The Long Ships is a great read—it’s like a great adventure movie, except that you get to know a lot about everyday life in 10th century Scandinavia. Reading this book immediately after reading The Odyssey, it belately dawned on me that both books are about sea-going adventurers in long-ago times.
The Long Ships was more purely entertaining because its author understood the minds and expectations of 20th century readers. Frans G. Bengtsson was writing in Swedish in the early 1940s. His book is about the fictional life and experiences of an individual named Red Orm. Orm (the “Red” is just for formal occasions) grows up on a farm in what is now southern Sweden, but is shanghaied by a Viking raiding party and quickly earns the trust of the sailors and becomes a full-fledged member of the ship’s crew. He sails with them to Spain where they are captured by Moors and then serve as galley slaves for a couple of years. Orm has a knack for making the best of situations—his full moniker could easily be “Lucky Orm.” By taking advantage of his opportunities he works his way up to being a member of a high-ranking official’s private bodyguard. In this capacity he participates in a raid on the Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela, then in Christian hands, where he ultimately finds himself in possession of a boat, a crew of compatriots, and a very large bell taken from the town’s cathedral. Recognizing his opportunity, Orm and his compatriots abscond with the bell, sail north, and eventually present it as a gift to King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark. A little digging around on the web reveals that the high-ranking Moorish official was a real person (Almanzor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almanzor) and that he did in fact lead a raid to Santiago during which the cathedral’s bells were captured. They were then melted down to make lanterns for the Great Mosque of Cordoba. The historical record says nothing about a Viking crew making off with the largest bell, but you almost expect to discover that that happened too. That’s how deftly Bergtsson weaves the experiences of his fictional hero into the actual events of 10th century Europe.
Orm goes on to have several additional adventures that I will not summarize here. He is a shrewd and wily fellow—like Odysseus—but he is also just an average guy who makes the most of his opportunities. He falls in love (with one of King Harald’s daughter, as it happens), makes friends, and deals with people and situations as best he can. Bengtsson shares Orm’s thoughts and feelings with the reader, and as a result we feel as if we know him. So we root for him and experience his victories and defeats vicariously. Because that’s how novels work.
Thinking back on The Odyssey, we never have any opportunity to get so chummy with Odysseus. His author (who may have been but was probably not an individual named Homer) is as much an advocate for his hero as Bengtsson is of his, but he has no interest in humanizing him, making him seem like a regular guy. This is neither a defect nor a choice—Homer was writing before the kind of characterization that Bengtsson employs had been invented.
This is not to claim that The Long Ships is a better book than The Odyssey. It’s a bit like the difference between a fine antique and a high-end reproduction of a fine antique. The original item ultimately has greater value, but the knock-off is probably preferable for everyday use. Your enjoyment of the newer object is not complicated by a need to appreciate its originality or understand something of the circumstances in which it was created.
But as different as these two books are, there are also similarities. Both Odysseus and Orm live in worlds without formal laws or government. When dealing with adversaries, they rely entirely on their own resources.
Odysseus needs to rid his home of the 108 suitors who have grown accustomed to whiling away their days in his palace. He doesn’t have the option of obtaining an eviction notice or a restraining order; nor can he just evict them single-handedly.
Orm’s domestic crisis occurs when a renegade force attacks his homestead while he is away on an expedition, killing several of his associates and making off with his daughter and his livestock. Orm is fortunate that he returns to his home the very day after this attack. Like Odysseus, he gathers a group of trusted allies, and with them he plans to track down the assailants and recover what is rightfully his. He plans a three-pronged attack with the primary thrust coming from the enemy’s flank—like Odysseus, he must take care to not be predictable.
It’s very satisfying to imagine dealing with those who have offended or harmed us in such a way. Think of all the movies, starring John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, where circumstances conspire to leave the hero with no other option than to make his own justice, with copious violence. The difference is that John Wayne and Clint Eastwood live in worlds where there should be a legal authority they can appeal to; typically (and, for the sake of the story, fortuitously) these authorities are absent, or turn out to be corrupt or ineffectual. On some level the implication is that relying on laws, lawyers, and law enforcement is for weaker, lesser mortals. Doing what other people tell you to do, obeying the damn government, constraining your own rights and priorities to accommodate due process of law, well, to hell with that.
In the worlds of Odysseus and Red Orm, there are neither governments nor laws, at least not written laws. We admire them because they refuse to be intimidated, but also because they are stronger and smarter than their adversaries.
Who can say if there were really such contented Vikings as Red Orm? Or if their contentment would be like his. We might as well ask what kind of jokes Charlemagne would have liked. We know lots of things about long-ago people, but we don’t know their everyday attitudes or what their interpersonal relationships were like. Because that wasn’t the kind of thing that those people thought it was important to record for posterity. So maybe the best policy is just to read The Long Ships because it’s such a great adventure story, and not too much about exactly which century Orm belongs in.
