Greetings and welcome to the first installment of the Swedish history project.
And to begin with, I thought it would be a good idea to talk a bit about Viking mentality because this is something that will reappear even after the Viking Age has ended, and that is the quest for glory.
And I stand here beside a glorious runestone, and I will talk a bit about the purpose of a runestone.
And to explain both the purpose of a runestone and the Viking mentality is with a quote from Hawa Mal, which goes as follows: Kettle die and kinsmen die, and one day you will also die.
But there is one thing I know which never dies: the fame of a dead man's deeds.
And that is exactly what a runestone is.
It is a commemoration raised by someone's sons, someone's relatives, someone's friends to commemorate a heroic and glorious deed.
So the Viking mentality was to a large extent about gaining that fame, gaining that glory in the eyes of one's peers.
So it was important to live a life that could be held up as a model to others that could inspire the next generation to greatness.
And we also have to talk a bit about what glory is.
Glory can be said to be respect earned among the men of your tribe or among the men of other tribes.
It is about doing something daring, something courageous, something beyond the ordinary.
That is one interpretation of the metaphysical value of glory.
The Vikings were primarily out of two things, gold and glory.
The gold part is quite easy to understand.
Raiding and trading was the lifeblood of the Vikings.
But also the glory aspect, and that can explain the adventures they partook in both West and Eastwatch.
So that is basically what a runestone is.
It's about someone who has lived a glorious life, a glorious enough life, so that it will be told to others even after he is dead.
So that is the fame of a dead man's deeds.
You have runestones to commemorate it.
Now, if we're talking a bit about the Viking expansions, we have to look upon the geography of Scandinavia.
Back during the Viking Age, most of Scandinavia was forest, so you couldn't really get all too easily to other parts via land.
But going to other places with ships was much easier.
So if we look upon the connections of that time, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland were much more connected via the coasts.
So if you look upon which Vikings went where, primarily Vikings from western Sweden, Denmark and Norway went west, whereas the Vikings from the eastern coast of Sweden went east down to Constantinople, also known as Miklagod.
Now we will go to another runestone which is erected in the memory of someone who went west with the Danish king to take Dana Jeld, tribute in England.
Now of course the Vikings who went east didn't only raid and trade or join the Veringian Guard to fight for the Byzantine Emperor.
Some of them established kingdoms.
The most notable example is the name Russia which comes from Ruslagen which is the area I am in at the moment.
So eastern coast of Sweden in Uppland, Ruslagen.
And from there you derive the name of the Rus, which in turn became Russia.
Although the Viking ruling class of Novgorod and the Russian kingdoms soon became assimilated by the larger Slavic populations.
So behind me stands one of two runestones raised in the memory of a man called Ulfrik who went to England to bring back two Dana Jelds, which is the tribute the English paid the Vikings to get off their land basically.
Now of course as we will discuss later on in another episode Knut the Great, Canute the Great, the Danish king created a North Sea Empire and his influence was felt even here in Sweden.
And again, if we're talking about the geography of Scandinavia, if you wonder why a runestone is placed here, quite far from both Denmark and England, but in terms of actual time of transportation it was quite near, considering the sea roads were so effectively used by the Vikings.
So when we're gauging communications and distances, it needs to be viewed from the point of ships.
And then also, if we're talking about Denmark, which would later become, along with Russia, Sweden's greatest enemy, back in the day there wasn't really much of a difference between Norwegians, Danes and Swedes.
And for those who are wondering, I can't understand Danish, I can speak Norwegian, or rather I can speak Swedish to Norwegians and they can speak back Norwegian to me and I can understand.
Back in the Viking age we could understand each other perfectly because then the, as I said again, the connections were via the coasts rather than the actual land, so the cultural exchange.
We were much more similar back then, so there wasn't really Denmark and Sweden, as you would see later on in history.
So that can explain why Swedish, or rather Vikings located in today's Sweden went with Danish kings and also Danes and Norwegians went with Swedish ships onto the lands in the East.
So basically to conclude this first episode of Runestones and Glory, Vikings were very much indeed occupied with the quest for glory, the quest for fame and riches and conquest.
