Vikings

Think you know about Vikings? We're here to bust some myths, by Odin!

Learn about Viking society, exploration and culture, crafts, and much more.

The word Viking may have come from 'vikingr' meaning pirate, or from 'Viken', the area around Oslo fjord in Norway. The same people were also called norsemen (men from the north) and even ashmen (from the wood they used to build their ships).

The word 'Viking' was used already during the Viking Age, sometimes with reference to things that people did: 'being out as a Viking' or 'acting like a Viking'. At other times it seems to have referred to a person, or rather a person’s surname. Many now define the Viking as a person from Scandinavia involved in plundering, trade or colonization. But at that time the word vikingr was used only for someone who went i viking - raiding and plundering. For some this was a way of life, but many Scandinavians never went. Others became vikingr only from time to time, to get money to establish themselves on their own land.

Ordinary people are referred to as norroenar or norroenir men, almost all of them being farmers or slaves. The Viking was commonly a man. Although there are a few examples, women, slaves (‘thralls’) and children were rarely Vikings.

 

Think about

A good way to start your studies of the time period the Viking Age and the people of that time is to think about your ideas and thoughts about Viking Age people. Brainstorm your ideas.

• What did people living in the Viking age look like?
• How did they live their lives?
• Did you visualize a Viking as a male connected to violence? Why is that?
• Popular understandings of the Viking people do not include their skills at boat building, navigation and all the crafts they excelled in – just raiding and plundering. Why?

Traditionally the start of the 'Viking Age' has been set to 8 June 793 when plundering Vikings attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne. But it is not altogether easy to date the 'Viking Age'. Different time frames appear depending on the studied material. There is also archaeological evidence that contacts with the continent and the British Isles stem from a much earlier date. Scandinavian travelers took home both goods and important information about conditions and opportunities in foreign countries, both in the east and west, many centuries before the 'Viking Age'. 

 

Think about

How can we know about people and events during the Viking Age, what are our sources?

 

Research

Are there any traces of Viking influence in today’s society? Think about artifacts, names, stories or traditions. Watch the Interview with a Viking video below and use information on other pages in this module to help guide your answers. 

In the 8th century most Vikings lived by farming, grazing animals, hunting and fishing.

The Viking societies were peasant communities. Owning land was very important; it determined your social position, history and destiny. The large family was the basic community on the farm. Being a person meant first and foremost that you belonged to a family collective, with responsibility for the family’s actions. An individual’s social status was dependent on his/her position within the family. Women ruled the household on the farm, the men would plough the fields and represent the family at the Thing. (see below) They would settle disputes, conflicts and trade with others. Both men and women could be rich and powerful.

The three levels are: Nobles, Jarls, free people Karls and slaves or peasants thralls. In the 8th century most Vikings lived by farming, grazing animals, hunting and fishing, whether in villages, isolated farms or on large estates. The whole family tended the farm and the entire household ate and slept together. Large estates included outbuildings for cooking, brewing, and craftwork. It was later in the Viking age that towns developed.

The greatest divide was between those who were free and those who were not free. A free person was allowed to carry weapons and talk at the ‘Thing’. An unfree person had, according to the wording of the law from the early Middle Ages, no rights at all.

 

Thing

Viking societies were governed by local assemblies called Things. They discussed important political matters, made laws and decided on punishments if laws were broken. Free Vikings were all allowed to attend and speak at these. They were usually held once a year.

The site Thingvellir in Iceland means ‘parliament plains’. The Althing is Iceland’s parliament today and believed to be the world’s oldest surviving law-making assembly on record. (It met from 930 until 1800 and from 1843 until today). Every 5 July a Thing is held on Tynwald Hill on the Isle of Man, where they have been meeting for over one thousand years. Because few people could read it was the custom at the governing assembly for the Law Speaker to recite all the existing laws once a year. 

 

Think about:

• Today personal items can influence a person’s status in society. In the Viking Age men and women could achieve high status by owning weapons (men) or keys (women). What kind of personal items can give higher status for men and women today?
• Imagine yourself living in the Viking Age. What kind of life would you have lived? What kind of position would they have had in society? What role would you liked to have had?
• Research and think about the different roles that women and men could have in the Viking Age. Make a comparison to our present-day society. What has changed? Is anything unchanged?

Mainly an oral society, not everyone could read. Knowledge of the Vikings is pieced together, however, since they did not leave written histories. They only left short inscriptions engraved on stones or wooden or metal objects, using letters called runes. Most of what we know comes from accounts written by others, often centuries later, or from archaeological finds, and from the study of things like language, place names, and art.

 

Activity

Use the rune key below, or find more examples through your own research to practice using runes. Start by writing your name in runes, then try writing a simple message. If there's no equivalent for an English letter you need to use write that letter using our normal Roman alphabet.

For Vikings, the domestic environment was colourful and anything but grey, colourless and harsh. They wore ornaments of glossy bronze, weapons of burnished steel and artistically-ornamented combs that they wore together with their clothing.

Textile fragments from graves show that even in simple agricultural environments, not only wool but silk and linen too were available. Textiles were generally dyed with plant materials and dyes were based largely on local flora. Pigment analyses of runes and pictorial stones reveal that these too were colourfully painted. Viking children learnt from stories (sagas) told by the experienced elders in the Viking Village. They learnt important skills like boat building and weaving by spending time with the elders in the community.

Viking market towns became large centres for the crafts in which Vikings excelled – woodworking, smithing and metalwork, bone and antler work. Viking craftspersons used many different materials like textiles, metal (wrought iron, steel and precious metal), wood, bone and horn, leather, glass and pottery. They were skilful and had great knowledge when it came to the best way of working up their raw material. Their craft was the result of ancient learning and traditions. 

A typical element of craftsmanship was the ability to transform finished products acquired from foreign countries. Such objects originally had a certain function but assumed a different significance in Viking Age culture. Craft, especially metal craft, had a mythological significance, the Aesir/gods forged metal. Forging in this context means creating or making. The gods were regarded as craftspersons in one sense or another and refinement of metal as a way of changing the world was created by the gods. For this reason, craftspersons also had to master the rituals that controlled certain forces in the world.

 

Viking Amulets

Vikings wore jewellery including neckpieces, brooches and cloak pins to represent their power and wealth. They were also very handy for holding their clothes up as Vikings did not have any buttons or zips! On their travels they traded and collected precious objects including silver and beads which they used to make their own jewellery. Vikings were accomplished leather and metal workers and you can see some of their beautiful jewellery in the Viking exhibition.

Vikings travelled great distances in their search for land and treasure. They traded eastward into Russia and south as far as the Arab lands, even reaching Baghdad. They traded the riches of the north – timber, iron, furs, amber, whale and walrus ivory, and animal skins – for silver and gold, jewels, glass, wine, salt, and slaves. Trading routes were more complex than purely export-import in two directions. They met traders from the eastern routes and brought back silk and spices from far-off Asia.

They travelled on rivers and lakes, carrying their boats across land when they had to, or forging on by horse, camel, and on foot.

The Vikings were a dynamic people who raided and traded across a large part of the world from the 8th to the 11th century. The Norse peoples scattered throughout Scandinavia were not at first unified nations. They called themselves Northmen, Norsemen, Danes, Götar and Svear. Others called them pagans, heathens, men from the north, the foreigners. They shared a language, now called Old Norse, and had most customs and religious beliefs in common.

In the 9th and 10th centuries Norwegian Vikings reached the Faroe Islands north of Scotland and went on to discover Iceland and Greenland. They formed settlements and colonies that lasted hundreds of years. During the Viking era their patchwork of principalities and fiefdoms consolidated into three kingdoms, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Hit and run raiders became large armies with strategies and engineering works, and they changed from pagan to Christian.

They founded settlements and towns in other countries and blended into the local populations, leaving their imprint in law, custom, landholding and language that endure to the present. They had a rich mythology and tradition of storytelling. They were fearless warriors and ferocious in attack. Viking raiders spread fear and panic. They demanded ransoms for hostages or money to leave people in peace. The most feared Viking warriors were the Berserkers. They fought wearing bearskins because they believed it would lend them the animals’ strength. They went into wild rages, rolling their eyes, frothing at the mouth and biting their shields. They may have eaten fly agaric, a type of poisonous toadstool, to send them into the rage.

But at the same time, they were shrewd and accomplished traders, skilled explorers and navigators, superb shipbuilders and craftsmen The ships that made this possible were among their greatest achievements. Built in many sizes for different uses, they were double-ended, clinker-built (overlapping planks) with a pronounced keel but shallow draft. Some were propelled by both oars and sail. Vikings were remarkably skilled navigators although little is known of their methods. It is thought they kept to the coasts where they could, but offshore could draw on a deep knowledge of stars, clouds, winds, currents, temperatures, and bird and animal behaviour.

Viking longboats were sometimes referred to as dragon ships, with fierce dragons carved on the prow to scare the enemies. The oars are the dragon’s legs, and the boat’s square sail the dragon’s wings.

The building of a Viking Age ship required a vast amount of materials. Wood was used in especially large quantities. the quantity of iron needed for thousands of ship rivets, and the amount of flax or wool that was used for the sail. Shipbuilding had an enormous impact on the environment.

 

Think about and research:

• Why did people during the Viking Age go abroad on boats over stormy seas and on dangerous rivers?
• Why do we go abroad today?
• Do we have the same reasons to travel today as people did during the Viking Age?

At the start of the Viking age most Scandinavians were pagan. They had many gods and goddesses from simple nature spirits to heroic figures. Odin, Thor and Frey were the major deities, who dwelled in Asgard – the inner world of an elaborate universe.

Vikings believed they travelled to other worlds in the afterlife. They were cremated or buried with possessions and sacrifices.

Some rich men were buried in boats, and women in carriages or sleds. But the spread of Christianity was unavoidable. Christian missionaries had been in Scandinavia from the beginning of the Viking age, and Vikings who settled in Christian countries learned Christian ways. For emerging Scandinavian rulers there was political advantage in alliances with neighbouring Christian powers. Denmark was converted in the 960s. Norway and Sweden gradually gave in over the next century. For some time Christianity and the old faith continued side by side, but pagan belief faded away as the Viking era ended.

At the start of the Viking age most Scandinavians were still pagan. They had many gods and goddesses - Odin, Thor and Frey were the major deities.

Odin was the Viking god of war. They believed he rode a horse with eight legs and had only one eye because he had traded the other one in for a drink from the well of wisdom. It is said Odin had two ravens, Huginn (Thought) and Muninn (Memory) who would fly around the world every day and report back to him.

Thor son of Odin was said to bring especially good luck. Thor, reigned over war, strength and right. He protected mankind from the giants. Iron and silver amulets in the shape of Thor’s hammer were worn by many Vikings. Vikings believed it was Thor’s hammer (Mjolnir) that made the sound of thunder. Thursday is named after Thor.

Frey, also called Yngvi, in Norse mythology, the ruler of peace and fertility, rain, and sunshine and the son of the sea god Njörd

 

Research old Norse gods.

• Who were the Norse gods?
• In what ways did the Old Norse gods serve people during the Viking age?
• Why were these stories told by the people of the Viking Age?

Curious facts you might not know about Vikings...

• Whale bone plaque was often used as an ironing board with an iron that was made from a heated lump of glass.
• Birds’ foot bones were often used as sewing needles.
• Every few days the Vikings would rub the fat from sheep or other animals into their goatskin boots to keep them soft and waterproof.
• The Vikings liked ice-skating and made the blades for skates by carving the leg and foot bones of animals (eg. cows and horses).
• Viking warriors looted treasures from churches and monasteries, seizing the priests and monks to kill or sell as slaves.
• There was no unity between the Vikings from different areas: they fought each other as fiercely as they fought their enemies.
• Swords were their most treasured belongings. They gave them names like ‘Leg biter’ and ‘Adder’. The blades were sharp on both sides and were up to 90cm long.
• The Vikings only had a first name, such as Erik or Harald. To distinguish one from another they had nicknames for surnames - Audun the Bad Bard was so-called because he stole some lines from another poet! Eirik the Red had red hair.

Facts from The Gruesome Truth about the Vikings by Jillian Powell 2012 Hachette Children’s group UK