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Okay, meandering and probably very long thread on how the Vikings of Assassin's Creed: Valhalla stack up against the history and literature of the era. Spoilers for everything in ACV, but I expect the thread to follow the general direction of the game plot...
So you can just stop reading if I've caught up to where you are. It's a big game, so this is going to go on for a while. I'm a Nordic literature PhD candidate - but this isn't exactly peer reviewed, so I could be wrong or just not know about things.
1. INTRODUCTION
This is going to be Sparknotes version of my intro to Snorre Sturlason's Heimskringla, an authored (as opposed to anonymous) collection of King's sagas dating to the 13th century. We're going to use Heimskringla to discuss the intro chapter of AC: Valhalla.
This is going to be Sparknotes version of my intro to Snorre Sturlason's Heimskringla, an authored (as opposed to anonymous) collection of King's sagas dating to the 13th century. We're going to use Heimskringla to discuss the intro chapter of AC: Valhalla.
Or rather, a small part of Heimskringla. The work itself is substantial, covering the lives and stories of Norwegian kings from pseudo-mythical origins up until the 12th century Civil War era. So the first question we must ask is whether Heimskringla constitutes -history-?
To which the answer, of course, is "well, it depends". Snorre obviously dabbled in poetry, but was also considered a historian of some renown. When he penned Heimskringla, it was intended as a work of history, adherent to the customs and norms of his own time.
Stylistically, he borrowed from the Sagas of Icelanders, which imbues Heimskringla with a stylistic prose most medieval works of history could never match. This, in part, is why it remains widely read, while those of its sources that can be identified at all, are usually ///
themselves consigned to history.
History writing and related concepts, like the notion of historical truth, are not fixed, but change over time. So while Snorre does not stand up to methodological scrutiny today, his authority remained largely unquestioned until the mid-1700s.
History writing and related concepts, like the notion of historical truth, are not fixed, but change over time. So while Snorre does not stand up to methodological scrutiny today, his authority remained largely unquestioned until the mid-1700s.
So we can trust Snorre's account insofar as that he wanted to impart the truth as best he could. But that doesn't mean it always happened exactly as he says! A potential rule of thumb is that his general account of larger happenings are roughly accurate, and become more so ///
the closer to his own time the narrative moves. But given the state of his sources, many of which were oral, the work contains a great deal of minutiae that simply can't be verified in any reasonable manner.
And also: His account of pre-history is essentially mythical.
And also: His account of pre-history is essentially mythical.
We also need to consider that Snorre wrote through a kind of filter. While he presumably wanted to preserve the beliefs of the Norse, he himself belongs to a tradition of learned Christianity, which shapes both his conception of the world, its history and the heathen past.
2. THE PROLOGUE
This describes stuff that happens until the in-game title display/vignette which typically marks the end of your "tutorial" or introductory chapter, which happens when you first leave for England. I had played for about 6 hours at this point.
This describes stuff that happens until the in-game title display/vignette which typically marks the end of your "tutorial" or introductory chapter, which happens when you first leave for England. I had played for about 6 hours at this point.
The game throws a lot of stuff at you early on, but it quickly coalesces into a path of revenge to restore your family's lost honor, directed towards early antagonist Kjotve. It seems the team at Ubisoft decided against fancy letters for accuracy - his name should be Kjøtve.
The narrative set-up is fairly well done - anyone who feels like Eivor is maniacally concerned with her honor to the point of seeming like a caricature should read an Icelander Saga. It captures - well enough, at least - many aspects of what we hold to be true of Norse culture.
Kjøtve is the first time ACV directly brushes against Snorre's account of things in Heimskringla. Valhalla is set it 872-873, against a largely fictional backdrop of regional conflict in Southwestern Norway* between protagonist Eivor and Kjøtve's rival "clans".
* A note: It seems futile to point out every concession made to ease and gameplay when it comes to the hypercompreased geography, as well as the occasionally made-up names of places. Additionally, historical research about the following events has revealed a long-standing ///
historiographical dispute, where Snorre takes a distinct side when he places the heartland of Harald Fairhair's rule in eastern Norway. ACV seems to be going the other way, based on some dialogue - or it's a slight alteration as a way to insert the player into the action.
Now we're entering spoiler territory, but true to Assassin's Creed tradition, Harald Fairhair (credited with unifying Norway) is featured as an NPC in ACV. Indicated both by the year and the presence of Kjøtve, it seems like ACV wants us to take part in The Battle of Hafrsfjord.
The Battle of Hafrsfjord was the final and decisive engagement in Fairhair's campaign of unification, where he - according to Snorre - defeated an alliance of petty kings from the southwestern regions of Norway, including one "Kjøtve the wealthy".
The account given by ACV and the more traditional Snorre account differ on a few key points:
According to Snorre, Fairhair's army, which he lead personally, ambushed the combined armies of petty kings Eirik, Sulke and Kjøtve at sea - it was a battle fought on ships and islets.
According to Snorre, Fairhair's army, which he lead personally, ambushed the combined armies of petty kings Eirik, Sulke and Kjøtve at sea - it was a battle fought on ships and islets.
In ACV, Fairhair outsources the battle to Eivor and her clan, but provides soldiers from his army. Also, it's an all-out assault on Kjøtve's stronghold, preceded by a bout of single combat where Eivor kills Kjøtve, who wields a pair of huge axes and throws wolf carcasses at her.
Kjøtve's ACV stronghold is called "Nottfall", which I take to be a clumsy translation of "Nightfall". Regardless of his inevitable demise at the hands of Eivor, ACV's Kjøtve is a great deal more imposing than the one described by Snorre.
By Snorre, Kjøtve is cast a merchant king, famous for his wealth more than his martial ability. The implication of the skaldic verse about the battle that Snorre quotes is that Kjøtve's role was to fund mercenaries (from France and Wales) in order to offset their numerical ///
disadvantage against the nascent king Fairhair. When the battle commences, Kjøtve is essentially written off as a coward, bordering on comic relief: While the other petty kings die fighting, he escapes to a small islet which could be easily defended.
Snorre doesn't elaborate - but he also doesn't need to, as the brief description of Kjøtve has laid bare the weakness of his character. So, in other words, ACV and Snorre present two very different versions of both the famous battle and of the less famous Kjøtve the Wealthy.
So what to make of this? To me, at least, this is the essential style of Assassin's Creed: Embellish minor characters to insert the overarching fiction of the universe into history. A lot can be said about how the Assasins and their progenitors, The Hidden Ones always seem to ///
be on the "right" side of history, despite assuming conflicting positions over the ages. You (accidentally?) pave the way for the definitive end of the Roman republic (Origins) but help establish the American and French (3, Unity), yet support the English monarchy (Syndicate).
But that's a different thread. Valhalla's handling of The Battle of Hafrsfjord and surrounding events is a function of how the Assassin's Creed games like to motivate their plots: Lost honor and/or revenge. The original AC epitomizes the former, AC2 the latter.
For that reason alone, it's strange that they haven't ventured into viking territory before now, because the prevalence and constant intermingling of honor and vengeance within Norse culture provides fertile ground for the kind of story the AC games want to tell.
Turning Kjøtve from a cowardly cipher of a minor character into a sadistically villainous enemy has the potentially unintended effect of making him much more interesting, even if it ultimately is done in service to the well-worn "templars bad, Assasins good" way of creating ///
an easily parseable, binary opposition that runs mostly unbroken through history. This essentially creates a system that works within "video game logic" out of history, which is usually messy, confusing and not at all characterized by clear-cut binary oppositions.
Kjøtve's reimagining happens on this basis, but despite being turned into a Bad Guy whose oathbreaking tendencies and lack of clemency is probably supposed to seem antithetical to Eivor and her compatriots, he nonetheless embodies a great deal more of the Norse ethos than ///
Snorre's cowardly merchant-king. Valhalla's Kjøtve could have been the subject of his own saga - few Saga heroes are clear-cut "good", but most adhere to a personal code that nonetheless maintain their honor (and the reader's sympathy). Some, like Gretti Saga, don't.
I doubt Kjøtve's Saga would, either.
Eivor's reason for leaving Norway at the close of the first chapter is well-presented and entirely in keeping with Snorre's account of the aftermath of the battle.
Eivor's reason for leaving Norway at the close of the first chapter is well-presented and entirely in keeping with Snorre's account of the aftermath of the battle.
With the holders of regional power thoroughly remade by Fairhair, a great deal of now disfavored chieftains simply gathered their followers and went west. Admittedly, the Harald Fairhair's Saga goes on to state that they largely left for the islands in or around Scotland, but ///
details schmetails! We also know that a great deal more in fact left for Iceland, as Fairhair solidifying his grip on the mainland spurred a significant wave of settling. It's of course not entirely inconceivable someone may have ended up farther south, like Eivor does.
And I think that wraps it up for today, with a small addendum: Sigurd - Eivor's brother - returns from a long trip as the game opens, having visited Miklagard. Most people probably knew, or guessed based on his new friends' accent, but this refers to Byzantium or Constantinople.
