Vikings In Science Fiction: Warhammer 40K

"To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace among the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."
-The preface to every Warhammer 40K book ever.



Sounds fun right?

But what is Warhammer 40K exactly? To put it simply, its a science fiction franchise set in, shockingly, the year 40,000 (technically after that... and also beforehand too but just use that as a reference to make things easy). The Imperium of Mankind, who is kind of the good faction but also a totalitarian regime based on paranoia and warfare, is under siege on all sides from an endless array of threats. There are the forces of Chaos, who worship a quartet of Dark Gods and who seek to destroy reality using the Warp, a kind of parallel reality. There are the Orks, a hyper-egressive and barbaric race bred for nothing but war over millions of years. The Necrons are an undead race of skeletal machines seeking to come back to life and to eradicate all other life in the universe. Then there is the-

Well you get the idea. Life kinda sucks right now. Your average human is woefully outclassed by nearly every threat in the galaxy. The average gun they get has been affectionately nicknamed "the flashlight" and their armor is called "cardboard." Faced with such overwhelming odds, humans needed a solution to overcome the power difference.

Enter the Space Marines. Genetically advanced humans who live a monastic life devoted to nothing but battle and combat. They stand around eight feet tall, wear power armor that makes them nearly invulnerable, and have the finest weapons in the galaxy humanity possesses. Space Marines are split into "Chapters" which are usually based on a particular theme. The Space Wolves Chapter is the prime subject for this post, as they are based off of the Vikings of yore.



(Above) Your average Space Wolf.

But what, beyond the vaguely nordic motifs makes them really like the Vikings, Trevor?

Ah I'm glad you asked me. There are numerous mythological references in their lore to be found. For starters, their home planet is called Fenris (like Fenrir, the wolf destined to kill Odin at Ragnarok). Several of their famous characters are also clearly based off Norse Gods or heroes. Lukas the Trickster for instance is no doubt modeled after Loki as he is a source of mischief and strife in the series. The young men chosen to become recruits for the Space Wolves must first die in a battle on their home planet before being brought back to life by an observer of the battle called "a chooser of the slain", clearly referencing Valkyries in this nature though the Space Wolves are all male.

Most interestingly is the level of detail some writers went to in describing them in books. In the novel "Prospero Burns" the main character is an archeologist who becomes a skald for the Space Wolves (a storyteller, one pulled from Iceland in this case). He used an alias to contact them, named Ahmed Ibn Rustah. Sound familiar? Its almost exactly the Ahmed we read from at the start of the year!

But no depiction using historical references is ever truly accurate to the source. For example, the Space Wolves are all too often portrayed as the stereotypical image of the Viking as a "noble savage" who we both pity for their barbarism and also admire for their strength. In reality, Viking culture was much more in depth than that, and I really wish the material used more real examples when getting ideas. In the end though, they're still a great example of the over the top level of absurdity that Warhammer 40K creates.