The Hávamál

by Marie-Louise Jensen



I have a copy of the Hávamál, which is a collection of 1,000 year-old poems translated as 'Sayings of the Vikings'. I found useful when I was writing my Norse stories Daughter of Fire and Ice and Sigrun's Secret as well as more recent younger stories.

It wasn't that I used anything from it directly in my writing. It was more that it gave me a sense of how the lives of the ancient Norse people were different to ours and also in which ways they were similar.
One of the ways their lives were very different was danger; especially danger of violent death. Thinking of Iceland, for example, as that is the Norse culture I'm most familiar with, there were clear laws and those who broke them could be sentenced to outlawry or fines. But there was no law enforcement, so if the guilty party failed to comply, his enemies would take matters into their own hands. Moreover, Viking tempers were quick and their sense of honour was strong, so feuds frequently arose.
Thus the Hávamál has a few warnings for observing personal safety:

Advice to a Vistor:

When passing
a door-post,
watch as you walk on,
inspect as you enter.
It is uncertain
where enemies lurk,
or crouch in a dark corner.

Famously, assassins would climb up in the roof space of doorways and drop down on unwary victims, killing them before they knew what had happened.

This gives such a flavour of the era. It is impossible to imagine in our lives today (in Europe anyway) having to inspect a doorway before walking in.

There are also warnings on quarrelling at feasts as feuds can follow and on guarding your tongue and carrying weapons when you leave home.
Then there are the sayings that are as useful today as they were in the days of longhouses and battle axes:

When to keep silent

Often it's best
for the unwise man
to sit in silence.
His ignorance
goes unnoticed
unless he tells too much.
It's the ill-fortune of unwise men
that they cannot keep silent.


There are plenty of warnings, too, about alcohol: "drink is a dangerous friend," and "ale unveils [the] mind." There is no doubt that foolish behaviour after drinking is a thousand-year-old issue at least.

Highly recommended for some insight into manners and etiquette of the times!

Choice of Language by Marie-Louise Jensen

So you're writing historical fiction. How do you recreate the past?

There are many ways you can do it. Atmosphere, descriptions, clothes, situation. all these things contribute to a sense of experiencing the past and all are important to the authenticity of the text.

One way I don't attempt to recreate the past is by language. Or at least not very much.

I've had reviews that complain that much of the vocabulary I use wasn't in use at the time the book is set. Of course it wasn't. If I were to try to use truly authentic language, it would require a vast amount of research - of the reading ancient texts in gothic script variety - and I don't think anyone would read my books. They would be too difficult to access. And I see my role as one of making the past accessible, enjoyable and easy to read about.

In the case of my Viking books, they are 'in translation' anyway, as the characters weren't speaking English, but Norse. And in the case of my Tudor novel, The Lady in the Tower, the language people spoke would have been so dramatically different to our own that we would struggle to understand it. It would be somewhere between Chaucer and Shakespeare.

As far as I'm concerned, language is the medium we use to access the story and not really a part of the authenticity of the setting. Of course, that said, it's still a minefield.

I have to be very careful not to include anachronisms, for example. It's more easily done that one might imagine, because we take our everyday items and the names we have for them so for granted that we scarcely see them. Thus my copy editor found and alerted me to a mention of trousers in my second Viking novel. Norse men wore leggings and tunics. Of course, I know perfectly well that trousers as a clothing form didn't exist until the Victorian age, but that kind of slip is so easy to make if you're cracking a joke or using a catchphrase.

And then there are the words that have changed their meanings. I've had to be really careful with these in my latest novel, which is set in the early Georgian era. In those days, a dress was a gown, a wardrobe was the clothes you owned and the piece furniture you kept them in was a closet. Skirts refered to the section of a man's coat below the waist; women had petticoats or 'coats', not skirts. I knew all these and others and had a list beside me as I wrote. Nonethless, when I did a search of the document once it was finished, I found six instances of the word 'dress' that had evaded my attention.

Getting these words right - the era-specific references - is very important to me. I think it does help to recreate the past. I did a great deal of research on costumes, furniture, food, literature and buildings, as well as lifestyle. Accuracy is valuable. Especially when readers are basing their knowledge of the era on your work. And of course modern slang is completely out of place in a book set in the past.

But if you want to tackle the old authentic language, don't come to modern historical fiction; seek out the plays, poems, stories and novels that were written back in the period you're interested in. Personally I enjoy reading many of them. But it's an altogether different experience.