Michael Crichton - Eaters of the Dead

[27]This passage is apparently the source of the 1869 comment by the scholarly Rev. Noel Harleigh that “among the barbaric Vikings, morality was so perversely inverted that their sense of alms was the dues paid to weapons-makers.” Harleigh’s Victorian assurance exceeded his linguistic knowledge. The Norse word alm means elm, the resilient wood from which the Scandinavians made bows and arrows. It is only by chance that this word also has an English meaning. (The English “alms” meaning charitable donations is usually thought to derive from the Greek eleos , to pity.)

[28] Linea adeps : literally, “fat line.” Although the anatomical wisdom of the passage has never been questioned by soldiers in the thousand years since-for the midline of the body is where the most vital nerves and vessels are all found-the precise derivation of the term has been mysterious. In this regard, it is interesting to note that one of the Icelandic sagas mentions a wounded warrior in 1030 who pulls an arrow from his chest and sees bits of flesh attached to the point; he then says that he still has fat around his heart. Most scholars agree that this is an ironic comment from a warrior who knows that he has been mortally wounded, and this makes good anatomical sense.

In 1847, the American historian Robert Miller referred to this passage of Ibn Fadlan when he said, “Although ferocious warriors, the Vikings had a poor knowledge of physiognomy. Their men were instructed to seek out the vertical midline of the opponent’s body, but in doing so, of course, they would miss the heart, positioned as it is in the left chest.”

The poor knowledge must be attributed to Miller, and not the Vikings. For the last several hundred years, ordinary Western men had believed the heart to be located in the left chest; Americans put their hands over their hearts when they pledge allegiance to the flag; we have a strong folk tradition of soldiers being saved from death by a Bible carried in the breast pocket that stops the fatal bullet, and so on. In fact, the heart is a midline structure that extends to varying degrees into the left chest; but a midline wound in the chest will always pierce the heart.

[29]According to divine law, Muslims believe that “the Messenger of God has forbidden cruelty to animals.” This extends to such mundane details as the commandment to unload pack animals promptly, so that they will not be unnecessarily burdened. Furthermore, the Arabs have always taken a special delight in breeding and training horses. The Scandinavians had no special feeling toward animals; nearly all Arab observers commented on their lack of affection for horses.

[30]Most early translators of Ibn Fadlan’s manuscript were Christians with no knowledge of Arabic culture, and their interpretation of this passage reflects that ignorance. In a very free translation, the Italian Lacalla (1847) says: “In the morning I arose from my drunken stupor like a common dog, and was much ashamed for my condition.” And Skovmand, in his 1919 commentary, brusquely concludes that “one cannot place credence in Ibn Fadlan’s stories, for he was drunk during the battles, and admits as much.” More charitably, Du Chatellier, a confirmed Vikingophile, said in 1908: “The Arab soon acquired the intoxication of the battle that is the very essence of the Norse heroic spirit.”

I am indebted to Massud Farzan, the Sufi scholar, for explaining the allusion that Ibn Fadlan is making here. Actually, he is comparing himself to a character in a very old Arabic joke:

A drunken man falls into a puddle of his own vomit by the roadside. A dog comes along and begins licking his face. The drunk assumes a kind person is cleaning his face, and says gratefully, “May Allah make your children obedient.” Then the dog raises his leg and urinates on the drunkard, who responds, “And may God bless you, brother, for having brought warm water to wash my face.”

In Arabic, the joke carries the usual injunction against drunkenness, and the subtle reminder that liquor is khmer , or filth, as is urine.

Ibn Fadlan probably expected his reader to think, not that he was ever drunk, but rather that he luckily avoided being urinated upon by the dog, as he earlier escaped death in battle: it is a reference, in other words, to another near miss.

[31]Urine is a source of ammonia, an excellent cleaning compound.

[32]Some authorities on mythology argue that the Scandinavians did not originate this idea of an eternal battle, but rather that this is a Celtic concept. Whatever the truth, it is perfectly reasonable that Ibn Fadlan’s companions should have adopted the concept, for the Scandinavians had been in contact with Celts for over a hundred and fifty years at this time.

[33](…) literally, “desert of dread.” In a paper in 1927, J. G. Tomlinson pointed out that precisely the same phrase appears in the Volsunga Saga , and therefore argued at length that it represented a generic term for taboo lands. Tomlinson was apparently unaware that the Volsunga Saga says nothing of the sort; the nineteenth-century translation of William Morris indeed contains the line “There is a desert of dread in the uttermost part of the world,” but this line was Morris’s own invention, appearing in one of the many passages where he expanded upon the original Germanic saga.

[34]The Islamic injunction against alcohol is literally an injunction against the fermented fruit of the grape; i.e., wine. Fermented drinks of honey are specifically permitted to Muslims.

[35]The usual psychiatric explanation for such fears of loss of body parts is that they represent castration anxiety. In a 1937 review, Deformations of Body Image in Primitive Societies , Engelhardt observes that many cultures are explicit about this belief. For example, the Nanamani of Brazil punish sexual offenders by cutting off the left ear; this is thought to reduce sexual potency. Other societies attach significance to the loss of fingers, toes, or, in the case of the Northmen, the nose. It is a common superstition in many societies that the size of a man’s nose reflects the size of his penis.

Emerson argues that the importance accorded the nose by primitive societies reflects a vestigial attitude from the days when men were hunters and relied heavily upon a sense of smell to find game and avoid enemies; in such a life, the loss of smell was a serious injury indeed.

[36]In the Mediterranean, from Egyptian times, dwarves were thought especially intelligent and trustworthy, and tasks of bookkeeping and money-handling were reserved to them.

[37]Of approximately ninety skeletons that can be confidently ascribed to the Viking period in Scandinavia, the average height appears to be about 170 centimeters (5’7”).

[38]Dahlmann (1924) writes that “for ceremonial occasions the ram was eaten to increase potency, since the horned male animal was judged superior to the female.” In fact, during this period both rams and ewes had horns.

[39]Joseph Cantrell observes that “there is a strain in Germanic and Norse mythology which holds that women have special powers, qualities of magic, and should be feared and mistrusted by men. The principal gods are all men, but the Valkyries, which means literally ‘choosers of the slain,’ are women who transport dead warriors to Paradise. It was believed that there were three Valkyries, as there were three Norns, or Fates, which were present at the birth of every man, and determined the outcome of his life. The Norns were named Urth, the past; Verthandi, the present; and Skuld, the future. The Norns ‘wove’ a man’s fate, and weaving was a woman’s work; in popular representations they were shown as young maidens. Wyrd, an Anglo-Saxon deity which ruled fate, was also a goddess. Presumably the association of women with man’s fate was a permutation of earlier concepts of women as fertility symbols; the goddesses of fertility controlled the growing and flowering of crops and living things on the earth.”