Men of Terror

"Sometime near the end of the tenth century, a man named Fraði died in Sweden. His kinsmen raised a granite runestone in his memory in Denmark. Although the message carved into the stone is hard to interpret, it appears to tell us that Fraði was the first among all Vikings and that he was the terror of men. What did Fraði do in his lifetime that made him so admired…?"

So begins Men of Terror: A Comprehensive Analysis of Viking Combat by William R. Short and Reynir A. Óskarson.

Emphasis on the "comprehensive." If you have any interest in Viking Age weapons or fighting techniques, or are curious if the heroes in the Icelandic Sagas could really have performed their heroic feats, this 350-page, 2-column book is the one to reach for.

It's got everything (with one exception, which we'll get to later): the Viking mindset, shields and armor, battle tactics, raiding and dueling...

Sax, axe, sword, spear, bow and arrows: Short and Óskarson describe each weapon in great detail--enough that you can make one, if you have the skills and materials--and give copious examples from the sagas, myths, and other literary sources of how each weapon was used and thought of. Numerous illustrations and charts complement their descriptions.

But what really makes Men of Terror stand out from similar books on Viking Age weaponry are the sections on the "physics of" each weapon.

The long, single-edged knife called a sax (or, less correctly, a scramasax), for example, is "a robust, trusty weapon." Designed for hacking (not stabbing), a sax, compared to a sword, is "less likely to break or fail when abused."

But it takes more raw strength to kill with a sax.

Here's why: "Compared to other cutting weapons such as the axe and sword, the sax is generally shorter and lighter, with most of the mass distributed closer to the hand than to the tip. A computer model of the weapon shows the smaller effective mass at the contact point and the lower linear velocities at impact together result in less energy delivered to the target when cutting with a sax compared to cutting with an axe or a sword, all other things being equal. Measurements confirm the model. The energy delivered by a replica sax to a target measured about 40 percent less than the energy delivered by a replica sword, not dissimilar to what the computer model predicted."

Follow the footnotes and you can peer into Short's Viking research studio, Hurstwic, in Massachusetts. There, he and his team attached a three-axis accelerometer to a heavy boxing-type bag (fixed so it couldn't swing). Multiple fighters attacked the target on the bag multiple times, with a replica sax, sword, one-handed axe, and two-handed axe. The data was recorded, checked, averaged, and then compared to a computer model built from the physical parameters of each weapon and how the hand grasps it.

Caption: Scenes from the Hurstwic Facebook page.

Did I mention Short is a research scientist with a degree from MIT and dozens of patents? His approach to reverse-engineering Viking combat techniques, he explains, is to "create a hypothesis that can be tested" and then to test it again and again. If you want data, this book has it.

The physics of the sax may explain why saxes are so rare in Viking sources. Archaeologists in Norway, for example, count 130 swords for every sax they find and, according to Short's own calculations, "only about 6 percent of the attacks in the [Icelandic Family] sagas are made with saxes." Perhaps also, he and Óskarson speculate, "it is for this reason that saxes were the prized weapon of jötnar (giants), ghosts, and men who had the strength of a giant."

Strength was also the deciding factor, Short and Óskarson argue, in wrestling or "empty-hand combat." In the sagas, this type of fighting is called glíma or fang. It is "the only combative activity alive today that holds a documented, nearly unbroken line that can be traced back to the Vikings," they say, but warn that the art has changed. "In the Viking Age, strength and power were valued in a wrestler," they argue, "but in modern glíma, finesse, agility, and beauty are what is most prized."

Viking fang "was a test of a man’s strength in a society that placed a premium on strength." It was the sport of Thor, the strongest of the gods.

As such, it "gives us clues about the mindset of the Vikings in combat," say Short and Óskarson. Wrestlers "need to be constantly on alert." They need to act "with 100 percent determination.... A warrior who has as his basis or foundation an aggressive, power-based wrestling would stand differently than a warrior who has as his basis a more technical system of wrestling or a striking art. A fighter’s lowering his center of gravity and adhering strictly to the most functional way to keep his balance gives us clues as to how he would stand in a combative situation.... The core of fang centered on raw power, swift movement, and cunning."

Some readers (like me) may have been annoyed by the sexist language in these quotations from Men of Terror. They are not a mistake. Men of Terror is a book-length argument against my thesis, in The Real Valkyrie, that women could be warriors in the Viking Age. Despite the fact that Thor's opponent in his famous wrestling match (as Short and Óskarson do point out) is a woman--the old giant woman Elli, a personification of old age--they believe Viking warriors were men: "men of terror."

Their book's title comes from a runestone cited and translated in the Samnordisk rune-text database. It begins: "Ástráðr and Hildungr raised this stone in memory of Fraði, their kinsmen. And he was then the terror of men."

The word translated as "of men" is vera. This word can also mean "of people." It is used, for example, in veröld, which means “world,” with öld meaning “time” or “age.” Thus veröld literally means “the age of humans” or “the time of humans,” i.e. what we now call the anthropocene. Ver is also used in compounds like Oddaverjar, or “people/family of Oddi.” You wouldn’t translate ver today to mean only masculine humans. It refers to all people--which is what “men” used to mean when the first translations from Old Norse to English were made, as in “good will to all men."

So instead of "Men of Terror," I would call Short and Óskarson's book, "People of Terror"--or would I?

Let's not be ridiculous. A title is a marketing tool, and "Men of Terror" is much catchier.

In Men of Terror, Short and Óskarson are simply focusing on men like I focused on women in The Real Valkyrie. Not to exclude the other sex, but to zero in on this particular elite cohort of Viking Age people: men of terror, i.e. professional male warriors with the strength of giants.

Short and Óskarson don’t need to talk about women warriors—I did that (and Short knows it; he even gave me a nice blurb for the book cover). They also don’t talk about male craftsmen or farmers or old men or boys, etc. Their focus is on what made these particular men terrible. If writing books about exceptional Viking women is justified, so is writing books about exceptional Viking men.

Men of Terror is a rich and stimulating--and yes, comprehensive!--look at one important aspect of life in the Viking Age. It deserves to be a classic.

To leave you with one last example of the many quirky questions the book answers, do you remember the episode in Njal's Saga where Gunnar is using his bow to fend off the enemies encircling his house when his bowstring breaks? He asks his wife for two strands of her beautiful long hair to braid into a bowstring, and she refuses--dooming him to death.

Could that have worked? Can you make a bowstring out of human hair? Flip to page 120 of Men of Terror and read: "The feasibility of using human hair was tested in our research lab by gathering hair, twisting it into a string, and splicing it into a conventional bowstring that had been cut. Measurements showed no significant change in power delivered or accuracy of the shooting when using a string made of human hair. These experiments showed the possibility of using human hair to repair a bowstring."

Brilliant! I've always wanted to know that.

For more on my book The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women, see the related posts on this blog (click here) or my page at Macmillan.com.

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