The seas were blessed calmly as we sailed across the canal and straight up the Seine, in the heart of France. The skald led us in song, our voices rumbled in the calm waters, thundered in our veins. We jumped from our long boat to the shores of France, shouting the glory of the All-Father as we loaded the beaches. The sounds of a glorious battle filled the air. Suppression,, crushing,, crush,, grumble,, ringing,, screams,, grumble,, ringing,, crush,, crush,, squid.
Without outside help from Spotify, that’s what the battle sounds like Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Neither the noise of the blades, nor the exciting drumbeat and song that keep our hearts high. Just very, very noisy sounds. Really strongly rustling sounds too. Shoot an arrow at a Frankish warrior? Suppression. To step into deep mud? Suppression. Hit someone with a sword? He recognized him: Suppression.
Let’s clarify one thing before we continue: I adore Valhalla. This is one of my favorite games of all time and one of the first games in which I felt really presented as a strange woman. Spending time with Eivor Wolf-Kissed is a joy. The power of the game is what makes me come back for more. I wish there was more music. I wish there was all kinds music when I’m on land and away from my team of backup singers.
Every time you sail around in your long boat, your crew will serenade you with Scandinavian sailing songs. They are habitable, atmospheric and set the tone as you sail the misty rivers of early medieval England. But as soon as you land, the music stops completely. Well, almost entirely. If you’re lucky, you’ll get research music from time to time – you can increase its frequency in the audio settings, but even if you increase that, most of my stay on land is silent.
Dark times
The music of the Dark Ages is definitely less well known and more abundant than the music of later eras. Folk music is not always very well preserved or even recorded. Plus, it was a time when there was a sharp divide between religious music and secular music. The advantage of religious music was that it was carefully recorded and these recordings survive to this day – so we tend to think of playing chants when we think of medieval music. But we know that people of that era listened to and created secular music. They made music and played instruments, swore, cursed and sang songs that would make even today’s audience blush. We even have stories of Anglo-Saxon religious musicians condemning “vain and idle” secular songs, something you would hear pouring through the doors of a crowded tavern on a warm summer night. If Scandinavian music got stuck in an ancient monk’s tour hard enough to scream about it a thousand years ago, it really must have been good shit.
Since we do not have exactly the bundles of surviving Iron Age folk songs recorded somewhere in standard modern musical notation, we must ask ourselves: How did pagan and secular music sound? The Assassin’s Creed the series is a master class on historical reconstruction and educated conjecture. Filling in the gaps in our knowledge for a certain period is related to creating an atmosphere that fits into what we know, and this is something that AC The series stands out with. Here’s how we have such a magnificent musical landscape from ancient Egypt Origin. All historical music includes a certain degree of reconstruction – that is, educated conjectures. More specifically, the Scandinavians left us with a lot we can collect these assumptions from.
We know from archaeological evidence that there were many wind instruments from this period, even random stringed instruments. The earliest known image of a triangular harp comes to us less than 200 years after the period when Valhalla is conducted. We even have modern accounts from outside observers commenting on Scandinavian music.