The fight-or-flight-or-freeze or the fight-flight response (also called hyperarousal or the acute stress response) is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. It was first described by Walter Bradford Cannon. His theory states that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system, preparing the animal for fighting or fleeing. More specifically, the adrenal medulla produces a hormonal cascade that results in the secretion of catecholamines, especially norepinephrine and epinephrine. The hormones estrogen, testosterone, and cortisol, as well as the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin, also affect how organisms react to stress. The hormone osteocalcin might also play a part.
Originally understood as the fight-or-flight response in Cannon's research, the state of hyperarousal results in several responses beyond fighting or fleeing. This has led people to calling it the fight, flight, freeze response (or fight-flight-faint-or-freeze, amongst other variants). The wider array of responses, such as freezing, fainting, feeding, or experiencing fright, has led researchers to use more neutral or accommodating terminology such as hyperarousal or the acute stress response.
The autonomic nervous system is a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal.
This system is the primary mechanism in control of the fight-or-flight
response and its role is mediated by two different components: the
sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system originates in the spinal cord
and its main function is to activate the physiological changes that
occur during the fight-or-flight response. This component of the
autonomic nervous system utilises and activates the release of norepinephrine in the reaction.
The parasympathetic nervous system originates in the sacral spinal cord and medulla,
physically surrounding the sympathetic origin, and works in concert
with the sympathetic nervous system. Its main function is to activate
the "rest and digest" response and return the body to homeostasis after the fight or flight response. This system utilises and activates the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
Reaction
An infographic displaying the fight-or-flight response
The reaction begins in the amygdala, which triggers a neural response in the hypothalamus. The initial reaction is followed by activation of the pituitary gland and secretion of the hormone ACTH. The adrenal gland is activated almost simultaneously, via the sympathetic nervous system, and releases the hormone epinephrine. The release of chemical messengers results in the production of the hormone cortisol, which increases blood pressure, blood sugar, and suppresses the immune system.
The initial response and subsequent reactions are triggered in an
effort to create a boost of energy. This boost of energy is activated by
epinephrine binding to liver cells and the subsequent production of glucose. Additionally, the circulation of cortisol functions to turn fatty acids into available energy, which prepares muscles throughout the body for response. Catecholamine hormones, such as adrenaline (epinephrine) or noradrenaline (norepinephrine), facilitate immediate physical reactions associated with a preparation for violent muscular action and:
The
physiological changes that occur during the fight or flight response
are activated in order to give the body increased strength and speed in
anticipation of fighting or running. Some of the specific physiological
changes and their functions include:
Increased blood flow to the muscles activated by diverting blood flow from other parts of the body.
Increased blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugars, and fats in order to supply the body with extra energy.
The blood clotting function of the body speeds up in order to prevent excessive blood loss in the event of an injury sustained during the response.
Increased muscle tension in order to provide the body with extra speed and strength.
In the context of the fight or flight response, emotional regulation
is used proactively to avoid threats of stress or to control the level
of emotional arousal.
Emotional reactivity
During
the reaction, the intensity of emotion that is brought on by the
stimulus will also determine the nature and intensity of the behavioral
response. Individuals with higher levels of emotional reactivity may be prone to anxiety and aggression, which illustrates the implications of appropriate emotional reaction in the fight or flight response.
Cognitive components
Content specificity
The
specific components of cognitions in the fight or flight response seem
to be largely negative. These negative cognitions may be characterised
by: attention to negative stimuli, the perception of ambiguous
situations as negative, and the recurrence of recalling negative words. There also may be specific negative thoughts associated with emotions commonly seen in the reaction.
Perceived control relates to an individual's thoughts about control over situations and events.
Perceived control should be differentiated from actual control because
an individual's beliefs about their abilities may not reflect their
actual abilities. Therefore, overestimation or underestimation of
perceived control can lead to anxiety and aggression.
The social information processing model proposes a variety of factors
that determine behavior in the context of social situations and
preexisting thoughts.
The attribution of hostility, especially in ambiguous situations, seems
to be one of the most important cognitive factors associated with the
fight or flight response because of its implications towards aggression.
Other animals
Evolutionary perspective
An evolutionary psychology
explanation is that early animals had to react to threatening stimuli
quickly and did not have time to psychologically and physically prepare
themselves. The fight or flight response provided them with the
mechanisms to rapidly respond to threats against survival.
Examples
A typical example of the stress response is a grazing zebra. If the zebra sees a lion closing in for the kill, the stress response is activated as a means to escape its predator. The escape requires intense muscular effort, supported by all of the body's systems. The sympathetic nervous system’s
activation provides for these needs. A similar example involving fight
is of a cat about to be attacked by a dog. The cat shows accelerated
heartbeat, piloerection (hair standing on end), and pupil dilation, all signs of sympathetic arousal. Note that the zebra and cat still maintain homeostasis in all states.
In July 1992, Behavioral Ecology published experimental research conducted by biologist Lee A. Dugatkin where guppies were sorted into "bold", "ordinary", and "timid" groups based upon their reactions when confronted by a smallmouth bass
(i.e. inspecting the predator, hiding, or swimming away) after which
the guppies were left in a tank with the bass. After 60 hours, 40
percent of the timid guppies and 15 percent of the ordinary guppies
survived while none of the bold guppies did.
Varieties of responses
Bison hunted by dogs
Animals respond to threats in many complex ways. Rats, for instance,
try to escape when threatened but will fight when cornered. Some animals
stand perfectly still so that predators will not see them. Many animals
freeze or play dead when touched in the hope that the predator will
lose interest.
Other animals have alternative self-protection methods. Some species of cold-blooded animals change color swiftly to camouflage themselves. These responses are triggered by the sympathetic nervous system,
but, in order to fit the model of fight or flight, the idea of flight
must be broadened to include escaping capture either in a physical or
sensory way. Thus, flight can be disappearing to another location or
just disappearing in place, and fight and flight are often combined in a
given situation.
The fight or flight actions also have polarity – the individual
can either fight against or flee from something that is threatening,
such as a hungry lion, or fight for or fly towards something that is
needed, such as the safety of the shore from a raging river.
A threat from another animal does not always result in immediate
fight or flight. There may be a period of heightened awareness, during
which each animal interprets behavioral signals from the other. Signs
such as paling, piloerection, immobility, sounds, and body language
communicate the status and intentions of each animal. There may be a
sort of negotiation, after which fight or flight may ensue, but which
might also result in playing, mating, or nothing at all. An example of
this is kittens playing: each kitten shows the signs of sympathetic
arousal, but they never inflict real damage.
In the Old Norse written corpus, berserkers were those who were said to have fought in a trance-like fury, a characteristic which later gave rise to the modern English word berserk (meaning "furiously violent or out of control"). Berserkers are attested to in numerous Old Norse sources.
Etymology
A modern reenactor in Germany
The Old Norse form of the word was berserkr (plural berserkir). It likely means "bear-shirt" (compare the Middle English word serk, meaning shirt), "someone who wears a coat made out of a bear's skin". Thirteenth-century historian Snorri Sturluson interpreted the meaning as "bare-shirt", that is to say that the warriors went into battle without armour, but that view has largely been abandoned.
Early beginnings
It is proposed by some authors that the northern warrior tradition originated from hunting magic. Three main animal cults appeared: the bear, the wolf, and the wild boar.
The bas relief carvings on Trajan's column in Rome depict scenes of Trajan's conquest of Dacia in 101–106 AD.
The scenes show his Roman soldiers plus auxiliaries and allies from
Rome's border regions, including tribal warriors from both sides of the
Rhine. There are warriors depicted as barefoot, bare-chested, bearing
weapons and helmets that are associated with the Germani.
Scene 36 on the column shows some of these warriors standing together,
with some wearing bearhoods and some wearing wolfhoods. Nowhere else in
history are Germanic bear-warriors and wolf-warriors fighting together
recorded until 872 AD with Thórbiörn Hornklofi's description of the battle of Hafrsfjord when they fought together for King Harald Fairhair of Norway.
In the spring of 1870, four cast-bronze dies, the Torslunda plates, were found by Erik Gustaf Pettersson and Anders Petter Nilsson in a cairn
on the lands of the farm No 5 Björnhovda in Torslunda parish, Öland,
Sweden, one of them showing what appears to be a beserker ritual.
Berserkers – bear warriors
The runestone Vg 56 at Källby in Västergötland, which may show a beserker in animal skin
It is proposed by some authors that the berserkers drew their power from the bear and were devoted to the bear cult, which was once widespread across the northern hemisphere. The berserkers maintained their religious observances despite their fighting prowess, as the Svarfdæla saga tells of a challenge to single-combat that was postponed by a berserker until three days after Yule. The bodies of dead berserkers were laid out in bearskins prior to their funeral rites. The bear-warrior symbolism survives to this day in the form of the bearskin caps worn by the guards of the Danish monarchs.
In battle, the berserkers were subject to fits of frenzy. They
would howl like wild beasts, foam at the mouth, and gnaw the iron rim of
their shields. According to belief, during these fits they were immune
to steel and fire, and made great havoc in the ranks of the enemy. When
the fever abated they were weak and tame. Accounts can be found in the
sagas.
To "go berserk" was to "hamask", which translates as "change
form", in this case, as with the sense "enter a state of wild fury".
Some scholars have interpreted those who could transform as a berserker
as "hamrammr" or "shapestrong" – literally able to shapeshift into a
bear's form. For example, the band of men who go with Skallagrim in Egil's Saga
to see King Harald about his brother Thorolf's murder are described as
"the hardest of men, with a touch of the uncanny about a number of them
... they [were] built and shaped more like trolls than human beings."
This has sometimes been interpreted as the band of men being "hamrammr",
though there is no major consensus. Another example of "hamrammr" comes from the Saga of Hrólf Kraki. One tale within tells the story of Bödvar Bjarki, a berserker who is able to shapeshift into a bear and uses this ability to fight for king Hrólfr Kraki.
"Men saw that a great bear went before King Hrolf's men, keeping always
near the king. He slew more men with his fore paws than any five of the
king's champions."
Úlfhéðnar – wolf warriors
Wolf warriors appear among the legends of the Indo-Europeans, Turks, Mongols, and Native American cultures.
The Germanic wolf-warriors have left their trace through shields and
standards that were captured by the Romans and displayed in the armilustrium in Rome.
Wolf warrior from Migration Age Germany that was part of the same tradition
The frenzy warriors wearing the skins of wolves were called Úlfhéðnar ("wolf coat"; singular Úlfheðinn), another term associated with berserkers, mentioned in the Vatnsdæla saga, the Haraldskvæði and the Völsunga saga and are consistently referred to in the sagas as a type of berserkers. The first Norwegian king Harald Fairhair
is mentioned in several sagas as followed by an elite guard of
úlfhéðnar. They were said to wear the pelt of a wolf when they entered
battle. Úlfhéðnar are sometimes described as Odin's special warriors: "[Odin's] men went without their mailcoats
and were mad as hounds or wolves, bit their shields...they slew men,
but neither fire nor iron had effect upon them. This is called 'going
berserk'." In addition, the helm-plate press from Torslunda depicts a scene of Odin with a berserker with a wolf pelt and a spear
as distinguishing features: "a wolf skinned warrior with the apparently
one-eyed dancer in the bird-horned helm, which is generally interpreted
as showing a scene indicative of a relationship between berserkgang ...
and the god Odin".
"Jöfurr" – proposed boar warriors
In Norse mythology, the wild boar was an animal sacred to the Vanir. The powerful god Freyr owned the boar Gullinbursti and the goddess Freyja owned Hildisvíni
("battle swine"), and these boars can be found depicted on Swedish and
Anglo-Saxon ceremonial items. Similar to the berserker and the
ulfhednar, the boar-warriors used the strength of their animal, the
boar, as the foundation of their martial arts.
Attestations
Berserkers appear prominently in a multitude of other sagas and poems. Many earlier sagas portrayed berserkers as bodyguards, elite soldiers, and champions of kings.
This image would change as time passed and sagas would begin to
describe berserkers as boasters rather than heroes, and as ravenous men
who loot, plunder, and kill indiscriminately. Within the sagas, Berserkers can be narrowed down to four different types. The King's Berserkr, the Hall-Challenging Berserkr, the Hólmgangumaðr, and the Viking Berserkr. Later, by Christian interpreters, the berserker was viewed as a "heathen devil".
The earliest surviving reference to the term "berserker" is in Haraldskvæði, a skaldic poem composed by Thórbiörn Hornklofi in the late 9th century in honor of King Harald Fairhair, as ulfheðnar ("men clad in wolf skins"). This translation from the Haraldskvæði saga describes Harald's berserkers:
I'll ask of the berserks, you tasters of blood,
Those intrepid heroes, how are they treated,
Those who wade out into battle?
Wolf-skinned they are called. In battle
They bear bloody shields.
Red with blood are their spears when they come to fight.
They form a closed group.
The prince in his wisdom puts trust in such men
Who hack through enemy shields.
The "tasters of blood" (a kenning) in this passage are thought to be ravens, which feasted on the slain.
The Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) wrote the following description of berserkers in his Ynglinga saga:
His (Odin's)
men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit
their shields, and were strong as bears or wild oxen, and killed people
at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon them. This was called Berserkergang.
King Harald Fairhair's use of berserkers as "shock troops" broadened his sphere of influence. Other Scandinavian kings used berserkers as part of their army of hirdmen and sometimes ranked them as equivalent to a royal bodyguard. It may be that some of those warriors only adopted the organization or rituals of berserk Männerbünde, or used the name as a deterrent or claim of their ferocity.
Emphasis has been placed on the frenzied nature of the
berserkers, hence the modern sense of the word "berserk". However, the
sources describe several other characteristics that have been ignored or
neglected by modern commentators. Snorri's assertion that "neither fire
nor iron told upon them" is reiterated time after time. The sources
frequently state that neither edged weapons nor fire affected the
berserks, although they were not immune to clubs or other blunt
instruments. For example:
These men asked Halfdan to attack
Hardbeen and his champions man by man; and he not only promised to
fight, but assured himself the victory with most confident words. When
Hardbeen heard this, a demoniacal frenzy suddenly took him; he furiously
bit and devoured the edges of his shield; he kept gulping down fiery
coals; he snatched live embers in his mouth and let them pass down into
his entrails; he rushed through the perils of crackling fires; and at
last, when he had raved through every sort of madness, he turned his
sword with raging hand against the hearts of six of his champions. It is
doubtful whether this madness came from thirst for battle or natural
ferocity. Then with the remaining band of his champions he attacked
Halfdan, who crushed him with a hammer of wondrous size, so that he lost
both victory and life; paying the penalty both to Halfdan, whom he had
challenged, and to the kings whose offspring he had violently
ravished...
Similarly, Hrolf Kraki's
champions refuse to retreat "from fire or iron". Another frequent motif
refers to berserkers blunting their enemy's blades with spells or a
glance from their evil eyes. This appears as early as Beowulf where it is a characteristic attributed to Grendel. Both the fire eating and the immunity to edged weapons are reminiscent of tricks popularly ascribed to fakirs.
In 1015, JarlEiríkr Hákonarson of Norway outlawed berserkers. Grágás, the medievalIcelandiclaw code, sentenced berserker warriors to outlawry. By the 12th century, organised berserker war-bands had disappeared.
The rage the berserker experienced was referred to as berserkergang (Berserk Fit/Frenzy or The Berserk movement). This condition has been described as follows:
This fury, which was called berserkergang,
occurred not only in the heat of battle, but also during laborious
work. Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed
impossible for human power. This condition is said to have begun with
shivering, chattering of the teeth, and chill in the body, and then the
face swelled and changed its colour. With this was connected a great
hot-headedness, which at last gave over into a great rage, under which
they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down
everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe. When
this condition ceased, a great dulling of the mind and feebleness
followed, which could last for one or several days.
When Viking
villages went to war in unison, the berserkers often wore special
clothing, for instance furs of a wolf or bear, to indicate that this
person was a berserker, and would not be able to tell friend from foe
when in "bersærkergang". In this way, other allies would know to keep
their distance.
Some scholars propose that certain examples of berserker rage had been induced voluntarily by the consumption of drugs such as the hallucinogenicmushroom or massive amounts of alcohol. This is much debated but the theory is further supported by the discovery of seeds belonging to the plant henbane Hyoscyamus niger in a Viking grave that was unearthed near Fyrkat, Denmark in 1977. An analysis of the symptoms caused by Hyoscyamus niger
are also similar to the symptoms ascribed to the berserker state, which
suggest it may have been used to generate their warlike mood. Other explanations for the berserker's madness that have been put forward include self-induced hysteria, epilepsy, or mental illness, among other causes.
A rook piece from the Lewis chessmen, depicted as a warrior biting his shield
One theory of the berserkers suggests that the physical
manifestations of the berserker alongside their rage was a form of
self-induced hysteria. Initiated before battle through a ritualistic
process, also known as effektnummer, which included actions such as shield-biting and animalistic howling.
If a soldier survives the berserk
state, it imparts emotional deadness and vulnerability to explosive rage
to his psychology and permanent hyperarousal to his physiology —
hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans. My
clinical experience with Vietnam combat veterans prompts me to place the
berserk state at the heart of their most severe psychological and
psychophysiological injuries.
It has been suggested that the berserkers' behavior inspired the legend of the werewolf.
In popular culture
In Assassins Creed: Valhalla, berserkers are mentioned throughout the game and on occasion met in the storyline.
The berserker is often used in many different forms of media as an archetype, such as in video games, with some examples being Path of Exile, TERA, and MapleStory 2.
Gears of War features an enemy known as the Locust. Within the Locust caste are drones, with the females named berserkers.
For Honor features a playable character named berserker.
Expert sailors and navigators aboard their characteristic longships, Vikings established Norse settlements and governments in the British Isles, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, the Baltic coast, and along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes in what is now European Russia, Belarus and Ukraine (where they were also known as Varangians). The Normans, Norse-Gaels, Rus' people, Faroese and Icelanders emerged from these Norse colonies. The Vikings also voyaged to Constantinople, Iran, and Arabia. They were the first Europeans to reach North America, briefly settling in Newfoundland (Vinland).
While spreading Norse culture to foreign lands, they simultaneously
brought home slaves, concubines and foreign cultural influences to
Scandinavia, profoundly influencing the genetic
and historical development of both. During the Viking Age the Norse
homelands were gradually consolidated from smaller kingdoms into three
larger kingdoms: Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
The Vikings spoke Old Norse and made inscriptions in runes. For most of the period they followed the Old Norse religion, but later became Christians. The Vikings had their own laws, art and architecture. Most Vikings were also farmers, fishermen,
craftsmen and traders. Popular conceptions of the Vikings often
strongly differ from the complex, advanced civilisation of the Norsemen
that emerges from archaeology and historical sources. A romanticised picture of Vikings as noble savages began to emerge in the 18th century; this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival.
Perceived views of the Vikings as violent, piratical heathens or as
intrepid adventurers owe much to conflicting varieties of the modern
Viking myth that had taken shape by the early 20th century. Current
popular representations of the Vikings are typically based on cultural
clichés and stereotypes, complicating modern appreciation of the Viking
legacy. These representations are rarely accurate—for example, there is
no evidence that they wore horned helmets, a costume element that first appeared in Wagnerian opera.
The etymology of "Viking" is uncertain. In the Middle Ages it came to mean Scandinavian pirate or raider. The Anglo-Saxons regarded the word wicing as synonymous with pirate and in several Old English sources wicing is translated into the Latin pirata. It was not seen as a reference to nationality, with other terms such as Norðmenn (Northmen) and Dene (Danes) being used for that. In Asser's Life of Alfred the Danes are referred to as pagani (pagans), but this is usually translated as 'Vikings', in modern English, which some regard as a mistranslation. The earliest reference to wicing in English sources is from the Épinal-Erfurt glossary which dates to around 700, whereas the first known attack by Viking raiders in England at Lindisfarne was in 793. The origin of wicing is disputed, with some believing that it is a loan-word from Old Norse.
The form occurs as a personal name on some Swedish runestones. The stone of Tóki víking (Sm 10)
was raised in memory of a local man named Tóki who got the name Tóki
víking (Toki the Viking), presumably because of his activities as a
Viking. The Gårdstånga Stone (DR 330) uses the phrase "Þeʀ drængaʀ waʀu wiða unesiʀ i wikingu" (These valiant men were widely renowned on viking raids), referring to the stone's dedicatees as Vikings. The Västra Strö 1 Runestone has an inscription in memory of a Björn, who was killed when "on a viking raid". In Sweden there is a locality known since the Middle Ages as Vikingstad. The Bro Stone (U 617) was raised in memory of Assur who is said to have protected the land from Vikings (Saʀ vaʀ vikinga vorðr með Gæiti). There is little indication of any negative connotation in the term before the end of the Viking Age.
Other theories suggest that its origin is from the Old English wicing and Old Frisian wizing that are almost 300 years older, and probably derive from wic itself related to the Latin vicus "village, habitation". Another less popular theory is that víking from the feminine vík, meaning "creek, inlet, small bay". Various theories have been offered that the word viking may be derived from the name of the historical Norwegian district of Víkin, meaning "a person from Víkin".
There are a few major problems with this theory. People from the
Viken area were not called "Viking" in Old Norse manuscripts, but are
referred to as víkverir, ('Vík dwellers'). In addition, that explanation could explain only the masculine (víkingr) and not the feminine (víking), which is a serious problem because the masculine is easily derived from the feminine but hardly the other way around.
Another etymology that gained support in the early twenty-first century, derives Viking from the same root as Old Norse vika, f. 'sea mile', originally 'the distance between two shifts of rowers', from the root *weik or *wîk, as in the Proto-Germanic verb *wîkan, 'to recede'. This is found in the Proto-Nordic verb *wikan, 'to turn', similar to Old Icelandic víkja (ýkva, víkva) 'to move, to turn', with well-attested nautical usages. Linguistically, this theory is better attested, and the term most likely predates the use of the sail by the Germanic peoples of North-Western Europe, because the Old Frisian spelling Witsing or Wīsing
shows that the word was pronounced with a palatal k and thus in all
probability existed in North-Western Germanic before that palatalisation
happened, that is, in the 5th century or before (in the western
branch).
In that case, the idea behind it seems to be that the tired rower
moves aside for the rested rower on the thwart when he relieves him. The
Old Norse feminine víking (as in the phrase fara í víking)
may originally have been a sea journey characterised by the shifting of
rowers, i.e. a long-distance sea journey, because in the pre-sail era,
the shifting of rowers would distinguish long-distance sea journeys. A víkingr
(the masculine) would then originally have been a participant on a sea
journey characterised by the shifting of rowers. In that case, the word
Viking was not originally connected to Scandinavian seafarers but
assumed this meaning when the Scandinavians begun to dominate the seas.
In Old English, the word wicing appears first in the Anglo-Saxon poem, Widsith, which probably dates from the 9th century. In Old English, and in the history of the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen written by Adam of Bremen
in about 1070, the term generally referred to Scandinavian pirates or
raiders. As in the Old Norse usages, the term is not employed as a name
for any people or culture in general. The word does not occur in any
preserved Middle English texts. One theory made by the Icelander Örnolfur Kristjansson is that the key to the origins of the word is "wicinga cynn" in Widsith, referring to the people or the race living in Jórvík (York, in the ninth century under control by Norsemen), Jór-Wicings (note, however, that this is not the origin of Jórvík).
The word Viking was introduced into Modern English during
the 18th-century Viking revival, at which point it acquired romanticised
heroic overtones of "barbarian warrior" or noble savage.
During the 20th century, the meaning of the term was expanded to refer
to not only seaborne raiders from Scandinavia and other places settled
by them (like Iceland and the Faroe Islands),
but also any member of the culture that produced said raiders during
the period from the late 8th to the mid-11th centuries, or more loosely
from about 700 to as late as about 1100. As an adjective, the word is
used to refer to ideas, phenomena, or artefacts connected with those
people and their cultural life, producing expressions like Viking age, Viking culture, Viking art, Viking religion, Viking ship and so on.
In Eastern Europe, of which parts were ruled by a Norse elite, víkingr came be perceived as a positive concept meaning "hero" in the Russian borrowed form vityaz' (витязь).
Other names
Europe in 814. Roslagen is located along the coast of the northern tip of the pink area marked "Swedes and Goths".
The Vikings were known as Ascomanni ("ashmen") by the Germans for the ash wood of their boats, Dubgail and Finngail ( "dark and fair foreigners") by the Irish, Lochlannaich ("people from the land of lakes") by the Gaels, Dene (Dane) by the Anglo-Saxons and Northmonn by the Frisians.
The scholarly consensus is that the Rus' people originated in what is currently coastal eastern Sweden around the eighth century and that their name has the same origin as Roslagen in Sweden (with the older name being Roden). According to the prevalent theory, the name Rus', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (*Ruotsi), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-)
as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern
Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen (Rus-law) or Roden, as it was known in earlier times. The name Rus' would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi.
The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them Varangians (Russian: варяги, from Old Norse Væringjar 'sworn men', from vàr- "confidence, vow of fealty", related to Old English wær "agreement, treaty, promise", Old High German wara "faithfulness"). Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors were known as the Varangian Guard.
The Rus' initially appeared in Serkland in the 9th century, traveling
as merchants along the Volga trade route, selling furs, honey, and
slaves, as well as luxury goods such as amber, Frankish swords, and
walrus ivory. These goods were mostly exchanged for Arabian silver
coins, called dirhams. Hoards of 9th century Baghdad-minted silver coins
have been found in Sweden, particularly in Gotland.
During and after the Viking raid on Seville in 844 CE the Muslim chroniclers of al-Andalus referred to the Vikings as Magians (Arabic: al-Majus مجوس), conflating them with fire worshipping Zoroastrians from Persia. When Ibn Fadlan was taken captive by Vikings in the Volga, he referred to them as Rus.
The Franks
normally called them Northmen or Danes, while for the English they were
generally known as Danes or heathen and the Irish knew them as pagans
or gentiles.
Anglo-Scandinavian is an academic term referring to the people, and archaeological and historical periods during the 8th to 13th centuries in which there was migration to—and occupation of—the British Isles by Scandinavian peoples generally known in English as Vikings. It is used in distinction from Anglo-Saxon. Similar terms exist for other areas, such as Hiberno-Norse for Ireland and Scotland.
The Viking Age in Scandinavian history is taken to have been the
period from the earliest recorded raids by Norsemen in 793 until the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Vikings used the Norwegian Sea and Baltic Sea for sea routes to the south.
The Normans were descendants of those Vikings who had been given feudal overlordship of areas in northern France, namely the Duchy of Normandy,
in the 10th century. In that respect, descendants of the Vikings
continued to have an influence in northern Europe. Likewise, King Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, had Danish ancestors. Two Vikings even ascended to the throne of England, with Sweyn Forkbeard claiming the English throne in 1013 until 1014 and his son Cnut the Great being king of England between 1016 and 1035.
Geographically, the Viking Age covered Scandinavian lands (modern Denmark, Norway and Sweden), as well as territories under North Germanic dominance, mainly the Danelaw, including Scandinavian York, the administrative centre of the remains of the Kingdom of Northumbria, parts of Mercia, and East Anglia.
Viking navigators opened the road to new lands to the north, west and
east, resulting in the foundation of independent settlements in the Shetland, Orkney, and Faroe Islands; Iceland; Greenland; and L'Anse aux Meadows, a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland, circa 1000. The Greenland settlement was established around 980, during the Medieval Warm Period, and its demise by the mid-15th century may have been partly due to climate change. The Viking Rurik dynasty took control of territories in Slavic and Finnic-dominated areas of Eastern Europe; they annexed Kiev in 882 to serve as the capital of the Kievan Rus'.
As early as 839, when Swedish emissaries are first known to have visited Byzantium, Scandinavians served as mercenaries in the service of the Byzantine Empire.
In the late 10th century, a new unit of the imperial bodyguard formed.
Traditionally containing large numbers of Scandinavians, it was known as
the Varangian Guard. The word Varangian may have originated in Old Norse, but in Slavic and Greek it could refer either to Scandinavians or Franks. In these years, Swedish men left to enlist in the Byzantine Varangian Guard in such numbers that a medieval Swedish law, Västgötalagen, from Västergötland declared no one could inherit while staying in "Greece"—the then Scandinavian term for the Byzantine Empire—to stop the emigration, especially as two other European courts simultaneously also recruited Scandinavians: Kievan Rus' c. 980–1060 and London 1018–1066 (the Þingalið).
In the Viking Age, the present day nations of Norway, Sweden and
Denmark did not exist, but were largely homogeneous and similar in
culture and language, although somewhat distinct geographically. The
names of Scandinavian kings are reliably known for only the later part
of the Viking Age. After the end of the Viking Age the separate kingdoms
gradually acquired distinct identities as nations, which went
hand-in-hand with their Christianisation. Thus the end of the Viking Age for the Scandinavians also marks the start of their relatively brief Middle Ages.
Intermixing with the Slavs
Slavic and Viking tribes were "closely linked, fighting one another, intermixing and trading".
In the Middle Ages, ware was transferred from Slavic areas to
Scandinavia, and Denmark could be considered "a melting pot of Slavic
and Scandinavian elements". It is argued that the presence of Slavs in Scandinavia is "more significant than previously thought" although "the Slavs and their interaction with Scandinavia have not been adequately investigated".
Colonization of Iceland by Norwegian Vikings began in the ninth
century. The first source mentioning Iceland and Greenland is a papal
letter of 1053. Twenty years later, they appear in the Gesta of Adam of Bremen.
It was not until after 1130, when the islands had become Christianized,
that accounts of the history of the islands were written from the point
of view of the inhabitants in sagas and chronicles.
The Vikings explored the northern islands and coasts of the North
Atlantic, ventured south to North Africa, east to Kievan Rus (now –
Ukraine, Belarus), Constantinople, and the Middle East.
They raided and pillaged, traded, acted as mercenaries and settled colonies over a wide area. Early Vikings probably returned home after their raids. Later in their history, they began to settle in other lands. Vikings under Leif Erikson, heir to Erik the Red, reached North America and set up short-lived settlements in present-day L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. This expansion occurred during the Medieval Warm Period.
Viking expansion into continental Europe was limited. Their realm
was bordered by powerful tribes to the south. Early on, it was the Saxons who occupied Old Saxony,
located in what is now Northern Germany. The Saxons were a fierce and
powerful people and were often in conflict with the Vikings. To counter
the Saxon aggression and solidify their own presence, the Danes constructed the huge defence fortification of Danevirke in and around Hedeby.
The Vikings witnessed the violent subduing of the Saxons by Charlemagne, in the thirty-year Saxon Wars of 772–804. The Saxon defeat resulted in their forced christening and the absorption of Old Saxony into the Carolingian Empire. Fear of the Franks
led the Vikings to further expand Danevirke, and the defence
constructions remained in use throughout the Viking Age and even up
until 1864.
The south coast of the Baltic Sea was ruled by the Obotrites, a federation of Slavic tribes loyal to the Carolingians and later the Frankish empire. The Vikings—led by King Gudfred—destroyed the Obotrite city of Reric on the southern Baltic coast in 808 AD and transferred the merchants and traders to Hedeby. This secured Viking supremacy in the Baltic Sea, which continued throughout the Viking Age.
Because of the expansion of the Vikings across Europe, a comparison of DNA and archeology undertaken by scientists at the University of Cambridge and University of Copenhagen
suggested that the term "Viking" may have evolved to become "a job
description, not a matter of heredity," at least in some Viking bands.
Motives
The motives driving the Viking expansion are a topic of much debate in Nordic history.
Researchers have suggested that Vikings may have originally
started sailing and raiding due to a need to seek out women from foreign
lands. The concept was expressed in the 11th century by historian Dudo of Saint-Quentin in his semi imaginary History of The Normans. Rich and powerful Viking men tended to have many wives and concubines; these polygynous
relationships may have led to a shortage of eligible women for the
average Viking male. Due to this, the average Viking man could have been
forced to perform riskier actions to gain wealth and power to be able
to find suitable women. Viking men would often buy or capture women and make them into their wives or concubines. Polygynous marriage increases male-male competition
in society because it creates a pool of unmarried men who are willing
to engage in risky status-elevating and sex seeking behaviors. The Annals of Ulster states that in 821 the Vikings plundered an Irish village and "carried off a great number of women into captivity".
One common theory posits that Charlemagne
"used force and terror to Christianise all pagans", leading to baptism,
conversion or execution, and as a result, Vikings and other pagans
resisted and wanted revenge. Professor Rudolf Simek states that "it is not a coincidence if the early Viking activity occurred during the reign of Charlemagne".
The ascendance of Christianity in Scandinavia led to serious conflict,
dividing Norway for almost a century. However, this time period did not
commence until the 10th century, Norway was never subject to aggression
by Charlemagne and the period of strife was due to successive Norwegian
kings embracing Christianity after encountering it overseas.
Viking-era towns of Scandinavia
Another explanation is that the Vikings exploited a moment of
weakness in the surrounding regions. Contrary to Simek's assertion,
Viking raids occurred sporadically long before the reign of Charlemagne;
but exploded in frequency and size after his death, when his empire
fragmented into multiple much weaker entities.
England suffered from internal divisions and was relatively easy prey
given the proximity of many towns to the sea or to navigable rivers.
Lack of organised naval opposition throughout Western Europe allowed
Viking ships to travel freely, raiding or trading as opportunity
permitted. The decline in the profitability of old trade routes could also have played a role. Trade between western Europe and the rest of Eurasia suffered a severe blow when the Western Roman Empire fell in the 5th century. The expansion of Islam in the 7th century had also affected trade with western Europe.
Raids in Europe, including raids and settlements from
Scandinavia, were not unprecedented and had occurred long before the
Vikings arrived. The Jutes invaded the British Isles three centuries earlier, pouring out from Jutland during the Age of Migrations, before the Danes settled there. The Saxons and the Angles
did the same, embarking from mainland Europe. The Viking raids were,
however, the first to be documented in writing by eyewitnesses, and they
were much larger in scale and frequency than in previous times.
Vikings themselves were expanding; although their motives are
unclear, historians believe that scarce resources or a lack of mating
opportunities were a factor.
The "Highway of Slaves" was a term for a route that the Vikings
found to have a direct pathway from Scandinavia to Constantinople and
Baghdad while traveling on the Baltic Sea. With the advancements of
their ships during the ninth century, the Vikings were able to sail to
Kievan Rus and some northern parts of Europe.
Jomsborg was a semi-legendary Viking stronghold at the southern coast of the Baltic Sea (medieval Wendland, modern Pomerania), that existed between the 960s and 1043. Its inhabitants were known as Jomsvikings.
Jomsborg's exact location, or its existence, has not yet been
established, though it is often maintained that Jomsborg was somewhere
on the islands of the Oder estuary.
End of the Viking Age
While the Vikings were active beyond their Scandinavian homelands,
Scandinavia was itself experiencing new influences and undergoing a
variety of cultural changes.
Emergence of nation-states and monetary economies
By the late 11th century, royal dynasties were legitimised by the Catholic Church
(which had had little influence in Scandinavia 300 years earlier) which
were asserting their power with increasing authority and ambition, with
the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden taking shape. Towns
appeared that functioned as secular and ecclesiastical administrative
centres and market sites, and monetary economies began to emerge based
on English and German models.
By this time the influx of Islamic silver from the East had been absent
for more than a century, and the flow of English silver had come to an
end in the mid-11th century.
Assimilation into Christendom
Christianity had taken root
in Denmark and Norway with the establishment of dioceses in the 11th
century, and the new religion was beginning to organise and assert
itself more effectively in Sweden. Foreign churchmen and native elites
were energetic in furthering the interests of Christianity, which was
now no longer operating only on a missionary footing, and old ideologies
and lifestyles were transforming. By 1103, the first archbishopric was
founded in Scandinavia, at Lund, Scania, then part of Denmark.
The assimilation of the nascent Scandinavian kingdoms into the cultural mainstream of European Christendom
altered the aspirations of Scandinavian rulers and of Scandinavians
able to travel overseas, and changed their relations with their
neighbours.
One of the primary sources of profit for the Vikings had been
slave-taking from other European peoples. The medieval Church held that
Christians should not own fellow Christians as slaves, so chattel slavery
diminished as a practice throughout northern Europe. This took much of
the economic incentive out of raiding, though sporadic slaving activity
continued into the 11th century. Scandinavian predation in Christian
lands around the North and Irish Seas diminished markedly.
The kings of Norway continued to assert power in parts of
northern Britain and Ireland, and raids continued into the 12th century,
but the military ambitions of Scandinavian rulers were now directed
toward new paths. In 1107, Sigurd I of Norway sailed for the eastern Mediterranean with Norwegian crusaders to fight for the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem, and Danes and Swedes participated energetically in the Baltic Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries.
Culture
A variety of sources illuminate the culture, activities, and beliefs
of the Vikings. Although they were generally a non-literate culture that
produced no literary legacy, they had an alphabet and described
themselves and their world on runestones. Most contemporary literary and written sources on the Vikings come from other cultures that were in contact with them.
Since the mid-20th century, archaeological findings have built a more
complete and balanced picture of the lives of the Vikings.
The archaeological record is particularly rich and varied, providing
knowledge of their rural and urban settlement, crafts and production,
ships and military equipment, trading networks, as well as their pagan
and Christian religious artefacts and practices.
The most important primary sources on the Vikings are contemporary texts from Scandinavia and regions where the Vikings were active. Writing in Latin
letters was introduced to Scandinavia with Christianity, so there are
few native documentary sources from Scandinavia before the late 11th and
early 12th centuries. The Scandinavians did write inscriptions in runes,
but these are usually very short and formulaic. Most contemporary
documentary sources consist of texts written in Christian and Islamic
communities outside Scandinavia, often by authors who had been
negatively affected by Viking activity.
Later writings on the Vikings and the Viking Age can also be
important for understanding them and their culture, although they need
to be treated cautiously. After the consolidation of the church and the
assimilation of Scandinavia and its colonies into the mainstream of
medieval Christian culture
in the 11th and 12th centuries, native written sources begin to appear
in Latin and Old Norse. In the Viking colony of Iceland, an
extraordinary vernacular literature blossomed in the 12th through 14th
centuries, and many traditions connected with the Viking Age were
written down for the first time in the Icelandic sagas.
A literal interpretation of these medieval prose narratives about the
Vikings and the Scandinavian past is doubtful, but many specific
elements remain worthy of consideration, such as the great quantity of skaldic poetry attributed to court poets
of the 10th and 11th centuries, the exposed family trees, the self
images, the ethical values, that are contained in these literary
writings.
Indirectly, the Vikings have also left a window open onto their
language, culture and activities, through many Old Norse place names and
words found in their former sphere of influence. Some of these place
names and words are still in direct use today, almost unchanged, and
shed light on where they settled and what specific places meant to them.
Examples include place names like Egilsay (from Eigils ey meaning Eigil's Island), Ormskirk (from Ormr kirkja meaning Orms Church or Church of the Worm), Meols (from merl meaning Sand Dunes), Snaefell (Snow Fell), Ravenscar (Ravens Rock), Vinland (Land of Wine or Land of Winberry), Kaupanger (Market Harbour), Tórshavn (Thor's Harbour), and the religious centre of Odense, meaning a place where Odin was worshipped. Viking influence is also evident in concepts like the present-day parliamentary body of the Tynwald on the Isle of Man.
Linguistic and etymological
studies continue to provide a vital source of information on the Viking
culture, their social structure and history and how they interacted
with the people and cultures they met, traded, attacked or lived with in
overseas settlements. A lot of Old Norse connections are evident in the modern-day languages of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Faroese and Icelandic. Old Norse did not exert any great influence on the Slavic languages
in the Viking settlements of Eastern Europe. It has been speculated
that the reason for this was the great differences between the two
languages, combined with the Rus' Vikings more peaceful businesses in
these areas and the fact that they were outnumbered. The Norse named
some of the rapids on the Dnieper, but this can hardly be seen from the modern names.
Runic inscriptions of the larger of the Jelling Stones in Denmark
Two types of Norse runestones from the Viking Age
The Norse of the Viking Age could read and write and used a non-standardised alphabet, called runor,
built upon sound values. While there are few remains of runic writing
on paper from the Viking era, thousands of stones with runic
inscriptions have been found where Vikings lived. They are usually in
memory of the dead, though not necessarily placed at graves. The use of runor survived into the 15th century, used in parallel with the Latin alphabet.
The runestones are unevenly distributed in Scandinavia: Denmark has 250 runestones, Norway has 50 while Iceland has none. Sweden has as many as between 1,700 and 2,500 depending on definition. The Swedish district of Uppland has the highest concentration with as many as 1,196 inscriptions in stone, whereas Södermanland is second with 391.
The majority of runic inscriptions from the Viking period are found in Sweden. Many runestones in Scandinavia record the names of participants in Viking expeditions, such as the Kjula runestone that tells of extensive warfare in Western Europe and the Turinge Runestone, which tells of a war band in Eastern Europe.
Other runestones mention men who died on Viking expeditions. Among them include the England runestones (Swedish: Englandsstenarna) which is a group of about 30 runestones in Sweden which refer to Viking Age voyages to England.
They constitute one of the largest groups of runestones that mention
voyages to other countries, and they are comparable in number only to
the approximately 30 Greece Runestones and the 26 Ingvar Runestones, the latter referring to a Viking expedition to the Middle East. They were engraved in Old Norse with the Younger Futhark.
Piraeus Lion drawing of curved lindworm. The runes on the lion tell of Swedish warriors, most likely Varangians, mercenaries in the service of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Emperor.
The Jelling stones date from between 960 and 985. The older, smaller stone was raised by King Gorm the Old, the last pagan king of Denmark, as a memorial honouring Queen Thyre. The larger stone was raised by his son, Harald Bluetooth,
to celebrate the conquest of Denmark and Norway and the conversion of
the Danes to Christianity. It has three sides: one with an animal image,
one with an image of the crucified Jesus Christ, and a third bearing
the following inscription:
King Haraldr ordered this monument
made in memory of Gormr, his father, and in memory of Thyrvé, his
mother; that Haraldr who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and
made the Danes Christian.
Runestones attest to voyages to locations such as Bath, Greece (how the Vikings referred to the Byzantium territories generally), Khwaresm, Jerusalem, Italy (as Langobardland), Serkland (i.e. the Muslim world), England (including London), and various places in Eastern Europe. Viking Age inscriptions have also been discovered on the Manx runestones on the Isle of Man.
Runic alphabet usage in modern times
The last known people to use the Runic alphabet were an isolated group of people known as the Elfdalians, that lived in the locality of Älvdalen in the Swedish province of Dalarna. They spoke the language of Elfdalian, the language unique to Älvdalen. The Elfdalian language differentiates itself from the other Scandinavian languages as it evolved much closer to Old Norse. The people of Älvdalen stopped using runes as late as the 1920s. Usage of runes therefore survived longer in Älvdalen than anywhere else in the world. The last known record of the Elfdalian Runes is from 1929; they are a variant of the Dalecarlian runes, runic inscriptions that were also found in Dalarna.
Traditionally regarded as a Swedish dialect, but by several criteria closer related to West Scandinavian dialects, Elfdalian is a separate language by the standard of mutual intelligibility.
Although there is no mutual intelligibility, due to schools and public
administration in Älvdalen being conducted in Swedish, native speakers
are bilingual
and speak Swedish at a native level. Residents in the area who speak
only Swedish as their sole native language, neither speaking nor
understanding Elfdalian, are also common. Älvdalen can be said to have had its own alphabet during the 17th and 18th century. Today there are about 2,000-3000 native speakers of Elfdalian.
Examples of Viking burial mounds and stone set graves, collectively known as tumuli
There are numerous burial sites associated with Vikings throughout
Europe and their sphere of influence—in Scandinavia, the British Isles,
Ireland, Greenland, Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Germany, The Baltic,
Russia, etc. The burial practices of the Vikings were quite varied, from
dug graves in the ground, to tumuli, sometimes including so-called ship burials.
According to written sources, most of the funerals took place at sea. The funerals involved either burial or cremation,
depending on local customs. In the area that is now Sweden, cremations
were predominant; in Denmark burial was more common; and in Norway both
were common. Viking barrows are one of the primary source of evidence for circumstances in the Viking Age. The items buried with the dead give some indication as to what was considered important to possess in the afterlife. It is unknown what mortuary services were given to dead children by the Vikings. Some of the most important burial sites for understanding the Vikings include:
There have been several archaeological finds of Viking ships of all
sizes, providing knowledge of the craftsmanship that went into building
them. There were many types of Viking ships, built for various uses; the
best-known type is probably the longship.
Longships were intended for warfare and exploration, designed for speed
and agility, and were equipped with oars to complement the sail, making
navigation possible independently of the wind. The longship had a long,
narrow hull and shallow draught to facilitate landings and troop
deployments in shallow water. Longships were used extensively by the Leidang, the Scandinavian defence fleets. The longship allowed the Norse to go Viking, which might explain why this type of ship has become almost synonymous with the concept of Vikings.
The Vikings built many unique types of watercraft, often used for more peaceful tasks. The knarr
was a dedicated merchant vessel designed to carry cargo in bulk. It had
a broader hull, deeper draught, and a small number of oars (used
primarily to manoeuvre in harbours and similar situations). One Viking
innovation was the 'beitass', a spar mounted to the sail that allowed their ships to sail effectively against the wind. It was common for seafaring Viking ships to tow or carry a smaller boat to transfer crews and cargo from the ship to shore.
Ships were an integral part of the Viking culture. They facilitated
everyday transportation across seas and waterways, exploration of new
lands, raids, conquests, and trade with neighbouring cultures. They also
held a major religious importance. People with high status were
sometimes buried in a ship along with animal sacrifices, weapons,
provisions and other items, as evidenced by the buried vessels at Gokstad and Oseberg in Norway and the excavated ship burial at Ladby in Denmark. Ship burials were also practised by Vikings abroad, as evidenced by the excavations of the Salme ships on the Estonian island of Saaremaa.
Well-preserved remains of five Viking ships were excavated from Roskilde Fjord in the late 1960s, representing both the longship and the knarr. The ships were scuttled there in the 11th century to block a navigation channel and thus protect Roskilde, then the Danish capital, from seaborne assault. The remains of these ships are on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.
In 2019, archaeologists uncovered two Viking boat graves in Gamla
Uppsala. They also discovered that one of the boats still holds the
remains of a man, a dog, and a horse, along with other items. This has shed light on death rituals of Viking communities in the region.
Reconstructed town houses from Haithabu (now in Germany)
Viking society was divided into the three socio-economic classes: Thralls, Karls and Jarls. This is described vividly in the Eddic poem of Rígsþula, which also explains that it was the god Ríg—father of mankind also known as Heimdallr—who created the three classes. Archaeology has confirmed this social structure.
Thralls were the lowest ranking class and were slaves. Slaves comprised as much as a quarter of the population.
Slavery was of vital importance to Viking society, for everyday chores
and large scale construction and also to trade and the economy. Thralls
were servants and workers in the farms and larger households of the
Karls and Jarls, and they were used for constructing fortifications,
ramps, canals, mounds, roads and similar hard work projects. According
to the Rigsthula, Thralls were despised and looked down upon. New
thralls were supplied by either the sons and daughters of thralls or
captured abroad. The Vikings often deliberately captured many people on
their raids in Europe, to enslave them as thralls. The thralls were then
brought back home to Scandinavia by boat, used on location or in newer
settlements to build needed structures, or sold, often to the Arabs in
exchange for silver. Other names for thrall were 'træl' and 'ty'.
Karls were free peasants. They owned farms, land and cattle and
engaged in daily chores like ploughing the fields, milking the cattle,
building houses and wagons, but used thralls to make ends meet. Other
names for Karls were 'bonde' or simply free men. Similar classes were churls and huskarls.
The Jarls were the aristocracy
of the Viking society. They were wealthy and owned large estates with
huge longhouses, horses and many thralls. The thralls did most of the
daily chores, while the Jarls did administration, politics, hunting,
sports, visited other Jarls or went abroad on expeditions. When a Jarl
died and was buried, his household thralls were sometimes sacrificially killed and buried next to him, as many excavations have revealed.
In daily life, there were many intermediate positions in the
overall social structure and it is believed that there must have been
some social mobility. These details are unclear, but titles and
positions like hauldr, thegn, landmand, show mobility between the Karls and the Jarls.
Other social structures included the communities of félag in both the civil and the military spheres, to which its members (called félagi)
were obliged. A félag could be centred around certain trades, a common
ownership of a sea vessel or a military obligation under a specific
leader. Members of the latter were referred to as drenge, one of
the words for warrior. There were also official communities within towns
and villages, the overall defence, religion, the legal system and the Things.
Status of women
Typical jewellery worn by women of the Karls and Jarls: ornamented silver brooches, coloured glass-beads and amulets
Like elsewhere in medieval Europe, most women in Viking society were
subordinate to their husbands and fathers and had little political
power.
However, the written sources portray free Viking women as having
independence and rights. Viking women generally appear to have had more
freedom than women elsewhere, as illustrated in the Icelandic Grágás and the Norwegian Frostating laws and Gulating laws.
Most free Viking women were housewives, and the woman's standing in society was linked to that of her husband. Marriage gave a woman a degree of economic security and social standing encapsulated in the title húsfreyja
(lady of the house). Norse laws assert the housewife's authority over
the 'indoor household'. She had the important roles of managing the
farm's resources, conducting business, as well as child-rearing,
although some of this would be shared with her husband.
After the age of 20, an unmarried woman, referred to as maer and mey, reached legal majority and had the right to decide her place of residence and was regarded as her own person before the law. An exception to her independence was the right to choose a husband, as marriages were normally arranged by the family. The groom would pay a bride-price (mundr) to the bride's family, and the bride brought assets into the marriage, as a dowry. A married woman could divorce her husband and remarry.
Concubinage
was also part of Viking society, whereby a woman could live with a man
and have children with him without marrying; such a woman was called a frilla. Usually she would be the mistress of a wealthy and powerful man who also had a wife. The wife had authority over the mistresses if they lived in her household.
Through her relationship to a man of higher social standing, a
concubine and her family could advance socially; although her position
was less secure than that of a wife.
There was little distinction made between children born inside or
outside marriage: both had the right to inherit property from their
parents, and there were no "legitimate" or "illegitimate" children. However, children born in wedlock had more inheritance rights than those born out of wedlock.
A woman had the right to inherit part of her husband's property upon his death, and widows enjoyed the same independent status as unmarried women. The paternal aunt, paternal niece and paternal granddaughter, referred to as odalkvinna, all had the right to inherit property from a deceased man.
A woman with no husband, sons or male relatives could inherit not only
property but also the position as head of the family when her father or
brother died. Such a woman was referred to as Baugrygr,
and she exercised all the rights afforded to the head of a family clan,
until she married, by which her rights were transferred to her new
husband.
Women had religious authority and were active as priestesses (gydja) and oracles (sejdkvinna). They were active within art as poets (skalder) and rune masters, and as merchants and medicine women. There may also have been female entrepreneurs, who worked in textile production. Women may also have been active within military office: the tales about shieldmaidens are unconfirmed, but some archaeological finds such as the Birka female Viking warrior may indicate that at least some women in military authority existed.
These liberties of the Viking women gradually disappeared after the introduction of Christianity, and from the late 13th-century, they are no longer mentioned.
Examinations of Viking Age burials suggests that women lived
longer, and nearly all well past the age of 35, as compared to earlier
times. Female graves from before the Viking Age in Scandinavia holds a
proportional large number of remains from women aged 20 to 35,
presumably due to complications of childbirth.
Examinations of skeletal remains also allow us to reconstruct the
relative health and nutritional status of boys and girls in the past,
using anthropometric techniques. Burials from Scandinavia
and other European countries suggests that, in comparison with other
societies at the time, female equality was remarkably high in rural
Scandinavia. Females in the rural periphery of Nordic countries during
the Viking period and the later Middle Ages
had relatively high status, resulting in substantial nutritional and
health resources being allocated to girls, enabling them to grow
stronger and healthier.
Appearances
Reconstructed Vikings costume on display at Archaeological Museum in Stavanger, Norway
Scandinavian Vikings were similar in appearance to modern Scandinavians;
"their skin was fair and the hair color varied between blond, dark and
reddish". Genetic studies suggest that people were mostly blond in what
is now eastern Sweden, while red hair was mostly found in western
Scandinavia. Most Viking men had shoulder-length hair and beards, and slaves (thralls) were usually the only men with short hair.
The length varied according to personal preference and occupation. Men
involved in warfare, for example, may have had slightly shorter hair and
beards for practical reasons. Men in some regions bleached their hair a
golden saffron color. Females also had long hair, with girls often wearing it loose or braided and married women often wearing it in a bun. The average height is estimated to have been 1.70 m (5 ft 7 in) for men and 1.55 m (5 ft 1 in) for women.
The three classes were easily recognisable by their appearances.
Men and women of the Jarls were well groomed with neat hairstyles and
expressed their wealth and status by wearing expensive clothes (often
silk) and well crafted jewellery like brooches, belt buckles, necklaces and arm rings. Almost all of the jewellery was crafted in specific designs unique to the Norse (see Viking art). Finger rings were seldom used and earrings were not used at all, as they were seen as a Slavic phenomenon. Most Karls expressed similar tastes and hygiene, but in a more relaxed and inexpensive way.
Archaeological finds from Scandinavia and Viking settlements in
the British Isles support the idea of the well groomed and hygienic
Viking. Burial with grave goods was a common practice in the
Scandinavian world, through the Viking Age and well past the
Christianization of the Norse peoples. Within these burial sites and homesteads, combs, often made from antler, are a common find.
The manufacturing of such antler combs was common, as at the Viking
settlement at Dublin hundreds of examples of combs from the
tenth-century have survived, suggesting that grooming was a common
practice.
The manufacturing of such combs was also widespread throughout the
Viking world, as examples of similar combs have been found at Viking
settlements in Ireland, England, and Scotland.
The combs share a common visual appearance as well, with the extant
examples often decorated with linear, interlacing, and geometric motifs,
or other forms of ornamentation depending on the comb's period and
type, but stylistically similar to Viking Age art.
The practice of grooming was a concern for all levels of Viking age
society, as grooming products, combs, have been found in common graves
as well as aristocratic ones.
Farming and cuisine
The sagas tell about the diet and cuisine of the Vikings, but first hand evidence, like cesspits, kitchen middens and garbage dumps have proved to be of great value and importance. Undigested remains of plants from cesspits at Coppergate
in York have provided much information in this respect. Overall,
archaeo-botanical investigations have been undertaken increasingly in
recent decades, as a collaboration between archaeologists and
palaeoethno-botanists. This new approach sheds light on the agricultural
and horticultural practices of the Vikings and their cuisine.
Pot of soapstone, partly reconstructed, Viking Age (From Birka, Sweden)
The combined information from various sources suggests a diverse cuisine and ingredients. Meat products of all kinds, such as cured, smoked and whey-preserved meat, sausages, and boiled or fried fresh meat cuts, were prepared and consumed. There were plenty of seafood, bread, porridges, dairy products, vegetables, fruits, berries and nuts. Alcoholic drinks like beer, mead, bjórr (a strong fruit wine) and, for the rich, imported wine, were served.
Certain livestock were typical and unique to the Vikings, including the Icelandic horse, Icelandic cattle, a plethora of sheep breeds, the Danish hen and the Danish goose. The Vikings in York mostly ate beef, mutton,
and pork with small amounts of horse meat. Most of the beef and horse
leg bones were found split lengthways, to extract the marrow. The mutton
and swine were cut into leg and shoulder joints and chops. The frequent
remains of pig skull and foot bones found on house floors indicate that
brawn and trotters were also popular. Hens were kept for both their meat and eggs, and the bones of game birds such as black grouse, golden plover, wild ducks, and geese have also been found.
Seafood was important, in some places even more so than meat. Whales and walrus were hunted for food in Norway and the north-western parts of the North Atlantic region, and seals were hunted nearly everywhere. Oysters, mussels and shrimp were eaten in large quantities and cod and salmon were popular fish. In the southern regions, herring was also important.
Milk and buttermilk were popular, both as cooking ingredients and drinks, but were not always available, even at farms. Milk came from cows, goats and sheep, with priorities varying from location to location, and fermented milk products like skyr or surmjölk were produced as well as butter and cheese.
Vikings collected and ate fruits, berries and nuts. Apple (wild crab apples), plums and cherries were part of the diet, as were rose hips and raspberry, wild strawberry, blackberry, elderberry, rowan, hawthorn and various wild berries, specific to the locations. Hazelnuts were an important part of the diet in general and large amounts of walnut shells have been found in cities like Hedeby. The shells were used for dyeing, and it is assumed that the nuts were consumed.
The invention and introduction of the mouldboard plough revolutionised agriculture in Scandinavia in the early Viking Age and made it possible to farm even poor soils. In Ribe, grains of rye, barley, oat and wheat dated to the 8th century have been found and examined, and are believed to have been cultivated locally.
Grains and flour were used for making porridges, some cooked with milk,
some cooked with fruit and sweetened with honey, and also various forms
of bread. Remains of bread from primarily Birka in Sweden were made of
barley and wheat. It is unclear if the Norse leavened their breads, but
their ovens and baking utensils suggest that they did. Flax
was a very important crop for the Vikings: it was used for oil
extraction, food consumption and most importantly the production of linen.
More than 40% of all known textile recoveries from the Viking Age can
be traced as linen. This suggests a much higher actual percentage, as
linen is poorly preserved compared to wool for example.
The quality of food for common people was not always particularly
high. The research at Coppergate shows that the Vikings in York made
bread from whole meal flour—probably both wheat and rye—but with the seeds of cornfield weeds included. Corncockle (Agrostemma),
would have made the bread dark-coloured, but the seeds are poisonous,
and people who ate the bread might have become ill. Seeds of carrots, parsnip, and brassicas were also discovered, but they were poor specimens and tend to come from white carrots and bitter tasting cabbages. The rotary querns often used in the Viking Age left tiny stone fragments (often from basalt rock) in the flour, which when eaten wore down the teeth. The effects of this can be seen on skeletal remains of that period.
Sports
Sports were widely practised and encouraged by the Vikings.
Sports that involved weapons training and developing combat skills were
popular. This included spear and stone throwing, building and testing
physical strength through wrestling (see glima), fist fighting, and stone lifting. In areas with mountains, mountain climbing
was practised as a sport. Agility and balance were built and tested by
running and jumping for sport, and there is mention of a sport that
involved jumping from oar to oar on the outside of a ship's railing as
it was being rowed. Swimming was a popular sport and Snorri Sturluson
describes three types: diving, long-distance swimming, and a contest in
which two swimmers try to dunk one another. Children often participated
in some of the sport disciplines and women have also been mentioned as
swimmers, although it is unclear if they took part in competition. King Olaf Tryggvason was hailed as a master of both mountain climbing and oar-jumping, and was said to have excelled in the art of knife juggling as well.
Skiing and ice skating
were the primary winter sports of the Vikings, although skiing was also
used as everyday means of transport in winter and in the colder regions
of the north.
Horse fighting was practised for sport, although the rules are
unclear. It appears to have involved two stallions pitted against each
other, within smell and sight of fenced-off mares. Whatever the rules
were, the fights often resulted in the death of one of the stallions.
Icelandic sources refer to the sport of knattleik. A ball game akin to hockey,
knattleik involved a bat and a small hard ball and was usually played
on a smooth field of ice. The rules are unclear, but it was popular with
both adults and children, even though it often led to injuries.
Knattleik appears to have been played only in Iceland, where it
attracted many spectators, as did horse fighting.
Hunting, as a sport, was limited to Denmark, where it was not regarded as an important occupation. Birds, deer, hares and foxes were hunted with bow and spear, and later with crossbows. The techniques were stalking, snare and traps and par force hunting with dog packs.
Games and entertainment
Rook, Lewis chessmen, at the National Museum of Scotland
Both archaeological finds and written sources testify to the fact
that the Vikings set aside time for social and festive gatherings.
Board games and dice games were played as a popular pastime at
all levels of society. Preserved gaming pieces and boards show game
boards made of easily available materials like wood, with game pieces
manufactured from stone, wood or bone, while other finds include
elaborately carved boards and game pieces of glass, amber, antler or walrus tusk, together with materials of foreign origin, such as ivory. The Vikings played several types of tafl games; hnefatafl, nitavl (nine men's morris) and the less common kvatrutafl. Chess
also appeared at the end of the Viking Age. Hnefatafl is a war game, in
which the object is to capture the king piece—a large hostile army
threatens and the king's men have to protect the king. It was played on a
board with squares using black and white pieces, with moves made
according to dice rolls. The Ockelbo Runestone shows two men engaged in Hnefatafl, and the sagas suggest that money or valuables could have been involved in some dice games.
On festive occasions storytelling, skaldic poetry, music and alcoholic drinks, like beer and mead, contributed to the atmosphere.
Music was considered an art form and music proficiency as fitting for a
cultivated man. The Vikings are known to have played instruments
including harps, fiddles, lyres and lutes.
On 1 July 2007, the reconstructed Viking ship Skuldelev 2, renamed Sea Stallion,
began a journey from Roskilde to Dublin. The remains of that ship and
four others were discovered during a 1962 excavation in the Roskilde
Fjord. Tree-ring analysis has shown the ship was built of oak in the
vicinity of Dublin in about 1042. Seventy multi-national crew members
sailed the ship back to its home, and Sea Stallion arrived
outside Dublin's Custom House on 14 August 2007. The purpose of the
voyage was to test and document the seaworthiness, speed, and
manoeuvrability of the ship on the rough open sea and in coastal waters
with treacherous currents. The crew tested how the long, narrow,
flexible hull withstood the tough ocean waves. The expedition also
provided valuable new information on Viking longships and society. The
ship was built using Viking tools, materials, and much the same methods
as the original ship.
Other vessels, often replicas of the Gokstad ship (full- or half-scale) or Skuldelev have been built and tested as well. The Snorri (a Skuldelev IKnarr), was sailed from Greenland to Newfoundland in 1998.
Cultural assimilation
Elements of a Scandinavian identity and practices were maintained in
settler societies, but they could be quite distinct as the groups
assimilated into the neighboring societies. Assimilation to the Frankish culture in Normandy for example was rapid. Links to a Viking identity remained longer in the remote islands of Iceland and the Faroes.
Knowledge about the arms and armour of the Viking age is based on
archaeological finds, pictorial representation, and to some extent on
the accounts in the Norse sagas and Norse laws
recorded in the 13th century. According to custom, all free Norse men
were required to own weapons and were permitted to carry them at all
times. These arms indicated a Viking's social status: a wealthy Viking
had a complete ensemble of a helmet, shield, mail
shirt, and sword. However, swords were rarely used in battle, probably
not sturdy enough for combat and most likely only used as symbolic or
decorative items.
A typical bóndi (freeman) was more likely to fight with a spear and shield, and most also carried a seax
as a utility knife and side-arm. Bows were used in the opening stages
of land battles and at sea, but they tended to be considered less
"honourable" than melee weapons. Vikings were relatively unusual for the
time in their use of axes as a main battle weapon. The Húscarls, the elite guard of King Cnut (and later of King Harold II) were armed with two-handed axes that could split shields or metal helmets with ease.
The warfare and violence of the Vikings were often motivated and fuelled by their beliefs in Norse religion, focusing on Thor and Odin, the gods of war and death. In combat, it is believed that the Vikings sometimes engaged in a disordered style of frenetic, furious fighting known as berserkergang, leading them to be termed berserkers. Such tactics may have been deployed intentionally by shock troops, and the berserk-state may have been induced through ingestion of materials with psychoactive properties, such as the hallucinogenic mushrooms, Amanita muscaria, or large amounts of alcohol.
The scales and weights of a Viking trader, used for measuring silver and sometimes gold (From the Sigtuna box found in Sweden)
The Vikings established and engaged in extensive trading networks
throughout the known world and had a profound influence on the economic
development of Europe and Scandinavia.
Except for the major trading centres of Ribe, Hedeby and the like, the Viking world was unfamiliar with the use of coinage and was based on so called bullion economy, that is, the weight of precious metals. Silver was the most common metal in the economy, although gold was also used to some extent. Silver circulated in the form of bars, or ingots,
as well as in the form of jewellery and ornaments. A large number of
silver hoards from the Viking Age have been uncovered, both in
Scandinavia and the lands they settled.
Traders carried small scales, enabling them to measure weight very
accurately, so it was possible to have a very precise system of trade
and exchange, even without a regular coinage.
Goods
Organized trade covered everything from ordinary items in bulk to
exotic luxury products. The Viking ship designs, like that of the knarr, were an important factor in their success as merchants. Imported goods from other cultures included:
Spices
were obtained from Chinese and Persian traders, who met with the Viking
traders in Russia. Vikings used homegrown spices and herbs like caraway, thyme, horseradish and mustard, but imported cinnamon.
Glass
was much prized by the Norse. The imported glass was often made into
beads for decoration and these have been found in the thousands. Åhus in Scania and the old market town of Ribe were major centres of glass bead production.
Silk was a very important commodity obtained from Byzantium (modern day Istanbul)
and China. It was valued by many European cultures of the time, and the
Vikings used it to indicate status such as wealth and nobility. Many of
the archaeological finds in Scandinavia include silk.
Wine was imported from France and Germany as a drink of the wealthy, augmenting the regular mead and beer.
To counter these valuable imports, the Vikings exported a large variety of goods. These goods included:
Amber—the fossilised resin of the pine tree—was frequently found on the North Sea and Baltic coastline. It was worked into beads and ornamental objects, before being traded. (See also the Amber Road).
Cloth and wool. The Vikings were skilled spinners and weavers and exported woollen cloth of a high quality.
Down was collected and exported. The Norwegian west coast supplied eiderdowns and sometimes feathers were bought from the Samis. Down was used for bedding and quilted clothing. Fowling on the steep slopes and cliffs was dangerous work and was often lethal.
Slaves, known as thralls
in Old Norse. On their raids, the Vikings captured many people, among
them monks and clergymen. They were sometimes sold as slaves to Arab
merchants in exchange for silver.
Other exports included weapons, walrus ivory, wax, salt and cod. As one of the more exotic exports, hunting birds were sometimes provided from Norway to the European aristocracy, from the 10th century.
Many of these goods were also traded within the Viking world itself, as well as goods such as soapstone and whetstone. Soapstone was traded with the Norse on Iceland and in Jutland, who used it for pottery. Whetstones were traded and used for sharpening weapons, tools and knives.
There are indications from Ribe and surrounding areas, that the
extensive medieval trade with oxen and cattle from Jutland (see Ox Road),
reach as far back as c. 720 AD. This trade satisfied the Vikings' need
for leather and meat to some extent, and perhaps hides for parchment
production on the European mainland. Wool was also very important as a
domestic product for the Vikings, to produce warm clothing for the cold
Scandinavian and Nordic climate, and for sails. Sails for Viking ships
required large amounts of wool, as evidenced by experimental
archaeology. There are archaeological signs of organised textile
productions in Scandinavia, reaching as far back as the early Iron Ages. Artisans and craftsmen in the larger towns were supplied with antlers
from organised hunting with large-scale reindeer traps in the far
north. They were used as raw material for making everyday utensils like
combs.
In England the Viking Age began dramatically on 8 June 793 when Norsemen destroyed the abbey on the island of Lindisfarne. The devastation of Northumbria's
Holy Island shocked and alerted the royal courts of Europe to the
Viking presence. "Never before has such an atrocity been seen," declared
the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York.
Medieval Christians in Europe were totally unprepared for the Viking
incursions and could find no explanation for their arrival and the
accompanying suffering they experienced at their hands save the "Wrath
of God".
More than any other single event, the attack on Lindisfarne demonised
perception of the Vikings for the next twelve centuries. Not until the
1890s did scholars outside Scandinavia begin to seriously reassess the
achievements of the Vikings, recognizing their artistry, technological
skills, and seamanship.
Norse Mythology, sagas, and literature
tell of Scandinavian culture and religion through tales of heroic and
mythological heroes. Early transmission of this information was
primarily oral, and later texts relied on the writings and
transcriptions of Christian scholars, including the Icelanders Snorri Sturluson and Sæmundur fróði.
Many of these sagas were written in Iceland, and most of them, even if
they had no Icelandic provenance, were preserved there after the Middle
Ages due to the continued interest of Icelanders in Norse literature and
law codes.
The 200-year Viking influence on European history
is filled with tales of plunder and colonisation, and the majority of
these chronicles came from western witnesses and their descendants. Less
common, though equally relevant, are the Viking chronicles that
originated in the east, including the Nestor chronicles, Novgorod chronicles, Ibn Fadlan chronicles, Ibn Rusta chronicles, and brief mentions by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, regarding their first attack on the Byzantine Empire. Other chroniclers of Viking history include Adam of Bremen, who wrote, in the fourth volume of his Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, "[t]here is much gold here (in Zealand), accumulated by piracy. These pirates, which are called wichingi by their own people, and Ascomanni by our own people, pay tribute to the Danish king." In 991, the Battle of Maldon between Viking raiders and the inhabitants of Maldon in Essex was commemorated with a poem of the same name.
Early modern publications, dealing with what is now called Viking culture, appeared in the 16th century, e.g. Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (History of the northern people) of Olaus Magnus (1555), and the first edition of the 13th-century Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danes), by Saxo Grammaticus, in 1514. The pace of publication increased during the 17th century with Latin translations of the Edda (notably Peder Resen's Edda Islandorum of 1665).
In Scandinavia, the 17th-century Danish scholars Thomas Bartholin and Ole Worm and the Swede Olaus Rudbeck
used runic inscriptions and Icelandic sagas as historical sources. An
important early British contributor to the study of the Vikings was George Hickes, who published his Linguarum vett. septentrionalium thesaurus (Dictionary of the Old Northern Languages)
in 1703–05. During the 18th century, British interest and enthusiasm
for Iceland and early Scandinavian culture grew dramatically, expressed
in English translations of Old Norse texts and in original poems that
extolled the supposed Viking virtues.
The word "viking" was first popularised at the beginning of the 19th century by Erik Gustaf Geijer in his poem, The Viking.
Geijer's poem did much to propagate the new romanticised ideal of the
Viking, which had little basis in historical fact. The renewed interest
of Romanticism in the Old North had contemporary political implications. The Geatish Society,
of which Geijer was a member, popularised this myth to a great extent.
Another Swedish author who had great influence on the perception of the
Vikings was Esaias Tegnér, a member of the Geatish Society, who wrote a modern version of Friðþjófs saga hins frœkna, which became widely popular in the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Viking long ships besieging Paris in 845, 19th century portrayal
Fascination with the Vikings reached a peak during the so-called Viking revival in the late 18th and 19th centuries as a branch of Romantic nationalism. In Britain this was called Septentrionalism, in Germany "Wagnerian" pathos, and in the Scandinavian countries Scandinavism.
Pioneering 19th-century scholarly editions of the Viking Age began to
reach a small readership in Britain, archaeologists began to dig up
Britain's Viking past, and linguistic enthusiasts started to identify
the Viking-Age origins of rural idioms and proverbs. The new
dictionaries of the Old Norse language enabled the Victorians to grapple with the primary Icelandic sagas.
Until recently, the history of the Viking Age was largely based
on Icelandic sagas, the history of the Danes written by Saxo
Grammaticus, the Russian Primary Chronicle, and Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib. Few scholars still accept these texts as reliable sources, as historians now rely more on archaeology and numismatics, disciplines that have made valuable contributions toward understanding the period.
In 20th-century politics
The romanticised idea of the Vikings constructed in scholarly and
popular circles in northwestern Europe in the 19th and early 20th
centuries was a potent one, and the figure of the Viking became a
familiar and malleable symbol in different contexts in the politics and
political ideologies of 20th-century Europe.
In Normandy, which had been settled by Vikings, the Viking ship became
an uncontroversial regional symbol. In Germany, awareness of Viking
history in the 19th century had been stimulated by the border dispute
with Denmark over Schleswig-Holstein and the use of Scandinavian
mythology by Richard Wagner.
The idealised view of the Vikings appealed to Germanic supremacists who
transformed the figure of the Viking in accordance with the ideology of
a Germanic master race.
Building on the linguistic and cultural connections between
Norse-speaking Scandinavians and other Germanic groups in the distant
past, Scandinavian Vikings were portrayed in Nazi Germany
as a pure Germanic type. The cultural phenomenon of Viking expansion
was re-interpreted for use as propaganda to support the extreme militant
nationalism of the Third Reich, and ideologically informed
interpretations of Viking paganism and the Scandinavian use of runes
were employed in the construction of Nazi mysticism. Other political organisations of the same ilk, such as the former Norwegian fascist party Nasjonal Samling, similarly appropriated elements of the modern Viking cultural myth in their symbolism and propaganda.
Soviet and earlier Slavophile
historians emphasized a Slavic rooted foundation in contrast to the
Normanist theory of the Vikings conquering the Slavs and founding the Kievan Rus'.
They accused Normanist theory proponents of distorting history by
depicting the Slavs as undeveloped primitives. In contrast, Soviet
historians stated that the Slavs laid the foundations of their statehood
long before the Norman/Viking raids, while the Norman/Viking invasions
only served to hinder the historical development of the Slavs. They
argued that Rus' composition was Slavic and that Rurik and Oleg' success was rooted in their support from within the local Slavic aristocracy. After the dissolution of the USSR, Novgorod acknowledged its Viking history by incorporating a Viking ship into its logo.
The appearance of Vikings within popular media and television has seen a resurgence in recent decades, especially with the History Channel's series Vikings (2013), directed by Michael Hirst. The show has a loose grounding in historical facts and sources, but bases itself more so on literary sources, such as fornaldarsaga Ragnars saga loðbrókar, itself more legend than fact, and Old Norse Eddic and Skaldic poetry. The events of the show frequently make references to the Völuspá, an Eddic poem describing the creation of the world, often directly referencing specific lines of the poem in the dialogue. The show portrays some of the social realities of the medieval Scandinavian world, such as slavery and the greater role of women within Viking society.
The show also addresses the topics of gender equity in Viking society
with the inclusion of shield maidens through the character Lagertha, also based on a legendary figure.
Recent archaeological interpretations and osteological analysis of
previous excavations of Viking burials has given support to the idea of
the Viking woman warrior, namely the excavation and DNA study of the Birka female Viking warrior, within recent years. However, the conclusions remain contentious.
Modern reconstructions of Viking mythology
have shown a persistent influence in late 20th- and early 21st-century
popular culture in some countries, inspiring comics, movies, television
series, role-playing games, computer games, and music, including Viking metal, a subgenre of heavy metal music.
Since the 1960s, there has been rising enthusiasm for historical reenactment.
While the earliest groups had little claim for historical accuracy, the
seriousness and accuracy of reenactors has increased. The largest such
groups include The Vikings and Regia Anglorum,
though many smaller groups exist in Europe, North America, New Zealand,
and Australia. Many reenactor groups participate in live-steel combat,
and a few have Viking-style ships or boats.
During the banking boom of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Icelandic financiers came to be styled as útrásarvíkingar (roughly 'raiding Vikings').
Apart from two or three representations of (ritual) helmets—with
protrusions that may be either stylised ravens, snakes, or horns—no
depiction of the helmets of Viking warriors, and no preserved helmet,
has horns. The formal, close-quarters style of Viking combat (either in
shield walls or aboard "ship islands") would have made horned helmets
cumbersome and hazardous to the warrior's own side.
Historians therefore believe that Viking warriors did not wear
horned helmets; whether such helmets were used in Scandinavian culture
for other, ritual purposes, remains unproven. The general misconception
that Viking warriors wore horned helmets was partly promulgated by the
19th-century enthusiasts of Götiska Förbundet, founded in 1811 in Stockholm. They promoted the use of Norse mythology as the subject of high art and other ethnological and moral aims.
The Vikings were often depicted with winged helmets and in other clothing taken from Classical antiquity,
especially in depictions of Norse gods. This was done to legitimise the
Vikings and their mythology by associating it with the Classical world,
which had long been idealised in European culture.
The latter-day mythos created by national romantic ideas blended the Viking Age with aspects of the Nordic Bronze Age some 2,000 years earlier. Horned helmets from the Bronze Age were shown in petroglyphs and appeared in archaeological finds (see Bohuslän and Vikso helmets). They were probably used for ceremonial purposes.
Viking helmets were conical, made from hard leather with wood and
metallic reinforcement for regular troops. The iron helmet with mask
and mail was for the chieftains, based on the previous Vendel-age helmets from central Sweden. The only original Viking helmet discovered is the Gjermundbu helmet, found in Norway. This helmet is made of iron and has been dated to the 10th century.
Barbarity
The image of wild-haired, dirty savages sometimes associated with the
Vikings in popular culture is a distorted picture of reality.
Viking tendencies were often misreported, and the work of Adam of
Bremen, among others, told largely disputable tales of Viking savagery
and uncleanliness.
Use of skulls as drinking vessels
There is no evidence that Vikings drank out of the skulls of vanquished enemies. This was a misconception based on a passage in the skaldic poem Krákumál speaking of heroes drinking from ór bjúgviðum hausa (branches of skulls). This was a reference to drinking horns, but was mistranslated in the 17th century as referring to the skulls of the slain.
Genetic legacy
Margaryan et al. 2020 analyzed 442 Viking world individuals from various archaeological sites in Europe.
They were found to be closely related to modern Scandinavians. The
Y-DNA composition of the individuals in the study was also similar to
that of modern Scandinavians. The most common Y-DNA haplogroup was I1 (95 samples), followed by R1b (84 samples) and R1a,
especially (but not exclusively) of the Scandinavian R1a-Z284 subclade
(61 samples). The study showed what many historians have hypothesized,
that it was common for Norseman settlers to marry foreign women. Some
individuals from the study, such as those found in Foggia,
display typical Scandinavian Y-DNA haplogroups but also Southern
European autosomal ancestry, suggesting that they were the descendants
of Viking settler males and local women. The 5 individual samples from
Foggia were likely Normans.
The same pattern of a combination of Scandinavian Y-DNA and local
autosomal ancestry is seen in other samples from the study, for example Varangians buried near lake Ladoga and Vikings in England, suggesting that Viking men had married into local families in those places too.
The study found evidence of a major influx of Danish Viking
ancestry into England, a Swedish influx into Estonia and Finland; and
Norwegian influx into Ireland, Iceland and Greenland during the Viking
Age.
Margaryan et al. 2020 examined the skeletal remains of 42 individuals from the Salme ship burials
in Estonia. The skeletal remains belonged to warriors killed in battle
who were later buried together with numerous valuable weapons and
armour. DNA testing and isotope analysis revealed that the men came from
central Sweden.
Female descent studies show evidence of Norse descent in areas closest to Scandinavia, such as the Shetland and Orkney islands. Inhabitants of lands farther away show most Norse descent in the male Y-chromosome lines.
A specialised genetic and surname study in Liverpool
showed marked Norse heritage: up to 50% of males of families that lived
there before the years of industrialisation and population expansion. High percentages of Norse inheritance—tracked through the R-M420 haplotype—were also found among males in the Wirral and West Lancashire. This was similar to the percentage of Norse inheritance found among males in the Orkney Islands.
Recent research suggests that the Celtic warrior Somerled, who drove the Vikings out of western Scotland and was the progenitor of Clan Donald, may have been of Viking descent, a member of haplogroup R-M420.
Margaryan et al. 2020 examined an elite warrior burial from Bodzia
(Poland) dated to 1010-1020 AD. The cemetery in Bodzia is exceptional
in terms of Scandinavian and Kievian Rus links. The Bodzia man (sample
VK157, or burial E864/I) was not a simple warrior from the princely
retinue, but he belonged to the princely family himself. His burial is
the richest one in the whole cemetery, moreover, strontium analysis of
his teeth enamel shows he was not local. It is assumed that he came to
Poland with the Prince of Kiev, Sviatopolk the Accursed,
and met a violent death in combat. This corresponds to the events of
1018 AD when Sviatopolk himself disappeared after having retreated from
Kiev to Poland. It cannot be excluded that the Bodzia man was Sviatopolk
himself, as the genealogy of the Rurikids at this period is extremely
sketchy and the dates of birth of many princes of this dynasty may be
quite approximative. The Bodzia man carried haplogroup I1-S2077 and had both Scandinavian ancestry and Russian admixture.
.jpg)
_sid_103).jpg)
.JPG)
.jpg)
.jpg)
_(cropped).jpg)
.jpg)
.JPG)
.jpg)
