Interview with Heri Joensen of Týr, Part Two

Click here for Part One of the interview.

Heri Joensen of Týr

KS – Many of your favorite bands were ones I grew up listening to – Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Kiss, Pink Floyd and Uriah Heep. With Týr, you’ve definitely declared yourself as a group in the modern metal genre. How do you think that listening to prog and glam music from this older period has affected what you write and play today?

HJ – In many cases, I would think that – song-wise and musically – probably the greatest influence on me personally has been Judas Priest. I mean the way they use the guitar and the way put their songs together – not always power chords, but often very, very melodic playing and harmony by two guitars, which is the way I like to do it. I think that definitely comes through.

But then there are other bands, like Uriah Heep. They have so much experimental stuff that we never even tried. They have keyboards, and they also worked with symphonic orchestras and everything. We never went that way. Even though I like to listen to much of it, I can’t really say we took any of it into our music. Maybe some Deep Purple riffing and the heaviness of Black Sabbath and all that.

KS – I think your first two records have more elements from doom metal.

HJ – Yeah. That was actually unintentional. I had a completely different thing in mind, when I wrote the songs. It’s difficult, without having done it before, to see the connection between your original idea and the end result. When I got the album, I thought, “This is not what I had in mind!” With the second one, the process was more transparent to me, so it turned out more like what I want.

The cover of Týr's How Far to Asgaard

KS – The lyrics to “Regin Smiður” and “Gátu Ríma” are traditional Faroese, but based on passages in the Eddas and sagas. “Lokka Táttur” is an interesting case. It’s a late medieval tale of Odin, Hœnir and Loki – the same trio of gods as in the Eddic stories of Thjazi and Andvari – but it’s not based on a known Icelandic source. This type of folklore is often neglected by modern scholars, who tend to fixate on Iceland.

HJ – Yeah. Yes.

KS – I wish I could find a modern English translation of these old Faroese ballads. The only book I’ve found so far is Nora Kershaw’s collection from 1921 [available as a free eBook in The Norse Mythology Online Library].

HJ – I should put you into contact with a professor in Faroes, Poul Vestergaard, who I’ve spoken to about precisely this. There are some quite neglected, rather big stories. The stories also exist in different forms – with the same elements – in the Faroes. It’s not seen anywhere. It’s not wandering stories.

Lighthouse on Kalsoy in the Faroe Islands
Photograph by Alessio Mesiano for National Geographic

KS – Do you feel a responsibility to bring Faroese culture to the outside world?

HJ – If I do, I’m very glad – if I bring it to people’s attention. That was not the idea – ha! – the general idea, to begin with.

I have a different angle. I would be very glad to make Faroese people proud of their own nationality or heritage or culture. With a rock or metal band, you can only represent snippets of mythology or history or nationality. So little actually goes into an album. I can, in the best case, hope to bring the subject to someone’s attention. If you want to study it, you don’t want to do it in our albums. Ha! You can go somewhere else.

KS – “Ólavur Riddararós” tells a tale of a young man and an elf maiden. I’m fascinated by the similarities between Irish and Icelandic elf-belief. Even into the twentieth century, they are somewhat parallel. Is there a distinctive elf tradition in the Faroe Islands?

HJ – Oh, yeah. Yeah. I have to say, I’m not that familiar with it – but I know there it’s there, because my grandmother believed elves existed. She said they went away when a Christian came. Of course, you have light, you can see, “Oh, there’s nothing. After all, the elves must have gone away.” Ha! Even today, I’ve spoken to people who firmly believe in elves. Ha!

Elf-belief isn't rare. Even Icelandic Members of Parliament believe!
Click here to read about an "Elf Kerfuffle in Iceland"

KS – How is Faroese folklore unique and different from that of other Nordic countries? Do you think it has its own flavor?

HJ – I don’t know. It may have. Of course, it comes directly from the same source as the Icelandic people have done – from Norway. I just know about the existence of these beliefs lately, but I actually haven’t looked that deep into it – so I couldn’t really tell you the difference.

KS – The Norse mythology that is familiar to us today is mostly from the Eddas, which were written down in Iceland long after the conversion to Christianity. As a Faroese person, what sort of personal relationship do you feel with the Icelandic material?

HJ – If you compare it to – for example – Saxo in Denmark, it’s not the same at all. I guess you have to grant the Icelanders that it is probably mostly their version that everyone has today. But I still feel at home with it.

We have not nearly as much, but we have some ballads that are based on mythology, also. I think you have to give that to the Icelanders. It’s theirs, in a way.

Týr in costume: see below for Heri's views on Viking re-enactment

KS – Americans tend to be less familiar with Saxo’s History of the Danes, which presents very different versions of the Norse myths. Because of the special Faroese relationship to Denmark, do children in the Faroe Islands read Saxo in school?

HS – No, we don’t. I had never heard of Saxo until I was twenty-five or so. I was in Denmark then, so I read them.

KS – Did you read the Eddas in school?

HJ – No. We had some parts. What did we have in school? I had Faroese history, like the Icelandic saga on the history of the Faroes. That we read, most of it. Then we had mythology, just the main stories. I remember particularly the one with the Fenris wolf and Týr. Sort of a general overview. It’s not like we actually read the Eddas. This was like third or fourth grade, so…

KS – Some of your lyrics – like “Hail to the Hammer,” “The Rune” and “Dreams” – have a great sense of longing for and connection to the distant past. How do you feel about Viking re-enactment and the desire to return to those times? How would you describe your emotional connection to this history?

HJ – I don’t do any re-enactment. I find it a little bit silly. I wouldn’t want to go back to those times, because I’m one thousand percent sure that we’re a lot better off today.

KS – We have eyeglasses.

HJ – Ha! Yes, for example! And fake teeth, some of us.

Heri Joensen (center, in Viking helmet) with Viking re-enactors
in video for Týr's "Regin Smiður" from the Eric the Red album

I don’t know. I find the history quite fascinating. I’m fairly sure one automatically glorifies it beyond reason. That’s just the way. You don’t have think further back than your great-grandparents, and you probably already glorified that beyond reason.

There’s also something about coming from such an isolated community. Some people came there twelve hundred years ago, and you’re still there. Probably not that much happened in between. It’s a pretty clean history, in a way. I guess if you’re a country like Switzerland, it’s hard to keep up with what happened when, because so much different crap happened all the time.

The simplicity of Faroes history, I think, makes it a bit fascinating. It’s a very straight line – long, long into the past. Of course, every one has it – it just goes in more crooked ways. Maybe that’s unjustified fascination, but that’s how I feel, at least.

KS – Do you have the ability – like the Icelanders – to trace your family history directly back?

HJ – No. We don’t have that good annals. Not nearly. I think, recently, everything has been digitalized. You can trace your family to the 1600s. You could also before, but it was not digitalized, so you had to go rummaging through papers written in very bad handwriting by priests who were very unqualified – and probably sent to the Faroes because they were unfit to be priests in Denmark, which was typical.

My mother went to genealogy studies. She made a family tree that goes back to, I don’t know, early 1500s – and I could see that my family’s been living in the same place for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

KS – The same town?

HJ – The same town? Ha! A village – like three houses. Call that a town if you like. Ha!

The Faroe Islands village of Lamba, where Heri grew up

KS – I’m interested in your compositional process. When you’re writing an original song, how do you go about it? Do you do it on paper, on the piano, on the computer?

HJ – I used to do it in handwriting. I had a little paper, and I’d write the melody on. Then I’d put the chords on. Through the chords, I would get some sort of riff. Then I’d add the bass or whatever.

KS – So you’d actually write it out.

HJ – Yeah. I used to. Now I work on the computer. I use a program called Guitar Pro. It’s an old program. I could show you right now. I’ll be right back!

[gets laptop]

I have to finish some music here. I have this nice program. So here, I put in a traditional melody. That’s the chorus of it. And I harmonize it into four voices.

KS – Do you enter it with a keyboard?

HJ – No. I just put it in here, by shortcuts. I have the melody for the verse over here. I make a chord progression to that. I don’t actually write down the chord progression anywhere. I just harmonize the guitar to fit this chord progression.

KS – So you do it more contrapuntally than with chords.

HJ – Yeah. So then you have a riff, and you can just leave out the melody. You still have the riff based on the melody, which is what this part before the melody comes in here is. I had two rhythm parts here, and I made one of the rhythm parts into a melody. Here, you have the faster drums and the rhythm part – and the other part, played more like a melody than a rhythm.

So that goes down again to the rhythm playing, when the melody comes in. You see here? We’re back to the rhythm guitar, and here comes the singing melody.

KS – The voice.

HJ – Yeah. At the end of that comes the chorus again. So that’s mainly how I work.

Terji Skibenæs, Heri Joensen Kári Streymoy, and Gunnar H. Thomsen
Týr plays Paganfest in Chicago - April 13, 2013

KS – How do you teach the other band members their parts? Do you print out parts for the band?

HJ – I send these tabs to them, and they can play it back. Here, you want to listen to it?

[plays demo]

You can hear. If you’re the bass player, for example, you can just put “solo” on the bass and listen to that – and you can have a metronome playing at the same time, so you know where you are and what you gotta do. This is a really easy program if you write songs, and you want other musicians to learn it.

KS – Do you work out all the vocal harmonies yourself, or do the band members come up with their own lines?

HJ – We all sing on the recordings.

Heri Joensen, Kári Streymoy, and Gunnar H. Thomsen harmonize
Týr plays Paganfest in Chicago - April 13, 2013

KS – Is everything through-composed, or is there any element of improvisation in the studio or on stage?

HJ – Not really. I don’t improvise. I write the melody in the program…

KS – The actual guitar solos?

HJ – Yeah. Then I practice them, and then I record them. I’m not sure about Terji. Maybe he improvises a little bit, every now and then. But once it’s recorded, he plays it the same every time. There’s no jam element to this. It’s all pretty fixed.

KS – The solos are always the same length?

HJ – Yes, they are.

KS – How do you find the traditional Faroese ballads? Is this music still performed by everyday Faroese, or is something that you have to research and pull from academic sources?

HJ – Everyday people. There are some people who, of course, know more about them – and have become academics, in a way, about them. It’s still a very communal thing. There are some people who are more enthusiastic about it than others, but anyone is free to learn one and write the appropriate arrangements.

KS – Do you learn them from recordings, or do you just know them from growing up?

HJ – I’ve known some from growing up. You just hear them so many times that it’s hard not to know them. Others, I know the melody, and I get the texts. Learning the melody is really easy; learning the texts is extremely hard. I’ve memorized some texts from paper – and also some from recordings.

Recently, there have been some CD releases by a Faroese label of old recordings. I think the oldest recording I’ve heard is from 1902. A German scholar was traveling around, recording on wax cylinders. These are preserved in a museum in Berlin, somewhere. Someone went there and got permission to put it on CD and release it in the Faroes.

Faroe Islands stamp featuring a scene from "Ormurin Langi"
("The Long Serpent"), a ballad written in the 19th century
and covered by Týr on the How Far to Asgaard album

KS – The Faroese ballad tradition seems similar in some ways to the Icelandic rímur tradition. Can you explain a bit about the history of kvæði, the Faroese ballads? How old are they?

HJ – Some of them definitely go really far back. Most of them… That’s hard to say. You can see by some of the styles of the melodies that they’re pre-modern. No one who knew anything about music theory was ever involved with some. You can see that from the melody, I think. Also – by that means – you can sort out those that are definitely modern. Like, if it is a clean Ionian melody, it’s probably not very old. Then you have these Dorians that are mixed with harmonic minor and all sorts of stuff.

How old they are precisely is very difficult to tell, because there are no written or recorded resources. The text and melody, you can’t say how tightly bound they are. You may have a text that’s from the Viking Ages, but then you have a melody. When did that come in? Did it come with this history? I think it’s impossible to tell. I like to think some of the melodies were around all the way back then. Unfortunately, it’s probably impossible to tell.

To be concluded in Part Three.

Interview with Heri Joensen of Týr, Part One

During the Chicago stop of the Paganfest America Part IV tour on April 13, I interviewed the lyricists of the three headlining bands. I long ago posted my interviews with Joris Boghtdrincker of Heidevolk (Netherlands) and Sami Hinkka of Ensiferum (Finland), and I’ve now finally gotten around to transcribing the recording of my interview with Heri Joensen of Týr (Faroe Islands).

Heri Joensen of Týr

Founded in 1998, Týr released How Far to Asgaard – the band’s first full-length album – in 2002. Since then, they have released Eric the Red (2003), Ragnarok (2006), Land (2008), By the Light of the Northern Star (2009), The Lay of Thrym (2011) and Valkyrja (2013).

Týr is known to fans of so-called Viking metal, pagan metal and folk metal for blending harmony guitar parts with harmonized vocals, for adapting and arranging traditional Faroese melodies, and for basing lyrics and imagery almost completely on Norse mythology, legend and history. The band is also known for promoting openly pro-heathen and anti-Christian messages in their lyrics, videos, album art and commercial products (t-shirts, banners, etc.).

Frontman Heri Joensen himself is known for controversial statements in interviews and on discussion boards. Although I do not agree with many of his positions, I felt that it was important to give him a chance to clearly address some of the issues that have been raised by his previous proclamations.

However, some of what Heri says in the following interview seems to directly contradict text currently on the Týr website. Some of what he says seems to directly contradict the content of the band’s artistic statements. He was given every opportunity to explain himself during a very long and relaxed interview. There was no language barrier; Heri is completely fluent in English and expresses himself quite clearly. The following transcription represents what Heri wanted to communicate to readers of this site. I leave it to you to make your own judgements.

Note: This is Part One of a three-part series.

The cover of Týr's Land

KS – For readers who may not be familiar with the history of the Faroe Islands, can you explain how the Faroes were settled?

HJ – The first – maybe not the first, at least the present settlers in the Faroes – were Norwegian Vikings. They came around 870s, I think, 875. It’s difficult to say precisely when. There were people in the Faroes before that. It could have been anybody; they don’t know. At least we who are there now, came then. Recent genetic studies have shown that about 80% of the men have Nordic genes, while the women have about 80% Celtic genes.

KS – Similar to Iceland.

HJ – Yeah, same as Iceland. They came to Scotland first – or the British Isles – and then married local women, went to the Faroes.

The strange thing is that, in the Orkneys and Shetlands – where there is also Scandinavian heritage – they have around the same ratio for women and men: 60-70% Scandinavian, I think. Which means the Scandinavian men have had to marry local women, have had to move further north – which is strange. But it also shows that the Vikings were sober, because they only took the beautiful women. Ha!

KS – What elements of the Viking Age worldview do you think still play an active role in the psychology of contemporary Faroese?

HJ – That’s really hard to say. There are some concrete examples, actually. The law system, for example, and many old traditional systems like whaling, whaling distribution. It’s this communal thing. Laws and customs concerning agriculture and farm animals and stuff like that.

Of course, it’s been modernized in many cases, but you don’t really throw everything away, ever. You sort of build on what you have and then what’s useful, and go from there. I guess you could say, in the practical aspects of living there, there’s a lot of things that are directly from the Viking Age.

As for the mentality of the people or anything like that, that’s really difficult to say. I’ve often thought about it. How much do we know about what people were like then? How life was like? I think that’s difficult to answer – for me, at least. I couldn’t tell you right now.

Gunnar H. Thomsen, Heri Joensen, Terji Skibenæs. and Kári Streymoy
Týr plays Paganfest in Chicago - April 13, 2013

KS – You’ve said in past interviews that you are “fully and wholly in favor of Faeroese independence and sovereignty.”

HJ – Yeah.

KS – What do you think would change in the lives of individual Faroese if they gained full independence from Denmark tomorrow?

HJ – Nothing. Well, we would have a few more posts on the national agenda, and that’s it. We would take care of our own currency, which would probably continue with the Danish krone or with the Norwegian, maybe. Maybe go to the euro. I don’t know. It’s all just practical issues.

KS – So why do you think it’s so important?

HJ – Because we were never asked. It’s the principle of democracy. If we got our independence and the very next day decided to be part of Denmark, at least we’d been asked.

KS – As a free partner.

HJ – Yeah. Which it’s not, at the moment. Nowhere in the whole history did the Faroese people decide to be a part of Denmark.

KS – Is this the situation you’re addressing with the lyrics on The Lay of Thrym, in songs like “Take Your Tyrant”? Or are those songs addressing the situation in the Middle East?

HJ – That was mostly inspired by events in the Arab Spring. I was not really thinking about actual independence with us.

A concept album about Middle East politics?
The cover of Týr's The Lay of Thrym

KS – You have criticized anti-whaling activists, most famously in the song “Rainbow Warrior.” How would you explain the Faroese relationship with whaling?

HJ – The whale is an animal like any other animal. They get really kind-of glorified in the modern media, to an extent that I think is completely unreasonable. It’s not like torturing a chimpanzee to death or anything like that.

The pilot whale is a very docile and peaceful animal, like a cow. It’s not like you have to fight it to death, like you would struggle with any wild animal. It behaves like a cow. You can hold it with one hand, and it just stays right there. So it’s quite easy to kill them fast and humanely.

Also, when you harvest your wildlife… Imagine all the things you spare the planet for, when you don’t have to breed livestock – all the CO2 emissions. You have to feed it, house it, transport it, slaughter it, refrigerate it. Whereas with wildlife, the planet is spared from all those things. You’re still left with the basic thing – you have to kill one animal to eat it.

So, if you kill a tame pig or a wild whale – ethically speaking, there’s really no difference. That’s, I think, the main point in favor of eating wildlife.

Heri with beard and Thor's Hammer pendant

KS – Is it true that you went to Denmark to study Indo-European Comparative Linguistics?

HJ – Yes, that is true.

KS – Why did you want to study this subject?

HJ – I’ve always been fascinated with languages, especially language history. I have one talent, and that is language. Everything else is just stubbornness and hard work. But I got hijacked by music. Ha!

KS – Then you went to Det Alternative Rytmiske Konservatorium in Copenhagen. Why is it called “alternative”?

HJ – Because there is another one that is subsidized by the state. This one is not, so this is an alternative to that. That’s the only reason it’s called “alternative.” You learn the same things, still.

KS – What did you study while you were there?

HJ – All the compulsory subjects, plus guitar. You have one instrument, and mine was guitar, of course. Then the rest of the subjects are compulsory – piano, rhythmics, music theory, music history.

KS – Composition?

HJ – There’s no actual composition. You do that mostly through music theory. I got a lot of compositional experience there, but there’s no course called “composition.” My main courses were music theory and guitar.

KS – Did you study classical guitar or jazz guitar?

HJ – Both, both. Everything.

KS – There’s a lot of contrapuntal writing in your music. Did you study counterpoint in school?

HJ – Yes. I was very much into Bach. My finishing task – my main thesis or project in guitar – was to compare the way Johann Sebastian Bach and Charlie Parker used leading tones.

Gunnar works the crowd as Terji and Heri concentrate on counterpoint
Týr plays Paganfest in Chicago - April 13, 2013

KS – You mean secondary dominants?

HJ – Yeah. Whatever you call it.

KS – Some of the earlier Týr music has very strong Baroque elements, and the later music has some complicated modernist rhythms. How do you think that your formal musical training interacted with your background in metal?

HJ – I always have a very theoretic approach when I write the music. I think, to begin with, maybe it was unnecessarily complicated.

On the second album, for example, take a song like “Regin Smiður” – the chorus, where there are all sorts of strange harmonizations in the guitar and the bass. I was tabbing the song the other day, and I was trying to listen to what I had played, and I couldn’t hear myself. So I had asked Terji, because he knew the parts that I wasn’t playing – “What the hell am I playing there?” – because I had played it all in the studio. “Don’t you remember? I’ll show you.” “Okay!”

If not even I can hear what’s being played, then what’s the point of it? I’m sure I could have got away just as easily with doing it in a much simpler way, which I try to do today. So I think, yeah, this is nice, this looks good in theory – but is it really necessary? So I try to hold back on that.

KS – I think the albums are getting more complicated. You think they’re getting less complicated as you go on?

HJ – I would hope so! Ha! If not... Ha!

KS – Your music often has very unusual rhythmic phrasing, especially as you move forward through your discography. You’ve said before that Faroese folk music has rhythms in odd time.

HJ – Yeah.

KS – Béla Bartók famously transcribed Hungarian folk music and was inspired by it to write music with very complicated rhythms. He was learning from the folk music.

HJ – Yeah, exactly.

Béla Bartók recording folk music in 1908

KS – Did your embrace of folk music lead you to the irregular rhythms in your own compositions?

HJ – Yeah, yeah.

KS – Are the melodies determining the rhythms?

HJ – Yes, exactly. If I write a piece of music from a blank slate, I always go four-by-four, and I don’t go for the funny rhythms for fun. But when you start with a piece of traditional music, you always have these odd times. That’s where it comes from, in our case. I very seldom come up with it myself.

To be continued in Part Two.

Viking Ship Field Trip

On October 5, I led a group of my students on a field trip to see a Viking ship in the Chicago suburbs. Yes, there is a Viking ship here in the Midwestern United States! Who knew?

The trip was open to students from my Norse religion class at Carthage College, members of the Carthage College Tolkien Society I started last semester, and students from my class at Chicago's Newberry Library on "The Hobbit: J.R.R. Tolkien's Mythic Sources." Considering how far out in the Western Lands the ship is currently kept, we had a good number of people who made the trek.

A Viking guards the Viking

The Viking is a 19th-century replica of the ancient Gokstad ship. The original ship was built in the mid-9th century and used for a ship burial around 900. The replica that we visited was built in Norway at the Framnæs Shipyard in Sanefjord between 1892 and 1893.

In 1893, the Viking was sailed by Captain Magnus Andersen and his eleven-man Norwegian crew across the wide Atlantic Ocean from Norway to the United States. The ship made stops in Newfoundland and New York City before traveling via the Hudson River, Erie Canal and Great Lakes to Chicago for the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Sailing from Bergen, Norway to Newfoundland took twenty-eight days on the open sea. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 4,800-mile journey from Bergen to Chicago took more than two months in total.

Ken welcomes the student group to the ship exhibit

Our tour guides were Ken Nordan and Andrew Woods, both members of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the Viking Ship. Last semester, Ken was an adult student in my Newberry Library class on "Norse Mythology: Exploring the Eddas." Both guides were very knowledgeable about the history of the Viking and of the original Gokstad.

Andrew talks to the students in front of a historical photo of the Viking

My favorite story of the tour was about the crew of the Viking getting a little drunk while stopping over in New York in 1893. They somehow ended up in a discussion with a group of Italian-American police officers on the competing claims of Leifr Eiríksson and Christopher Columbus to "discovering" the Americas. Unsurprisingly, this turned into a street brawl and the sailors ended up temporarily in jail. They were only recently officially pardoned for their "crimes."

Front of the Viking

The original Gokstad ship was 76.5 feet long with a 7.5-foot beam and measured 6' 4" from the bottom of its keel to its midship gunwale. The keel was 57' 9" and made from a single timber of oak. Gwyn Jones describes the construction of the ship in A History of the Vikings (1968/1984):

The strakes were joined together by round-headed iron rivets driven through from the outside and secured inside by means of small square iron plates. The caulking was of tarred animal hair or wool. The hull was kept in shape by nineteen frames and cross-beams. The decking of pine, in this case loose so that the space beneath could be used for storage, was laid over these beams. The strakes below the waterline were tied to the frames with spruce root lashings, a device which contributed much to the ship's flexibility. This was still further increased by a carefully systematized trenailing of the above-water strakes to wooden knees and cross-beams or, in the case of the top two, to half ribs secured to the strakes below and butted into the underside of the gunwale.

The deck is not in place, so the ship's interior structure is visible.

The draft of the Gokstad (the distance from the waterline to the bottom of the keel) was only 3.5 feet, which meant that it could easily be piloted up most rivers and dragged onto beaches without piers or harbors. The 19th-century Viking was modeled carefully on this ancient ship, and many of the elements described above are clearly visible (and labeled) in the photographs I took during our visit.

Rear of the Viking

Click on these pictures to see larger images of the Viking's interior construction:

The Gokstad was made almost completely of oak, with sixteen pairs of pine oars designed with various lengths so that they would hit the water in unison. The oar-holes could be closed when not in use. The mast was also of pine and was approximately thirty feet tall, with a heavy woolen sail about twenty-three by thirty-six feet. When not in use, the mast could be taken down and secured to the t-shaped wooden supports in the middle of the ship.

One of the oars, sticking through the side of the ship

A pile of oars next to the ship

View through an oar-hole

An oar in its proper place

The mast of the Viking on the ground

The t-shaped structures for storing the mast when not in use

The Gokstad was steered with a side-rudder attached to the starboard rear of the ship. According to Jones, Captain Andersen was particularly impressed by the ease of steering during his journey in the Viking. The rudder was

a singularly effective instrument pronounced by Magnus Andersen to be one of the clearest proofs of northern shipbuilding skills and seamanship. On his Atlantic crossing he found it satisfactory in every way, decidedly superior to a rudder on the sternpost, and manageable by a single member of the crew in any weather with just one small line to help him.

The steering board & a little Viking

This device is at the root of the word starboard, which now means the right side of a ship – that is, where the steer-board is attached. As Ken explained during the tour, port (meaning the left side of a ship) is the side that you tie to the port when docking – on the opposite side from the steer-board. Make sense?

The steering board

The attachment of the steering board

The Gokstad was used as a burial ship around the year 900 and was excavated from its mound in 1880. The barrow of blue clay had preserved the ship for nearly 1,000 years. The remnants of thirty-two shields were found in the ship – two for each oar-hole. The burial also contained remnants of the sail, oars, spars, and kegs for food and drink.

Don't forget – the deck is missing.

A burial chamber with a raised bed had been built in the rear of the Gokstad and covered with birch-bark. Scraps were found of what must have originally been rich woven hangings of silk and gold on the inside of the chamber. According to the website of the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo that describes the burial,

The skeleton shows that he was a man in his 40s, of powerful build and between 181 and 183 cm tall [approximately 6 feet]. Signs of cutting blows to both legs indicate that he died in battle. A cut to the right shin bone shows that he would not have been able to stand upright, but a knife wound to the inside of the right thigh indicates the probable cause of death. Striking at the legs was a common fighting technique in Viking times and the middle ages.

This is what the decking would have looked like. The circular marks
are guides to show where each piece of planking is to be placed.   

The dead man must have been shrouded in a sewn-up costume when he was buried. His weapons and jewellery are gone. There were probably grave robbers here as early as Viking times, but far from everything is gone. A game-board was found, with pieces made of horn, as well as fish hooks and harness tackle of iron, lead and gilded bronze, 64 shields, kitchen equipment, 6 beds, 1 tent and a sledge. Also with him in the grave were 12 horses, 8 dogs, 2, goshawks and two peacocks. Three small boats were also found in the burial. 

Samples of Viking gear at the Viking exhibit

After the 1893 Exposition, the Viking sailed down the Mississippi to New Orleans and back up again to Chicago. It was then donated to the Field Columbian Museum (now the Field Museum of Natural History) and moored in the Jackson Park Lagoon before being set in dry dock next to the museum. Unfortunately, it was not properly preserved and soon started to deteriorate.

Seems sharp.

Seems heavy.

In 1920, the ship was restored by the Federation of Norwegian Women's Societies and moved to Lincoln Park. Although kept under a wooden shelter, it continued to be damaged by changes in temperature and humidity. When the Lincoln Park Zoo was expanded in 1994, the ship was moved to its current location in Good Templar Park in Geneva, Illinois. It is now protected by a shelter of metal and fabric, yet still subject to temperature changes.

Testing the sword

Testing the helmet

In 2007, due to the ongoing environmental threats to the ship, Landmarks Illinois declared the Viking display one of the ten most endangered historic sites in Illinois. Thankfully, a $52,000 grant in the same year enabled stabilization work to be done to the ship in 2008.

Don't mess with my students.

Especially don't mess with the women.

In 2012, trusteeship of the Viking was transferred from the Chicago Park District to the Friends of the Viking Ship, the group that now cares for the ship and gives presentations to visitors. The ship's dragon-head and dragon-tail are currently in storage at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, where they will remain until a climate-controlled home can be built for the ship.

Where the tail would attach to the ship

Where the head would attach to the ship

The Friends of the Viking Ship are working to raise funds for the preservation of the ship, including the building of a permanent housing and reconstruction of missing items. Thousands of rivets still need to be cleaned and treated with preservative. You can learn more about the ship and make donations at the Friends of the Viking Ship website. You can also become a Friend of the Viking Ship, plan a visit to the exhibit and learn more about Viking ship construction methods. There is also a call out to anyone who may have information about items that have gone missing from the ship over the last hundred-odd years. Do you have a Viking shield in your basement?

The rivets need your help!

The next field trip I'll be taking my students on is to the J.R.R. Tolkien Archive at Marquette University in Milwaukee to see the manuscripts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (along with Tolkien's original maps and illustrations). If you're interested in signing up for a future public course, please click the "Join this site" button in the right-hand column at The Norse Mythology Blog and keep an eye on the website's classes page!

Norse religion students, Tolkien Society members, tour guides & Your Friendly
Neighborhood Norse Mythologist (in the Heidevolk t-shirt, not the Viking helmet)

P.S. Speaking of Tolkien...

After the Viking ship field trip, we all had a nice big pizza lunch in Batavia, Illinois. One of my students noticed this sticker on the back of a sign next to the bridge over the Fox River. Extra credit points if you can read the runes rightly!

Can you read the runes?

P.P.S.

My students all swear they didn't put the sticker up.

P.P.P.S

Including the ones from the Tolkien Society.

P.P.P.P.S.

I didn't do it, either. Pinky swear.