Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

by Neil Price

This question of reality is important because the Vikings did not believe in these things any more than someone today ‘believes in’ the sea. Instead they knew about them: all this was as much a natural part of the world as trees and rocks. That these beings could not be seen need not have been significant.

The names and natures of the worlds, and their beginnings, are described in a number of mythological texts collected in the Poetic Edda, as well as in longer narrative form by Snorri in his prose handbook.

While open carnality was certainly a Vanir trait, the notion that it was a negative one may well be a Christian intervention in the sources. Freyja, in particular, was exactly the sort of sexually independent woman that terrified the Church.

The subsequent assault is documented by Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Rāzī, who tells us of the seven days that raiders spent sacking the city, killing the men, and enslaving the women and children. As word spread into the surrounding countryside, the emir, ’Abd a-Raḥmān, mustered a large army and marched to meet the Viking force, which was now ensconced on the Isla Menor. The Vikings were drawn out of their camp and the city by decoy troops who led them to Tablada, some two miles south of Seville, where they were ambushed and slaughtered by the bulk of the Muslim army. The surviving members of the Viking force fled to their ships and departed, leaving thirty vessels behind, while the dead were hung from the palm trees of Seville.