Thorkell the Tall and the bubble reputation: the vicissitudes of fame What does it take to make a hero? My Concise Oxford Dictionary defines the word as 1) a ‘man of superhuman qualities, favoured by the gods, demigod’; 2) an ‘illustrious warrior, one who has fought for his country’; 3) a ‘man admired for his achievements and noble qualities’; and 4) the ‘chief man in poem, play or story’. All these meanings remain in use, although the last definition is perhaps now the commonest: ‘hero’ is interchangeable with ‘protagonist’ and the personal qualities of the character are irrelevant in comparison to his (or her) position in the narrative. The adjective ‘heroic’, by contrast, almost always refers to the other definitions, especially the second, the ‘illustrious warrior’, and I take it that it is this kind of hero who is to be the subject of this meeting. So what does it take to make an illustrious warrior? Obviously skill in the handling of weapons is a prerequisite, along with courage and sagacity; charismatic powers of leadership, in order to attract a hired of fighting-men, would seem essential, as would the opportunity to display these qualities; and, of course, a hero is helped by a measure of good fortune, though winning the battle isn’t absolutely necessary – after all, it is ‘not that you won or lost, but how you played the game’. 1 One final ingredient remains, an ingredient also required by the more mundane ‘protagonist’; someone must tell your story. As with being being rich, there’s no point in being heroic if nobody notices. Telling the stories of heroes was one of the prime tasks of the skaldic poets whose floreat was the tenth and eleventh centuries, though their verses were not committed to writing before the twelfth century at the earliest. There are, of course, 1 Grantland Rice, ‘Alumunus Football’, in Only the Brave and Other Poems (NY: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1941). 1