Vikings!
I have to be entirely honest, "okay, FINE," is the spirit in which I watched the first episode of Vikings. I had decided not to! I was okay with that! But then people kept posting about it, and I was like, "it has all these things that I like," and getting more and more unsure, and finally I heard that they actually bother to use some Old English and Old Norse! And then I was like, "okay, FINE, I will try the first episode but I PROBABLY WON'T ENJOY IT."
THE THING IS, THOUGH. THE THING IS that yes, it was all very sepia-toned, and yes it was definitely not great art, and yes there was more violence than I like (and promises to be more in the next episode, Lindisfarne ;___;), and yes I was ready to be like, "I DON'T ENJOY THIS," but unfortunately the show very sneakily and underhandedly got under my defences.
I'm sure you're all desperate to know how. The answer is, by making a decent-ish stab at representing Norse legal codes and societal attitudes to crime.
:(:(:(:(
MY ONLY WEAKNESS.
So that is what I want to talk about! Because I straight-up love Norse legal codes. (I should be more specific here: I have only actually read Grágás, the main surviving Icelandic legal document, and Vikings obviously doesn't take place in Iceland, but Grágás is our main testament to Norse law, and is probably the main source for this show as well.) Grágás is one of the most fun legal things you will ever read. (Obligatory note that obviously legal codes, including Grágás, do not actually show what happened, only what the lawmakers would like to happen.) Things that Vikings did right, and made me go *___*:
- manhood begins at around twelve or thirteen. I mean, we all know that children were not considered children for anything like as long in the past, but isn't it kind of mindblowing that you were a full legal man under Icelandic law around that time? Because being a full legal man under Icelandic law means that you are part of a society that revolves around ideas of blood debt and killing that are pretty fucking heavy, and you look at that little twelve-year-old boy in Vikings and you realise that next time he hurts someone in a game, he might actually be considered to have offended someone's honour and be killed for it (yes okay that's a saga example and a bit extreme and probably wouldn't happen, plus in the saga it happened in Iceland and Iceland was like, "WE'RE LIKE THE REST OF SCANDINAVIA, ONLY OUR POPULATION HAS QUITE A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF CRIMINALS AND MURDERERS AND GENERAL SOCIAL OUTCASTS FLEEING OUR BLOOD DEBTS, SO WHOOPS, ACTUALLY, MAYBE WE'RE MORE LIKE VIKING LAND XTREEM," (my favourite hilarious thing is that all the criminals and outcasts fled to Iceland, and then for a little while, the Icelandic criminals and outcasts fled to Greenland. Can you even imagine what nasty men some of those Greenlanders were?) so yes I am being a bit dramatic) and then you're like, "wow."
- killing people is completely fine (well, if you can pay for it), so long as you do it in the open. If you try to hide it, then it's murrrrrrderrrrrrr, and it strikes hard at the foundations of society, because if you hide it then it cannot be compensated for and the truth cannot be found and trust amongst the group cannot be kept. So yeah, if you kill someone, you damn well report it to the first person you see, and then it's fine! Again, WTF? (And this is not just a Norse thing, it's a standard early mediaeval thing - you'll find the same ideas in legal codes from Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, and I would imagine from most other places in Europe, although I don't know.) It's absolutely fascinating how cheap life was, really, and how acceptable it was to take it. So when they were like, "yeah, you could have passed two houses in order to avoid the relatives of the guy you killed, but THERE IS NO PROVISION IN THE LAW FOR THREE," I almost squeaked with joy because YES. (Plus, yes, they were just that fucking legalistic, if Grágás is anything to go by.)
Thing I would have liked Vikings to do:
- Quite often, stealing stuff was worse than killing someone - again, it's to do with that secret or open thing. No problem if you rob someone in broad daylight because your sword's bigger than his! On the contrary, well done, big man! Secret stealing? BASICALLY THE WORST. In societies where you needed to trust your neighbours or nothing could ever get done and nothing could ever function (bearing in mind: no detectives, no police, very little ability to enforce promises made particularly given that most (and pre-Christanity, make that 'basically all') people were illiterate), doing stuff in secret ripped at the fabric of society in a really destabilising way. So in my ideal world, the guy who got accused of stealing would have been treated a lot more harshly. (Although he did plead guilty, which was bringing the stealing out into the open! So Vikings still wins.)
SO. I like Lagertha and Ragnar's faces (and Rollo's, I have to be honest), and I like how they're using language, and I like lots of other stuff, but honestly, the show got me when it spent about five minutes on that courtroom scene.
I CAN'T HEAR YOU CALLING ME A GEEK OVER THE SOUND OF MY OWN AWESOMENESS, JSYK.
Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/69755.html with
comments. Comment wherever you like.
THE THING IS, THOUGH. THE THING IS that yes, it was all very sepia-toned, and yes it was definitely not great art, and yes there was more violence than I like (and promises to be more in the next episode, Lindisfarne ;___;), and yes I was ready to be like, "I DON'T ENJOY THIS," but unfortunately the show very sneakily and underhandedly got under my defences.
I'm sure you're all desperate to know how. The answer is, by making a decent-ish stab at representing Norse legal codes and societal attitudes to crime.
:(:(:(:(
MY ONLY WEAKNESS.
So that is what I want to talk about! Because I straight-up love Norse legal codes. (I should be more specific here: I have only actually read Grágás, the main surviving Icelandic legal document, and Vikings obviously doesn't take place in Iceland, but Grágás is our main testament to Norse law, and is probably the main source for this show as well.) Grágás is one of the most fun legal things you will ever read. (Obligatory note that obviously legal codes, including Grágás, do not actually show what happened, only what the lawmakers would like to happen.) Things that Vikings did right, and made me go *___*:
- manhood begins at around twelve or thirteen. I mean, we all know that children were not considered children for anything like as long in the past, but isn't it kind of mindblowing that you were a full legal man under Icelandic law around that time? Because being a full legal man under Icelandic law means that you are part of a society that revolves around ideas of blood debt and killing that are pretty fucking heavy, and you look at that little twelve-year-old boy in Vikings and you realise that next time he hurts someone in a game, he might actually be considered to have offended someone's honour and be killed for it (yes okay that's a saga example and a bit extreme and probably wouldn't happen, plus in the saga it happened in Iceland and Iceland was like, "WE'RE LIKE THE REST OF SCANDINAVIA, ONLY OUR POPULATION HAS QUITE A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF CRIMINALS AND MURDERERS AND GENERAL SOCIAL OUTCASTS FLEEING OUR BLOOD DEBTS, SO WHOOPS, ACTUALLY, MAYBE WE'RE MORE LIKE VIKING LAND XTREEM," (my favourite hilarious thing is that all the criminals and outcasts fled to Iceland, and then for a little while, the Icelandic criminals and outcasts fled to Greenland. Can you even imagine what nasty men some of those Greenlanders were?) so yes I am being a bit dramatic) and then you're like, "wow."
- killing people is completely fine (well, if you can pay for it), so long as you do it in the open. If you try to hide it, then it's murrrrrrderrrrrrr, and it strikes hard at the foundations of society, because if you hide it then it cannot be compensated for and the truth cannot be found and trust amongst the group cannot be kept. So yeah, if you kill someone, you damn well report it to the first person you see, and then it's fine! Again, WTF? (And this is not just a Norse thing, it's a standard early mediaeval thing - you'll find the same ideas in legal codes from Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, and I would imagine from most other places in Europe, although I don't know.) It's absolutely fascinating how cheap life was, really, and how acceptable it was to take it. So when they were like, "yeah, you could have passed two houses in order to avoid the relatives of the guy you killed, but THERE IS NO PROVISION IN THE LAW FOR THREE," I almost squeaked with joy because YES. (Plus, yes, they were just that fucking legalistic, if Grágás is anything to go by.)
Thing I would have liked Vikings to do:
- Quite often, stealing stuff was worse than killing someone - again, it's to do with that secret or open thing. No problem if you rob someone in broad daylight because your sword's bigger than his! On the contrary, well done, big man! Secret stealing? BASICALLY THE WORST. In societies where you needed to trust your neighbours or nothing could ever get done and nothing could ever function (bearing in mind: no detectives, no police, very little ability to enforce promises made particularly given that most (and pre-Christanity, make that 'basically all') people were illiterate), doing stuff in secret ripped at the fabric of society in a really destabilising way. So in my ideal world, the guy who got accused of stealing would have been treated a lot more harshly. (Although he did plead guilty, which was bringing the stealing out into the open! So Vikings still wins.)
SO. I like Lagertha and Ragnar's faces (and Rollo's, I have to be honest), and I like how they're using language, and I like lots of other stuff, but honestly, the show got me when it spent about five minutes on that courtroom scene.
I CAN'T HEAR YOU CALLING ME A GEEK OVER THE SOUND OF MY OWN AWESOMENESS, JSYK.
Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/69755.html with
comments. Comment wherever you like.