The culture of the Norse lands of the early Middle Ages was defined by a martial ethos that emphasized sea raiding. Chiefs called Vikings carried out these raids in search of glory and riches in faraway lands, from Newfoundland to Russia. Despite a wealth of sources on Norse tactics and deeds, they are surprisingly silent on burial practices. This is strange, since warrior cultures tended to emphasize proper burial rites to ensure the passage of their men to the afterlife. Fortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, there is a single first-hand account for Norse burial practices, and it comes from a surprising source, the Arab travel writer and emissary Ahmad ibn Fadlan.
The Land of Darkness and the Rus’
Ibn Fadlan mostly concerns himself with his mission to the saqaliba, a blanket term Arabic writers used to describe the diverse array of Finno-Ugric, Slavic, and Turkic-speaking groups inhabiting the forests and steppes of modern Russia and Ukraine. From his writing, his destination was the kingdom of the Volga Bulgars, a Turkic state whose rulers were related to the founders of Bulgaria. They had converted to Islam and requested an emissary from the caliph in Baghdad to teach them proper practice. Ibn Fadlan and his entourage set out from Baghdad passing through Turkic Central Asia and eventually arriving in Volga Bulgaria in the dead of winter (the modern Russian republic of Tatarstan).
In The Land of Darkness, Ibn Fadlan records that during his time in Volga Bulgaria, his party encountered a group fo traders called rūsiyyah (Rus’). The Rus’ were groups of Norse adventurers who seeking wealth and power, established trading outposts in the Slavic and Finnic lands, intermarrying with locals and eventually establishing the state of Kievan Rus’. Ibn Fadlan’s narrative does not focus much on the institutions of the Rus’. Instead, he pays special attention to their physical appearance, which he deemed to be the epitome of beauty, and the burial customs of the Rus’ nobility. The latter appear to have caught his attention for their lurid and violent character, allowing us to a glimpse into the burial customs of the eastern Scandinavian diaspora of the Early Middle Ages.
The Rus’ Burial
Ibn Fadlan’s description of the Rus’ funeral is very specific, and there is always the possibility that he exaggerated the details. However, he clearly states that he there, giving him greater credibility than second-hand accounts. According to The Land of Darkness, when a Rus’ noble died, his body was placed inside a tent on his longboat. His warriors and an old woman called “the angel of death” decked him out with his best weapons, armor and valuables. According to Ibn Fadlan, the cold preserved the deceased’s body so that when it came time to leave him in his tent, the only visible sign of death was the darkening of his skin. After a brief summary of the material part of the funeral, Ibn Fadlan provides us a grizzly and detailed description of the most lurid, and perhaps fascinating part of the funeral, the Norse practice of retainer sacrifice.
Ibn Fadlan, as a Muslim, was likely taken aback by what he witnessed at the Viking burial. Despite this, his level of detail suggests that the violent rituals that followed fascinated him too. Following the preparation of the body Rus’ warriors gathered the deceased’s slave girls together until one of the girls volunteered to die with her master. She would then be monitored to ensure she did not escape, and spent the rest of her time feasting joyfully and copulating with her master’s men. Ibn Fadlan does not give a clear reason for this, cryptically recording that this bizarre ritual stemmed from the slave girl’s love of her master. Finally, the slave girl would enter the tent where the dead man lay and look at him. Ibn Fadlan refers to this as “gazing upon paradise.“ She then bid farewell to the others, and entered the tent with the angel of death and six men, each of whom took a turn with her. Only once this was complete would those present stab and strangle her to death with a knot. Once the ritual was over,, the Rus’ stripped naked and burned the ship.
Aftermath
Ibn Fadlan records that while watching the ship burn, one of the Rus’ warriors mocked Arabs as fools. Ibn Fadlan, speaking through an interpreter, asked him why. In response, the Rus’ warrior said that Arabs and Muslims unceremoniously dumped their great men in the ground, while the Rus’ allowed the winds to spirit their dead into heaven on the wind’s back. This episode is one of the last Ibn Fadlan records, ending his travel record, so we do not know what happened after his return to Baghdad. Nevertheless, this fairly unknown Arab travel writer leaves us with one of the more interesting, if not gruesome, funerary rituals of a group that has elicited so much fascination in our popular culture. Ibn Fadlan’s unembellished description of the ritual suggests that he recorded it as he saw it, putting his prejudices aside. Regardless of how unsavory the rituals were to his own Islamic sensibilities or our modern ones, he considered it worthy of a record for this peers, and for posterity, allowing us a small direct glimpse into the Viking world.