Considering his
long and illustrious career as a Germanic philologist, Tolkien scholar, and literary
critic, Tom Shippey’s latest work feels like the culmination of a number of papers
and monographs he’s published over the years on something that might be termed
the “heroic imaginary” of medieval Germanic literature. This began with Old English Verse (1972), in which
collection of essays “The Argument of Courage: Beowulf and Other Heroic Poetry” best articulated the ideas which
would find their final expression in the present volume. But although Laughing Shall I Die spends a chapter
focusing on the world of Hygelac and Hrothgar and the fall of the Scylding (or Skjöldung)
dynasty, the focus of the book is on the Viking age itself.
Shippey poses a question at the beginning
of the book: what was it that made the Vikings so feared and so effective,
despite the fact that they possessed few technological advantages over their
main opponents, who were from similarly warlike cultures and shared many
similar values? In answering this question, Shippey tries to steer between the “horns
on helmets” Romantic-era stereotypes as well as the more recent efforts to rehabilitate
“Viking culture” in academic circles. He argues for a Viking ethos (and for
Shippey “Viking” is a job-description, not the name of an entire culture)
characterized by complete self-control in the face of emotional duress, stoicism
in the face of “losing,” and understatement through prose but expression
through poetry.
Although this book engages freely with historical and
contemporary scholarly thought on the subject and does not shy away from the
occasional linguistic digression, Shippey has done an admirable job of making
this book accessible to non-academics. Full of good humor, irony, and enough
grisly murders and dynastic struggles to satiate even the modern and enlightened
appetite for such things, the only thing you need to enjoy this book is an
interest in the people who called themselves Vikings.
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