“King, you made a great attack on the family of princes. Gracious leader, you reddened broad Kantaraborg in the morning.” With these words, an early 11th-century poet, Óttarr the Black, praises one of the martial feats of his patron, King Óláfr Haraldsson of Norway. Kantaraborg is the Old Norse form of the name of Canterbury; the event that is being commemorated here is the capture of the city by a Viking army in 1011. Its sequel the following year was the shocking martyrdom of Archbishop Ælfheah.
For the English writers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the capture of Canterbury was a grievous event: the 1011 entry laments that “there misery could be seen in the place where joy was often seen previously”. But that is not at all how the taking of Canterbury is viewed in Óttarr’s verse. Here, the assault offers grounds for celebration, an instance of the king’s military prowess.
Old Norse poetry such as Óttarr’s, in other words, gives us access to a perspective on the Viking Age from the Vikings themselves. Such poetry is full of journeys and battles, dominated by charismatic war-leaders who wield weapons, conquer lands, and share out treasure to their followers. The stereotype of the Vikings as great warriors derives largely from this self-image that was cultivated by their poets.
The poetry is marked by verbal ingenuity, imaginative
