Vinland in Valhalla
When given the opportunity to choose my own final project for a Race in Antiquity-based class, I knew I wanted to focus on the video game I was currently playing, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Trying to base this game on actual primary sources from its own period was much easier than I expected, as there are two extremely well-known Nordic sagas detailing the Vikings’ journey at the turn of the first millennia, about 995 CE, The Greenlanders Saga and Erik the Red’s Saga. Anyone familiar with the Assassin’s Creed games players inhabit a member of the secret brotherhood of Assassins that has existed since the Roman Period in Ancient Egypt, about 50 BCE, shown in an earlier installment of Assassin’s Creed Origins. In Valhalla, the main character is Eivor, a Nordic Viking who travels south from Norway to England in 859 CE when numerous Viking tribes were known to move south and begin interacting with the native Saxons. We see this happening when Eivor visits ancient cities that have lasted since the Roman occupation of England, including Lunden.
The historical sagas I compared the game to have clear and glaring differences, specifically the date of Viking’s first landing in North America. After reading the Vinland Sagas and preparing to play this game, I am interested in how they are going to address this clear difference. Of course, Assassin’s Creed has to alter the historical narrative slightly to make a cohesive and recognizable storyline for gameplay, but how Vikings are on an entirely foreign continent to them one hundred years earlier than the historical record shows is going to be an interesting explanation.
Rasmussen, Carl Eric Christin Jens. Summer in the Greenland Coast. 1875, Private Collection.
This mini blog series will detail my gameplay of Valhalla’s Vinland Saga, starting with Eivor’s arrival in Vinland and ending with their departure. I have a few key sections of the game that I’m going to be focusing on comparing to the historical sagas, including the introduction to Vinland, the Native tribes present in the game and saga and their differences, the attributes of gameplay that pair well with the sagas, and the reasons for leaving North America in both sources.