Narrative without Borders

Abstract

My mother grew up in the district of Härjedalen in northern Sweden. Her small but picturesque village, Överhogdal, was given a modest mention in history books when, at the beginning of last century, a tapestry was found there dating back to 1040–1170. It had remained hidden away in a church storage room (apparently a piece of it had been used as a doll’s blanket by a village girl) for more than a thousand years. Detailed and richly decorated, the Överhogdal tapestry depicts life in the Viking Age. In its woven design it is possible to read fragments of the past and predominantly they show herds of animals, as well as people on the move. There are people on foot, on horseback, as well as longboats. The extent to which the Vikings explored the breadth of the Atlantic is disputable, although there is said to be evidence of early Norse settlement at the beginning of the eleventh century on the far northern tip in Newfoundland (Winchester, 82). How much of the Atlantic the Norse men explored we do not know for sure, but this tapestry with its longboats reminds us of the role the ocean played in their imagination, despite the fact that many, like those in Härjedalen, lived inland. Even those who lived near an Atlantic shore would most likely have been unaware of its extraordinary expanse and instead they would have relied on stories about sea monsters and other dangers associated with this massive body of water.