A Scandinavian Cremation-Ceremony

Extract

Many years ago, when searching for accounts of cremations which might illustrate those described by Homer, I came across a paper by the late Dr Joseph Anderson, entitled ‘ Ceremonies at the Incremation of a Norse Chief ’, read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1872. A large part of it consists of a translation, apparently the only one in English, of the narrative of an Arab, Ahmad bin Fudhlan, who early in the 10th century visited a Scandinavian settlement on the Volga and there witnessed the cremation of the body of a chief. Though it attracted much attention at the time and is of great intrinsic interest, Anderson’s paper is now virtually unknown, and except for Orientalists the important Arab document is available only in Holmboe’s Danish version, from which Anderson made his translation, and in Fraehn’s German translation of 1823, As Anderson’s translation was not made from the Arabic, was slightly expurgated, and is not very accessible, it seems worth while to publish a new translation made from the original text by Miss Charis Waddy. This was originally intended to form an appendix to an article on cremation in the Aegaean area and in Homer which had appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, but proved to be too long. I am grateful for the opportunity of publishing it, almost simultaneously, in Antiquity, for it supports the point which I sought to establish, viz. : that for all the glamour thrown over it by Homer, cremation of the dead is naturally associated with a somewhat barbaric culture, and in the case of the Greeks was mainly practised at an early date and by the more backward members of the race.