If you asked a Northern European in the 11th century what they thought about the Vikings, you’d probably hear that they were violent, pagan raiders. However, travel further South and you might discover an altogether different reputation. If you asked someone in Southern Europe or the Middle East about the Vikings, they might tell you about canny traders and businessmen bringing valuable commodities from the North. As well as travelling to raid and colonise in the North Atlantic, the Vikings travelled South and East as merchants. In fact, the Norsemen established a vast trading network, facilit ..read more

Though the overwhelming majority of Viking warriors depicted in TV, movies and museums are men, in recent years pop culture has become increasingly fascinated with female Viking warriors. From Lagertha in Vikings to Astrid in How to Train Your Dragon, there seems to be no end of swash-buckling, battle-hardened Viking women on our screens. These characters make for great TV, but how much truth is there behind the female Viking warrior trope? Characters like these go back as far as the Icelandic Sagas and beyond. Even in the Viking-age, ordinary folk would have been regaled with stories of Shiel ..read more

Living in Scandinavia and settling in some of the coldest habitable regions on Earth, the Vikings were masters at overcoming long, dark winters. But without electricity or central heating, how did the Vikings not only survive, but thrive, through the cold months?   Life in the Viking-age was controlled by the passage of the seasons, with the time of year deciding what you ate, what work there was to be done and how you spent your leisure time. Though farming and raiding were on hold during the winter, the colder months were still incredibly busy for the Vikings. With food harder to come ..read more

We all know that the Vikings were some of the most skilled seafarers of their day. Medieval Norsemen ruled a vast network of trading outposts and settlements, as well as full-blown colonies far from their home Scandinavian homeland. But exactly how far did the Vikings travel in their quest for exploration and influence over the globe? From East to West, and North to South, the Viking world spanned thousands of kilometres. Taking in their entire network is a momentous task; far more than can be covered in one short article. So let’s focus right now on the Vikings’ dominance over the North Atlan ..read more

No one is quite sure how the Vikings welcomed in the New Year. In fact, there is a debate among historians as to exactly which month marked the beginning and end of the Viking calendar. But while we can’t be certain how Vikings celebrated this important moment, there is one New Year’s festival with direct Nordic origins that can serve as an annual connection through the millennia. Readers outside of Scotland might not be familiar with Hogmanay. Taking place on the 31st of December, this yearly festival is often unfairly reduced to ‘Scottish New Year’s Eve.’ It’s much more than that though. Hog ..read more

Viking history is rife with tales of warriors, either fearless and honourable or violent and cruel depending on whose source you’re reading. During the Viking-era, there was one group of warriors that was so feared for their animalistic rage and total destruction on the battlefield that their name has given us the English term for an uncontrollable frenzy of anger. The Berserkers stood above the fold of ordinary warriors, known for fighting in a trance-like state, their bodies were overtaken by an unstoppable, insatiable rage.   Who were the Berserkers?   Berserkers were an elite leg ..read more

The Vikings believed that the universe around them was controlled by a rich pantheon of gods and spirits. In a volatile world, impacted so heavily by the seasons, disease and other forces of nature, VIking-age Scandinavians could turn to a seeress for insights into the whims of fate. The practice of seidr, a type of ritual magic performed to convey messages from the spiritual to the mortal realm, was used in Viking society for everything from telling the future to diagnosing illness. Rituals were performed by visionary seeresses, who held such a high position in society that they were honoured ..read more

It’s hard to imagine how health and medicine would have looked almost a thousand years before the discovery of germ theory, antibiotics and anaesthesia. But even without our modern knowledge about how the body works, and what to do when it goes wrong, the Vikings were able to treat illnesses, heal wounds and live healthy lives. Though we don’t have any Viking-age medical textbooks or guides to medicinal plants, we’re able to piece together a pretty good picture of what health and healing looked like in the Viking era. This is done with archaeological findings at gravesites, evidence of non-nat ..read more

  If you look at any modern depiction of a Viking, whether that’s in a movie, TV show or even an AI-generated image, you’re more than likely to find yourself looking at a tall, muscular, heavily tattooed warrior. Tattoos have become so central to our image of the Vikings that Norse tattoos are a thriving subgenre of modern body art, adorning the skin of men and women in Scandinavia and beyond. Here’s the issue though: we don’t actually have any evidence that the Vikings tattooed themselves at all. There’s no mention of tattoos in any saga, and the Vikings didn’t leave behind any written ..read more

  Blood sacrifice was a central part of many Viking rituals, from established yearly celebrations to pre-battle rallying. While we know that sheep, cows, pigs and goats would often find themselves on the sacrificial altar, this begs the question, did Vikings ever sacrifice humans? Human sacrifice was common in pre-Christian Europe. We know that it happened in Ancient Greece, Rome and Celtic communities, and there is evidence that Vikings practised human sacrifice too. The idea has become so ubiquitous that we can find human sacrifice as a common trope in movies and TV shows set in Mediev ..read more