Eaters of the Dead

About the Author

Michael Crichton was born in Chicago in 1942. His novels include The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Congo, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, and Airframe. He is also the creator of the television series ER.

Notes

NOTE: The unprintable Arabic script found in the footnotes of the original paper version has been rendered as “(…)” in this e-text version. -Russell

[1] Throughout the manuscript, Ibn Fadlan is inexact about the size and composition of his party. Whether this apparent carelessness reflects his assumption that the reader knows the composition of the caravan, or whether it is a consequence of lost passages of the text, one cannot be sure. Social conventions may also be a factor, for Ibn Fadlan never states that his party is greater than a few individuals, when in fact it probably numbered a hundred people or more, and twice as many horses and camels. But Ibn Fadlan does not count-literally-slaves, servants, and lesser members of the caravan.

[2] Farzan, an unabashed admirer of Ibn Fadlan, believes that this paragraph reveals “the sensibility of a modern anthropologist, recording not only the customs of a people, but the mechanisms which act to enforce those customs. The economic meaning of killing a nomad leader’s horses is the approximate equivalent of modern death-taxes; that is, it tends to retard the accumulation of inherited wealth in a family. Although demanded by religion, this could not have been a popular practice, any more than it is during the present day. Ibn Fadlan most astutely demonstrates the way it is imposed upon the reluctant.”

[3] Actually, Ibn Fadlan’s word for them here was “Rus,” the name of this particular tribe of Northmen. In the text, he sometimes calls the Scandinavians by their particular tribal name, and sometimes he calls them “Varangians” as a generic term. Historians now reserve the term Varangian for the Scandinavian mercenaries employed by the Byzantine Empire. To avoid confusion, in this translation the terms “Northmen” and “Norsemen” are everywhere employed.

[4] Arabs have always been uneasy about translating the Koran. The earliest sheiks held that the holy book could not be translated, an injunction apparently based on religious considerations. But everyone who has attempted a translation agrees for the most secular reasons: Arabic is by nature a succinct language, and the Koran is composed as poetry and therefore even more concentrated. The difficulties of conveying literal meaning-to say nothing of the grace and elegance of the original Arabic-have led translators to preface their work with prolonged and abject apologies.

At the same time, Islam is an active, expansive way of thought, and the tenth century was one of its peak periods of dissemination. This expansion inevitably necessitated translations for the use of new converts, and translations were made, but never happily from the standpoint of the Arabs.

[5] This alone was startling to an Arab observer from a warm climate. Muslim practice called for quick burial, often the same day as the death, after a short ceremony of ritual washing and prayer.

[6] Or, possibly, “crazed.” The Latin manuscripts read cerritus, but the Arabic of Yakut says (…), “dazed” or “dazzled.”

[7] Interestingly, in both Arabic and Latin, literally “disease.”

[8] The perils of translation are demonstrated in this sentence. The original Arabic of Yakut reads (…) and means literally “There is no name I can speak.” The Xymos manuscript employs the Latin verb dare, with the meaning “I cannot give it a name,” implying that the interpreter does not know the correct word in a non-Norse tongue. The Razi manuscript, which also contains the interpreter’s speeches in fuller detail, uses the word edere, with the meaning “There is no name that I can make known [to you].” This is the more correct translation. The Northman is literally afraid to say the word, lest it call up demons. In Latin, edere has the sense of “giving birth to” and “calling up,” as well as its literal meaning, “to put forth.” Later paragraphs confirm this sense of the meaning.

[9] Wulfgar was left behind. Jensen states the Northmen commonly held a messenger as hostage, and this is why “appropriate messengers were the sons of kings, or high nobles, or other persons who had some value to their own community, thus making them fitting hostages.” Olaf Jorgensen argues that Wulfgar remained behind because he was afraid to go back.

[10] Some early authors apparently thought this meant that the sail was hemmed in rope; there are eighteenth-century drawings that show the Viking sails with rope borderings. There is no evidence that this was the case; Ibn Fadlan meant that the sails were trimmed in the nautical sense; i.e., angled to best catch the wind, by the use of sealskin ropes as halyards.

[11] This is a typically Muslim sentiment. Unlike Christianity, a religion which in many ways it resembles, Islam does not emphasize a concept of original sin arising from the fall of man. Sin for a Muslim is forgetfulness in carrying out the prescribed daily rituals of the religion. As a corollary, it is a more serious offense to forget the ritual entirely than to remember the ritual and yet fail to carry it out either through extenuating circumstances or personal inadequacy. Thus Ibn Fadlan is saying, in effect, that he is mindful of proper conduct even though he is not acting according to it; this is better than nothing.

[12] Other eyewitness accounts disagree with Ibn Fadlan’s description of the treatment of slaves and adultery, and therefore some authorities question his reliability as a social observer. In fact there was probably substantial local variation, from tribe to tribe, in the accepted treatment of slaves and unfaithful wives.

[13] There is some dispute among modern scholars about the origin of the term “Viking,” but most agree with Ibn Fadlan, that it derives from “vik,” meaning a creek or narrow river.

[14] The accuracy of Ibn Fadlan’s reporting is confirmed here by direct archaeological evidence. In 1948 the military site of Trelleborg, in western Zealand in Denmark, was excavated. The site corresponds exactly to Ibn Fadlan’s description of the size, nature, and structure of the settlement.

[15] Literally, “a two-handed man.” As will be clear later, the Northmen were ambidextrous in fighting, and to shift weapons from one hand to another was considered an admirable trick. Thus a two-handed man is cunning. A related meaning was once attached to the word “shifty,” which now means deceitful and evasive, but formerly had a more positive sense of “resourceful, full of maneuvers.”

[16] This account of what is obviously a sighting of whales is disputed by many scholars. It appears in the manuscript of Razi as it is here, but in Sjogren’s translation it is much briefer, and in it the Northmen are shown as playing an elaborate joke upon the Arab. The Northmen knew about whales and distinguished them from sea monsters, according to Sjogren. Other scholars, including Hassan, doubt that Ibn Fadlan could be unaware of the existence of whales, as he appears to be here.

[17] Popular representations of the Scandinavians always show them wearing helmets with horns. This is an anachronism; at the time of Ibn Fadlan’s visit, such helmets had not been worn for more than a thousand years, since the Early Bronze Age.

[18] The described figurine corresponds closely to several carvings discovered by archaeologists in France and Austria.

[19] Ducerespiritu : literally, “to inhale.”

[20] This is not the same “angel of death” who was with the Northmen on the banks of the Volga. Apparently each tribe had an old woman who performed shamanistic functions and was referred to as “the angel of death.” It is thus a generic term.

[21] The Scandinavians were apparently more impressed by the stealth and viciousness of the creatures than the fact of their cannibalism. Jensen suggests that cannibalism might be abhorrent to the Norsemen because it made entry into Valhalla more difficult; there is no evidence for this view.

However, for Ibn Fadlan, with his extensive erudition, the notion of cannibalism may have implied some difficulties in the afterlife. The Eater of the Dead is a well-known creature of Egyptian mythology, a fearsome beast with the head of a crocodile, the trunk of a lion, and the back of a hippopotamus. This Eater of the Dead devours the wicked after their Judgment.

It is worth remembering that for most of man’s history, ritual cannibalism, in one form or another, for one reason or another, was neither rare nor remarkable. Peking man and Neanderthal man were both apparently cannibals; so were, at various times, the Scythians, the Chinese, the Irish, the Peruvians, the Mayoruna, the Jagas, the Egyptians, the Australian aborigines, the Maoris, the Greeks, the Hurons, the Iroquois, the Pawnees, and the Ashanti.

During the time Ibn Fadlan was in Scandinavia, other Arab traders were in China, where they recorded that human flesh-referred to as “two-legged mutton”-was openly and legally sold in markets.

Martinson suggests that the Northmen found the wendol cannibalism repellent because they believed that the flesh of warriors was fed to women, particularly the mother of the wendol. There is no evidence for this view, either, but it would certainly make a Norse warrior’s death more shameful.

[22] An Arab would be especially inclined to think so, for Islamic religious art tends to be nonrepresentational, and in quality similar to much Scandinavian art, which often seems to favor pure design. However, the Norsemen had no injunction against representing gods, and often did so.

[23] (…): literally, “veins.” The Arabic phrase has led to some scholarly errors; E. D. Graham has written, for example, that “the Vikings foretold the future by a ritual of cutting the veins of animals and spreading them on the ground.” This is almost certainty wrong; the Arabic phrase for cleaning an animal is “cutting the veins,” and Ibn Fadlan was here referring to the widespread practice of divination by examination of entrails. Linguists, who deal with such vernacular phrases all the time, are fond of discrepancies in meaning; a favorite example of Halstead’s is the English warning “Look out!” which usually means that one should do exactly the opposite and dive for cover.

[24] Circumcision.

[25] Ibn Fadlan does not describe a basilisk, apparently assuming that his readers are familiar with the mythological creature, which appears in the early beliefs of nearly all Western cultures. Also known as a cockatrice, the basilisk is generally a variety of cock with a serpent’s tail and eight legs, and sometimes bearing scales instead of feathers. What is always true of the basilisk is that his stare is deadly, like the stare of a Gorgon; and the venom of the basilisk is particularly lethal. According to some accounts, a person who stabs a basilisk will watch the venom travel up the sword and onto his hand. The man will then be obliged to cut off his own hand to save his body.

It is probably this sense of the danger of the basilisk that prompts its mention here. The old noble is telling Ibn Fadlan that a direct confrontation with the troublemakers will not solve the problem. Interestingly, one way to dispatch a basilisk was to let it see its reflected image in a mirror; it would then be killed by its own stare.

[26] (…) in Arabic, and in the Latin texts, verbera. Both words meaning “flogging” or “whipping,” and not “flinging,” as this passage is ordinarily translated. It is usually assumed that Ibn Fadlan used the metaphor of “whipping” with dirt to emphasize the ferocity of the insult, which is clear enough in any case. However, he may have consciously or unconsciously transmitted a distinctly Scandinavian attitude toward insults.

Another Arab reporter, al-Tartushi, visited the town of Hedeby in A.D. 950, and said this about the Scandinavians: “They are most peculiar in the matter of punishment. They have only three penalties for wrongdoing. The first of these and the most feared is banishment from the tribe. The second is to be sold into slavery and the third is death. Women who do wrong are sold as slaves. Men always prefer death. Flogging is unknown to the Northmen.”

This view is not precisely shared by Adam of Bremen, a German ecclesiastical historian, who wrote in 1075: “If women have been found unchaste, they are sold off at once, but if men are found guilty of treason or any other crime, they prefer to be beheaded than flogged. No form of punishment other than the axe or slavery is known to them.”

The historian Sjogren places great importance on Adam’s statement that men would prefer to be beheaded rather than flogged. This would seem to suggest that flogging was known among the Northmen; and he argues further that it was most likely a punishment for slaves. “Slaves are property, and it is economically unwise to kill them for minor offenses; surely whipping was an accepted form of punishment to a slave. Thus it may be that warriors viewed whipping as a degraded penalty because it was reserved for slaves.” Sjogren also argues that “all we know of Viking life points to a society founded upon the idea of shame, not guilt, as the negative behavioral pole. Vikings never felt guilt about anything, but they defended their honor fiercely, and would avoid a shameful act at any cost. Passively submitting to the whip must have been adjudged shameful in the extreme, and far worse than death itself.”

These speculations carry us back to Ibn Fadlan’s manuscript, and his choice of the words “whipping with dirt.” Since the Arab is so fastidious, one might wonder whether his words reflect an Islamic attitude. In this regard, we should remember that while Ibn Fadlan’s world was certainly divided into clean and dirty things and acts, soil itself was not necessarily dirty. On the contrary, tayammum, ablution with dust or sand, is carried out whenever ablution with water is not possible. Thus Ibn Fadlan had no particular abhorrence of soil on one’s person; he would have been much more upset if he were asked to drink from a gold cup, which was strictly forbidden.

[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] Lineaadeps : 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.”

Cantrell also notes that “in practice, we know that divination, spellcasting, and other shamanistic functions were reserved to elderly women in Norse society. Furthermore, popular ideas of women contained a heavy element of suspicion. According to the Harvamal, ‘No one should trust the words of a girl or a married woman, for their hearts have been shaped on a turning wheel and they are inconstant by nature.’ ”

Bendixon says, “Among the early Scandinavians there was a kind of division of power according to sex. Men ruled physical affairs; women, psychological matters.”

[40] This is a paraphrase of a sentiment among the Northmen, expressed fully as: “Praise not the day until evening has come; a woman until she is burnt; a sword until it is tried; a maiden until she is married; ice until it has been crossed; beer until it has been drunk.” This prudent, realistic, and somewhat cynical view of human nature and the world was something the Scandinavians and the Arabs shared. And like the Scandinavians, the Arabs often express it in mundane or satiric terms. There is a Sufi story about a man who asked a sage: “Suppose I am traveling in the countryside and must make ablutions in the stream. Which direction do I face while performing the ritual?” To this the sage replies: “In the direction of your clothes, so they won’t be stolen.”

[41] In the Faeroe Islands of Denmark, a similar method of scaling cliffs is still practiced to gather bird eggs, an important source of food to the islanders.

[42] This description of the physical features of the wendol has sparked a predictable debate. See Appendix.

[43] Lectulus.

[44] Fenestraporcus : literally, “pig window.” The Norsemen used stretched membranes instead of glass to cover narrow windows; these membranes were translucent. One could not see much through them, but light would be admitted into houses.

[45] This section of the manuscript is pieced together from the manuscript of Razi, whose chief interest was military techniques. Whether or not Ibn Fadlan knew, or recorded, the significance of Buliwyf’s reappearance is unknown. Certainly Razi did not include it, although the significance is obvious enough. In Norse mythology, Odin is popularly represented as bearing a raven on each shoulder. These birds bring him all the news of the world. Odin was the principal deity of the Norse pantheon and was considered the Universal Father. He ruled especially in matters of warfare; it was believed that from time to time he would appear among men, although rarely in his godlike form, preferring to assume the appearance of a simple traveler. It was said that an enemy would be scared away simply by his presence.

Interestingly, there is a story about Odin in which he is killed and resurrected after nine days; most authorities believe this idea antedates any Christian influence. In any case, the resurrected Odin was still mortal, and it was believed that he would someday finally die.

[46] The classic popular account of Evans and Schliemann is C. W. Ceram (Kurt W. Marek), Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1967.

[47] M. I. Finley, TheWorld of Odysseus, Viking Press, New York, 1965.

[48] Lionel Casson, TheAncient Mariners, Sea Farers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times, Macmillan, New York, 1959.

[49] Among the many discussions of Viking society for the general reader, see: D. M. Wilson, The Vikings, London, 1970; J. Brondsted, The Vikings, London, 1965; P. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings, London, 1962; P. G. Foote and D. M. Wilson, The Viking Achievement, London, 1970. Some of these references quote passages from Ibn Fadlan’s manuscript.

[50] To my knowledge there are still only two principal sources in English. The first is the text fragments I read as an undergraduate: Robert Blake and Richard Frye, “The Vikings Abroad and at Home,” in Carleton S. Coon, A Reader in General Anthropology, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1952, pp. 410-416. The second source is Robert P. Blake and Richard N. Frye, “Notes on the Risala of Ibn-Fadlan,” ByzantinaMetabyzantina , 1949, v.1 part 2, New York, pp. 7-37. I am grateful to Professor Frye for his assistance during the first publication of this book, and this recent revision.

[51] For trends in post-modern academic thought, see, for example, Pauline Marie Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions, Princeton, New Jersey, 1992; and H. Aram Veser, ed., The New Historicism, Routledge, New York, 1989.