What is a Skald?

           “During the lengthy gloom of winter, when their sleek ships lay idle, the Norsemen seem to have devoted themselves to two principle pastimes: mead drinking and poetic entertainment. They would gather in the great hall of their jarl, or chieftain, to feast and then indulge in the arts of the skalds. When the [skald] performed, the raised voices of all assembled often formed an enthusiastic chorus.”

         -Yoell, Nordic Sound, p. 6

What were skalds, exactly? Were they musicians? Storytellers? Singers? Poets? The answer, is yes. To the norse skalds, all of these were one in the same. Stories were better sung, songs were better as stories, and with a wellspring of inspiration as wide and deep as Norse mythology, the possibilities for stories, poems, and songs were endless. Yet, many may ask, “how could storytelling and poetry be such a cornerstone of a savage and warlike people such as the vikings?” With the help of Hollywood and Christian revisionist history, the viking culture has been largely misunderstood and unjustly narrowed down to a simple people with a desire to simply steal and murder. The vikings are such an interesting people to paint as the noble savage trope in our various avenues of entertainment, that we easily forget that these northern people were just as adept at arts, literature, and engineering as they were at warfare and piracy. (Yoell, p. 6)

Winters were harsh and bitter north of the Baltic Sea. Part of the reason the vikings of old were such a “seize the day” type of people was because of the very fact that they spent months on end huddled around hearthfire and kin waiting for the warmer weather where they could enjoy their preferred activities of hunting, gaming, raiding, trading, and exploration. So, what were these restless people left to do for the many months out of the year when their dragonships and longboats were frozen in their harbors? The only thing a community can do when confined to the indoors for days on end: they created art together, and the masters of their narrative art were what came to be known as the skalds.

Skalds were the school of bards developed by this northern passion for poetic storytelling. It is thanks to these skalds that we have any written record of norse mythology and culture at all. Though they may have began their legacy as simple bards, poets, or storytellers, with the many struggles and conflicts the Christians brought from the south, arguably the most important gifts the norsemen could ever receive came from these foreigners: the formalized written word, and standardized music. Rather than looking at the conversion of the northern peoples to Christianity as the victory of an alien civilization, it would do this subject best to view it as the overflowing vitality and creative energy of the North merging with a civilization who were best equipped with standardized practices to formalize and record their art forms that were largely passed down by spoken word up until this point in history. (Yoell, p. 7)

Despite the many culture clashes that occurred between the former viking warriors and their new southern neighbors, the effect which Christian culture had on the north can not be overstated. The Christendom of Scandinavian reaching as far north as Trondheim (then called Nidaros) in Norway expanded the musical resources of the northern cultures enormously. For the next five hundred years, not only would the northern peoples benefit from the Christian musical practice, but the Gregorian chant and Roman hymnody of the southern lands would in turn absorb many features of the skaldic style. So much would the northern arts affect Christendom that their stands strong evidence that part harmony originated in the north, as the euphonic hymn to St. Magnus “Nobilis humilis” was discovered in the library at Uppsala in Sweden, which apparently represents the work of a Norwegian monk passing through the Orkney Islands during the 13th century. This hymn to St. Magnus may be the earliest piece of authentic Scandinavian music enjoyable by listeners today. (Yoell, p. 7)"

Beside the musical spirit of the northern skalds stands an equally, strong, yet more diligently recorded literary side. There is one man who may be attributed to single-handedly bringing us the norse mythology that we know about today, and who can confidently be called the most important skald of his time, and that man is the Christian-educated chieftain, Snorri Sturluson.

Snorri Sturluson was not a musical skald. Rather, he was a very well educated and imaginative politician in Iceland who is responsible for writing down the Prose Edda, Heimskringla, and Egil’s Saga. The Prose Edda in particular was a collection of mythological tales written down by Snorri and told of all the norse gods, creatures, myths, and monsters that we know of today. The very importance of this work to our western literary culture was defended by J.R.R. Tolkien himself as being far more important than the many hours spent studying Shakespeare. The validity of Tolkien’s belief is self-evident, simply by looking at his success as an author, attributed to his countless hours devoted to translating and studying Snorri’s work on his own or in his self-created club of those devoted to Snorri’s work known as the Kolbiters. These Kolbiters were colleagues Tolkien convinced to substitute Shakespeare for Snorri, and is where many stories were shared and created, including the timeless Tolkien gem, “The Hobbit”. C.S. Lewis was also deeply inspired by the imaginative storytelling of Snorri, according to Nancy Marie Brown in “Song of the Vikings” preface:

"Lewis had read the mythological tales from Snorri’s ‘Edda’ in English as a boy. He found the Norse myths more compelling -as stories, he said- than even the Bible. Like Tolkien, he was drawn to their Northernness: to their depictions of dragons and dwarfs, fair elves and werewolves, wandering wizards, and trolls that turned into stone. To their portrayal of men with a bitter courage who stood fast on the side of right and good, even when there was no hope at all.”

As we can see, skalds of the north came in many styles and forms. We have our poets, we have our singers, we had our novelists, we have our actors, and we have our musicians and composers. The stories of Snorri Sturluson, this Homer of the North, were deeply influential to notable writers such as Richard Wagner, Henrik Ibsen, Seamus Haney, The Brothers Grimm, Sir Walter Scott, and Neil Gaiman. (Brown, Song of the Vikings, p.6) It even influences other mediums of art besides books and plays especially in movies, video games, and more contemporary music styles, especially heavy metal.

Yet, one thing ties all of these different performers from all walks of life together, and that is one thing: their undying passion for the passing down of the rich mythological heritage of their legendary viking culture that still, in the face of all adversity and dismissal, pervades and inspires our culture thousands of years after their age had ended. It is only because of the skalds that pre-Christian northern heritage persists in our books, in our holidays, in our movies, in our music, and in our imaginations.

Works Consulted:

Yoell, John H. The Nordic Sound: Explorations into the Music of Denmark, Norway, Sweden.   Foreword by Antal Dorati. Crescendo Pub. Co., 1974.

Brown, Nancy Marie. Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.