Outlaws and Viking Metal

I've been making my way through Robert Ferguson's book on the Viking period in European history, which talks about the common legal custom of turning people convicted of murder into outlaws. Being an outlaw in this case didn't mean you were put into a prison; instead, you were expected to leave the area for a certain period of time, and during that time, the relatives of the person you killed were allowed to hunt you down and kill you without being outlawed themselves. This view on enforcement led to some pretty interesting situations, where men who had been outlawed in one area became colonists somewhere else...and sometimes moved on to a third area, because they'd killed someone else.

To bring it back to the metal - because it's all about the metal - Erik the Red, the guy who led the European settlement of Greenland, was one such person; he had to leave Norway because of some killings, and settled in Iceland. Later on, he was outlawed in Iceland for killing a few other people in various disputes, and took the opportunity to set up a colony in Greenland while fleeing for his life. After reading about his journeys, I had to give Tyr's Eric the Red a listen, and that brought the story full circle back to violence with the song "Raymund Hin Unge," about a bad ass named Young Raymond who cares not for fancy garb and kills giants all by his lonesome:

Raymond walked along the salty beach
There he saw seven giants standing
“I will take Raymond on my smallest hand.
And throw him far offshore”
“You will not do that alone,” said Raymond
“You must come all seven of you,” said the young
Raymond

Raymond took his dear sword
The one he called the red Dimling
He hew the seven giants simultaneously
So that they bled to death
“There they lie, all seven of them,” said Raymond
“And I still stand here,” said the young Raymond

I Can No Longer Listen to Amon Amarth Outside the Home

...Or outside any situation where I am either doing domestic chores or eviscerating my enemies. I've developed quite an affection for With Oden on Our Side over the past few months, turning to it a number of times to help distract me from the drudgery of cleaning the massive pile of plates I've ignored all week first thing on a Saturday morning. In the process, I've come to discover it's a really good album, but almost entirely because of the lyrics: every song is either retelling of a Norse epic, a story of a saga, or a description of a battle, and all unrelentingly bad-ass. They're also just intelligible enough to pick out the words and sing along. The music, on the other hand, is woefully generic, providing just enough of a vehicle to support the words and propel them along.

All well and good, but when I'm focusing on something, all I really get is the music, sitting in a layer just below my conscious thought. My forty-five minutes of Viking-metal-fueled rush wimps out in a memory of dullish high speed strumming, with sweet lyrics like "Bear skin on my back/Wolf jaw on my head/Valhall awaits me/When I'm dead" consigned to some mental dustbin so I can concentrate, ruining the whole experience. So, resolved: if I can't scream along to the lyrics, it's not a good place to listen to Amon Amarth.

Hurray for Vikings

Amon Amarth's video for "Twilight of the Thunder God":



It's clear the band spent some money putting this together; the production value isn't quite Braveheart, but it'll do for a song about Vikings. My favorite part is where everything is inexplicably on fire: houses, spears, rims of shields - the later carried by someone who's still trying to use it for its original purpose - which gives a nice epic note to whatever the heck the two groups in this video are fighting about.

Oh, who am I kidding: songs and videos about Vikings rule.