Norse Mythology & Life 3 Old Norse Mytholog
Viking weddings and divorces. What kind of wedding ceremonies did the Vikings use?
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Viking weddings and divorces. What kind of wedding ceremonies did the Vikings use?Courtship, Love and Marriage in Viking Scandinavia Part I -- Forward and Introduction Forward Some time ago, some friends of mine came to me and asked me to tell them how a Viking wedding was conducted. Although I write a column entitled"The Viking Answer Lady" for my local SCA newsletter, I hadn't a clue as to the answer. When I turned to the sagas, they didn't tell me, either. Thus began the start of a massive research project that has produced the work you are about to read. The study is still not over... I am still discovering new information as the number of scholars in the fields of Viking history and Scandinavian womens' studies increases. Whenever I discover new information, I either correct or augment my work, so it is as current as I can make it. The long and short to the problem is this: even in sappy modern romance novels, how many times is an entire wedding ceremony actually described? You can discover that brides wear white dresses, often with veils, that there was a groom, a best man, a matron of honor, bride's maids. You'd find out that the words "I do" and some rings fit into the picture somewhere. But since each and every one of us has seen or heard about weddings, the novelist doesn't have to include all the details. Only an ethnographer or an anthropologist is likely to record the type of full details that would enable someone from another time or culture to really understand a modern American wedding. Similarly, the authors of the sagas did not provide complete details, nor did contemporary commentators or historians from other cultures. So here is my answer to the question of "How did the Vikings conduct a wedding?" I feel that I have made a good approximation. My friends, Lord Bjorn Haraldson and Lady Leidrun Leidulfsdottir, enacted the wedding as I describe it here: as all the guests, and the couple themselves will tell you, everything felt right. It was like participating in a folk ritual in a foreign country, where you know that each action has millennia of tradition behind it. I take little credit for the success of the event, as Ledirun is a formidable general who knows how best to marshal her friends and assemble her resources to stage a coup: this wedding was the closest I have ever felt to the sensation of "YOU ARE THERE." As with any piece of scholarship, you the reader must judge my research upon its merits and decide if you agree with my conclusions. If you have access to information which corrects or elaborates upon my own, please feel free to contact me: gunnora@vikinganswerlady.org Gunnora Hallakarva 375 Brown Road McDade, Texas 78650 USA
I. Introduction This paper seeks to examine marriage and related topics as they existed in Viking Scandinavia. Primarily, marriage was a contractual arrangement between the families of the bride and groom in the Viking Age, just as it was throughout other areas of medieval Europe. However, in addressing the topic of marriage, I have also briefly examined love, sexual conduct, mythical-religious aspects, and divorce in order to provide context for understanding the sociocultural background in which marriages were made. The focus of this research is the pagan era of the Vikings, although due to the lateness of the period legal codes and literary sources, some information is undoubtedly more reflective of medieval Scandinavia (ca. 1000- 1400 CE). It should also be mentioned that since much of the information we possess today about the Viking Age originated in Iceland, the information presented in this paper may reflect Icelandic practices only, for there were wide differences in laws. society and religion throughout the various Scandinavian countries, and thus there was no such thing as a single, universal "Viking culture." The primary sources for the Viking period come from archaeology, runic inscriptions, and contemporary literary evidence provided by Arabic travelers and German chroniclers such as Adam of Bremen. Additional sources which may be used to complete a picture of the Viking Age date from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries: these are the Scandinavian chronicles, sagas, and laws. In utilizing these later sources, the researcher must use caution in accepting as confirmed truth whatever he or she finds there. The sagas are concerned with personalities and political maneuverings rather than with social history, and may reflect most accurately the social conditions of the author's lifetime instead of those of the historic figures that people the sagas, just as medieval artists painted historic figures such as King Arthur in the armor of the late Middle Ages rather than in the proper historical gear. The legal codes of medieval Scandinavia are perhaps more factual in orientation than are the sagas, however their chief value to the researcher is to provide "normative history," describing how lawmakers wanted their society to operate, rather than the actual workings of day-to-day life. Further, the extant law codes we possess (Gragas, the Gulathing Law, Frostathing Law, Jyske Lov etc.) were all redacted and written down after the close of the Viking Age, when the establishment of Christianity and canon law could influence these codes. Unless one day we recover and revive some hapless Viking who has been preserved frozen in glacial ice, and are able to extract from him a detailed account of his life and culture, it is unlikely that modern historians will ever be able to present an absolutely accurate and authoritative description of the life of the Viking Age. The Saga Time has passed away, and like the Golden Age of Homer, may only be recovered in bits and potsherds, in romanticized remembrances and distant echoes. In order to re-create the society of the Vikings within recreationist organizations such as the S.C.A., or to resurrect the religious beliefs and tenets of the pagan Scandinavians as do the Asatruar, we frequently blend together a mix of historical fact, period fiction, and the creativity of our own imaginations in order to create a new reality which we hope is not too far from the truth of history. With this in mind, we can let the information contained in these pages teach us what the Viking marriage was, or at least, might have been. 
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