In 1961, Ian Cameron published his first novel, The Lost Ones. In 1974 it would be re-released as The Island at the Top of the World to go with the Disney movie made based on the book. As a kid, this movie thrilled me with the idea that a lost civilization could exist at the North Pole. What I didn’t realize was that the idea was old, really old. The Greeks had named these imaginary people the “Hyperboreans” back in Plato’s time. The name means those who live beyond the North Wind. There were different theories over the years: Hyperborea was really Sweden or England or even North America.
I have been on a search for the Hyperboreans. To be exact, the first literary Hyperboreans. Which novel established the idea that a lost Viking realm existed in the Arctic hidden away? Pulps and comic books would use the idea but I knew they were the later culprits. Disney and Cameron were even further along.
Reading a book on SF history I came across a reference for A. S. Morton’s Beyond the Palæocrystic Sea; or, The Legend of Halfjord (1895). This odd book isn’t really a novel per se. It is the account of a man and a legend he brings to us about a strange people living at the North Pole. A manuscript is discovered in the sea. It was written by Pierre Vacheron, an American from New Orleans. Rather foolishly he jumps on an iceberg and is carried off into the Arctic wastes where no one has yet explored.
There he finds a city called Nikiva, which is inhabited by lost Vikings who worship an ancestor named Halfjord, who went away and is expected to return like King Arthur. The locals mistake Vacheron for this Halfjord. They do not use writing, so as the adventure goes on Pierre writes the manuscript we are reading. (They expect things like that from a god.)
The Vikings treat Vacheron well, though they always make sure he can’t leave. They give him food, the best of everything, including the women, which he refuses since he is pining for his lost Julia and because he is a good Christian. While living amongst these strangely peaceful Vikings, he learns that they kill anyone with red hair, including babies. He wonders at this strange custom. The last portion of the book relates the original tale of Halfjord and how he was betrayed by a redhead. This is really A. S. Morton’s actual desire, to tell us an imaginary saga of Halfjord. The creation of Pierre Vacheron and the preamble is to set up the tragedy of the later tale.
This mostly forgotten book, a mere footnote in Science Fiction history, may be the source from which all later frozen Vikings spring. Combining the idea of lost Vikings with the concept of the frozen and later reanimated corpse, usually a caveman (which may have been done in the very first issue of Weird Tales), the much-used frozen Vikings of the comic books explodes in the 1950s. These include “Eric the Red” (1952), “The Northern Horror” (1952), “Sword of the Vikings” (1953), and “Vengeance of the Vikings” (1953). What happened in around 1952 to make this a hot topic for horror comics? After World War II, there was a lot of interest in Greenland, where Viking remains were discovered in the 1950s. I have to assume this is what drove this early ’50s boom on frozen Vikings.
The earliest example I have found (so far) in comics is this one page filler from Timely’s All-Winner’s Comics #2 (Fall 1941). It doesn’t have the frozen Vikings reanimated but it does suggest what will come later. The author and artist are not known.
