In Search of Viking Literacy Practices

Abstract

Researchers in literacy studies have been refining the definitions and examples of literacy development over the past four decades that have significantly improved our knowledge about marginalized cultures and their literacy development. This article explores the literacy practices of the medieval Scandinavians through archaeological and textual sources. First, I explore the gaps in literacy research followed by a detailed examination of medieval Nordic literacy practices shown in the runestones, artifacts, and the sagas. The intent of this article is to shed light on a literacy tradition outside of the privileged Latinate Christian tradition during the medieval period.

Notes

1. The author would like to thank the RR editor and RR reviewers Deborah Brandt and Maureen Daly Goggin for their insightful and encouraging comments, which improved the manuscript immensely.

2. Walter J. Ong, in his now classic work Orality and Literacy (1982), argues that the brain and thought processes change as people gain literacy. This fits in well with the classical learning master narrative often used in describing literacy in the Middle Ages. Brian Street counters Ong’s argument rather convincingly that literacy is not just a technical skill but a type of social practice, which is what I argue is the case for the Nordic peoples of the Middle Ages.

3. Shirley Brice Heath examined the mix of text and oral based culture in her ethnography of the Trackton community. In her essay, “Protean Shapes in Literacy Events,” she argues that a literacy event “is a conceptual tool useful in examining within particular communities of modern society the actual forms and functions of oral and literate traditions and co-existing relationships between spoken and written language” (93). In effect, she expands the terms and range of literacy to include mixed oral and text-dominant literacy. James Gee, in his essay “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics,” further expands the concept of functional literacy by showing how multiple literacies are really multiple discourses which are context laden in the groups who value those specific discourses.

4. Jesse Byock has a great introduction to the runic alphabet in his Viking Language 1. I recommend this for people who are interested in picking up a bit of the runic inscriptions. Byock’s scholarship helped immensely in the preparation of this manuscript.

5. See John S. Robertson, “How the Germanic Futhark Came from the Roman Alphabet.” Futhark: International Journal of Runic Studies vol. 2, 2011, publ. 2012, pp. 7–25, and Michelle Waldispühl, “Runes in Action: Two South Germanic Inscriptions and the Notion of a ‘Literate’ Epigraphic Culture.” Futhark: International Journal of Runic Studies vol. 5, 2014, publ. 2015, pp. 65–90.

6. Recently linguists, too, have challenged master narratives concerning Vikings. Joseph Embley Emonds and Jan Terje Faarlund from Palacký University, Olomouc, 2014, wrote English: The Viking Language using analysis of word etymologies and syntax to argue that English is not an Anglo-Saxon language, but actually a Viking language taken from the Norse speakers when England was under the Danelaw period in the 7-800s. Their argument is persuasive based on the similarities we share with Modern descendants of the Norse language as compared to Modern German. The book can be accessed online at http://anglistika.upol.cz/vikings2014/.

7. Recently (28 March 2019) the National Museum of Denmark released pictures and details of an Iron Age ceramic cup or pitcher with runic inscriptions on it. The sherd was discovered at the Iron Age village of Uglvig. Archaeologists suspect that the inscription was carved in the 300s-400s C.E. The runic carving suggests an early use by middle class workers as having a functional literacy even then—but more research will be needed at the site to make further judgments. For further information, visit the National Museum of Denmark at https://natmus.dk/.

8. For an interesting view of the spelling and phonological conditions of Old Norse, see the “First Grammatical Treatise” in the Codex Wormianus.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert L. Lively

Robert L. Lively is a Ph.D. candidate in Writing, Rhetorics, and Literacies at Arizona State University. His scholarly interests focus on Rhetoric and Literacy in medieval Nordic countries. He teaches First-Year Composition and Linguistics at Truckee Meadows Community College. He can be reached at [email protected].