Civilization #36: Memory of the Norse

Today we continue our look at the Vikings, specifically their worldview and cultural system. I believe that Viking culture is truly one of the outstanding cultures in Western civilization. The problem, however, is that we know very little about it for several reasons.

First, they were purposefully an oral tradition. It is our prejudice, our belief, that a literary culture is superior to an oral tradition. It's harder to read and write, but what we forget is that when we transition from an oral tradition to a literary culture, we lose a lot in the process. Many cultures that had the capacity to read and write chose not to because it was much more important for them to preserve the oral tradition than to adopt a literary culture. There are many good reasons why you would want to preserve an oral tradition.

The second reason is that the Vikings would eventually convert to Christianity. In this conversion process, which would take generations, they had to abandon a lot of their tradition and heritage, including their mythologies and their historical memory. The Vikings were perceived as barbarians by the Christians, and because of the traumatic Viking encounters with Europe, there was an intention to eradicate the Viking memory.

Please keep in mind that we don't know that much about the Vikings. What we do know comes from two sources. The first is archaeology; we have dug up some of their graves and, through them, have been able to reconstruct some of their culture. But the main source of our understanding is through Norse mythology. Unfortunately, we only have a fraction of their entire mythology. It's vast, grand, epic, and beautiful, but we only have a fraction of it. Over time, Christian intellectuals wanted to sanctify or purify Norse mythology because it is extremely violent and sexual, so they basically cleaned it up. This means that a lot of what we have has been interpreted through a Christian lens, so please be careful about that.

I will try my best to reconstruct the Viking worldview, but please understand there are severe constraints and limitations. I will reconstruct it by comparing and contrasting it with other mythologies, civilizations, and cultures, and by using literary interpretation and, ultimately, my imagination. Please take what I say with a grain of salt. Be skeptical, be suspicious, and challenge me where you feel you need to.

A World of Stories: Vikings vs. Greeks and Romans

Let's look at the Viking tradition in contrast to the Greeks and the Romans.

The Greek Worldview

For the Greeks, the idea of the community was the polis, which gives us our word for politics. The idea is that a community is a group of men—only men—who come together to debate and argue over the future of the community. As such, the individual is someone who stands out. The words they use are eudaimonia, meaning flourishing (you can only flourish if you're standing out among a group of men), and arete, meaning proving your excellence among a group of men.

I'll give you two examples. The first is Achilles from The Iliad. Achilles tells everyone, "I am in Troy to seek personal glory. I don't care about the Greeks, I don't care about Helen or Troy. I don't care about what others think. I just want to stand out." That's why he's willing to let Hector and the Trojans almost destroy the Greek army.

Another example is from Herodotus's Histories and has to do with the Athenian leader Themistocles. In the year 480 BCE, the Persians were invading the Greek mainland. Sparta and Athens united against the Persians, who burned down Athens. The Athenian people were on their ships, and at this point, the Spartans, who were in command of the military, and the Athenians had a huge argument. The Athenians wanted to challenge the Persians at sea and defeat their navy. The Spartans wanted to use their navy to protect their homeland, the Peloponnese, against the Persian invasion. They could not come to an agreement.

So, what Themistocles does is he sends a spy to the king of the Persians and tells him, "Hey, the entire Greek navy is stationed in Salamis, but they're about to run away from you. Here's a great chance to send your entire Persian navy to crush the Greek navy once and for all." That's what the king does. At the Battle of Salamis, the Athenians and the Spartans destroy the Persian navy and turn the course of not only the war but of Western history. If the Persians had won that day, we would be living in a Persian-influenced world as opposed to a Greek-influenced world. When you think about it, what Achilles and Themistocles are doing is what we would call sedition, treason, or betrayal. But that's just the Greek worldview.

The Roman Worldview

The Romans had a very different perspective. The community was fundamentally about tradition, and as such, the individual had to be pious to the tradition—loyal to the tradition. In China, we have a concept called filial piety, but this is completely opposite. In China, filial piety means obedience to your father; what your father says is right. But in Rome, piety means loyalty to the traditions of Rome.

The classic example is Julius Caesar. Caesar wanted to be king and was about to break a lot of Roman traditions, so his friends, including his biological son Marcus Brutus, killed him. It was more important for Marcus Brutus to be loyal to the traditions of Rome than to be loyal to his father.

The Viking Worldview

For the Vikings, the community is a set of stories. Stories are not the same as tradition. Tradition is what is passed down, what is written down. Stories are living memories that a community tells about itself. Therefore, there's a flexibility to these stories; they can be reimagined over and over. The basic structure is the same, but the community has to constantly relive and reimagine these stories. The individual, therefore, is a person who acts out these stories, either through ritual, adventure, or exploration.

This is a hard idea to understand. Let me tell you a story to illustrate this Viking culture. Thirty years ago, I was having lunch with a new friend who went to Georgetown University. He told me that at Georgetown, there's a competition among undergraduates: who can go the furthest to do the most useless thing. What my friend and his friend did was get in a car, drive 12 hours to the Canadian border, cross it, get out of the car, go into the forest to take a piss, get back in the car, and drive all the way back to Georgetown. They spent 24 hours driving so they could take a piss in Canada.

You might think this sounds stupid, but the most interesting thing about the story is that it is memorable. Fifty years after they graduate, people will still remember what they did. They'll tell their friends, their colleagues, their children. This memory will persist over time. No one can remember who got the best grades at Georgetown that year or who made the most money in his or her life. But everyone is going to remember these two guys. That is Viking culture. It's not about winning glory or protecting tradition; it's about doing what is shocking, what is new, what will add to the imagination and the memory of the community.

The Grandeur of Norse Mythology

The main memory of the Vikings is, of course, their mythology. Norse mythology, I would argue, is the greatest mythology in human history. We still have it today in Marvel movies like the Thor series and in TV shows based on the Vikings. So, let me explain why I would argue that Norse mythology is probably the greatest cosmological system we have.

• It's Grand: In this mythology, there are nine realms, all connected by a world tree called Yggdrasil. No one knows what this world tree looks like, but it's basically the equivalent of God in this system. In Yggdrasil, there are three gods who control the fate and destiny of the world, called the Norns. What's also important to understand is that there's something outside this universe.
• It's Complete: It has a beginning and an end. The beginning is a rift, and from the rift steps a frost giant named Ymir. Then comes a cosmic cow who licks the ice and releases another god, who will eventually give birth to the three major gods, including Odin. These three gods kill Ymir and build the universe from his carcass. But there's also an end, which they call Ragnarok. Ragnarok is the end of everything. It is a final battle between the gods, whom we call the Aesir. The Aesir will fight a final cosmic battle against their enemies, and in this final battle, everything will die. Nothing will be left. That's it.The Christian tradition will take this story and adapt it for its own ends. In the Christian tradition, Ragnarok does happen, but after the end of the world, two humans—a man and a woman—will emerge from the destruction and reconstitute the world. In the Norse tradition, it ends. You may think this sounds extremely pessimistic, but that's only because we're looking at it from our perspective. From the perspective of the Vikings, the end of the world means that you must cherish every single day. Live with honor, live with glory, live with courage. Cherish every moment.
• It's Unified: All the characters and everything that happens is contained within this mythology and contributes to its development. This mythology includes not only gods but also humans who are champions of the gods. There's a very famous love story within this mythology between a human named Sigurd and a Valkyrie named Brynhildr. Eventually, a famous German composer named Wagner will take this story and the entire Norse mythology and construct something called The Ring Cycle, which is the most famous opera in German history and one of the foundations of modern German culture. This Norse mythology will also become the inspiration for Tolkien's epic, The Lord of the Rings.

The Three Core Viking Values

Norse mythology tries to create community among the Vikings and instill certain values. The three major values that these stories manifest and express are:

1. Courage: The courage to explore, to seek what is new and unknown, to venture forth into the unknown. Vikings are mainly explorers and adventurers; raiding is only a small part of their community.
2. Loyalty: This is a very important concept. When you go out on new adventures, you're usually going with your brothers, your friends. It's like a band of brothers. You have to be willing to die for each other. If the survival of the group requires you to make the sacrifice, you have to do so. Loyalty means love for each other; it does not mean obedience. The Viking world is very egalitarian, with very little hierarchy.
3. Resourcefulness: When you venture off into the unknown, you cannot know what to expect. You can't plan ahead or be strategic. You can only be resourceful, meaning you must respond to danger as it arises. You have to be very quick-witted; you have to have street smarts.

A Viking Funeral: The Account of Ahmad ibn Fadlan

Every culture grapples with three fundamental questions, which the painter Paul Gauguin captures in his work: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? To be human is to ask these three questions, and that's ultimately what Norse mythology is trying to grapple with as well.

Our understanding of the Vikings comes from archaeology. We have dug up their graves and discovered that each grave is unique. It seems that each grave, in its own way, is telling a story about who this person was. The grave was not meant just to send this individual into the afterworld but also to remember him or her and their achievements.

Funerals were the most important aspect of Viking society. It's what brought the community together and what they remembered the most. Funerals are what contributed to historical memory. These funerals were extremely elaborate, involving animal and human sacrifice, and could last for a long time—up to 10 days.

Because the Vikings never wrote anything down, we don't know much about these funerals. In fact, we only have one historical record of a funeral, which happened among the Viking Rus' in the East, near the Volga. It was written down by a Muslim diplomat and traveler named Ahmad ibn Fadlan. He was from the Abbasid Caliphate and was in the Viking world to negotiate a trade treaty. As an honored guest, the Vikings invited him to a funeral of a deceased chieftain.

There are certain things about this funeral that are important. First, it would last 10 days. Second, a third of the man's wealth was spent on funeral expenses—basically a feast for everyone. A third was spent on his funeral clothes, which were tailor-made for him. And a third was given to his wife. This tells us that even though he was high status, he didn't have that much wealth, and the Vikings were a very egalitarian society. They didn't care that much about wealth; they spent a third on the funeral, just burning away the money.

There was a funeral director, a woman whom ibn Fadlan calls the "Angel of Death," who was orchestrating this funeral. During the course of the funeral, things happened that disgusted him. Please keep in mind that ibn Fadlan is an observer who doesn't speak the language or know the culture, so he doesn't know exactly what's going on. He's also a Muslim, so he has his own cultural worldview that is in conflict with the Viking worldview. Finally, he is writing this down after the fact, and if you do that, you will often misremember things. So please take his description with a grain of salt. But also remember that we have no choice in the matter, as this is the only written record of a Viking funeral from this time.

Here is what he writes: They cut a dog in two and threw the halves into the boat and placed the man's weapons beside him. They had two horses run themselves sweaty, cut them to pieces, and threw the meat into the ship. Finally, they killed two cows, a hen, and a cock and did the same with them. Not only are they remembering him, but they're giving him supplies to sustain him as he voyages into the afterworld.

They asked for a human sacrifice, and a slave girl volunteers. Meanwhile, the slave girl went from one tent to the other and had sexual intercourse with the master of each. Every man told her, "Tell your master that I have done this purely out of love for him."

This is really confusing for us. It's a funeral, and they're having sex with the woman who is about to be sacrificed. I'm going to use my imagination here. First, who is the slave girl? I would argue that she must be the lover of the deceased chieftain. Why? Here's the logic. Remember The Iliad. The entire story begins because Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks, has kidnapped a girl who happens to be the daughter of a high priest of Apollo. The priest comes to him and says, "I will give you all the gold in the world, but please give me back my daughter." All the Greeks say, "You should do that, Agamemnon." That's just the custom of war; a father can ransom his daughter.

But Agamemnon says, "I'm not going to return her because I love her. I love her more than my wife." As a result, the high priest prays to Apollo, who unleashes a deadly plague among the Greeks. Finally, Achilles steps up and says to Agamemnon, "You have to return the girl." Now Agamemnon has lost face, so he says to Achilles, "Fine, I will return the girl that I love more than anything else in the world, but you must give me your slave girl." Achilles gets so angry about this that he refuses to fight for the Greeks, which leads to the disaster of the Trojan War.

What is this telling us? In this world where these men are far from home, they kidnap these slave girls and fall in love with them. In the process, these great men confer status and power onto these slave girls. The slave girl is not a normal girl; she is the lover, the mistress, essentially the wife of the chieftain who has died.

So another question then is, why has she volunteered to kill herself? Well, if we continue the logic, I would argue that it's because without the man, she has no status and power in the community. She'll go back to being a slave and might be ostracized. By volunteering and sacrificing herself, she will win status, power, and honor for her children and for her relatives in the community. She will make her family part of that community.

Now, the question then is, if the slave girl is the chieftain's favorite mistress and if she does in fact love this man, why is she having sex with everyone? The answer is that in this world, gifts are very important. If you go to war and win things, you have to share with everyone. So what this deceased man is saying is, "Now that I'm dead, I give you one final gift, and it's the greatest treasure that I can possibly give you, which is the woman I love." That's why each man is forced to have sex with her, and they tell this girl, "When you go to your master, tell him I only do this out of my love for him, not for you."

Are they having sex with the dead master?

Yes, you can make that argument. Remember, in this world, homosexuality doesn't exist as a concept in the same way. It's okay for men to have sex with each other; it's okay for men to have sex together with one woman. That's how they create intimacy and bonding. When you're out at war, you have to be able to make the ultimate sacrifice, so you have to bond with your fellow soldiers, and the best way to bond is through sex. So yes, you can make that argument. They think they're having sex with the master through the girl. And that's why they say, "I'm only doing this out of my love for him, not for you, but for him."

Let's continue with ibn Fadlan's account:

In the afternoon, they moved the slave girl to something that looked like a door frame, where she was lifted on the palms of the men three times. The doorframe represents access to the afterworld. The first time, she saw her father and mother. The second time, she saw all her deceased relatives. And the third time, she saw her master in Paradise.

What she's really doing is implanting her personal memory into the community as a whole. She's making her family part of the community now. She's talking about her past, and everyone is observing. They know that after she dies, they must honor her memory by honoring her relatives and family.

There it was green and beautiful, and together with him, she saw men and young people. She saw her master beckon to her. Then she was brought a chicken, which she decapitated and which was then thrown on the boat. This is some strange ritual that I have no idea what it means, but it must mean something. Often, what they do is reenact mythologies. There must have been a famous story where a woman decapitates a chicken for some reason, and she's doing that. They are reliving mythologies.

Thereafter, the slave girl was taken away to the ship. She removed her bracelets and gave them to the old woman... she removed her anklets and gave them to the old woman's two daughters. She took what was most valuable to her and gave it to the old woman who is the Angel of Death, the funeral director. She's giving thanks to the old woman, paying her, giving her a gift for the honor of being sacrificed.

Then they took her aboard the ship, but they did not allow her to enter the tent where the dead chieftain lay. The girl received several vessels of intoxicating drinks, and she sang. These intoxicating drinks are often psychedelics, meant to enhance her visuals.

Before the old woman urged her to enter the tent, "I saw that the girl did not know what she was doing," notes ibn Fadlan. Ibn Fadlan is completely confused by this, but what we need to understand is this is highly choreographed. Every person knows what to do. It's a ritual, meaning that there's a script in place and that the chieftain, the slave girl, and the old woman all discussed this beforehand. That's the only way this makes sense.

Then the girl was pulled into the tent by the old woman, and the men started to beat on their shields with sticks so her screams could not be heard. Six men then entered the tent and had intercourse with the girl. Afterward, they laid her on the bed beside her master. What this is doing is reenacting the memory of being with their chief—going out on raids, sacking a city, and then assaulting the women together. Guys, I know this is terrible, but again, we have to try to understand their worldview and their practice.

Two men grabbed her hands and two men her wrists. The Angel of Death looped a rope around her neck, and while two men pulled the rope, the old woman used a knife to strike the girl between her ribs, ending her life. That's how she dies.

Thereafter, the closest male relative of the dead chieftain walked backwards, unclothed, covering his rear with one hand and holding a piece of burning wood with the other. Again, this must come from a certain mythology; that's the only way we can explain this practice. He set the ship aflame, after which other people added wood to the fire.

And that's how he dies. Again, this sounds gruesome, but what they're doing is celebrating the man and implanting his memory into the community. Because everyone participates in this funeral, the man's memory is now part of the community's collective consciousness. He has become a story within the community and therefore will be remembered forever for his achievements.

The Greeks and the Romans had equivalents. For the Romans, it was something called the Triumph. The Triumph was the highlight of Roman life. It was basically a military parade for a general who won a great conquest. The parade would offer pictures of the conquered territory, parade treasures like elephants or gold, and also parade slaves and captured people, usually kings. At the end of this parade, they would go to the Temple of Jupiter and sacrifice these slaves and captured kings to the god. So it's very similar to the funeral.

The Greeks, on the other hand, had theater to build the community's collective consciousness. The community all participated; there were no professional actors. The spectators would judge which theater was the best, and it was the greatest honor to be picked as the best playwright for that year. The theater was very different; they didn't practice human sacrifice. What they did was often write about war from the perspective of the enemy. Euripides wrote The Trojan Women, where he wrote about the women of Troy who were captured and kidnapped by the Greeks. Aeschylus wrote about the Persian loss. That's why the Greek civilization is considered the most imaginative in human history—because it practices empathy, it changes perspectives, it's willing to celebrate everyone.

Values in Norse Mythology: Courage, Loyalty, and Resourcefulness

Norse mythology's purpose is to express and promote three values: courage, loyalty, and resourcefulness.

• Courage: The example of courage is Odin. At the beginning of the world, Odin, the god of knowledge, wants to seek all knowledge. He flies around Yggdrasil, the world tree, and goes into different realms. He meets a god by a well of cosmic knowledge; if you drink from it, you gain cosmic knowledge. Odin wanted to drink, but he had to make an offering. He offered what was most valuable to him: his eye. He plucked out his eye, gave it to the god, and drank from the well. But once he learned cosmic knowledge, he became more curious. He ventured into the realm of death, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not penetrate this world. So he killed himself. That's what you do if you want to enter the world of death. He was dead for a long time, but in his death, he was able to see all the secrets of the universe. Afterwards, he resurrected himself. Odin personifies the idea of courage in the Viking world: to seek the unknown relentlessly, even if it costs you your life and your eye.
• Loyalty: In the Norse world, there will be a Ragnarok, and the wolf Fenris will foreshadow its arrival. He's very dangerous, but when he's born, he's just a little pup, so the Aesir (the gods) decide to adopt him as a pet. His master is Tyr, the god of war. But very quickly, Fenris grows to be huge, and now the gods see him as a menace. They try to tie him up, but no matter how hard they try, they can't. It becomes a game, and Fenris thinks this is really funny. But the gods become really worried, so they go to the dwarfs and ask them to create a magic rope. Tyr goes back to Fenris and says, "Hey, let's continue this game of us trying to tie you up." Fenris is like, "Okay, but how do I know that you will release me if I can't get out?" Tyr says, "Put your hand in my mouth, and if you don't release me, I'll take your hand." The gods discuss this, and Tyr volunteers, knowing that he's going to lose his hand. And that's what happens. They tie Fenris up, and when Fenris wants to be released, the gods refuse because he's a menace. Then Fenris just bites off Tyr's hand. That's loyalty—loyalty to your friends.
• Resourcefulness: The gods are always at war with the frost giants. One day, a man called the Builder comes to them and says, "I can build you a wall to protect you from your enemies in 18 months." This is for Asgard, the home of the gods. The Builder says, "I will do this, but I want three things: the sun, the moon, and the beautiful goddess Freya in marriage." The gods are like, "No, that's a stupid deal." But Loki, the god of mischief and the blood brother of Odin, says to Odin, "Take the deal, but make it six months. That way, he'll finish about a third of the wall, and we can finish the rest." Odin thinks that's a great idea. The Builder agrees on one condition: that he's allowed to use his horse to carry the bricks. The gods agree. What they don't know is the horse is a magic horse, able to travel as fast as light itself. The Builder is able to build the wall very quickly and is about to finish. Odin says, "Loki, you got us into this mess, get us out of this mess, or I will kill you." So what does Loki do? He's a shapeshifter. He shapeshifts into a mare, a beautiful horse. The Builder's horse sees the mare and becomes really excited and runs off. The Builder is not able to finish the wall, and Loki gives birth to a baby horse that then becomes Odin's horse. That's the idea of resourcefulness.

There are some really funny stories in Norse mythology. One of the funniest is this: Thor has a magic hammer named Mjölnir. He loves it so much that he sleeps with it under his pillow. One day he wakes up and finds it missing. Of course, he thinks it must be Loki, but Loki says, "I didn't do it, and I'll find out for you who did." Loki discovers that it was the frost giant king who stole the hammer. The king will only return the hammer if the gods give him Freya as a wife. Loki goes back, and Freya says, "Screw off, I'm not going to do this." So Loki says to Thor, "I have a plan." The plan is to dress Thor up as Freya. He's going to put a wedding dress and a veil on Thor, and Loki will disguise himself as a bridesmaid.

Stupid plan, but they do it. They go off, and the frost giant king doesn't really notice that Freya is a huge man. They have this huge feast, and unfortunately, Thor loves to eat and drink. He's eating an entire ox, drinking all this beer, and burping in the process. The frost giant king is kind of confused but also really excited. At the wedding, the king presents the hammer Mjölnir to "Freya." He lifts the veil to kiss his bride and that's when he realizes it's actually a man. Then Thor gets his hammer and beats the crap out of the king.

The Viking Understanding of the Individual

What do these stories tell us about the understanding of the individual in the Viking world? Neil Price, a Viking expert and archaeologist, says the Viking individual is shaped by four forces:

• Hamr: This is basically the shell or the shape of the person, the outer being. It may not be the body, but the shell.
• Hamingja: Think of it as a pet who follows you around and personifies luck. Because it's a pet, you can either nurture it or not. You nurture it by showing courage. In battle, if you enter with courage, the pet will be with you. But if you run away and hide, the pet might run away. In the Viking world, all that matters is hamingja. You win if you get lucky, not because you're stronger.
• Hugr: This is your essence, your soul, who you really are.
• Fylgja: This is what you inherit from your family. It is the guardian spirit of your family. Think of it as the collection of your ancestors who whisper advice in your dreams. Today, we would call this concept intuition.

As you can see, we think of the Vikings as barbarians, but in fact, they have a very complicated and nuanced understanding of themselves and the world.

The Power of Oral Tradition

How were the Vikings able to do this? My argument is that it's because of the oral tradition. We are simply not as creative as people who tell stories every day and who make stories the heart and center of their community.

Before, people lived in an oral tradition. When you tell stories, you need at least two people: the speaker and the listener. Often, it was a whole community that participated. This meant that the stories were living things, things that you played with, that were flexible like clay. You could change the stories over and over. Each person who told the story would tell it differently, so there are millions of different versions of these Norse stories. Each story is unique. There's a concept in cultural theory called the aura—the essence, the soul—and each story has its own soul.

Let's contrast this with literary culture. In literary culture, reading and writing, you have to do it by yourself. But the benefit is that whatever you write leaves you and becomes part of the page. It's permanent. As a result, your words can escape time and space; they become timeless. We have Homer because his words were written down, even though Homer was probably illiterate.

Today, we live in a visual culture. Think of videos and photographs. First, it's passive. In both literary and oral culture, you have to participate, to use your imagination to make the thing alive. But with a photograph, it's all provided to you. It's a very passive experience. It's self-enclosed, meaning it's impossible for you to add anything to it. But you get more information that way. For example, a map tells you a lot more information than if someone tried to explain it to you with words. And the last advantage of a visual culture is that it is universal. If an alien species came down to our planet and looked at our pictures, they would know what's going on.

The oral tradition is extremely complex. We tend to think that it's just about telling a story, but there are so many variables and nuances. The Vikings told stories in a big hall because it's usually cold up north. It's dark, so they have a big fire inside, and the storyteller, the bard, would recite the story beside the fire as everyone listened. The halls were huge, as big as a Greek amphitheater, seating a thousand or two thousand people. When it's dark and you can't see, your ears become much more perceptive. The words become alive, more colorful, with more detail and imagery. And these words are bouncing off the walls, creating echo and resonance, almost like bonds that unite everyone in the telling of the story.

If you think about it, this experience is very similar to the Ice Age. People came together in those caves not to paint, but to tell stories about where they came from, who they are, and where they're going. All of our ancestors, for thousands of years, participated in this process. This takes us back to the time of the Ice Age; it's activating a nostalgia within us, and that's why the oral tradition is so powerful.

These stories have to be told in a certain way to excite the audience. In the oral tradition, it's a co-creation, a collaborative process. That's what makes it so powerful. As an experiment, think about this: there might be some material in a class you found really interesting. You go on YouTube to watch the lecture and try to remember the experience, and what you'll find is you cannot, because we've switched from oral culture to visual culture. The same is true if it's your 18th birthday. You have a wonderful time with your friends and you take a picture to remember the experience. But what you will find is the picture doesn't really capture the experience for you. It cannot bring back the feeling.

That's why the Vikings were so insistent on maintaining their oral tradition. It's what gave the community purpose and meaning. If you gave that up, your community would lose cohesiveness.

What is the oral tradition? We've mainly lost it. But think of it as merging two things you know very well: the immersion of a good movie, where you feel you are in that movie, combined with the intimacy of a four or five-hour conversation with your best friend. The oral tradition combines these two things, and that's why it's so powerful that it cannot be remembered. It cannot be written down. But this oral tradition will go on to influence major European civilizations, specifically the Germans and the British, but also the Russians.

Why Did We Lose the Oral Tradition?

• We transitioned to a literary culture that emphasized reading and writing.
• We went from paganism to Christianity. The problem with Christianity is it is extremely focused on what is good and evil, whereas pagan culture is about whether something is interesting or not, memorable or not.
• We went from an egalitarian world, where everyone can contribute to the story, to a hierarchical world, where the elite insist on indoctrinating us and controlling how we think.

To conclude, let me tell you a story. I have two young boys, and I tell them stories where I make them the heroes. I told my youngest son, Malu, this story:

On your fourth birthday, something magical happens. You can pray to God, and whatever you wish for, God will grant you. Malu thinks for a long time and then prays, "I wish for a room full of strawberries every single day." Immediately, his room is full of strawberries. He loves it. The next day, the room is full of strawberries again. The third day, again. But by the fourth day, he's kind of sick of strawberries. Eventually, strawberries overflow and fill the house, then the street. The neighbors are worried, but we share the strawberries. Then they get sick of them too. The strawberries fill the entire city of Beijing. It's a national emergency. Then the whole country of China is filled with strawberries, then the whole continent of Asia. Eventually, everyone has to get on a spaceship and go to the moon. But the strawberries keep overflowing until they reach the moon.

At this point, the entire world prays to Malu. "Listen, your fifth birthday is tomorrow. Please pray to God and tell him no more strawberries. If you do this for us, we will make you president and king of the world. We will give you all the chocolate in the world." And Malu says, "Yes, I will." On his fifth birthday, Malu closes his eyes, prays to God, and says, "Dear God, I wish for a room full of chocolate every day."

And that's how the story ends. It's a very strange story, but my sons will remember this for a long time. Not only that, it's going to inspire him to tell his own stories. All he has to do is change the story a bit, and now he has his own.

But if I were to write down this story, I couldn't say it in this way. Let's see how I would change it if I wrote it down:

For his fourth birthday, Malu prayed to God for a room full of strawberries every day. Immediately, his room filled with strawberries. He ate them happily. The next morning, his room filled with strawberries. He ate them. The very next morning, his room filled with strawberries. He did not eat them. The house filled with strawberries, then the street, then the city, then the country. On his fifth birthday, Malu prayed to God for no more strawberries. His room became clean, and Malu understood the power of words.

Do you understand why I'm doing this? Why has literary culture changed the story? Because now I know that the words leave me and they leave Malu. They go out into the wider world, and people will judge my words. They will think I'm a bad father or whatever. I'm conscious of that, so I change it in a way that is not so offensive.

In oral culture, you can be intimate. Therefore, you can play, you can experiment, you can be curious, you can be adventurous. That's what leads to the imagination. But in a literary culture, everyone is watching you. A hundred years from now, people are still watching you. Therefore, you have a sense of shame.

A metaphor we can use is that this transition from oral tradition to literary culture is really like the story of Adam and Eve. Because they ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, they developed a sense of shame. They understood that they were naked and therefore they were being watched. And because of this, they are thrown out of the Garden of Eden. We leave the oral tradition behind and we think that it's a good thing, but we tend to forget the power and beauty of it.

I leave you with three questions:

1. What is the imagination? In the oral tradition, we would think that the imagination is just an extension of memory. By making our stories memorable, we excite the imagination and allow for the process of creation.
2. Could we have Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare without the oral tradition? I think the answer is no. I don't think we would have the greatest poetry in human history if it were not for the oral tradition. For the past 50 years, what literary masterpiece have we created?
3. Does civilization make us less creative? Does being civilized make us more ashamed of exploring, of being curious, of playing? Are we less creative because of civilization?