Did the Vikings invent surrealism? In a
word, no. Far from it. Viking culture was brutal, every bit as violent and
cruel as all the stereotypes: gruff, beetle-browed, muscular men sailing
dragon-prowed longships intent on plundering the riches of neighboring
countries and territories. But here is where all the contradictions begin; as
savage and inhuman as they were in battle and plunder, they produced wonderful
art, elaborate wood carvings and delicate metalwork, intricate interlacing
patterns and fabulous beasts, and most notably fantastically beautiful ships as
perfect for sailing on the open sea as they were for navigating the banks and
shoals of rivers.
Their literary culture
was renown for its wit and lively description, its vivid narratives and striking
images. It was an oral culture, requiring a prodigious memory and rhythms and
sonorities powerful enough to endure in the breath of its scalds.
The bulk of what we know
of the details of Viking lore is captured in two main books: the Poetic Edda
and the Prose Edda. The material in the Poetic Edda was garnered
from anonymous sources in the thirteenth century, who drew from an even older
source called the Codex Regius, an Icelandic codex in which many old
Norse poems are preserved. The production of the Prose Edda is thanks to
a thirteenth century Icelandic chieftain named Snorri Sturluson. The Poetic
Edda, sometimes referred to as the Elder Edda, is the older of the
two. The Prose Edda, a.k.a. Younger Edda, is considered the
fullest and most detailed source of Norse Mythology.
The two Eddas are filled
with stories of treachery, trickery, cunning and betrayal. Competition and
strength are main obsessions, as is wisdom. All the gods and heroes of these
tales crave wisdom as much as strength and prowess in battle. Odin, the chief
god of Norse Mythology, ventured to the mystical Well of Urd at the base of
Yggdrasil, an immense ash tree that held the cosmos together, its branches
spreading over all the world, its three central roots spreading very far apart;
one was among Aesir, the pantheon of the Norse gods; a second was among the
frost giants where Ginnungagap – the primordial void – once was; and the third
reached down to Niflheim, meaning “World of Mist,” and is a realm of primordial
ice and cold. “Under the root that goes to the frost giants was the Well of
Mimir. Wisdom and intelligence were hidden there, and Mimir was the name of the
well’s owner. He was full of wisdom because he drank the water from the Well of
Urd from the Gjallarhorn.” Gjallarhorn was just that: a horn, a loud sounding
or yelling – as in ‘gjallar’ – horn.
This is where Odin shows
up, looking for wisdom. I’m not entirely sure what the Viking conception of
wisdom happened to be, but it seems to be associated with intelligence in
general, not necessarily our narrower conception of prudence and sound
judgement. Nevertheless, it seems odd and not a little contradictory that a
people so thrilled and gratified by slashing people to bits for their gold and
silver would treasure this thing called wisdom. Viking wisdom, as it is
described in the lays and sagas, is associated with dominance, skill in
weaponry, and survival.
Ayn Rand would’ve loved
Viking culture; her conception of wisdom is completely in sync with Viking
predation. The Vikings, like Miss Rand, were not known for their empathy and
compassion. They obsessed over wealth and the heroic feats of individuals
exalted far and above their communities. Compassion is a weakness. Going
berserk with an ax or sword and setting an English village afire after raping
all its women, killing all its men and running off with all its accumulated
wealth is a worthy goal, enough to make any Wall Street banker or hedge fund
investor nut in his pants.
That said, Odin was
jonesing for some wisdom, so much so that he gouged out one of his eyes and
gave it to Mimir as a pledge, and got his wisdom on. Whatever wisdom meant to
the Vikings, and however I may be distorting their conception of it, it was
quite definitely a highly valued asset.
Wisdom was not a prominent
goal of the surrealists. If anything, wisdom would be an obstacle to an agenda
far more nourished by the irrational, by the unconscious and dreams. So why
would this notion even flit across my brain? Aligning Viking culture with
surrealist preoccupations is like setting up a wedding between John Wayne and
Patti Smith. The incongruities are stunning.
And yet there are
parallels and flashes, here and there, of highly imaginative conception, ideas
that are absolutely in harmony with surrealist manias.
Vikings loved battle. The
surrealists, despite their many arguments and occasional fistfights, were not
particularly fond of war, but war was crucial to the birth of surrealism. When
André Breton was doing his military service in a neurological ward in Nantes he
met a young soldier named Jacques Vaché, who was being treated for shrapnel
wounds. They hit it off, and after Jacques returned to the battlefield they
maintained a correspondence. Vachés letters collected during this period – most
of them written to friends and family – have been published in a book called Lettres
de Guerre (Letters of War). Vachés’s letters were written in
wretched circumstances, the trenches of the first World War, muddy, bloody,
cadavers everywhere, bombs exploding, machine gun fire raking the ground and
mowing down soldiers on both sides. He wrote hastily - directly to the point -
with an abundance of irreverent, anti-militaristic humor, or ‘umour,’as he
liked to spell it. There are frequent requests for clothing and food (the French
army was very poorly supplied) including insightful asides as to the uses he
puts these items and actualizing the day-to-day reality of trench warfare. Vaché had no literary ambition, yet he wrote
in a style of great detail and riveting precision, creating a virtual
hyperreality that intensifies the imagination. The effect is dynamic, and
telegraphic: there’s an ongoing juxtaposition of unrelated events which creates
a form of collage, all of it fueled by the adrenalin of war. The excitement is
palpable. It’s no wonder that this seeded the way for Breton’s innovative
approach to poetry.
One finds the same effect
in the work of Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars, who were also involved in the
first World War. One can’t help but see a connection between war and poetry,
not that this should serve as a recommendation for aspiring young poets to go
to war. But the energy war fuels is also evident in the Viking sagas.
Viking poetry as a whole
has more in common with the objectivists than the surrealists; the lines,
rhythms, and imagery are extremely compact, extremely direct and lucid. But
there are moments of great imaginative force, energies that transcend the
mundane and create riddles of cosmic proportion. One of these is an item called
Gleipnir.
Gleipnir is the fetter
that holds a giant ravenous wolf named Fenrir from devouring the entire world.
It is made of six items: the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman,
the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish and the
spittle of a bird. These are sometimes described as six impossible things, but
there’s nothing impossible about the sinews of a bear, the spittle of a bird,
or the beard of a woman. They’re just extremely rare and – particularly in the
case of the bear’s sinews – extremely difficult to procure. The breath of a
fish, the roots of a mountain (roots in a botanical and not a geological
context) and the sound of a cat’s paws on the ground enter the realm of
surrealism.
The language of
surrealism, according to Peter Stockwell in his book The Language of
Surrealism, “has a connected double function: it operates in the everyday
waking world and it operates in the inner world of dream, the irrational, and
the marvelous.” It’s a language embodied in psychic experience and which aims
for a convulsive, striking, unfamiliar beauty. Gleipnir easily satisfies all
these qualities.
The Danish
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard was fascinated by
Gleipnir. He read into gleipnir a form of imaginative power that could so hold
us in its spell that – taken in a more negative sense – could describe
metaphorically how we become prisoners of our own mind, obsessed with
irrational interpretations of subjective experience, trapped by phantom,
non-existent beliefs and judgments. “And so am I, while the whole world cannot
bind me,” he observed, "yet bound and raving in my chains, and I am bound by a
chain that is unreal and that yet is the only thing that can hold; just as the
chain…
…that the Fenrir wolf was bound with was braided
of things which did not exist (can be elaborated), and which still was the only
chain that was able to hold that monster, thus am I bound in the unreal and yet
real chains of my dark imagination.
This is an opposite tact
to the surrealist conception of language, which is a poesis of liberation, but
the idea that ideas can restrict and restrain is a theme running throughout the
surrealist project. They used language as a hatchet to break those bonds rather
than use it to bind and inhibit.
In a narrative titled
“Sigurd the Volsung” included in the Prose Edda, a Viking blacksmith
named Regin travels to Thjod to work for King Hjalprek. He forges a sword so
sharp that when the legendary hero Sigurd – the slayer of Fenrir- lowered it
into running water “it sliced through a tuft of wool carried by the current
against the sword’s edge.” Sigurd digs a
pit under the path used by the wolf Fenrir, lowered himself into it and as
Fenrir crawled toward the river for a drink Sigurd thrust his sword into him,
killing him instantly. Regin then “came forward and said that Sigurd had killed
his brother.” “As settlement between him and Sigurd, he asked Sigurd to take
Fafnir’s heart and roast it on the fire.”
Sigurd roasted the heart, and when he thought it
was cooked, he touched it with his finger to find out if it was still raw. The
boiling juice from the heart ran on to his finger, scalding it, and he stuck
his finger into his mouth. When the heart’s blood ran to his tongue, he
suddenly understood the speech of birds.
This story bears a
remarkable affinity to the fables of André Breton’s Poisson soluble (Soluble
Fish), and many other surrealist stories.
The Vikings may not have
invented surrealism, anymore than they invented the predations of neoliberal
economics destroying the communities and working class of the world, but the
affinities are there. Cultural paradigms come and go, but the forces of the
imagination are as universal as fire, as elemental as water, and as fabulous as
the speech of birds.