A young Viking woman picks up her sword and goes in search of retribution and justice.
In 934 the English are fighting the Norse for supremacy over the North. Worship of the old Norse gods is challenged by Christianity. Traditional loyalties are tested and revenge can be swift and violent. In Cumbria a man is outlawed and killed. Faced with a life of destitution and servitude, his daughter Sigrid's only option is to appeal to the King of Norway to reverse his judgement on her father and allow her to inherit the family farm. But Norway is far away and Sigrid has only her wits and her skill with the sword to help her cause.
Giving birth to my Shieldmaiden has been a long, sometimes
painful, experience. I always knew I had to write a book about Vikings. It felt
like it was my duty as a Scandinavian to educate the British about our shared
heritage and rescue these deluded people from the notion that Vikings was all
about the ‘rape and pillage’ by wild Northmen of peaceful, Christian Anglo
Saxons.
It took a long time. Life got in the way; mortgage, career,
travel. It took a dream to get me started. I dreamt that I woke up. I opened my
eyes, it was dark, I could smell wood-smoke, wet dogs and damp woollen clothes.
I could hear the rustle made when mice scurried among the reeds covering the floor.
When my eyes got used to the dark I discerned tall rafters supporting a steep
roof. I’m Swedish, I know a Viking longhouse when I see one. This was the 10th
Century and I was very old. Aches and pains stopped me going back to sleep and
I fell to reminiscing about my life.
The next morning, after waking up properly, back in the 21st
Century, I began writing the story of Sigrid Kveldulfsdaughter. I don’t believe
in reincarnation or spirits, it was a dream, nothing more. It doesn’t actually
matter how it came about and when people ask if Sigrid is me, I just tell them
that, although I may look it, I’m not over a thousand years old.
I thought my Scandinavian background and my past as a
student of History would be enough and I’d get this book written pretty
quickly. And the gods in Asgard laughed at my hubris.
Why, oh why, did I set the story in Cumbria? Of course I’d
been to Buttermere on holiday and loved it there. But describing life there in
the 10th Century threw up some difficult questions. Was it part of Strathclyde
or Northumbria? To whom would the Viking settlers there pledge their
allegiance? I assumed that the Cumbrian Vikings, being predominantly Norse,
would support the Dublin kings in their claims on the crown of what I have
called the Kingdom of Jorvik. Above all, I felt safe setting them against the
Saxons. But what was their relationship to Strathclyde and the Scots?
Forget about nation states, forget about boundaries. This is
a time of personal power based on a network of supporters. A centre of power,
Jorvik for example, had its sphere of interest where its ruler collected
tribute, could call up an army and keep law and order. That influence
diminished the further from the centre you got. Several centres worked together
as less powerful chieftains added their spheres of interest to the strongest
one. A king was only as safe and as powerful as the support he was afforded by
his followers. The commitment was based on mutual duties and rewards; the king
was supposed to show generosity towards his supporters in the form of gifts of
land and gold.
Sigrid lives in the area of Buttermere and Loweswater. This
was a border zone between the interests of Viking Northumbria/Jorvik,
Strathclyde and the expanding Saxons intent on conquering all England. It was
difficult terrain for an army or even for tax collectors. The Norse Viking
communities seem to have had a fair amount of independence or at least choice
whom to submit to. There were local Thing gatherings and many of the Thing
mounds where they discussed matters of common interest, voted and held law
court have been identified. I decided that Sigrid and her family would attend
the Thing at Fellfoot in Little Langdale.
The first book, Shieldmaiden, features the battle of
Brunnanburgh. The problem here is that nobody knows where that took place.
Eminent historians differ on the matter and here was I, a mere novelist, having
to settle on a place. I did. Then a group including the Professor of Viking
Studies at Nottingham University decided on a site on the Wirral. So, assuming
they must be right, I re-wrote a whole chapter. I have since learnt about yet
another possible site for the battle which I actually find more credible but
what’s been put in print has to stand.
Historical accuracy is important to me. I learnt a lot of
History through fiction and I believe that historical novelists have a duty to
present to their readers a scenario that is at the very least not impossible. But we can only be as accurate as the sources
we use. The Vikings had no written language apart from the runes and the
inscriptions on stones tell us very little: “Thorstein went to England with Canute and
died there,” for example. So most of the contemporary sources are manuscripts
written by monks and priests. The Anglo Saxon Chronicles were commissioned by
King Alfred the Great to give his family a history, to justify their claim to
power and to generally make them seem good. Much of what’s written there comes
under the heading of ‘well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?’
There are six versions of the Anglo Saxon Chronicles and
they sometimes disagree even about basic facts like the year of an event and
the names of people involved. This held me up when I wanted to describe a
battle at Leicester. Two separate dates 941 and 943, only the first name of the
Viking king given: Anlaf. Unfortunately there were two Anlafs; one was King of
Jorvik in 941, the other in 943. I decided there had been two battles,
subsequent events made this quite plausible or at least not impossible.
Written sources are prone to be biased so you’d have thought
that archaeology would provide some certainty. Not so. Finds have to be
interpreted. To me and to most Scandinavians the notion of women warriors,
shieldmaidens, is neither new nor overly contentious. Many graves contain
evidence of powerful women and some of those also contain weapons. The ideas that
‘she must have looked after them for her husband’ or ‘they were ceremonial’ or ‘not
actually weapons at all’, were all new to me. I was taught in school that both
boys and girls in Viking times learnt to ride, swim and use bow and arrow, that
when the men were away trading or raiding women needed to be able to defend the
farmstead.
Likewise, I find it strange when people explain away the
writings by Adam of Bremen or Saxo Grammaticus claiming they were told lies or
misunderstood when people told them about warrior women. And that’s before we
even get into myths and legends preserved in folk-memory. Most of all I have on
occasion been saddened by the vitriol with which some people conduct what
should be a grown-up discussion based on evidence. For myself I am satisfied
that some women did fight and some women were warriors. As far as I know
there’s no evidence for women taking part in raids but we know they accompanied
raiding parties and invading armies of Vikings. Maybe it just made sense for
them to at least be able to fend for themselves.
So I wrote a novel about a woman who became a warrior. I
told it the way I dreamt it when I woke up in that longhouse and remembered a
life as Shieldmaiden.
Marianne Whiting
About the Author
www.mariannewhiting.com and www.shieldmaidenthenovel.blogspot.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Twitter @MarianneWhiting.
Fascinating, Marianne. I can't imagine going back that far in history to research a novel.
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