Bravery was the major asset of ancient tamils.when we read our ancient literatures we at times even wonder whether such incidents happened or not.When we read mothers challenging to cut of the breasts which fed a cowardly son,when we read about women who chased away tigers using muram,we stand dumbfounded.As long as tamilnadu produced such brave men, we were a proud race.But somehow after 11th century we stopped producing such brave warriors.
I at times wondered whether such bravery was poets exaggeration or reality.But when i read about some other races, i found that they too produced such great warriors.Their bravery was not an inch lesser to that of ours.At its peak every civilization produced such brave warriors.I will write about one such race,the vikings.
This is a narrative by Ibn Fadlan-He was a courier of baghdad caliph.The year was 922.He starts his journey to bulgaria,but changes his direction and joins a group of vikings.Ibn fadlan himself comes from a glorious race.He belongs to the caliphate which proceeds to rule from france in west to lahore in east and south africa in south to russia in north.He comes from such a valiant race.But when he encounters vikings,he finds that ther valor is secondary to none.he writes about them as follows.
"Verily these huge men fight continuosuly.They are never at peace.They sing songs about their warfare and bravery and believe that death of a warrior is the highest honor"
when he writes about Buliwyf,the viking cheiftan it is only admiration.He writes about ruding,the sword of buliwyf which was as big as ibn fadlan himself.Fadlan says he couldnt even lift it,but buliwyf handled it with ease.
He also writes about the arrows of vikings which could easily pierce a huge oak tree and come out of the other side.
He writes about viking women too.When a man dies in war his woman also dies with him.She is usually strangulated and stabbed with swords,this is more painful than our "udankattai" but yet these women did that willingly.
He narrates that when buliwyf found his parents cruelly killed and his entire village burnt down--buliwyf did not cry.He was just thoughtful.Ibn fadlan never understood this.He even found buliwyf joking after some hours.Then he learns from herger,another viking,that death from war is a cause for celebration and not a cause for sorrowness.Vikings joke and celebrate death by war and mourn death by disease.In fact fadlan narrates that many vikings have never seen old men from their tribe.Men die when they are young.Old men are treated as cowards,for the fact that they lived to such an old age.One viking king rothgar lived to a very old age,and he is very sad for this.
The paradise of vikings resembles that of our veera swargam.when a viking dies he goes to paradise where he is bought to life by viking gods odin and thor.Then sword fights start with other warriors in dawn and continues till dusk.Then at evening the winners are decided and the dead are again bought to life.Then at night enjoyment starts with wine and women.Then again morning sword fight starts.This goes on perpetually.
Finally ibn fadlan narrates how vikings met other race-wendol-who were actually neanderthal men.War rages between wendol and vikings.There were only 13 vikings and they defended lots of women a nd children.wendols were large in number and were gijantic.But in end wendol are defated bu vikings with buliwyf sacrificing his life valiantly.
fadlan describes the viking houses as follows."inspite of the huge size of vikings,the gate to their huts was very small.even a mighty warrior has to crawl to enter the hut.But i learnt that this is done so that even a child can hide inside the hut and cut the head of an enemy who crawls inside"
More on this valiant race can be found from fadlan's manuscripts.Michael crichton has translated this into english in the title of "eaters of the dead".
Vikings achievement is no mean.They discovered america even before colombus,conquered and ruled russia and norway and were great seamen.But after 12th century they converted to christians and mixed with other europeans.