the practice of child-spearing?
In Landnamabok (The Book of Settlements) ch 379, Olivir Child-Sparer is so named as he chose not to "have children tossed by spear-point as was the custom of vikings at the time." This sort-of non-deed/descriptive naming raises some questions, so let's NorsePlay this out:
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| [Viking Spear handforged by That Works.] |
Aside from a prospective father not picking up his presented newborn from the floor in order to claim them thus casting outdoors the unworthy infant for slow exposure to the elements and/or wild animal predation, what if a quicker option besides this was to spear them?
This naming could also be solely in a foreign context from when Olivir went a-viking seasonally, so perhaps on raids he spared spearing the newly-made orphans. In this case the resulting abandonment meant Olivir's name was critical of his possibly misplaced mercy.
And in the sagas many men are taken down by vengeful descendants, so this practice may just be a way of preemptively tying up those loose ends in the possible threads of fate.
Do the readings say that the children die from the 'spearing'?
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderfully grim question, Gold3spinner! The quote in the first paragraph above is the only reading I've yet run across that mentions this practice. Given the martial proficiency of the Norse, their invention of the Blood Eagle, and establishing their reputations to the point where foreign rulers would just pay out huge sums of silver to avoid being raided, I suspect it took many dead children of all ages to prove that they were not an empty threat.
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