it would be terrible if you did that right but the benefit is that whatever you write leaves you and become becomes part of the page it's permanent now and as a result your words can escape time and space it becomes Timeless we have Homer because Homer's words were written down even though Homer was probably illiterate okay today we live in the visual culture so think of videos think of photographs right first thing to understand is that it's passive both in literary and oral culture you have to participate you have to use your imagination to make the thing alive but with a photograph it's all provided to you okay it's a very passive experience um it's self-enclosed meaning you there it's impossible for you to add anything to it okay but you get more information that way so there are benefits to visual uh culture so for example a map right if you look at a map it tells you a lot more information than if someone try to explain it to you with words and the last advantage of a visual culture is it is universal so if an alien species came down to our planet and looked at our pictures they wouldn't know what's going on okay whereas if they heard a story or read a a book they would have abely no idea what's going on right so this is the old tradition in contrast with literary culture and visual culture the old tradition is extremely complex we tend to think that it's just about telling a story okay but if you think about it there are so many variables and nuance and factors in the telling of a story that's why each version is unique onto it itself okay so I could teach the same material but if we change the classroom if we change the students if we change the lighting the experience of being in this classroom would change the north the Vikings the way they told stories is they would tell it in a big hall because remember it's usually cold up north it's snowing outside they would tell it in a big Hall and it's dark so they have a big fire inside inside the hall and the Storyteller The Bard would recite the story or tell the story beside the fire as everyone um listens some important things to know about this first is the Halls were huge they were as huge as a Greek Ampitheater so you can see about a thousand 2,000 people within the hall okay second is the idea of darkness when it's dark and you can't see see your ears become much more perceptive so the words have become alive they're more color they're more detail they much more imagery okay and third is these War these wall these words are bouncing off the walls and they're creating Echo and resonance and so these words almost like bonds that unite everyone in the telling of the story okay and if you think about it this experience is very similar to the Ice Age remember last semester at the very beginning we did the Ice Age cave paintings and what we need to understand is people came together in these caves not to paint in the caves but to tell stories about where they came from who they are and where they're going all right and all of our ancestors every one of them for thousands of years participate in this process of converging in these ice caves and hearing stories be being told to them in these dark wet caves so this takes us back to the time of the Ice Age It's activating a Nostalgia within us and that's why the old tradition is so powerful okay all right so these stories have to be told in a certain way to excite the audience okay so think of this class in this class we have no tests I don't even take attendance so when I present material in this class it has to be interesting for you right why is it interesting but it has it's shocking it has emotions it has structure when I come to class I actually do not script out my class what I do is I think of the narrative structure the story I want to tell and then in class depending on your reactions depending on the question you ask I will change some of the details in the story to make it much more interesting for you in the old tradition it's a cocreation collaborative process and that's what what makes it so powerful as as an experiment what you can do is this think about think about this in class there might be some material you found really interesting right so then you go on YouTube I post these lectures on YouTube to try to remember the experience and what you'll find is you cannot okay because we've switched from or culture to visual culture the same is true if it's your birthday okay it's your 18th birthday you got with your friends and you have a wonderful time and you're like I want to take a picture to remember this experience but what you will find when you you do that is the picture doesn't really capture the experience for you you cannot the picture cannot bring back the feeling for you okay and that's why the Vikings were so insistent on maintaining their old tradition and not trans transitioning into the literary culture because their old tradition is what gave the community purpose and meaning if you gave that up then your community would lose cohesiveness right does does does it make sense to you guys all right so what's the old tradition again we've lost it um we we've mainly lost it but remember what it is okay let's take two things that you know very well and merge them together and then you can experience what the or tradition is it's basically the immersion of a movie think of going to a good movie and and remember the power the immers of power of being that movie you are in that movie okay you combine it with the intimacy of a conversation you just think of like having this like four or five hour conversation with your best friend and talking about life and love in general okay it the old tradition combines these two things and that's why it's so powerful that's why it cannot be remembered okay the Viking or tradition was extremely powerful but it was so powerful that it cannot be remembered it cannot be written down but as I will show you in future classes this or tradition will go on to influence major European civilization specifically the Germans and the British but also the Russians as well all right so again for most of human history we as humans have shared our time together telling stories why do we lose the old tradition okay remember this why did we lose your or tradition well we transition to a literary culture that emphasize reading and writing so in school um we have you read books but we don't have you tell stories we don't tell stories to you we went from paganism to Christianity okay the problem with Christianity is it is extremely uh simonia it focus on what is good and evil whereas Pagan culture it's like whether it's interesting or not interesting whether it's memorable or not memorable okay live a memorable interesting adventurous life and the Christians are like no that's not good because if you do that you're going to create a lot of evil so live a good life avoid committing evil last thing is the is we went from a guaran world where everyone can contribute to the story to a hiero world where the top the elite insist on indoctrinating us and controlling how we think right okay does that make sense to you guys any questions so far so this is why we left the or tradition and adopted literary and visual culture okay so to conclude the class um I know there's a lot to take in and it's a lot of information I apologize okay but let me conclude with a story um so I have two young boys and I sleep with them okay and what I do is I tell them stories I don't have them I don't have them do math I don't have them read books but I tell them stories where I make them the characters the heroes of the story so I'll tell you one story that I told my youngest son Mau okay the story goes like this it is Mau fourth birthday and I tell Ma on your fourth birthday something magical happens you can pray to God and whatever you wish for God will grant you your wish so M was really excited and he thinks a long time about what he wants on his fourth birthday he prays to God and says I wish for a room full of strawberries every single day he says that and God immediately responds immediately in his room it's full strawberries and malal he's he loves strawberries he eats it right away the next day the room is also full of strawberries and he eats it again the third day again but by the fourth day he's kind of sick of strawberries So eventually strawberries overflow and fill the house and then they fill the street at this time the neighbors are really worried and we have to explain to our neighbors oh it's because M wish for strawberries and that's why we have so many strawberries but hey let's share strawberries together okay and the neighbors are at first happy but then eventually they get sick of strawberries too and then the strawberries fill the entire Street then the city of Beijing is filled with the strawberries now it's a national emergency okay the military Comm signed C and we ever trying to resolve this issue then the whole country of China is filled with strawberries then the whole Contin of Asia is filled with strawberries eventually everyone has to get on a spaceship and get out of get get out into space and go to the moon to recolonize the moon but strawberries keep on overflowing until they reach the moon at this point the entire world pray says to M listen you are fifth birthday is tomorrow please pray to God and tell him no more strawberries mama if you do this for us we will make you president and king of the world we will give you all the chocolate in the world we'll give you all the gold in the world can you please do this can you please tell God no more strawberries if you do that we'll give you all the chocolate in the world and M says yes I will and then fifth birthday Malu closes eyes prays to God and says Dear God I wish for a room full of chocolate every day and that's how the story ends okay now it's a very strange story but guess what my son's remember this for a long time but not only that it's going to inspire him to think about the story and tell his own stories okay all he has to do is changed the story a bit and now he has his own story he can change the characters he can change some of the details all right that's a power of the old tradition but if I if I would write down this story I couldn't say it in this way I couldn't do it okay let's see how I would change the story if I want it down okay let's same story but now I write it down rather than say it to ma himself for his fourth birthday M prayed to God for a room full of strawberries every every day immediately his room filled with strawberries he ate them happily the next morning his room filled with strawberries he ate them the very next morning his room filled with strawberries he did not eat them okay so I I have to make the story shorter more compact so that's easier to read the house filled with strawberries then the street filled with them then the city then the country on his fifth birthday Mama prayed to God for no more strawberries his wom became clean and M understood The Power of Words do you understand why am I doing this why has literary culture change the story because now I know that the words leave me and they leave Mal they go out into the wider world and therefore people will judge my words they will think like I'm a bad father or whatever I'm conscious of that okay so I change in a way that is not so offensive so that people can better appreciate this you understand you see the difference between oral culture and literary culture in oral culture you can be intimate therefore you can play you can experiment you can be curious you can be adventurous that's what leads to the imagination but in a liberty culture everyone is watching you 100 years from now people are still watching you therefore you have a sense of Shame you're very conscious about your effect on people all right so a metaphor we can use is this transition from oral tradition to literal culture is really like the story of Adam and Eve where because they ate the fruit from the Tree of knowledge they develop a sense of Shame they understood that they are naked and therefore they're being watched okay and because of this they are thrown out out of the Garden of Eden so I want I want to leave you with that metaphor okay ear tradition we we leave it behind and we think that it's a good thing but we tend to forget the power uh and beauty of the old tradition all right so I leave you with three questions okay to help us better understand and remember the lecture the first question is what is the imagination what's the memory well in the old tradition we would think that the imagination is just an extension of the memory by making our stories memorable we excite the imagination therefore we allow for the process of creation second question is could we have Homer Dante and Sher without the old tradition and the answer I think is no okay I think we would not have the greatest poetry in human history if it were not for the old tradition in fact if you think about for the past 50 years what has Humanity even though it's there's like 8 bilon of us we have more wealth um and Technology never before what literary Masterpiece have we created I know you guys read the do Club in school and it sucks okay I'm telling you right now it is terrible it's a piece of crap and I can't think of a littering Masterpiece of the past 50 to 60 years okay there are some very entertaining books all right but not of the stat and power of Homer Dante and Shakespeare and the last question I I have is does civilization make us less creative okay does being civilization make us more ashamed of exploring of being curious or playing or we less creative because of civilization all right okay so that's it guys any questions okay so um next week we start the we will do the abysed califit okay all right so I will see you guys um next Tuesday