Aud the Deep-Minded: The Original Ice Queen. S:2, E:2

Aud Ketilsdottir, born over 1000 years ago, stitched together kingdoms and farms, freed thralls and converted rulers. She was the master weaver of Christian and Pagan threads, Celtic and Norse traditions, folklore and gospel. Generations later, Aud's handiwork becomes the world that Gudrid will be forced to reckon with. We talk about all this, along with some Viking fashion advice from a real dandy. Join us!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Like after our Runa concert, or listening to some podcasts, or watching these guys do YouTube videos about Norse culture, and they have Thor necklaces and things like that, and they just love the culture. I remember the lead singer at Rodruna had that one part where he said. Music is the language of the planet, every culture has tuned into that music. It's okay that you're here tonight celebrating the music of this culture, kind of like giving.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Like it's um we're all we all came here naked, we're all strangers, you know, we were born here, and we did instinctively want to know where we came from and so I think that's why this when people this Viking, a lot of the scholars um don't like to attach the word Viking to this to what they're talking about because it's been trademarked and there's shows and blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

So and it's not even appropriate, it's not even correct.

unknown 1:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Viking is a sea king, not all Norse pagan people even to got on a boat. Well, they some of them lived on farms forever, and some of them lived in the hills and the mountains, and so yeah. But yeah, so maybe we just had that conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

Okay. Well, I mean, yes. I mean that kind of ties in a little bit to what we're talking today about, which is Gudrid the well-traveled. We're gonna cover her um basically her time in Iceland before she got on the boat and went to Greenland as a young teenage or as an older teenager. So is that kind of what you're thinking too?

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, I'm just ready to pepper in background on I did a deep dive into the different types of Christianity because we were wondering last week what Christianity was she being presented with. Mm-hmm. And then did you do, yeah, I'm just gonna kind of follow your journey and then interject, like I do so well, interrupt and interject. Or if you want to give a time when I do go over the different countries conversions, that's really interesting. And then I also did a little research on Yggdrasil, the life tree. Oh which maybe when we talk more about her religion part or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

That's great. And I I kind of went, did a little dive into her lineage and her family descendancies or whatever, just to kind of round that out with her. But then we're gonna talk about her life in Iceland and kind of what was expected of her and why she seems unique. And again, a reminder one thing that makes her unique is she does appear in two sagas, um, I standic sagas, and by name. And we get actually three, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Three, I think three. I think we can count three. We've got two in the Vinland sagas, right? The Green Saga of the Greenlanders and Eric the Red saga. And then in this um Snorri's Schnorri's Heimscreen law, in the saga or it's the history of Ola, he since he was so I think he must have jumped on the bandwagon, he was associated with Leaf Erickson. So he tells the saga to that. And again, like I said last week, I I tried to see if oh well the Vinland sagas just take from this and put it. Oh, right. And there are it would have been the saga of the Greenlanders. There are sim very similar the way it's told, the order it's told. So I just haven't researched enough to see if that could count as a third saga, but maybe.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

I feel like, yeah, I feel like people are starting to talk about that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Yeah, it's a third source, at least. We could say it's a third source, maybe not a total separate saga, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

So anyway, yeah, she's out there.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Okay. So let's see. I want to just start with the base, remind everybody, we're talking about Gudrid Djorn Barn, our daughter. She um is also known as Gudrid the Well Traveled. And if you go to our first episode, we kind of um did the basics. She was born in Iceland. Um, and basically in Iceland in 980. So we're talking 980. Show them what you made, Kim. Show them what you did. Oh, I just do I like big scrolls. And so I take the people and I cross-hatch where they all run into each other. Yes. So, but I want to talk about 980 for a minute. It is the height of what people call the Viking era. Uh, but Gudrid, one of the reasons why she's gonna be so well traveled in our stories, is she lives at this kind of the end of the golden age, so to speak, of it depends on if you're in the boat or on land, but of the what started as kind of plundering or trips to get wealth turned into a full-on merchant culture, which and big conquering by the Norse peoples. And she's kind of living at the end of that because Christianity is gonna come in and sort of mess with them, but that's not the only thing that's going on. Anyway, so just to let you know, so we've got the Vikings, we've got the Byzantine Empire, is still really strong in 900. It was founded in 900. Maya, when she was born, there was the sudden collapse of the Maya civilization. We've got we've got the Vikings, and what happens is as you start from whatever 3000 BC, uh, the Norse during the Roman Empire, which was at the start of kind of what the Vikings when they started coming in with the Germanic tribes, you have the Roman Empire. Um that was about 400 CE. So at the time of Gudrid's birth, she's living in a world, she's not from Norway, as we'll discuss. She's um living in Iceland, which is a fascinating place to start because it's kind of like the wild west of this world here in 900 CE, where you have lots of cultures, lots of dynasties, some falling, some building. And for some reason, these people in Iceland at the time were pretty lith and flexible and going in and out of other cultures and um, you know, exploring. So Iceland has, if you read their landman bach or whatever, um book of land taking, the land taking book.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

So they admit they're taking the land and we're gonna write a book about it.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

Yeah. So they come people come to Iceland in from Norway, they're coming from Ireland, there's you've got Scottish people, you've got British people, Britons, not British, and you've got pagans, you've got baby Christians coming on there, you've got snails. Yes, go ahead, tell me.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Can I say one thing I researched about that because I was trying to figure out what foot who was the first foot on Iceland, right? There are Inuit, I guess you'd call them people, indigenous people that were there, but not we're not talking like battles or anything. It was the hunting grounds, I think, for different tribes that lived in other places. So nobody, they weren't taking over anyone's land. Then I looked at, okay, well, who's the first white people? And I, it's a rabbit hole, but I went, it's basically monks, um, mon monastic monastic monks, so not Roman Catholic monks, who which is gonna play an important part when we start talking about our Celtic people and what Christianity they were doing. It wasn't Catholic, it wasn't Roman, it was um uh after Christ died, you had his apostles, and then you had believers who kind of not your famous believers, but people that believed went off into the desert and they're called desert fathers, fathers of the desert. Yeah. And um like we're talking present-day Iraq or Syria or Syria and Palestine is the what I read about. Um, and they are, well, I guess I'm just gonna talk, but they love Jesus, they love the church, the religion Jesus had taught, but they didn't have any real canonized doctrine or anything. It was just people that had a belief and they wanted to go spread it. And they made their way up to Europe and set up monasteries or um nunhouse uh sister houses for women, and they were some most of them though were hermits, just uh a hermit, a man going with the gospel up into Europe and then kind of converting as people would talk to him. It was a very nature-based way approach to Christianity. That's why I think it blended with paganism so well, and it wasn't um a diocese, D-I-O is more of a bishop and his geography and a monastic monk is uh a monk and people that wanted people that believed in him around, you know, he didn't rule a geographic area, and so those are the first people that went to, I guess, white people that went to Iceland. And so when the Norse and all these people arrived, they they did have these monks there, and I think that's how a lot of them maybe you're gonna talk about this, but how Christianity kind of was there before the North, a a different kind of Christianity.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

It's interesting. Um can they trace the monks to a particular place? Like, would they be speaking English? Were they Celtic? Were they?

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Um there's not a lot written about them that I found, but I'll honestly I didn't deep dive into them. I can where they came from. They did spread up through, then they went through Egypt. They must have just wandered up through setting up, or maybe they sailed up and they ended up in Ireland because there's Celtic people are monastic Christians. That's yeah, who those Christians are. They're different. It's a different Christian, and then they have a big uh that's a big dispute, and they have finally a Synod, the Council of Synod, um, where they have to uh decide which Christianity they're gonna have. And their biggest difference is just what day to celebrate Easter and what kind of haircut to have, basically, you know. It's like yeah, the important things. Yes. So anyway, that's what I was when you're talking about Iceland, it's interesting what peppered thing was already there, or maybe by the time people got there, they were they did leave a lot of those monks left because they were ran out or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

So but it is interesting how much and and that's a good point. We how much the idea, the establishment of these monasteries along these sea routes um sort of did, you know, I think something that's important that I had to understand was how mobile these people are. Because in my brain, if you're in 900 AD, you're stuck, you know, you don't go far from home. But the at least the Norse people and the the Celtic and the Britons who lived near the oceans, they they were wanderers. Like they, and especially the Norse, they would go in the summer and they would market place or raid or whatever they're doing, but they all come back to their winter camp essentially, tell their big stories, get themselves all riled up, and then they go again. But when you read these sagas, they don't talk about how special it was to arrive somewhere on a ship. That's just what they did. And they travel from Norway to, you know, to Kyiv or to Byzantine era empire or Egypt or whatever, and that's just kind of what they did. Yeah. Um, but we do see a lot when you start looking at Iceland, and tell me if I'm wrong, but you see quite a few Norwegians because it's what a four-day sail west for them to get to Iceland.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Yeah, it's not a big deal at all. And they measure distance in days, not miles. I think I talked about that too. Like four days from the west coast of Norway to the Faroe Islands or something, and then two days from the Faroe Islands to Iceland or something. It's not, I don't know, it's like commuting almost. They they were going back and forth with these raids all the time and not long distances, you know. I mean, f not always long distances. Right, right. Um and they were dangerous. The raids were dangerous, and and they wrote uh rune stones, you know, they erected rune stones uh as a tribute to some raid or something. They they were commonplace, but they were also, like you said, they came back and they get riled up. They're also getting glory and they're getting promotions and they're getting established, and these raids were pretty important. Um, so going to Icel, but then also landing on Iceland, they're not raiding anyone. The monks didn't have anything. The monastery the monastic monks were so almost Puritan, you know, Protestant. They don't they wanted to simplify, they wanted no decor, no fancy things. So when the first Viking landed in Iceland, what do you think he found? Or what was but not Viking, first Norse person?

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Um, I think now remind me if I'm wrong, but they found it to be like the sagas talk about it. It's kind of a strange world, right? It's um did it have trees? It had trees, or was that Greenland? They deforested Iceland. Yeah. So when they arrived, they they really needed timber. And that for for many of the people, it wasn't really the conquering, it was most like getting the resources. So Iceland, when they first arrived, was filled with trees. They quickly denuded all the trees, and that's why it looks so barren today. Also because of weather changes. But at the time period that Gudrid was born in Iceland, it's a period characterized by the most powerful volcanic activity in history was happening. In in 934 to 940 AD, so this is her father's alive. Um, they experienced a massive lava flow eruption, which belt seven miles of lava and massive amounts of sulfur. And so some reachers believe that this event lies in the Volupsa, which is another saga, right? Um, it's a poem that for foretold the end of the Norse gods and the turn towards Christianity. So she's kind of being already, even the land is acting dramatic when Gudrid is born, like with beginnings and endings.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

There's some where the man opens the door and he sees nine women in black and nine women in white. There's so many sagas that again, sagas were actually written down from by Christians, so they could have a Christian bent. But there's that one, and then there's one where them he uh someone has a dream that they open the door, and there's that must not be, but it it's symbolic of Christianity taking over too. Then there's the one where he sees the tree that's the actually the cross that had been buried, and it's dec decorated with blood and gold, and it's the new Igdosil, the new life tree. It's interesting. So they must have known change was in the air, right?

SPEAKER_02 17:45

I I think so, because also um the world was entering a medieval warning warming period. So, you know, it had warmer temperatures that allowed them to start. Greenland, of course, was covered in ice, but in their time there was enough of a coastline there that they could farm.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

So um that's interesting. So they landed in the most volcanic time in Iceland. That means the skies were bananas. That's crazy. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah. Okay. So that was magical. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

And um, so here she's there, but there have been there had been people I would say the Landman book landmond book. Um the earliest person related to Gudridge. This is related to Gudrid, on her mother's side, was uh a man called Nadison, N Nadadson, who was born in Norway in 840, lived in Iceland, and had a son in 865 in Iceland. So and then his wife was Norwegian and her background, just to give you an idea of the different backgrounds. So this is cool. This guy was one of the first Norwegians to come. So they'd been there by the time Gudrid was born. Her part of her lineage had been there since 840, so 100 something years in Iceland. And so the idea when you got to Iceland is you're going to get land and but you're also gonna go off in the summers with your men, your friends, your your kinships, and um do some raiding, do some manly stuff, although your women went too. And you'd go to Greenland and hunt walrus for the the ivory and all that kind of stuff. Um so it's they didn't have a centralized power in Scandinavia yet. And so it was mostly these petty kings, these family groups that would get together with your boys and you'd go down and you'd so they would supplement their income um by going on these raids. Yeah. Um, so she Gujar does have some Norwegian. Um but so I'm thinking about her being born in this place. Um sorry, we can cut this out.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

I just well, no, and let me just um I don't think if we've ever so one thing we'll talk about a lot with these raids is we talked a little bit about um contracts between pu humans. So like marriage, um, a servant, and then these groups that would go out and raid were called lids, L IDs. And a lid is your most trusted, almost like a as a contract as binding as marriage group of men that you would go on these raids with in your boats, and it was uh, I guess if it's L I D lid, unless it's a D that D with a th lith. I don't know, but um friendships were were contracts. You could contract a man could contract with the man that you would be a friend with him and loyal to him. And this is how these petty kingdoms and after a raid, you come back with your lid, the leader of the raid would distribute the wealth evenly. So it kind of cut out the in these lids, competition or and things like that. Lids in different groups and whatever, they can compete and you would have battles and things like that. But if you had your contracted friendship and loyal people, you could have confidence to do a lot. No wonder they just just uh almost like a company, like I'm on there. Company and we go do this raid, and so um yeah. I didn't want to and I think I got you off track on that, but we're gonna be talking and we'll keep going a lot about these raids.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Um so anyway that that is absolutely vital to know because that's how every the these mechanisms operated.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah, and I think her dad had and I think her dad had that. I think when those, you know, I think this was in practice even in Iceland, Iceland and these groups too, had this contracted, trusted people that you could go off an adventure with, you know?

SPEAKER_02 22:44

So I think that's the perfect introduction for how we meet Gudrid. Uh she's probably 15 years old in the um this is from the Eric the Red saga. And it's just I'm gonna paraphrase it, but it it's kind of the first time we meet Gudrid, and it it's a good jumping off point because there's some questions, some unexpected things happening that we can discuss, I guess. So it starts with Torgir Vil Vilshasen, who we will learn is um an uncle to Gudrid, but he took to wife Enora, daughter of Ener from Lauger Brecka, which is called the Slope of the Hot Spring, and it's the western side of Iceland, the son of Sigmund, the eon of Kettle Thistle. So just think, just start playing, keeping these little words rolling around in your head. And then here comes Gudrids, because I just wasn't sure who her mom was. Okay, the second daughter of Einar was named Halvig. Thorborn Viffelson took her to wife. So I I'll get to it. But you're fine.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Um the sagas, we kind of have to tell them we appreciate them because we read them. So telling them is good.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

Yeah, I think okay, so I will just I'm just gonna follow through this and then we can pick it apart if we want or go down our rabbit trails. But um okay, so Thorborn Viffelson took Halvig to wife. This is uh Gudrid's father and Gudrid's mother. And of course, in family search, she is just Mrs. Viffelson or whatever. But we know a little bit more about her. To the spot that Thorborn, is it Thorborn, removed his abode and became great and worshipful. He was a temple priest and had a magnificent estate. Thorborn's daughter was Gudrid, the fairest of women and of peerless nobility in all her conduct. So what an introduction.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

So that is an interesting translation.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

It's a weird translation.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Mine is she was the most attractive of women and one to be reckoned with in all her dealings.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Ooh, I love that. That's cool. Okay. This I think is the this translation I just pulled up is like the sagas for dummies. Like the new difference between the new international version of the Bible and the Saint Well, really?

SPEAKER_00 25:29

Because I like the way he said that.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Well, it's simple. Um, but we're getting we're gonna be introduced to Gudrid as a 15-year-old. And remember, this is 980 A.D., and we're getting a flavor of um a young girl's life in this remote island. So there was a man named Orm who dwelt at Arnestapi, which is Eagle Rock, and he had a wife who was named Haldas. He was a well-to-do farmer, a great friend of Thorborn, so start putting their friendships together. Yeah. And Gudrid lived at his house as his foster child for a long time. Um, we can talk, we'll have to talk about the fosterage traditions in the Nor with the Norse and the Celtics. And um, it doesn't mean her mother wasn't there. It just that's when your child turned 14, they were smart enough to realize they that child's not gonna listen to you anymore, and you need to go work at you need to go learn things from someone else's home.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

So time, time tested, honored.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

We've got our cl our six our Salem people doing that.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

I mean, they're yeah, that's I mean, um, and you'll often see the the this is a world inhabited, you've got to remember, by things that we we don't see in our world. Hopefully we don't see them. But um when elves?

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Are you talking about elves?

SPEAKER_02 27:05

No, I wish. I'm gonna introduce the thralls. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

Um I sh we should edit all this out.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

No, I love it. Keep this is do it.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

So okay, it doesn't mean that she is her parents hate her or don't love her. Right. She comes from the other sagas talk about her well-mannered life and a good life. And um, in fact, her father and his brother married two sisters, which they just told us, and that the sisters are the ones that have way back some Vandal blood and some Tunisia, you know, they've got a lot of stuff going on in their DNAs, but um that will cut that part out.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Anyway, none of us were cutting out.

SPEAKER_02 27:59

So what happens is we see Gudrid not as some orphan, she does have a mother, but the fact that her father has chosen his other friend, his man friend, you know, his best buddy and his lit or whatever, for her to live there, then he had a lot of esteem for this man and trusted that. And um, and what's interesting is they were under the rule of whatever religion your master or wherever your householder was, that's the one you had to follow. So we can talk about that a little bit with Gudrid's raising. But anyway, so she would have been probably at this house for three years already, quite a bit of time, or maybe longer. But let me keep going. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Okay. Then we'll get back to how she's raised.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Yes, because we're gonna well, let me just okay. Now these sagas wander like a menopausal woman. Like they just wander from person to person. So they're gonna tell you about Well, okay, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Let me set the scene for when form scene Caesar. Like it's a it's a it's a productive, I picture it kind of a bustling, they didn't really have towns, but they had their longhouses or their farms. You had people a blacksmith, you had traders, you had women weaving. It was an active, busy place.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

Yes. And it was yeah, go ahead. Can you describe it a little bit more? Well, I guess I'm gonna be pulling from a different bunch of different things. Let me let me set the scene. Okay, and we'll pick it apart because this when I started reading the sagas, trying to find Gudrid in them, this was like, what? It made so it in these few paragraphs, you kind of can see this Norse world come alive a little bit. But so we meet Gudrid in the sagas. She's she's a foster child, or she's living in the household of Orm. And while she's there, there's a man named Torgir who dwelt at Torgir's Fall. So that's his land. He was mighty rich in cattle and had been made a freedman. All right, so that gives you some clues. He had a son whose name was Einar, a handsome man, well-mannered, and a great dandy. My my translation must have been from the 1800s. Very cute. So Einar, so you can picture him. And he at this time, he's probably 1920, was a traveling merchant sailing from land to land with great success. And he always passed his winter either in Iceland or Norway. So you get a flavor for this rhythm of coming and going and riches. And now, after this, I tell how that one autumn, when Einar was in Iceland, he proceeded with his wares along Sneffelsness, which is the area that her father and his brother had their farms, and we'll get into that in a minute, with the object of selling. So he's got his wares from his plunders, he's talking them off to everybody. Orm invited him to stay there, and Einar accepted his invitation. Because there was friendship between him and Orm's people, his wares were put into a certain house, outbuilding. Basically, Orm's gonna set up a shop for Einar and help him out. There he unpacked his merchandise, showed it to Orm and the houseman, and bade Orm that take thereof some things as he would. Orm accepted the offer and pronounced Einar to be a goodly gallant traveler and a great favorite of fortune. When now they were busy with their wares, a woman passed before the door of the outhouse. So we get a woman entering into a saga in the same paragraph as they're talking about the wares and the traveling and the friendships and all this. And Einar's about, he's probably really young, 19 or 20. He's probably pretty proud of himself, pretty feeling pretty fancy. Einar saw her passing and he inquired of Orm. And if you want a better translation, tell me. Um inquired of Orm.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

Someone had to research your translation to figure that out. So that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

Yeah. So here they are in this outbuilding that Orm's put. And you're right, in these farms, there's lots of people going around. There are women, men, children, there are thralls or slaves, freed people, unfreed people. Um, and we get a little glimpse of this market economy here. But he Einer says, Who that fair woman might be passing before the door before the door. I have not seen her here before, said he. That is Gudrid, my foster child, said Orm, daughter of Thorborn the Franklin from Lauger Brecka. She must be a good match, said Einar. Surely she has not been without suitors who have made proposals for her, has she?

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Wow, that's so funny. My translation. Mine says Einar spoke. She'd make a fine match. Or has anyone already already turned up to ask for her hand?

SPEAKER_02 34:09

I love how in the middle he, you know, he's trading. He's might as well get himself a wife.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Yeah. And did it say the part where he loves loves his fine dress? We'll have to talk about that too. How these what these Viking when you're done, uh remind me to go back and let's talk about that. No, this is great. So he sees her there in the shed working and putting his wares away. And he sees Gudred pass in front of the shed door and he asks about her. And has anybody proposed to her yet?

SPEAKER_02 34:42

Which um, you know, the northe these people are very direct. I love them. There's no small talk. No. Um but yeah, does it talk about? I don't, I think this one's just giving us a bare bones, but I just wanted to introduce Gudrid as she appears. So she must have made an impression.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

And it says she's choosy about her husband, you know. Yeah. Orm says she's been asked for right enough. So yeah, she's been people have been asking to marry her, but she's choosy about her husband, as is her father as well. So that's your first clue that um, and you get lots of clues in the sagas. Lots and lots of men don't they don't make big decisions until they ask their women on big things. Um and that women definitely had a say-so in their lives, in their choice, certain class of women. There are women that are not making any choices for themselves. But uh, this middle merchant class type of woman got to have a say in her future and who she married and where she went, what she did. And even if that's not reflective of all the Norse to make it into sagas as much as it does. Because like I said, this isn't the only time they're talking about a woman making up her own mind, is says something, I think.

SPEAKER_02 36:19

Yeah, and and they don't say it, you know, arm Omar is actually, I think he's saying it as, you know, respect for how he mentions her thoughts on the matter. You know, you think the other other cultures, other societies, no one considers the woman's thoughts. So I'm thinking 900 AD. Okay, this is a different world we're stepping in. I like it.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

And I wonder if it's um not to bash on Christianity, but stuff that I've read is that Christianity did kind of put women in their place a little bit. I guess I should write down pop things that pop into my head and go back and talk about them.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Well, that's the problem because we could pick this apart sentence by sentence, which because my thought was that I don't think people would follow.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

I think what you're doing is the correct way to do it. Well, I just have to write down, I want to go back and talk, like we brought up her childhood with Pagan, right? That's kind of what we're gonna talk about. Yeah. I want to talk about his clothing because I think that's a good time to talk about the clothing because we are flushing this group out through her saga, we're flushing out this whole society, right?

SPEAKER_02 37:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

And did you want to talk about slavery?

SPEAKER_02 37:39

I will talk about, I will take us back to um what I know about her dad because it that will take us to your Christianity discussion.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

Yes, because I am ready to talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

I like where so you're gonna finish talk telling.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

I'm just gonna finish four more sentences. Oh, sorry. No, well, not that's not true. A couple more paragraphs, which I can.

SPEAKER_01 38:03

You go as far as you feel.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

Um, I'm just gonna take it to which part? Um, the part where Thorborn, we just meet him and he's he's insulted. He's insulted by the slave thing. And then I'm gonna say, I that was a weird response. Um, who is why would that, you know? I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 38:28

That's cool.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

Okay, I would like you to pick apart his outfit because it kind of they said he was a dandy.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

And I think slow down a little with that.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Yeah, it won't take long because we'll talk about them again. But just to visualize these people, so they're not picturing people with helmet horns coming out of their hat.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. So we're so we are meeting Gudrid for the first time in the sagas as this beautiful. We're gonna see her here as um. Does she answer Einar? Do we hear her speak in your translation?

SPEAKER_01 39:12

We don't even know if she even knows that he asked in the translation.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Okay, good. Okay. So um, Einar, who to me just seems like a wiener. I don't know why. He just seems like he's flaunting and a woman walks.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

It's funny how they color, they can color that out in two sense, you know, just a couple of words. They're so good with their words.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

That's what I love about the sagas because they're it reads pretty modern.

SPEAKER_01 39:41

Yeah, they're enjoyable. I would say, any listener, get yourself a book of sagas and cozy up. And it they're hilarious and they're deep. And I cried in some of them. They're they're cool. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

Yeah. So tell me, can you tell us what about Einar? Tell could you know why he's important? Because he's a version of manhood that you see with with some of these Norse people, but but they're I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Or should I just keep going? No, and a lot of no, no, no, because this is this is good, because we're talking about Einar, and who wants to go back and talk about Einar? But um there is a lot through all of it, through Norway, Sweden, and Finland, this Norse culture, there's a struggle for the young man. And it is um because polygamy exists. So old guys are picking up all the women, and these raids and merchants was a way for him to get status. And but even beyond that, not even just these young men, this culture is done a great disservice in our modern um echoing of them or whatever, on what they they are not dudes with horned hats, they aren't Conan the Barbarian, they are super almost made fun of. The Anglo-Saxons made fun of them on how freaked out and meticulous they were in their dress, in their clothing. They um they trimmed their beards very short. They had a sp a particular haircut, which a lot of the boys had back in the day of like super short up the back and long in the front, you know? Oh yeah, that's right. And that so much that the Anglo-Saxon teenagers started doing it and the priests had to yell at them. They had um women wore, there were different levels depending on class, but whatever class you wore, you dressed your best for that. And you had linens or flax or there was no cotton um hemp, I guess, too, wool clothing that was always you didn't just wear a shift or whatever, then you had another layer that you would put on. They had the double brooches with kind of a neck a beaded necklace in between. They always had jewelry or bracelets. The men were they were very into how things smelled, which I love, which means I'm definitely related to them. Yeah. They wanted to smell nice, they again were groomed and clean-shavened. The word um Saturday for them is Lau Love, it has the word water in it, because Saturday was the day they bathed. So they they bathed every Saturday. I don't I can't remember if we talked about this before in an episode or not. In so much that in Constantinople, the the king built them their own bathhouse because they bathed all the time every week, so they had their own bathhouse in the guard. And then in uh again in when they were living on half of Britain, um, and they were even slaughtered once because the Anglo-Saxons knew when to attack the Norsemen. It was always on a Saturday after they bathed. Um and they also they loved color. They didn't dress in brown and drab clothing. They knew how to dye clothing and they loved blue, bright blues and reds and the runestones that we find now. We're just seeing the stone with the carving, but those had been painted and decorated. Their boats were painted bright colors, their homes. Every inch was carved or decorated. Their spoons that they used and their bowls had carvings, everything. They just everything was decorated to the nines with them in gold and shiv. And when they talk about the longhouses, if you walked in at night when the fires were going, the whole longhouse was g shimmering and glimmering because they had these little gold rectangles with carvings on them of different things. Some were like porn, some were lav, some were just good luck that would be decorated around the whole longhouse. Their helmets were decorated and sometimes they had these gold. So just picture this. It's not this drab medieval. It was muddy and yucky or whatever, but it's not this. These weren't ugly, icky, muddy, stinky people. They were highly groomed, very interested in what they looked like. And Einar is just a reflection of that. And when you add, then he's also this youthful guy trying to get a wife in this land of polygamy and very few women. And the women that you did find could have their own mind. They didn't have to marry you. Uh you had to have a dowry, like we said last time, you had to have money to get a woman, you know. Um, so he's kind of re of a reflection on that. So yeah, he's probably this arrogant dude, but he's also just trying to make a life for himself, you know?

SPEAKER_02 45:19

And they um they they're interesting as you'll discuss, or we kind of discussed last week, is that you cannot enter their world with our framework. Like um all these labels we have for different masculinity or all they're they are very different. And you only can figure it out with a kind of an open mind because they had bro codes. Like you there were even in battle or in merchants or anything like that, there was honor involved, even the way you spoke to each other, or the way the oaths that you kept, or um, and then on Iceland, people are killing their neighbors over honor and things like that. We'll get to that, but that's the the darker side of this culture. But they had a sense of equity and fairness in all things. And that's why yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

Sorry, go, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

No, no, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Well, lead like we said, leader to his group of men um is I think that's there's a rune that reflects that, that the whole meaning of the rune is that you you distribute your wealth. It's instilled in their religion to distribute your wealth equally amongst your group or your men or your lid or your family. Um but for these young men, there was also expected that you go out and you get you create your own group and farm and lid and you know.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

Right. So I mean Einar is really doing what he's expected to do. So he's he's definitely not unique, no, but he's very a great symbol of this type of uh 19, 20 year old uh young man who travels you know, he's probably been down to the Hebrides and down to Ireland and or Kyiv, or he's he could be in a million different places. Oh, he could have this time period.

SPEAKER_01 47:34

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um that's so that's oh, and the one last thing I would say is that when you just reminded me is the the the inf the every place they traveled, they brought back that influence. So a lot of their dress and garb, you can kind of tell they went to like uh the Estonia or places like that, they would come back with kind of that dress or that fabric or that material. They weren't uh shy of being brave with their fashion choices and setting trends. There were and you could even in the burials that they find, they can tell where what region they're from based on the trend at the time. Like there was a certain area where women, instead of wearing the metal brooches, they would wear boxes, which ended up being, I think they were relic boxes that's from the raids or from the monasteries. But they were boxes, you know, and they were the only group that were being brave to wear box brooches now. And you could open it, and there was a little, you know. So the fashion and they were adapt they were getting inspiration from the places they went and bringing it back. I think that's cool. That reminded, sorry, that reminded me of that.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

That's what you know, the archaeological things that are happening in this world. So fun to talk about right now because it seems like every day they're finding new things and figuring it out. But just in that outfit you described of the woman alone, think of all the influences that you know, what Gudrid would have been wearing on this remote island in Iceland would have the circle brooches she might have had, that you know, a lot of things were influenced. And um they said that in Iceland, DNA-wise, most of the men that they say were of Norwegian or whatever descent, but 70, 80 percent of the women were from Ireland, Scotland, Britain. Yeah. Um so so Gudrid will tell that story of how but there's such a blend of things going on in her world. But um, so can you describe what Einar was wearing? The sagas tell us, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:59

I think it just mentions that he was very and worried about what he dresses like. So I guess as a man, there were a couple different things they could wear. A lot of them like to wear, depending on if you were coming from the east and Russia, they did wear those, or even the south, um, those kind of bloomy pants that kind of you shove into your boots and they kind of pop out the top of the boot. Um or pant, just regular pants. Um, they had tunics. They had that's the thing, the fashion was so influenced by so many different places. Yeah. They must have just been gorgeous and fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 50:45

And I um yeah. I taught I I got, you know, at Gujarat's end of her life, she goes on this pilgrimage, and I kind of was trying to research what kind of hotels she had to stay in and stuff. Yeah, that's cool. Um at one point it mentioned people would have known and noticed her due to her fashions because they mentioned the colors like the blues and the kind of the flair that they had. They would have no definitely noticed her on the pilgrimage as this unique specimen of woman, you know. She would have been striking. Um so Orm.

SPEAKER_01 51:33

See, Orm wants to propose to her. And he's Einar wants to propose to Orm. And Iriner wants Orm to, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:42

Okay. Yeah, Einar feels like he's, you know, he's home for the winter. He might as well pick up a woman because it's clear he's made his fortune. And then what happens? Most of them would settle down in Iceland with their farm and their women, you know, and have a base there. So and start their own longhouse. Yes, behaving the way he should be behaving. Yes. Um, but so he says she must be a good match. And Orm answers, and he's a dutiful bro guy, because he's like, proposals have been made, friend, but this treasure is not to be had for the picking. It is found that she will be particular in her choice, as well as also her father. So he's the friend is establishing this is an honorable woman, this is an honorable family. It's not going to be so easy for you to do this. So then Einar goes, Well, in spite of that, she is the woman whom I have in mind to propose for by one look as she crosses the door. And I wish that in this suit of mine you approach your father on my part and apply yourself to plead diligently for me, for which I shall pay you in return a perfect friendship or whatever. Her father, Thorborn, may reflect that our families would be suitably joined in the bonds of affinity, for he is a man in position of great honor and owns a fine abode. But his personal property, I am told, is greatly on the decrease. Neither I nor my father lack lands or personal property. And if this alliance should be brought about, the greatest assistance would accrue to Thorbjorn. So he's making his negotiation now. Um warm answers of a surety, I consider myself to be thy friend, and yet am I not willing to bring forward this suit? For Thorbjorn is a proud mind and withal a very ambitious man. So we're we're getting kind of a good glimpse into manhood a little bit here.

SPEAKER_01 53:49

Yeah. And it seems that Einar had done his research a little bit because he knew that Gudrid's dad was having some hard time. He sounds like he was land rich, money poor, and this guy was land poor, money rich, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:05

It probably would have been a good and if you're an older dude who let's say this isn't Thorbjorn's case, but if you're an older guy, it's been several years since you've probably gone on a summer adventure and hit up some monasteries and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 54:22

So you're relying on your farm to Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:25

Einar replied that he desired there no other thing that is offered marriage should be made known. So here's a young man who feels like his money and his current conquests can buy him anything, which is interesting.

SPEAKER_00 54:40

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 54:41

Um, Orm then said, I'll I'll go talk to him. And Einar journeyed south again until he came home. So see how he's back and forth, and these people are coming and going. Um a while after, Thorbjorn, Gutrid's father, had a harvest feast, as he was bound to have because of his great rank. So there's lots of expectations. The Norse culture, and I'm saying the Norse culture, but you know, we'll find that Thorbjorn is inheriting this culture kind of. But um I it really among even the Celtic tribes and the Gallic, there's a feeling of reciprocity that you have to do.

SPEAKER_01 55:23

You have to share your wealth. You have to. It's your duty. It's your religious, it's your conviction, it's who you are. It's absolutely, yeah, which is which is different, I think. It's nice to hope. It's good to think that each every leader in the planet will share their goods with their people, but not so.

SPEAKER_02 55:47

Right. So we're starting to see some of these social fetters, right? It's a feast he was bound to have. So if we know the little clue that he's not doing well with money, it's it's probably he has to have it, he has to do it. Orm was there on our stoppy, and that's the eagle guy, and many other friends of Thorborn were at his harvest feast. So now we're back at um Gudrid's birthplace at our father's home. And Orm entered into the conversation with Thorborn and told him how Einar had lately been to see him and was a promising man. He now now Orm's doing his best. He now began to woo on behalf of Einar and said that an alliance between the families would be very suitable on account of certain interests. There may arise to thee, Thorborn, he said, great assistance in thy means from this allowance. So there's a lot different ways that Thorborn could have answered, but he answers, I did not expect the like proposal from thee, that I should give my daughter in marriage to the son of a thrall, and so thou perceivest that my substance is decreasing. Well then my daughter shall not go home with thee, since thou considerest her worthy of so poor a match. Orn went home, all his household guests left, and Gudrid remained with her father and stayed at home that winter.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

Um, so let's do you think Gudrid maybe liked Einar?

SPEAKER_02 57:27

I won I I don't know. I don't know because she could have talked her dad into it. I mean she would have talked her dad into it, maybe. She would have. And there's what are some other words they use to describe her?

SPEAKER_01 57:43

Um well that she's that she is um knows her own mind. She and one to be reckoned with in all her dealings. To me, that says that she's not told what to do, which yeah, she's not told what to do. You have to explain and consult. And we'll see later that she can is asked her husbands ask her questions first before they make decisions, and you know, so I guess I'm just being romantic that maybe she wanted to go back and now she has to stay at her dad's house and can't go back to where Einar is, you know, and it's a long, sad winter for her or whatever, but well, you have to wonder a little bit, because yeah, so um, but there's a there's a phrase in here that gave me pause, which you know the word thrall, which we know means slave.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

Slave um from being captured and things. And so what bothered Thorborn was not maybe who Ein or his personality or that he's a dandy or that he's throwing his money around. It seems interesting that the thing that bothered him and he Thorborn kind of gave Orm, his bro, a talking to. I can't believe that you think this was a good marriage consideration. Uh why should I give my daughter in marriage to the son of a thrall?

SPEAKER_01 59:20

Well, yeah, it made sense. On paper it made sense, but he's got deeper issues.

SPEAKER_02 59:27

He does. And so that's where um I dug into who is this father? Who, who is he? And um Thorborn, if you didn't know anything, um, I would think he was a Norway guy. I would think he has a land, so he's been working hard, he's a landowner. And since he's appearing in a saga, I would think he might be an elite, you know, living in with elite society. Turns out, though, that Thorborn, although he's reluctant to sell his daughter to the son of a slave, Thorborn's father was a slave as well. So Thorborn was not a free man. Um, and I I started to look into that a little bit, um, just to think about where who she is and who he was.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

So and how important it was in the sagas to even point any of this out, you know. Yeah. That this this issue was something that was important enough to put into the saga at all. You know, they could have skipped right to the good stuff at the end, but they really the Olaf, the the Snorries talks about this too. It's important enough to talk about this coming from a thrall. You know, I think they all had that, a lot of them had this issue. I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:00

So and especially in Iceland, you know, in Iceland, you do have the Norwegians who are highborn. You uh, as we'll find out from Vilfil's story, Gudrid's father's story, grandfather's story, they're living on land that belongs to their Norwegian masters. So Gudrid isn't born in Iceland because she wanted to be. Okay, let me let me just straighten it out. So I went back and I'm like, who is this guy? We don't know who his mother is. Who is Gudrid's father? Why would he be so offended? And why would he mention the lower social standing, you know? So you know that that's a problem. You he's thinking in hierarchical rank, but what makes someone noble or free? Um, and so I started looking into is is this the right time or are we bored?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:05

No, this is good unless you want to go back and talk about her childhood real quick. I don't know. Yeah. Because are we gonna talk about well, where you're going is real Maybe I'll do a basic sketch.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:19

I'm not gonna give 20 pages. I'm just gonna say what I found out.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:23

Say what say whatever you want to say. This isn't boring. This is good.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:28

Okay, so I I checked on the lineage of who is her father, Thorborn. Why is he so offended? In fact, we know he most likely had thralls working on his property because he had been, you know, there's lots of fights about it. Like Eric the Red, his thralls collapsed a slope of his neighbors and he got in trouble for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:52

So um thralls slaves were not um always what you picture like in chains and uh tied to poles, like and you see in movies in these this age. They they were valuable, most of them were valuable members of the longhouse, of the community of the farm or whatever, and um trusted, and it depends on where you got your thrall from. A lot of these thralls were coming from prominent families or educated families or understood the the they could understand their fate a little bit too, that uh slaves were freed sometimes and could get their own land, or like it wasn't um this is over there were obviously cases, especially if you were a girl thrall. Um there's studies that they saw that they didn't get as much food, they were undernourished, they were obviously essayed. Um like I'm not talking about that situation more with her father, her her father's idea of slavery or thrallhood would have been. Um he should have had a little bit more. It's interesting his pride. It's interesting his pride about this, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:18

Yeah. So I mean, because it obviously hit a nerve because logically, if he was losing money, it would be smart of him to marry his daughter off. That's how you kind of linked yourself in with new people. Yeah. It would have been good for advantageous for him. So I kind of looked back at the grandfather. So Thorbjorn and his brother Thorstein were born in Iceland and they were farming together almost like co-kings, or there were always groups of two men that were kind of sharing.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:57

They were married, they had a married friendship. There's a word for it. A marital, a contracted friendship, but they were brothers.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:05

And they were married to two sisters, but you look back a little one more generation, so you see Thorborn being upset that the son of a slave would ask for his daughter's hand in marriage. Well, Thorborn is the son of a slave. Right. And his father, we only know him by the name Vilfil, which was a term that was given to slaves, or it was a kind of a it meant beetle, or it was something to demean that person. So that wasn't the name he was born with. So um I went back to find out where placing where the grandfather was from, what kind of thrall was he? What was his story? And um interesting. Yeah. It it's interesting because what Logically, if you put all the pieces together, it's very uh likely Viefil was born. This is Thornton's father, so remember this Goodridge's grandfather. Um, he was born in let's see. You found out where he was born. I think I found it. Wow. Um I'm trying to make sure that I have the right boy. Okay. Um they name him as Vifil Kettleson, which is a clear indicator already that you've got a thrall situation going on. Because if you see Kettleson or you see Vifil, it indicates that's a name that was given to them by their captors. Um it's date wise, um Vilfil looks to be from the Alt Clude tribe, which is a tribe of Was he from Ireland?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:24

Is he the one from Ireland? So talk about odd, maybe, until maybe scoop him up with odd.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:32

Okay, well he yeah. So let me let me go back then. So in 874 was the first Viking settlement of Iceland, 874. Um, this is the time kind of the the age of the heady times for any kind of Viking activities. So in 830, we have is she another grandma of ours or not?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:02

She is, we're related to her.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

Yes. Um what's the best way to tell this?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:11

Which is interesting, we're related to her because she's not blood with Gudr Gudrid. She was the slave, she's the owner of Gudrid's grandpa.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:21

Okay, let's see. I'll do this. Let me think how to do this. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:26

Um, I'm going back to my notes on Odd.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:29

Yeah. Okay, so we know based on where um Vilfil's farm is in Iceland, Lauger, Brexica. Those are the lands of Odd, um, the deep-minded. Her descendants are living there. She's another really interesting woman. She's one of Iceland's most significant settlers. Her timeline is defined by the make migration of her family across the Norse world and her decision to grant freedom and land to the slaves she carried with her from Iceland. So it's it's uh based on who Orm is, who um Gudrid's father's lit or group is, they were all um settled in Odd's lands and came with her.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:19

Cool that we're talking about Gudrid, but her whole life was set up by this other woman, Odd. Some people call her Odd the Deep Minded. What is her actual last name? It's Odd. Uh let's see.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:35

Well, she was born in Kettle. Oh, Odd Kettle's she's a Kettle's daughter.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:41

She's the original Kettle Flatnose was her husband's father, yeah. And she married Olaf the White from Dublin. So, yeah, so Odd the Deep Minded in the 1830s, 40s was born in Norway to Kettle Flatnose. Kettle Flatnose becomes a big player down in Brittany and down in Ireland. Um, and so that's why you'll see many thralls calling themselves Kettleson. Oh because they were his caption captive.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:17

So it's not just a term for a slave, it's actual lineage of who their owner was or who brought them over.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:24

Because we have Vilfill is listed as a Kettleson. Um that's our grandfather of who we're talking about. Yeah. Um, so his name in the family search is actually a double thrall indicator.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:42

Okay. Yes. So um, so we've got odd. She be okay. So her father, she's born in Norway. She moves to the Hebrides. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:55

And the Hebrides are west of Scotland, right? Little set of islands west of Scotland.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:02

A bunch of islands. Um her father, who was from Norway, established himself as ruler there in the 850s. So she's the daughter of a petty king who's taking over all these lands. And the Hebrides kind of sit wedged between the Britain, Britain world and the Irish world. So she would have learned, she probably knew four to five languages. Yeah. Um, she was actually Christian, um, which her father would not have liked, but she was. She, and they say she was influenced in the Hebrides by that sort of Christianity that was being practiced there. Which would have been the monastic okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:49

Um, yeah. So the uh man, I don't know. I'd torn if I would have liked this one or not. It's very blah, very um flat, but it is nature, like I said, they use nature, they were they were very into um so like the Celtic region, which this is at the time, they used their religious leaders, were the druids for the pagan part of it. Right. Which was and when you study how the druids kind of what they what was important to them seemed very similar to what the this type of Christianity was also important to them. You had, you know, science and studying the stars and using kind of the world and the planet and nature and the heavens as a way to incorp incorporate it in their religion, kind of. Okay. So she Yeah. Yeah. So we're not talking that she was um I don't think she's baptized Roman Catholic, where she was going that way yet. But definitely Christian. She loved Jesus, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:12

I saw one term, and you know more about it than I do, a um called Gaelic Christianity, which was more like sacred nature and thin places.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:25

Yeah, thin places meaning uh mystic mystical spirits could come talk to you. Um they they didn't, they weren't uh because the Roman Catholic they wanted to get rid of that, and you had no personal revelation, no spirits coming from the other side. That was evil. If that happened, that was a demon. They could, you know, okay. Um, but this kind of Christianity still was mystical and you know, very pagany.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:54

Yeah, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:56

So she would have been that way, but still, if you're a pagan, you don't want to, you know, they will they were still covering up pagan sacred spaces with chapels and things like that. That was happening too. So right, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:13

Well, so yeah, so she spends her life with the dad who's conquering people right and left, and she would have spent her life with thralls, um, people captured from Ireland, from Britain, from even from France, all sorts of places, wherever her dad went, they seem to, as this time period, if you go to Egypt, if you go to Turkey, if you go everywhere, they're trafficking in people, unfortunately. Um, so she would have been pretty comfortable. That would have been part of her her world.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:54

Yeah. Um, and it seems like she was pretty fair with a certain class of thrall.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:00

Yeah. And so, okay, so the 850s, she marries Olaf the White in Dublin. He's the Viking king of Dublin. So you're talking interesting culture happening here. So she goes to Dublin, which of course, Dublin was one of the big markets for thralls and slaves coming in and out. They actually had the slave markets.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:27

They were that's probably why a lot of women DNA in Iceland are from there, which means a lot of the women in Iceland were probably slaves brought over. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:41

And um they had one son, Thorstein the Red, which of course, if you look at um not to be confused with Eric the Red, yes. Right, right. Um so Thorstein, her son, conquered nearly half of Scotland, supported by his mother. So that you're talking the Picts are there who are considered a different type of people than the go ahead. I think that's Braveheart, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:16:13

They painted themselves blue.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:15

Yes, and they're the ones the Romans were really afraid of.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:19

Yeah. So the Picts did not convert, they did not like the Romans, they the um Sax the Anglos brought over the Saxons to fight the Picts, and then the Saxons ended up taking over the Anglos, and now you have, you know, it's like the these guys were fierce up there.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:40

The Romans had to actually build two huge walls to kind of contain them up in the northern part of Britain. Um, and so yeah, so she, this one woman had been to Norway, lived in the Hebrides, which you know, you've got the Falcon Islands, you've got all those places up there, right? Yeah. Then she marries the king of Dublin. So she's dealing with um Irish people. And then her son is killed by the Scottish chieftains. And so she's in Dublin in a hostile land, and she she secretly commissions a ship to build, be built in the woods by her thralls. So it tells you something about the people, the kind of maybe ruler or whatever she was, is she had people who were able to build ships, who were able to sail ships, yeah, really able to communicate with her, who were interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:44

Yeah. So I missed. Did she so this is after her husband died, right? Was called sorry. And he was a pagan, he never converted to Christianity. So that's a theme we're gonna find out. The women seem to convert quicker than the men.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:02

That's right, which is weird. In 870, though, while Thorstein is conquering everything and his mom, Odd, is living in Dublin, there was a huge um capture that happened in the north of Scotland. And one particular is the one that I think where Vilfil was living, based on all the indications from different sources. So there was a Viking siege to a kingdom called Dumbarton, not a kingdom, but it's a place, a rock particularly, that's located on the river Cluny. And it was, they were called the Eltclude people, kind of a tribe of these people who were actually Welsh but had been separated down in the southern part. You have the the Welsh people who were there when the Romans came in AD 200, I think, or when the Romans came. Romans held this island in captivity for 400 years. Um, so the Welsh were kind of trying to keep to themselves. And there was a group of Welsh people who they call the Britons now, um, stuck up here past Hadrian's Wall, and right past the Adriatic Wall that the Romans built. And there's this community located around this rock. Um and they weren't Picts, but they weren't Anglo-Saxons and they weren't the other Nort, you know, the other people. So there's this kingdom called Altclude, which it says Dumbart was the capital of the kingdom of Stratclyde, which actually didn't become that kingdom until after this siege. So what happened is you got these peoples living on and around this hill, and there are merchants because they're controlling things coming in and out of the Irish Sea into the interior of Britain to where you know the Romans were, the all the Anglo-Saxons were. And Thorstein, the Vikings, came down and they just wanted it. So what they did was they for all the people got up to their rock, their Dumbarton Rock, which is a huge place, which has places for lots of people to be up there. They didn't normally live up there, they would wander their other kingdoms and noble homes, but the the real elite were stuck up there. And the Vikings just hung out at the bottom for four months and starved them. It was basically impossible to get up there because wow, it had been for centuries. There were ways, you know, the roads were teeny to get up to the rock. It was this fortress that was almost impossible to control. And you could see a 360-degree view of anybody coming your way. And so the four-month, and this is odds, sun, right? Sieging, killing, and it's not just happening on the rock, they're keeping the people up there, but they're also killing everyone in the area and taking them as slaves. And um, at the end of the four months, their well went dry because these people are trying to live on top of this rock. And this is called the Siege of Dumbarton, and it's one of the largest, they said 200 ships of thralls were taken from there and sent to Dublin for the slave markets.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:02

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:04

Gudrid's uh grandfather would have been most likely 13 or 14 when this happened. And because he ends up in all's group of people that came to Iceland, he was almost certainly a pretty upper class person, but maybe connected to the royal king, um, maybe not. But um they said, you know, if he was captured during the siege, he was likely a baptized Christian of high birth before becoming a slave. So if if this is her father, her grandfather, right? Who was captured.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:50

Um that's the Christianity connection then. Yes, her dad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:57

Her dad would have been raised Christian. Um, let me see. It says by the age of 14, Vilfil would have possessed a skill set that commanded immediate respect from his Norse captors and likely explains why a woman as shrewd as odd chose him for her inner circle. The Norse didn't just value raw strength, they admired the aristocratic virtues that Vilfil would have been refining since childhood. Um, he would have been adept with seamanship. Um, these Britons here in Strathclyde, which was Dumbarton Rock, but it's the Alt Clued tribe, were famous for their cavalry skills. Um, and as a boy, essentially a noble son was a professional warrior in training. So he would be adept with a spear, shield, and long knife, and he would have had courage and martial skill. A young man who could hold his own in a shield wall was seen as a potential trusted follower, more than a mere thrall. He would have spoken four languages: cumbric, um, Gaelic, Latin, and of course, Norse. And so he could be a diplomat. He could serve as act as a translator and a cultural bridge between her Norse, Odd's Norse people and the Gaelic Irish people. He also being able the ways of the water was life or death currency for the Vikings. Most likely he could have helped Odd navigate her secret ship out of Scotland. Um, by the time Odd captured or inherited him, he wasn't just a slave, he was a displaced aristocrat whose upbringing made him a most competent lieutenant, which is why she ultimately gave him his own valley in Iceland, a gift reserved for family. I I could go into all the reasons why I think this works. Um, but what's interesting about him then, we talk about Gudrid as this bridge, the well-traveled. Her father would have been raised, let's see, with a preservation of the old North or the Welsh epic traditions. He would have known the tales of heroic resistance. And his people would have successfully blended pagan Celton folklore with Christian theology. So he he would have kind of speak in a similar language to Odd, but she had the Norse traditions.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:29

I wonder why, I wonder if that's why you're talking about her dad now, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:33

Yeah. Her grandfather.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:36

Her grandfather. I wonder if that's why her dad was okay with Gudrid going to be an apprentice with a pagan family. Because we established that Om that Om, his friend, is pagan, right? Basically, I mean we find that out later. But for your not only for the grandson of this Christian legacy to be okay with his daughter going to hang out with the pagans and learn from them shows that he was a he was. He was a blend of this Celtic Christian world with this Norse. Yeah, it's interesting. Because I always wondered that like why he he's so he's so Christian, and yet he let his daughter go be tutored by pagans.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:34

Yeah, so it's not what you're saying is so right because he's not the type of Christian we understand. None of them are, they're different. And um so yeah, so he what's interesting and what's sad is if he was born highborn from Dumbarton Rock, um, his name would have been in the Cumbrick language, which is like Old Welsh. The king of Dumbarton was actually captured with all the other people that were up there with him. So Vilfil could have been a son of a king, who knows what he was. Right. Um the name Vifil in Old Norse translates to Beetle or Weevil, and scholars suggest that while the name was ancient, it fell out of favor and became a common nickname for slaves. Um, for a boy from a royal Britannic house, being renamed Beetle was a sharp demotion. And and one of the saddest parts is they were raised on their oral traditions and their stories and their songs and all these things, the Celtic stuff that was this blend or Welsh. And he would have lost all of that. So he lost his name, he lost his bearing, he lost his family. He's living in Dublin, Ireland, now with a Norse woman. Her, we know somehow she ended up with her, luckily. Um, so anyway, that's a lot of baggage to take. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:13

And um, and he wasn't the grandfather. It seemed like there's a streak of pride in this family, too, because the grandfather, when Odd is ready to give him land, freeing him, she knows she's gonna die, or maybe it's when they first got there. Yeah, but freeing them all, she's distributing land out to her freed slaves um and supporters. And he even then is kind of snarky with her, like, why didn't you free me before you freed everybody else before you gave them land? You're giving me land, okay, but now free he's very, very has very worried about their status. He's getting land, but even the grandpa is like, you also have to free me. I don't want to be a slave anymore, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:05

And it and that shows up on the sagas, which means that was probably really bratty for a throg. Like here she is giving him land. And he's more worried about his status.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:17

Yeah. I had that happen to me in a job once. They didn't have the position available that I wanted, um, but they had the money to give me and give me a fake position and give me the raise. And I remember going in the office and being like, the title means more to me than the money. I was dumb. I was like 20, so I don't know. Well, I mean, I that's kind of I probably have that pride streak in me still. For sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:50

I mean, yeah, it's very, very sad. Um that I guess it says this Christian synthesis by then by his time, the Philid, which is um the old beliefs, had successfully blended pagan Celtic floor floor with Christian theology. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:12

Um, that's where you lose all the druids. Like we don't know a lot about the druids, and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:18

It all kind of disappeared. I guess these were known as song called Phylli, and per certain women would recite these, his lineage, their lineage to them. How do you spell it? Um f-i-l-i.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:35

Oh, not phyla, because phylla is a prostitute. Oh no, f-i-l-d-h.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:42

Oh, okay. He would have grown up hearing the philida recite the stories of the old north. Oh, that's like phlyga. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:52

Yeah, interesting. Yeah. This is uh part of everybody that has the your ancestor spirit in you.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:59

Oh, right. Because this says he no when he got to Iceland, he carried an intellectual baggage with him. Well, he no longer longer had a phylae to sing his praises. Um, so no one could speak to his he had lost the ability to recite his own geology and speak with the sophistication of a court-educated noble. So he had lost a lot. So he basically in his mind has to rebuild these noble stories now with his two sons, and has obviously told his sons the bad the sad story. Right. Um interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:42

So that's keep got some uh generational trauma going on.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:46

And and what it tells me is Gudred they're not really Norse. They were captured by the Norse. He's lucky enough to live in Iceland, but they they weren't brought up with the Norse gods. They would have been brought up with the Celtic gods. And the two sisters that the two brothers married were not most likely not Norse either. They would have been Celtic. They could have even been slaves themselves, probably, right? There's a very good indication because the wife he's linked to is Efrey Weifel's daughter, which is a slave, obviously a slave terminology. So yeah, she was most likely Irish or Celtic or whatever. Anyway, so that's a lot of talk.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:34

We could cut that out, but no, I think we I think we kind of end with that a little bit and then talk about get into her childhood. I think this is a perfect outline to talk about a couple of things late on the next episode, if we want to. Okay. I think that's perfect. We needed to know, I think we need to know where she's coming from. How um, because we'll talk about her pagan influence too, but to know this noble Christian thing, I'm sure her grandfather and her dad, probably her mother too, if she was also one of these elite slaves. I guess is that a term?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:19

Yeah, it is a term because otherwise they would be dead. Yeah. Because that ship that odd built to to get get them to Iceland, get them away, fit 25 to 30 people. Yeah. That's a very select group. If you're talking 200 ships of thralls and slaves were taken from their homeland.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:41

And she was smart. She she didn't go directly to Iceland, she went to the Faroe Islands and married off a daughter there, kind of established loyalty there. Who knows what else she did there? And then she went to the other island. Is it the heavy Orkney? Orkney, yeah. Is that right? Oh, it's yeah. Married a daughter off there.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:06

Can you imagine being her daughters? Her, I guess they were her granddaughters, right? Her daughters and her granddaughters. Yeah, she was a grandma. Yeah, you're staying with grandma, and every time you pull it up an island, you're married left there.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:21

And and but then also she probably had relationships with these people too before, right? And they could have even been loyal to her dad or her husband.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:31

Who were the choices for these granddaughters if she wasn't going to Norway and Iceland? She there were slaves and lots of people they didn't know. At least, and you know, I think Odd had lived long enough as a girl in this culture. She probably didn't know the Norse culture very well. She was more comfortable with her thralls and the people.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:57

Yeah, and her husband was, like I said, did not he was Norse pagan. So she would have known it through him, but she didn't like it. You know, she wanted him to convert and he didn't. And um, that's the other thing I want to talk about next week is this conflict of women trying to convert their men to Christianity. It's and that's what I'll do. Next time I'll do the outline of different groups when they converted to Christianity throughout Europe, I think, to kind of give a little uh pan out a little bit of what's going on and then talk about her, the pagan faith a little bit too, with what she's doing. Because then as the saga goes on, we have two really interesting spiritual experiences that she has. One's very pagan and one's very Christian, but they're both very similar, I think, is an sorcerer and the yeah. Um but uh I think that was really good. I think that's interesting. We have to know that part of her.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:05

It helps us understand also um when these later chronicles, because one saga has the fathers, and Gudrid is very devout, and the other one has them not so much, doesn't talk about that, but to understand what kind of Christianity, what kind of language, what they understood and what she had learned. And it is interesting that as a foster child, she grew up with the woman that we know the most that affected Gudrid would have been Haldis, her foster mother. And we learn in the next segment of her life what she was learning there, which would have been the Celtic pagan practices, right? Maybe we don't know. Well, well, what's what's Hollis? Is she Norse? She is um no. No, all of these people that that are acquaintances with Thornstein and Gudrid's family while they were living on Odd's lands, but they were all Celtic.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:10

Did Orm come with him or was Orm already in Iceland and they became friends? Do we know that?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:16

Orm was since Orm was living in Odd's lands. Orm was? Yeah, it's pretty cl.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:25

I don't I guess the point is But Orm is um the grandson's generation, right? Orm is the guy, so he would have been Orm wouldn't have been friends with the grandfather living in those lands. He would have been friends with the son of the slave. So her dad was born and raised in Iceland, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:37:46

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:47

So we don't so Orm, you think comes from the Celtic place?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:52

Celtic Um, only because a lot of sources state that because of this class distinctions happening in Iceland, if you were the son of a thrall or a thrall or a freedman, you would pretty much hang in, they would hang in there, they were clannish, so they would have been of Celtic or Britain or Pitt descent. They would have understood each other in that sense. So they weren't mingling with odds, the Norwegian people as much. They had their own kind of little realm.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:32

And that's why I think Thornstein didn't want, didn't think Einar was good enough for his daughter, because he saw himself as a much higher and a different so do you think even in the pagan Christian there's a hierarchy there, like looking down on Norse paganism versus Celtic paganism?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:59

Or the misunderstanding because at the same time in the island, you've got people sacrificing animals, and then you've got Odd building her chapel on the hill, you know, you've got all these different ways of being.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:15

You've got definitely like Eric the Reds family, they're very Norse. They're talking about Odin, and I mean everybody's name is Thor, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:26

Well, and it is interesting that Vilfil um named his sons. Both of them have the Thor beginning to their names. And Thorstein, he named one of his sons that that was Guthrie's uncle. That's the name of Thorstein the Red that captured ruined his whole world. So it's it's a weird feel D almost too. I mean, yeah, it's a weird blend.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:56

Well, if you bring the human side to it, they did have a lot of really amazing experiences together. They would have maybe bonded. Maybe I'm romanticizing it, but I think so. You don't it doesn't have to be drawn on, well, you're from here, so you hate this person, you're from here, you hate this person. Yeah. They were blending a lot. And as we'll learn, as I can talk about next week, um either it's a either it's a translation, an intentional translation trick of the Christian writer, translator, or there really are some truths in both religions that would make them flexible with each other, of you know, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:46

I mean you would know more than us about me about that, but it seemed like their pagan nature worship, druidic, Celtic background, it seemed like they were sympatico in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:02

Yeah. So when you I when I dig on, okay, what are the big problems, what are the big differences just in Christianity itself, there they are big problems, like uh with the monastic Christians and the Roman Christians, again, the the two biggest arguments was what day to celebrate Easter. This man named Bede wrote this thick of a book on trying to calculate the appropriate day to have East celebrate Easter based on the moon and the stars and the sun and the dew on the grass. There's more dew on a full moon, and so just and how to count on your fingers, and it it's the you get into the eyes of a month and the gnones of a month. Um, just it was a big issue. And then the other issue, like I said, was the hairstyle. The the monastic monks wanted they would shave the back of their head and have like a crown, and then the Roman Catholic monks, I might be reversing this, would shave the crown of their head so their hair represented the crown of thorns. Oh they had to have a big council to sit and talk about this. But then when you con relate Christianity with paganism at that time, um, there's a lot of crossover. They I wonder what their major, major issues were. And if there's just not a I don't know. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Yeah, no, that makes total that's makes total sense. Things that aren't a big deal to us were a really big deal to them in separating out religions, even within their own religions. So it'd be interesting to find out the difference between a Celtic paganism and a Norse paganism.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:58

And then even the like you're mentioning, there's different flavors of Christianity because you've got monasteries monasteries dotted all up and down. Yeah. The British Isles and Ireland, and they're all sending out their flavors. I guess the flavor of Christianity that Gudrid's grandfather would have learned was from the Ayana monastery, which was located just north of them. Okay. So whatever that can tell us, that would kind of help us understand. Okay. But in either sense, the Bro code lives very strong when you see Thorstein's answer to why, you know, the the the warrior in him or the family honor lives still lives pretty strong when he wouldn't want his daughter to be married to the son of a slave, which ironically he is the son of a slave, which is heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:00

Or there was some other issue. I don't know. I think it is that I think the slave thing was the I mean it's it's uh issue that it's you don't get rid of it once it's eye opener.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:15

I mean it's sad because you cannot for us that loves to look at lineage and feel pretty grateful that we can it ends with we don't we don't know we we have to rebuild his life too and not even we don't even know his real name. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:38

So it's and aren't we lucky that that that slave genealogy ends at 1000 AD as opposed to 16, you know. Right. Yeah but yeah, he would have had all the think about being 14 on top of a rock being starved and watching your family die and carted away and yeah all these Viking ships around because they were phenomenal. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:08

Well, we got her proposal, which of course there it was a big no. So I think big no, he took off. Yeah, so the father's so pissed, he's like, I'm I can't stay here anymore. And and this is what starts Gudrid's travels, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:30

In our next good job, thank goodness for Einar, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:35

Yeah, so I mean if she had married Einar, I'm I was trying to think what kind of life she would have had. Definitely not the the one she had.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:43

So yeah, and depends on who Einar was as a man, but he wasn't a dandy though. She marries another dandy, she likes those dandies.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:53

He marries better dandies, yeah. They are pretty cool. So all right.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:59

Well, that was awesome, Kim.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:01

Thank you. Thank you. And I'm I won't talk so much next time. No, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:06

It's good. You're giving us the the bone, the vertebrae to tell all these flesh out these people. It's great. Okay. So that's awesome. I love that we got to where we are because I was worried we'd go too fast and we have so much to talk about just in our childhood.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:22

What you what you're ready to do is is what needs an episode, actually, to get us ready for how weird that prophecy is.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:32

Yeah, I think so. We need to give this the religious background, yeah, the pagan background before we and the Christian because it is a man, it is just a theme. And we're not even talking like a 20-year, it's hundreds and hundreds of years. I know. I know. So good. All right. Hey, yeah, let me say end of we'll stop recording. Thanks for joining us. Come to our our website, the Destaff Podcast.com, and leave us your questions, comments, things you want us to research, people that you can add to, or if we're wrong about something, William Wallace was not. He was like in the 12th century, so I was wrong on him. But I think the were the blue face, the blue face paint through threw me off.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:24

So yeah, well, we love there they're yes, it's a colorful world we're entering into here, and we get to go along with Gudrid as as our guide. So it's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:38

Okay, well, I love you. Thank you, everybody. Thanks. Okay, I'm gonna stop.