LESSON 7.4 Who were the Vikings and how did they live?
LEARNING INTENTION By the end of this lesson you should be able to identify and explain the roles and relationships in Viking society, as well as describe their way of life.
Tune in SOURCE1 , from a Viking village museum in Denmark, shows actors representing Viking people who are getting on with their daily life. Using the following thinking routine, explore what they are doing in the photograph. See: What you can see in the image? Think: What does it makes you think about what they are doing? Wonder: What questions about their lives does this raise in your mind? Share your ideas in a small group or a class discussion.
SOURCE1 A recreation of daily life as a Viking
7.4.1 Viking social structure Although Vikings are often thought of as raiders, most were actually farmers who lived in longhouses with their families. They needed to store enough food to survive the long, cold winters. Viking farms were spread out, and their society had a clear structure with powerful leaders called jarls, who owned the largest farms. Viking society had three main layers: earls or jarls (leaders), karls (freemen like farmers and skilled workers), and thralls (slaves). Jarls were rich, owned land, and led raids. Karls were freemen who could farm, vote, hunt, own slaves and join raids. Thralls were at the bottom; they were usually captured in raids or trades and couldn’t own land or choose their work. Their owners could treat them however they wanted. The Vikings believed that the god Rig created all three classes, as told in the saga The Lay of Rig (see SOURCE2 ).
SOURCE2 An extract from the Lay of Rig in which the creation of the thralls is described
Great-grandmother bore a swarthy boy; with water they sprinkled him, called him Thrall. Forthwith he grew and well he throve, bur tough were his hands with wrinkled skin, with knuckles knotty and fingers thick; his face was ugly, his back was humpy, his heels were long. Straightway’gan he to prove his strength, with bast a-binding loads a-making, he bore home faggots the livelong day. There came to the dwellings a wandering maid, with wayworn feet and sunburned arms, with down-bent nose,- the Bond-maid named. She sat her down in the middle of the floor; beside her sat the son of the house: they chatted and whispered, their bed preparing — Thrall and Bond-maid — the long day through. Joyous lived they and reared their children. Thus they called them: Brawler, Cowherd, oor and Horsefly, Lewd and Lustful, Stout and Stumpy, Sluggard, Swarthy, Lout and Leggy. They fashioned fences, they dunged the meadows, swine they herded, goats they tended and turf they dug. Daughters were there, — Loggy and Cloggy, Lumpy-leggy and Eagle-nose, Whiner, Bondwoman, Oaken-peggy, Tatter-coat and the Crane-shanked maid. Thence are come the generations of thralls.
TOPIC7 The Vikings 161
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