THE HEART OF THE VIKING CIVILISATION – THE TINGS
By Torgrim Titlestad, Professor Emeritus (University of Stavanger, Norway), Dr.Philos.
The recent changes in the understanding of the Vikings have led to an on-going discussion about their role in European history. Research now shows that Viking chieftains were not restricted to the far northern backwaters until the 9th century and that they did have contacts with the Europe of their time long before the Viking Age. Let us have a look into the beginning of the Viking World – from the perspective of the most peripheral Viking country, Norway, the country most covered by the sagas:
The end of the Ice Age was 12 000 years ago. Then the first humans seem to begin to inhabit what is now Norway. The ice at first left its grip on the south western part of Norway (Agder/Rogaland) and was accessed by raft or boat over the Nordsjørenna, mainly arriving from the Hamburg area of Germany. Here they established their stoneage society – a society that was much more complicated and civilisational than scholars before us have believed. A recent find from Agder a couple of weeks ago show that they had sophisticated houses and centers for cultic and cultural behavior – and annual festivals. We will however not delve into detail for the centuries before the establishing of the foundations for what becomes the foundations for the Viking period. Then we are in the early centuries AD.
In Rogaland in the Jæren area what is now the municipality of Hå, archaeological evidence prove that they had established their assemblies, ’parliaments’, named ting. Their physical remains are still visible as almost destroyed ruins. They also developed art, not only in excellent miniature golden items but also in scripture, dating back to the 3third century, both in stones and in bones – a lanuage that still can be understood by specialists. Huge chieftains houses were built (’The Royal Castle’, Kvassheim, app. 100 meters lenght), and they already were participating in organising a naval army of 1 500 soldiers and officers and a 70 ships to plunder in Denmark. Due to recent archaeological research in Denmark we know area ble to documentate this fact – and their defeat. We do not have any explicit saga on this military failure of these ’Norwegians’, but The Heroic Sagas give us signals back to similar events from this ancient period. And here is the important conclusion: Already in the 3 third century the Scandinavians had reached an organisational level that made it possible to make complicated logistical overseas military campaigns possible. Archaeological gravefinds state that several Norwegians had been officers of the Roman Army or navy, thus adding modern European military competence to their existing military training and knowledge. (Then we understand that the Vikings did not appear out of thin air.)
THE TINGS
Archaeology has made it clear that the early Norwegians both had a relatively high material, cultural and organisational culture, but the most distinguishing element was its evolving political culture. The oldest documentation here is to be found in the book of the Roman Tacitus from 98 AD. (No saga reaches so far back.) The Norwegians were one branch of the huge Germanic tree – which he described. He was especially fascinated by the German tribes living to the North, at the North and Baltic sea – not far from Norway. He underlined that they were strong freedomlovers and for this purpose had their popular assemblies (excluding women and slaves) where discussions raged and decisions were made.
Thus Tacitus touches what should be the heart of the Viking culture in world history: the ting – the popular assembly. We do not have any written evidence on the development of the tings, however, the most striking difference we can see from the Greek democracy is:
1) the Norse ting was a product of continous development /evolution at least from the beginning of the first millenium AD – continously without a cultural breakdown until our days – as the Greek democracy was a revolutionary product that lasted not for much more than 150 years and then died – until it then was artificially reinvented, partly misunderstood by men in the academic elites in Northwestern Europe in the 18th century.
2) Greek democracy was mostly a mass phenomena – up to 6 000 men gathered on the Pnyx: Who can imagine that democracy is exercised under such circumstances – while the Norse ting-system consisted of minor units – thus giving a much more down to earth opportunity to exercise profound democratic mentalities.
It is also fascinating that the most we know of the Norse ting-system is given in evidence in the sagas just from the Viking-period, even from the early Viking-period, especially from sources describing the development of Iceland after the 870s during the founding years of Iceland: Those numerous Norwegians who fled the rule of Norway´s first unifying king, Harald Finehair, seems to have established their tings a short time after settling on Iceland. This fact underlines the role of the tings in the heart of the Viking-peoples. And we see that the foremost Viking export-article outside Scandinavia was: the ting. Only in the Irish sea today it exists at least 11 remaining ting-arenas in Wirral, in Liverpool and in Northwest England, in Ireland, in Isle of Man – where it still functions more than 1000 years after its establishing.
Even in Norway we still have got 26 physical remains of the ting – also in the northern part of Norway, while we only in Rogaland in the South-West still have 8 arenas. The variation in the ting-system is also striking as late as in the 10 th century in Rogaland, ca. 950 (Gulating-model):
1) Allmannating – the general ting every year in May/June in the local society
2) Fjordungsting – ting for one quarter of a county – a representative ting above the allmannating
3) South of the fjord and North of the Fjord – another and higher level of representation
4) Fylkesting – Countyting – a representative ting for one county (Norway had ca. 20 counties in the 10th century)
5) Gulating, Forstating, Eidsivating, Borgarting: regional representative tings for every part of Norway, the Gulating having 350 representatives of 4 western counties: diet paid for travel, food, and lodging. In addition to this hierarchical Norwegian tings based on appointment by the leading men in the region, you may find fascinating differences from the Icelandic ting-system, partly based on the Gulating model. But you will find that the ting-system had several more models: one for the crew on Vikingships: ting at the mast, you had weapon ting every spring with punishment for those who did not keep their Viking ships in order – and every man had the right to summon a thing if he had a major case to promote. You also had the house-ting and the punishment ting.
6) In addition you had a overlapping system for ting-units for the military defence of the country which was divided in shipraths, the basic unity of the country: one shiprath consisting of the minimum of men to arm a Viking ship.
On background of this knowledge from the middle of the 10th century we may say that the ting-system at least in Norway was sophisticatedly ingrained in Norwegian minds. A lot more could be said of the ting-system and its functional value to its members. Interestingly enough we may estimate that between 10–15 percent of the community were actors within the system, measured by the common participation in the veizla-system – the political banquet-system. This probable fact compared to modern political participation tells us that the level of political activity cannot be said to have been much less important 1000 years ago than in Norway today – where a small minority of party-elites decide whom are to be put on the election-list for parliament.
The basic principle of the Norse society was the Law which was uniform and not only for one level of society – as common in continental Europe, and its main focus on the free man, that is a person who when he was an adult was able to defend his life and family physically. The ting was the verfication of his personal freedom. For hundreds of years this was the main tendency for the political man in the Norse society and its ca. 20 petty kingdoms in Norway – until the advent of the absolute monarchs as Harald Finehair (858–931). They demanded a redistribution of societal power in their favor on the cost of the tings. This ignited a popular rising which made Norway experience a dramatic and blood-letting civil war for a couple of hundred years until the sole monarchs prevailed at the end of the 11th century.
The kings were however never successful enough to fully eredicate the role of the freedom of the tings. And from the 13th century the kings had to share their power with the church, which caused a new loss of ting-power. But the tings were so ingrained in the mind of the people through hundreds of years that they had become a strong historical mentality. The Black Death in the 14th century revived their life, as central authorities then almost disappeared. The tings represented the backbone of the society and survived until Norway´s rebirth as an independent nation in 1905 – with a political freedom that impressed the world: Norway was already one of the European countries enjoying the highest degree of individual freedom. Norwegians were ahead of Sweden and Denmark regarding the right to vote and parliamentarian rule. What did then the Norwegian politicians do to achieve a formally independent country? They could not appeal to the people because of Swedish tyranny. Norway had no prisons with political dissidents. Norwegian could freely express their opinions in what language they preferred. What they did was to mobilize the people behind the sagas that described the pride of being a free nation. And the people was willing: They loved and cherished the sagas as their own inherited pride. And they followed the appeal of their politicians.
The secret of understanding the high degree of freedom in modern Norway and the other Scandinavian countries lies in the sagas and the time of the Vikings. The Scandinavians were lucky to preserve this freedom tradition for centuries thus having an excellent foundation for developing modern democracies, today accepted as the most outstanding democracies in the world, also including exceptional free women. For Norway heroic elements of the sagas were re-enacted during the second World War II, to the extent that US president Franklin D. Roosevelt pronounced the strong words regarding the Norwegian anti-nazi-struggle in 1942: Look to Norway! President Roosevelt said:
"If there is anyone who still wonders why this war is being fought, let him look to Norway. If there is anyone who has any delusions that this war could have been averted, let him look to Norway; and if there is anyone who doubts the democratic will to win, again I say, let him look to Norway."
These words inspired Norwegians fighting the German occupation of Norway and the rest of Europe as well as for the resistance fighters of other small countries during World War II. Because the Viking history survived in the backbones of the Norwegians, conveyed through the sagas, this ancient historical period could inspire the modern struggle for freedom and democracy. And it still may!
From a presentation at the International Vinland-Seminar in Chicago, North Park University, October 2010.