The Vikings' Violent Image Problem

The Vikings are one of the most iconic and well-recognised people in all of history. The marauding raiders with their horned helmets and bloodlust have been a much depicted and widely portrayed civilisation, with numerous TV series, films, books and even comic books giving them the image the public all know and recognise.

The accuracy and authenticity of these depictions have been widely studied and explored, in an attempt to try and reimagine and reevaluate the nature and culture of the Viking people. Much modern history disputes many of the media representations of the Vikings, but the extent to which the media - be it documentaries, films, TV or even Asterix - have shaped and formed the image and idea of the Vikings in the public’s imagination is yet to be truly measured. From the myth of horned helmets, to the reputation of violent, half-crazed barbarians, the media has continually and perpetually influenced our view of the Vikings.

A Violent Image Problem

Since the beginning of the Viking civilisation, people have been enhancing, mythicising and in most cases, demonising them. This began as early as one of their first recorded raids, with Alcuin, one of the most important intellectual figures of the time, a former abbot, educator at Charlemagne’s court and constant letter writer, sending a letter to Bishop Higbald of the St. Cuthbert Monastery. Alcuin writes, 'the pagans have desecrated God's sanctuary, shed the blood of saints around the altar, laid waste the house of our hope and trampled the bodies of the saints like dung in the street.’ From the earliest recordings of the Vikings’ escapades, they have been presented as bloodthirsty invaders and raiders that destroy, kill and pillage their way through Europe.

‘The standard picture of the Vikings’, write Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard and Gert Tinggaard Svendsen, ‘is that of savages running berserk who roved the European coasts, robbed towns, burned churches, raped women, killed innocents and just generally created havoc and mayhem before eventually celebrating their deeds by gorging and drinking day and night.’ To invoke the image or idea of a Viking, is to immediately conjure this kind of presentation. This has been absolutely perpetuated in the modern media; in movies, novels, TV shows and comic books. For example, the Amazon Prime Exclusive show, ‘Vikings’, portrays the titular people as ‘a band of professional pillagers with a disregard for human life and a relentless focus on gratifying material desires’ as the New York Times reviews it.

This, however unfortunately for the real Vikings, is how they are remembered, and how, possibly, the public wants to remember them. It has become the collective memory of the Vikings in the public consciousness. ‘Somehow’, writes Simon Coupland, ‘an idea enters popular consciousness and becomes virtually unassailable by dint of frequent repetition’. It is this constant repetition of the Vikings as violent and marauding warmongers that forever perpetuates this image in the minds of the public. The majority of the primary sources, with many coming from the invaded monks themselves, are heavily biased with a hatred and distrust of the Vikings, purposefully seeking to demonise them. ‘Even by the end of the ninth century,’ Coupland continues, ‘there are signs of exaggeration and distortion creeping into Frankish accounts of the Viking raids because of these stereotypical images, and in the centuries which followed their influence can be seen to have been even greater’.

This particular stereotype is constantly perpetuated in modern media because it is, ultimately, more enjoyable for the public to view. The general majority of cinema goers, TV show viewers and novel readers much prefer to see a stereotypically violent people enact all their violent fantasies on unsuspecting innocents; the public wants these people whom they have always seen as violent to live up to their expectation of the violence, in such a way that they can continually feel better about themselves and about how far civilisation has come since that time. To be truly cynical, many watch violent historical dramas to feed their idea that time that there is no hope for any violence like that to occur again; ‘The Viking—a heroic, savage, and ancestral figure—constitutes a complex archetype that we hold up to provide a distorted mirror image of ourselves. The use of this image in academic research, literature, artwork, comic books, commercials, sports mascots, and movies reveals not only how Vikings are perceived but also provides a lens with which to view how we see ourselves.’

A recent study from researchers at the University of Augsburg, Germany and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that ‘some types of violent portrayals seem to attract audiences because they promise to satisfy truth-seeking motivations by offering meaningful insights into some aspect of the human condition.’ This is no where more prevalent than in the portrayal of the Vikings and similar eras; Anglo- Saxons, Game of Thrones. ‘Depictions of violence’, the report continues, ‘that are perceived as meaningful, moving and thought-provoking can foster empathy with victims, admiration for acts of courage and moral beauty in the face of violence, or self-reflection with regard to violent impulses.’ In short, many watch the violent portrayal of Vikings in the media to feed their need for affirmation, their want to examine themselves and their own violent impulses, and to satisfy their expectation of the Vikings as the manifestation of their stereotypes.

Changing Perceptions

However, in more recent years, the study of the Vikings has yielded greater insight into their plunderous tendencies and violent methods, and into how they may not have actually been so violent as the stereotypes suggest. There needs to be, Kurrild-Klitgaard and Tinggaard Svendsen argue, ‘a new perspective and [argument] that the Vikings simply acted as economically rational bandits’, and not the men simply ‘running berserk’, as their stereotype presents. While there is a multitude of evidence that suggests that settling down and creating a more economically viable society, in the long run, was in the Vikings’ plans, this is something yet to really be explored in the media presentation of them. To give them their credit, Amazon Prime do present Ragnar Lothbrok, the star of their ‘Vikings’ show, and Netflix do present their Ragnar, in ‘The Last Kingdom’, as Vikings intent on settling down, motivated by the need for food and resources, and not completely focused on murder. This is a very modern advancement, however, with many still preferring to present the Vikings as the violent killers we all know.

In the modern attempt to reevaluate, reexamine and reanalyse history, the Vikings have become one of the groups with the most significant change over the last few decades. As a BBC News article records, ‘The classic view is that articulated in Hollywood's 1958 movie The Vikings’, ‘In the 1960s and 70s their portrayal as marauding barbarians was questioned. Academics pointed out that most of the written records for the Viking invasion of England were written by monks who, as the "victims", would not have been objective. Archaeology began to replace the Norse sagas - written several centuries later - as the most reliable evidence’, and, ’a crucial turning point came in the late 1970s [... where] the Vikings became seen as domestic, family-oriented people,’ and concludes with the thought, ‘Revisionism is natural. Academics are always looking for a fresh angle. And people change their mind as social mores evolve.’ With the changing political, moral and historiographical landscape constantly changing and evolving, there is no surprise that the presentation of the Vikings would become a hot topic. ‘Today’s mythic image of the Vikings was recursively constructed through academic research and popular culture against a backdrop of developing nationalism, modernity, and now post-modernity.’

As with many other eras of history, modern historians seek to change the public’s perception of the people who were involved, or who were effected by an event, or an event itself, in order to fit better with a world that, while being hyper-connected, is also losing its personal touch and intimacy. Constantly, for example, in modern commemorations of the First World War, photos are shown, letters are read out, poems are displayed; faces are added to the numbers, in an attempt to draw greater resonance and relatability to the event. This is similar to what we can see in the changing perceptions of the Vikings, with revisionism forging a pathway by which the public can begin to see the Vikings as humans behind the bloodthirsty façade and violent stereotypes.

The Effect on the Public

Everything that has been discussed before, has a profound impact on the public’s view of the Viking people. As explored earlier, the early media’s presentation of Vikings, of their actions, their society and their practices, completely defined the collective memory and consciousness of the public. ‘Popular representations — including Hollywood movies — bear responsibility for the evolution of the modern Viking archetype, which continues to hold an important but ambiguous place in western culture’16. So often, what the media portrays, is what people believe.

This is probably greatest shown in the issue of the Vikings’ horned helmets. The Vikings only ever used horned helmets, if they ever truly did use them, in ceremonial fashion. But this has been a constant part of the Viking imagery in popular culture: a bushy-bearded man with a horned helmet and an axe. This is a powerful example of how the media can spread its ideas and solidify them into what many think is fact; ‘The ubiquitous nature of the Viking stereotype, codified and commercialised through the material culture of plastic horned helmets, demonstrates how effective popular culture is at disseminating its ideas’, Elisabeth Ward explains succinctly.

This is exactly what has happened with the Vikings, where the media has created this kind of identity cult around the Vikings that has become unassailable, insurmountable and most probably unbeatable. In this environment, when a Viking is presented in a different way, it comes as a surprise, as something so unexpected that it can almost seem less realistic than the violence the rest of the media portrays. It has almost come to the point where the actual history of the Vikings has been dictated by the media presentation; archeological finds are interpreted in certain ways, primary sources are taken as more credible than they probably should be, the exaggerated and distorted images portrayed by later civilisations are taken as closer to the fact, and the public is almost collectively duped into believing a false image of the Vikings.

There is also the issue that, as Coupland says, ‘misconceptions about the Vikings are not confined to the general public; some are widespread in scholarly circles, too’. This is an incredible situation in which the academics and scholars can sometimes hold the very same falsehoods and stereotypes as the public they are trying to educate. As in the modern world, where media and perception inevitably influences what is communicated and discussed, some historians can find themselves distracted or held back by stereotypes that they have grown up with, learnt in popular culture and in the media. This creates an almost cyclical dilemma in which education of the true facts can never really flourish until it is broken. Thankfully, this cycle of misinformation is gradually being challenged and broken as the years progress; more filmmakers and television writers are looking for further authenticity and accuracy, historians and academics are working ever harder to gather the truth, and both are beginning to present a more wholistic and complete image of the Vikings.

This may seem like a dire indictment of the situation, but it is not something necessarily completely unrectifiable. As one can see in the slow introduction of ‘normal’ Vikings in the ‘Vikings’ series or in ‘The Last Kingdom’, where aspects of their normal lives outside of the violence are subtly brought in, this can begin to take us down the road of restoring their image. ‘The Vikings have a bad reputation’, Coupland states, ‘they were regularly portrayed as brutally cruel, devilishly cunning and of superhuman stature. [...] In sum, tales of tall, treacherous and brutal Northmen can be shown to have grown in the telling, and there is an evident gap between the Vikings of myth and the Vikings of history.’

However, the Vikings have also become a ‘mythic bad boy phenomena whose appeal to male children – of all ages – [that] persists whatever the prevailing culture’. So deeply has the stereotype of the Vikings woven its way into the public consciousness that it has even become something that the Nordic cultures have latched onto and claim heritage and inheritance from. An example of this is the Icelandic ‘Viking Thunder Clap’ first exhibited at the Euro 2016 football championships where the Icelandic fans clapped and grunted in a rhythmic way to mimic a kind of war march or scare tactic. ‘Many attribute the origins of the Thunderclap to old Viking war chants or pre-battle rituals’. To be descended from the Vikings, and to hold onto aspects of their warlike natures has become ‘really really cool’. The stereotype is thus perpetuated again by people wishing to hold onto a heritage to make themselves feel bigger and stronger, while in the process compromising, or all together eliminating, the want or need for accuracy or reality. As Tveskov and Erlandson explain, ’as an ancestral archetype, Vikings represent qualities that we like to think we embrace, qualities that contrast our perceived modern successes against our savage ancestry, and nostalgic images of what we think we have lost in becoming the society we are today—and sometimes each of these simultaneously.’ Its almost as if the public have latched onto the idea of the Vikings as a manifestation of the stereotypes and love it. To try and introduce a new image for the Vikings may fall on deaf ears as the public may not what to surrender their view of the Vikings that they have always known and loved. As this view of the Vikings has become almost inextricably linked with today’s culture, popular and societal, it may be very difficult to remove or change it. The Vikings have taken in interesting place in the collective heart of the public, where they have become everything we are repulsed by, everything we hate, but also, in some ways, everything we aspire to be. It is a primeval instinct within us to want to be dominant, even aggressively so, and thus the Vikings allow us to harken back to a bygone age that we love to conjure up, draw heritage from and portray in such a way as to make us feel better about ourselves and feed our own violent impulses. All these aspects come together in a dangerous concoction that really does not harm anyone but the very subjects of their adulation, hate and relationship.

One of the major issues with the Viking presentation in modern media and the public’s perception of them may be, not so much that they have been fundamentally misrepresented, which is of course a valid statement, but that they have not been presented wholly enough. This discussion has not been to say that the Vikings were not violent, or did not go out and raid and pillage, because they did, and its a fact. It is to say, however, that what is missing from the grand narrative of the history of the Vikings are the less glamorous parts, the less glorious parts; the home life, the family life, the day-to-day grind of everyday life. This is definitely becoming something that more people are addressing as more comes to light about it. This hasn’t just been a dire speculation on the history of Vikings being a complete travesty and falsification; there is hope for restoration, and the light at the end of the tunnel is drawing nearer.

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