#personal analysis tag

anyway, old norse warrior traditions were deeply rooted in duties of honour, law and vengeance. this latter pillar was seen more as a duty and even had a special name, hefnd (ᚼᛁᚠᚾᛏ, “right of vengeance”). rather than a personal vendetta guided by one’s own morals, it was a solemn and binding obligation, one that was tied to one’s kin and tribe, and the memory of the slain. the sagas, our primary sources of knowledge on old norse history, are filled with accounts of men who made vows to avenge a father, brother, spouse or friend. 

in the HTTYD universe, we can even consider that it’s one of the reasons why the berkians are so keen on exterminating the dragons: it is their right, for many of them have fallen to those beasts, as stoick himself puts it. therefore, it’s a continuous cycle of death and revenge justified by customary, borderline religious rites, mostly tied to odin worship (who was not always portrayed as a just god, mind, but this discussion is for another post, otherwise i would be filling this with academic jargon and footnotes).

what is most important here is to know that hefnd, by its societal and cultural construction, was expected, and we can see that in berk as well: dragon-slaying is what makes berkians be berkians to begin with. so, back to the toothless and hiccup’s first meeting scene...

can we really say that hiccup thought he was executing hefnd here? yes!

other than his speech format resembling a heitstrenging (ᚼᛁᛁᛏᛋᛏᚱᛁᚾᚴᛁᚾᚴ, “a vow of strength”), which was a promise made while a man stood before a beast (slain or about to be) and swore to perform great deeds, generally including the killing of a specific foe, there’s another detail in hiccup’s speech*:

* (p.s breaking a vow of strength would, by custom, bring immense shame upon the man and his entire family.)

hiccup says, “then i’ll cut out your heart and take it to my father.” this isn’t just a tough-sounding line; it’s a direct reference to old norse heroic literature. the act of taking an enemy’s heart for revenge is a motif found within the epics, though it is a rare and extreme example of vengeance, not a usual practice. 

the most famous and oft-cited instance doesn’t come from the icelandic sagas, which tend to be more grounded in historical reality, but from the legendary material, specifically the tale of hervor in the hervarar saga ok heiðreks. in a particularly gruesome part, a character named hjálmar defeats the champion angantýr and the other berserkers, but is himself mortally wounded. the saga describes hjálmar asking his companion to cut out angantýr’s heart and to take it with them.

another and perhaps even more famous instance is found in the myths surrounding sigurd the dragon slayer of the völsunga saga: in some versions, he takes reginn’s heart rather than his head. 

hiccup is most likely taking inspiration from these two tales, even if they were not common traditions by the legal and social norms of medieval scandinavia. it comes with the fact of it being the mark of a legend, not a typical man: hjarta (ᚼᛁᛅᚱᛏᛅ, “hearts”) in norse thought carried memory and identity, so piercing/crushing/eating another being’s heart was like taking their entire spirit, submitting them to you (as seen in snorri’s edda with loki) or vanishing them forever. taking a heart, since it carried memories, names and the breath of soul, therefore, was a symbolic act of complete annihilation.

so in this scene, hiccup is trying to perform, to live by the great names. so much so that he changed the position of his blade: in this scene, when he’s seconds away from slaying toothless, he supports his trembling right hand (representing what is expected of him) with his left (representing himself). hiccup, who is already seen by his own people as “not viking enough,” is consciously acting, trying to prove to himself he can fit in, wanting to be a vinstri no longer. he wanted to be víss (ᚢᛁᛋᛋ, “a man”/“a right man”). 

here, it’s important to note: the daily world of the norsemen was built for the right-handed. most tools, from axes for splitting wood to tools for carving bone or wood, would have been crafted with a right-handed grip in mind. a vinstri would have had to adjust, either by using his non-dominant hand or by using tools in a way they were not intended. oftentimes, a vinstri would even be denied participation in some daily tasks and battles, being ostracised and outcasted if they could not adapt. why, you ask?

tactical techniques, battle arrays and, most importantly, the participation in skjaldborg (ᛋᚴᛁᛅᛚᛏᛒᚢᚱᚴ, “shield wall/rampart of shields”). this was the greatest challenge for left-handed warriors, because shield walls relied on a warrior holding his shield in his left hand, protecting his left side and the right side of the man next to him, while his right hand, holding a spear or sword, would then be free to strike. this discipline was what made it possible to create the o so famous unbreakeable barrier we see referenced in movies, comics, etc. left-handed warriors were either placed on the flanks of the formation, so that their unique stance would be less of a liability, and therefore trained to become one of the starting, warcrying soldiers, or they were placed in the skirmishes with bows and arrows instead. if they were not physically apt enough, they were simply denied on the battlefield.

and, as it’s shown in the first movie, hiccup was completely rejected from any participation in action; his lack of technique and his scrawniness are brought up again and again throughout the first movies and well deep into the series. battle was part of an identity, and it was required for you to be a víss.

so, once again: here, he is performing. he wants to be a regular viking so, so bad, and he knows this is his one true chance.

but he’s not like them! his left hand literally stops him.

it’s not that he couldn’t kill a dragon; he clearly could, had the physical opportunity and even the will to do so. he never stuttered while declaring his heitstrenging, and he seemed to perfectly understand his right of vengeance with his tribe as well. it’s just that hiccup didn’t see an enemy in the night fury in front of him.

if he could not see toothless as his enemy then and there, was it even his right to kill him? hefnd is a right reserved only for enemies, those we do not see as kin and that are dishonourable. if he could not see toothless that way, then what honour was there? was this even the right way of becoming víss? are legends built this way?

the short answer is that, yes, some legends are built that way. shame and honour walk hand in hand: egill’s saga is a lot similar to hiccup’s story. he fails socially many times, he’s often described as arriving too late or uninvited and he constantly insults himself in a comedic manner. but despite shame and embarrassment and feeling like he is not víss, he takes his chance anyway, killing others to try and prove himself (often in spaces where he doesn’t even need to be violent, like halls and feasts). a lot of characters do that in old literature to try turning shame into honour, paradoxically painting one as the other. it is a constant struggle to belong at the cost of another.

throughout HTTYD1, hiccup had been debating over the status he would gain if he were to kill this or that dragon; yet, in that single moment, with toothless scared and thinking that would be his end, hiccup finds that he does not want to become that kind of legend.

it is a choice. it is goodness. it is shame. it is everything that egill, sigurd and other heroes do not do.

“i did this.”

he cuts toothless’ ropes down with his left hand. can you guess which hand he used to try and calm down hookfang, too? 

in more than a metaphorical sense, he’s making history with his own hands. he is choosing to be more than an ordinary “viking” (or what he perceives as one, even if some chronicles sing about people needing someone like him). rather than performance, rather than following berk tradition blindly, he’s risking everything to pave the right way, even if that means that’s with what is left of him and that he’ll never really belong anywhere.