Things About Death that We Learn From Viking Warriors
What is the key to the Viking fame which has last for centuries? One point of view is the Viking opinion upon death that fostered the development of a monster spirit within every warrior. This blog post discusses things about death that we can learn from the Viking warriors.
"It's only death"
Whether you have already known it or not, the Vikings didn't fear death.
The reason why we fear death is because we are not sure what will happen when we die. People always fear what they don't understand, don't they?
But the Vikings were completely different. They had the picture of their afterlife. They had in their mind about the place - where they would go when they passed away. It is universally accepted that death hurt both the deceased and the living. The Vikings mourned for the deceased. But because their beloved deceased had gone to a better afterlife, they would be happy about that.
Death is no big deal
As we know, the Vikings had desired to join the gods in Valhalla since their childhood. Valhalla was the great hall of Odin the Allfather up in Asgard. There, Odin host the fallen warriors who bravely fought and died in battle.
This is why the Vikings were forever ready to fight in the battle in the bravest way until their last breath. Nothing could break their spirit and hinder their ambition of joining the gods in Valhalla. This made the Vikings superior on the battlefield.
"If we fear death, we allow it to enslave us"
This point might somewhat overlap the aforementioned one but it's still worth discussing. That the Vikings didn't want to become the slave of the death might root in the Norse mythology.
In Norse mythology, Hel daughter of Loki ruled over Helheim land of death. No one wanted to join her in Helheim for the army of Hel would fight against the gods when Ragnarok broke in the sky.
The fallen warriors were the army of gods. And if they feared death, they couldn't join Valhalla. They would spend their afterlife living with Hel in Helheim and took part in the army of the dead against their own gods.
They were defeated as Vikings by Christianity, which in my opinion tends to feminize and weaken men and make them more subservient to others and controllable. Defeatable. With Christianity, their “salvation” to a better life/world, could more easily be taken away. I think something similar happened in the Roman Empire with other factors mixed in. I am really not sure if Christianity overall more helped this world, or hurt it. Tend to think that overall, more damage was done than good. I believe in a Creator/First Cause and tend to relate to such as Mother/Father, but don’t think the Source is all that impressed with Church down through the ages or it’s counterpart Mithraism.
What a ridiculous statement history moves on other states and cultures absorbed the vikings all religions are formulated to encompass the people to unify them through fear and education so that the few can control the many. The warrior spirit still exists but is contained within laws so that clever people can control these emotions to suit themselves. Let us pray that there is a god or gods so that eventually justice may be levied against those who have through the suffering of the many may receive just vengeance.
Being so feared, brave in battle and conquerors, what or how is it that they were defeated and fizzled out into history.
Ich würde gerne mehr erfahren !!!