The Origins of Flyting

(Pictured above: "The Flyting of Loki")

The newest Assassin’s Creed installment, Valhalla, is set in 873 AD and follows Eivor, a fictional Viking during the invasion of Britain. As the player explores Norway, England, and the Norse culture, Eivor becomes increasingly entangled in the conflict between the Brotherhood of Assassins and the Templar Order. While playing the game, players are introduced to a new challenge to the series called flying.

Flyting is a battle of word, wit, and wealth. In these dialogues, a nonplayable character insults Eivor, and Eivor is meant to respond with one of the three dialogue options given to the player. The responses must match the rhythm, cadence, rhyme, and content of the opponent’s insults. Each duel begins with a wager and winning increases the player’s Charisma skill.

Many players may question the origins of flyting. It is not something that Ubisoft, the creators of Assassin’s Creed, made up for this game. Flyting has been a ritualized poetic exchange of insults practiced mainly between the fifth and sixteenth centuries. It was, for the most part, a contest conducted in verse, and examples of such exchanges are found throughout Norse, Celtic, Old, Middle, and Modern English literature involving both historical and mythological figures.

The tradition may have derived from the Gaelic “filid,” or class of professional poets, who composed tirades against those who slighted them. The content of the insults consisted of a wide range of mock “character assassination,” which is an attempt to harm a person’s reputation. The flyting exchanges were often provocative and included accusations of cowardice, stupidity, or sexual perversion.

In many cases, though the contestants attacked each other spiritedly, there was professional respect for each other’s skill with the vocabulary of invective. The contest was considered a safe space where taboos were knowingly and legitimately flouted. This allowed for a sort of safety valve to let off steam. In Anglo-Saxon England, for example, flytings took place in feasting halls with an audience. Though the winner took a large drink of mead in victory, he would then invite the loser to drink as well.

The word flyting or fliting is a noun comes from the Old Norse word flyra, meaning provocation, and the Old English verb flitan, meaning “to quarrel.” While the act of flyting has been a composed contest since the fifth century, the general sense of the word as a verbal dispute is attested to around 1200. The word found its first use as a literary term in Scotland about three centuries later.

One of the earliest written records of flyting is in the Old English epic poem Beowulf, produced sometime between 975 and 1025 AD. In the confrontation of Beowulf and Unfero, flyting is used as a sort of prelude to the physical battles. Beowulf also flytes with Hrothgar about the sea battle. Flyting also occurs in the thirteenth-century poem “The Owl and the Nightingale” and in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Parlement of Foules” of the fourteenth century.

Flyting was introduced as an official literary term in Scotland in the sixteenth century largely in part to The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy. Written around 1500, it is the earliest surviving example of the Scottish version of flyting in poetry. Flyting was public entertainment in Scotland during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, despite the fact that there were penalties for using profanity in public. Kings James IV and James V even encouraged “court flyting” as their entertainment, and The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy is a record of such a contest in front of King James IV.

The insults in the poem are generally graphic and personal. Many involved accusations of capital crimes of theft and treason, giving the contest a particular political thrill when considered this was all done in front of the king. In this piece Dunbar describes Kennedy as starving, poor, and of having sex with horses. Kennedy’s rebuttal calls Dunbar a dwarf descended by Beelzebub. The satire also contains the first known example of the word “shit” as a public insult.

After flyting died out in Scotland, it continued on through Celtic literature, such as in Robert Burns’ poem “To a Louse” and James Joyce’s poem “The Holy Office.” Seventeenth-century English playwrights also enjoyed using flyting as a literary device that they knew would be well received by the public.

William Shakespeare’s plays contain dozens of flyting examples. There are at least thirteen examples in Shakespeare’s tragedies and more than thirty flytings in the comedies. The bulk of these exchanges occur when the lords and ladies of the upper class meet up in playful moods and are used to elicit laughter from the audience.

The most famous example of flyting, and the clear connection to Valhalla, is in the Poetic Edda, a collection of anonymous Old Norse poems. There are two poems in specific that showcase the Norse gods flyting with one another. The “Hárbarðsljóð” or “The Lay of Harbard” is a flyting poem between Harbard, otherwise known as a disguised Odin, and Thor, the thunder god. The poem “Lokasenna,” also known as “Loki’s Verbal Duel” or “The Flyting of Loki,” is about Loki flyting with practically every Norse diety at a dinner party.

In “Lokasenna,” Loki, the trickster god, attends a feast given by the sea god Gymir. The two servants, Fimafeng and Eldir, heap praises unto the gods in welcome. Loki becomes jealous of the praise and kills Fimafeng. This enrages the other gods in attendance, and Loki is kicked out.

Loki returns to the party after threatening the other servant, Eldir, and demands a seat and a drink by the rules of hospitality. When this doesn’t work, Loki demands fulfillment of an oath sworn by Odin, the Allfather, that they should drink together. Loki is given a seat and then proceeds to have a flyting with any and every god or goddess who speaks to him. The flyting between Loki and Odin is particularly vehement. Loki only stops and leaves once Thor shows up and threatens him.

While Valhalla clearly pulls from these last examples, flyting can still be found in many cultures around the world. Taunting songs are present in several cultures such as the Inuit. It can be found in Arabic poetry in a popular form called naqā’id, as well as in the Japanese competitive verses of haikai. In America, the act is similar in both form and function as the modern practice of freestyle rap battles.

Valhalla arrives in the midst of a Viking-themed entertainment resurgence. But as one of the biggest video game series, Ubisoft chose to show a more balanced version of the Vikings, one that shows both the brawn and brain of the culture. Their inclusion of this challenge showcases the thought, effort, and research done to do this correctly, and it shows.