[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] Linea adeps : 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.