D&D 5E We're Ready For The Thirteenth Warrior Campaign Setting

[SirAntoine]

It's as important to note that the Rus were actually viking merchants/raiders. The locals were Slavs, a different culture, and one dominated by the villages the Rus built as trade centers.

(And that the Rus were basically made into the Russian nobility by Gengis Khan.)

I think the Rus were merchants and settlers themselves. The Vikings would pass through and trade with them, and be given hospitality. They weren't so much allies of the Vikings as saying to them if they sail farther there are really big, rich targets.

Genghis Khan did provide for the eventual rise of Russia through supporting the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The Slavs were as much a part of this culture as the Rus or anyone else, though they mainly originate farther southwest around Ukraine and Bulgaria.

 

[SirAntoine]

Actually, Ibn Fahdlan was originally sent from Baghdad to what is now Bulgaria, but along the way is drafted into going to Scandinavia with the Northmen.

Those cultures were spread through there, though, and the Rus were visitors to where Ibn was sent.

 

[Klaus]

Those cultures were spread through there, though, and the Rus were visitors to where Ibn was sent.

Yes, definitely.

 

[Zaukrie]

Love that movie

 

[Beleriphon]

Well, no, not whole cloth, or it wouldn't be his take on Beowulf. It has the basic plot structure but tries to ground the superstitions in a reality. Grendel, the mother, then the dragon, for instance, are all represented in mortal analogs. The hero dies in the end. As Beowulf, the epic not the hero, is suspected to have been co-opted by missionaries somewhere along the way and given some Christian elements, Crichton presents Eaters of the Dead through the eyes of an outsider with a different religion than those people at the center of the tale. It's anything but whole cloth.

Well, yes I know that its his take on Beowulf. My whole cloth comment is more towards the way its presented as an actual translation of a real man's tale. The footnotes and such go a long way to make it seem as though Chrichton had written it from notes he'd found and translated (or had translated) rather than making up the historical aspects entirely. He basically turned Grendel into lost group of homo neanderthalis, which has no basis in history and Bulwyf is of course not a real person.

Yes, Ahmad ibn Fadlan was a real person. Yes, he really did meet Viking and the Rus people. Yes, he did travel all over Central and Eastern Europe. No, he didn't fight crazy neanderthals in Northern Europe with a bunch of Vikings. That being said, the real man's own accounts do actually include the ship burial and a back and forth where a Viking calls the Fadlan a weirdo for want to let the dead be eaten by worms rather than incinerated and let into paradise immediately. So, if anything I'd take Eaters of the Dead and The 13th Warrior as a fairly accurate view of how 10th century Vikings actually lived.

Here's the quote I mentioned:

"One of the Rūsiyyah stood beside me and I heard him speaking to my interpreter. I quizzed him about what he had said, and he replied, “He said, ‘You Arabs are a foolish lot!’” So I said, “Why is that?” and he replied, “Because you purposely take those who are dearest to you and whom you hold in highest esteem and throw them under the earth, where they are eaten by the earth, by vermin and by worms, whereas we burn them in the fire there and then, so that they enter Paradise immediately"

 

[aramis erak]

I think the Rus were merchants and settlers themselves. The Vikings would pass through and trade with them, and be given hospitality. They weren't so much allies of the Vikings as saying to them if they sail farther there are really big, rich targets.

Genghis Khan did provide for the eventual rise of Russia through supporting the Grand Duchy of Moscow. The Slavs were as much a part of this culture as the Rus or anyone else, though they mainly originate farther southwest around Ukraine and Bulgaria.

Nope. The Rus WERE those early viking traders. More viking traders continued to come through after Gengis Khan made them a principality of the Golden Horde, but the Rus themselves were not Slavs, but Northmen (Norsk) or Sweedes. And, pretty much, from that point on, the Russian nobility were and remained mostly foreigners to the peasantry. There was much hybridizing, however, of the Rus' and pre-Rus Slavic cultures. One of the big differences was that the Kyïvan Rūs' was christianized a century before the other Northmen, and that the relations with the slavs themselves generally weren't hostile; other places where the Vikings went were somewhat less happy - Ireland, Scotland, England all have horrible runs with "are they here to trade to raid today"... and the difference often was a matter of "Are the locals demands in trade insulting?" and "is the church undefended?"

But you must also remember: Viking is a verb... to wander. With connotations of "to wander looking for trade and/or plunder".... and the culture that sent them out starts around 700AD, flourishes from 800 until Harald Christianizes the Danes (1104) and the Norwegians and Sweedes follow suit within 70 years, and declines slowly through to the 1400's, when the Christian subcultures within those lands become firmly dominant. Their own name for themselves as wanderers is just the norse form of "Those who wander"...

I highly recommend Basil Dmytryshyn's Medieval Russia: A Sourcebook.

 

[Mark CMG]

My whole cloth comment is more towards the way its presented as an actual translation of a real man's tale.

Beowulf is no one man's real tale, neither as the story of a man nor the story by a man. It was part of an oral tradition that changed many times over the centuries of telling, so Chrichton changing it even further is just part of that tradition.

 

[Beleriphon]

Beowulf is no one man's real tale, neither as the story of a man nor the story by a man. It was part of an oral tradition that changed many times over the centuries of telling, so Chrichton changing it even further is just part of that tradition.

Sorry, I rather meant that the tale is presented as real events as perceived Ahmad ibn Fadlan which is of course not true. Eaters of the Dead is particularly bad about not making that perfectly clear.

 

[Mark CMG]

Sorry, I rather meant that the tale is presented as real events as perceived Ahmad ibn Fadlan which is of course not true. Eaters of the Dead is particularly bad about not making that perfectly clear.

I'm still missing your point, I think. Whatever version of Beowulf one could have learned, it seemingly always has been as a narrative by one person telling the tale of Beowulf. The general thinking is that the one first written down of which we know had some particular additions to it that were religiously Christian, and many agree those are awkward in the overall context of the narrative. Like product placement, it can be at times subtle but at other times stand out as not original to the tale.

Nevertheless, Crichton merely adjusts the focus/POV we've seen in most Beowulf films back for his text to a first hand account by a religious narrator, though he switches to Islam. He may have done this because many versions of Beowulf already have touches of Christian add-ons (mostly, purposefully awkward and imposing). I am guessing he did what good storytellers do and find a way to make the narrating-protagonist sympathetic. He's there to observe and from a culture looking (at that time) to expand trade, not proselytize.

When you think about it, the narrative viewpoint of The 13th Warrior (Eaters of the Dead, but the film is the topic of the thread I guess) is closer to the first written Beowulf of which we know than most other film versions in that they all bypass the original narrator and zoom into the tale to make us the narrator, so to speak, and any mention in such films of the semi-religious narrator we know from that first written version is either cut out altogether or turned into a sort of punchline.

 

[Beleriphon]

I'm still missing your point, I think. Whatever version of Beowulf one could have learned, it seemingly always has been as a narrative by one person telling the tale of Beowulf. The general thinking is that the one first written down of which we know had some particular additions to it that were religiously Christian, and many agree those are awkward in the overall context of the narrative. Like product placement, it can be at times subtle but at other times stand out as not original to the tale.

Eaters of the Dead is presented as though its events actually happened to Ahmad ibn Fadlan's during his travels. I think we both agree that during his very real travels from Baghdad to Moscow ibn Fadlan did not encounter any neanderthals, nor did he journey with Northmen to fight said fictional neanderthals.

My overarching point the whole time has been that Michael Chrichton's novel uses an actual person that really did tavel from Baghdad to Moscow and really did encounter Vikings of all stripes as the narrator of a fiction that closely follows the story of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.

So my whole point is that yes I know Eaters of the Dead and The 13th Warrior are basically Michael Chritchon's riff on Beowulf. However, the novel makes it seem like the story is based on actual real world events that happened in history but was a lost part of Ahmad ibn Fadlan's writings about his journey to Moscow.