™Old Norse & Viking culture
A study of the Norse world: the Old Norse language and its runes, the sagas and Eddas, mythology, everyday life, seafaring, and the lasting mark the Vikings left on Britain.
Who were the Vikings?
The Old Norse word víkingr meant someone who went raiding by sea. It described an activity, not a whole people: most Scandinavians of the period were farmers, craftworkers and traders who never went “a-viking” at all.
Historians usually date the Viking Age from about 793, when raiders attacked the monastery at Lindisfarne, to 1066, when the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada was defeated at Stamford Bridge. In those centuries people from what are now Denmark, Norway and Sweden raided, traded and settled from North America to Constantinople.
Sudden attacks on coasts and monasteries.
Silver, furs, walrus ivory and slaves moved along rivers and seas.
Farms and towns from Iceland to the Danelaw.
Kingdoms and earldoms in York, Dublin, Orkney and, briefly, all England.
Old Norse & the runes
Old Norse was the North Germanic language of the Viking Age. Its descendants are Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish; Icelandic has changed least, so modern Icelanders can still read the medieval sagas with some effort.
Runes were carved rather than written, so the letters are made of straight strokes that are easy to cut into wood, bone or stone. The name futhark comes from the sounds of the first six runes: f, u, þ (th), a, r, k.
24 runes in three groups of eight, used from about the 2nd to the 8th century AD.
c. 150–750Reduced to 16 runes during the 8th century; the alphabet of the Viking Age.
c. 750–1100Memorial stones, often raised for family members, such as the Jelling stones in Denmark.
MonumentsThe 16 runes of the Younger Futhark (long-branch, or “Danish”, forms). Names are Old Norse; meanings are approximate, and some are uncertain.
Sagas & Eddas
Much of what we know about Norse stories comes from manuscripts written in Iceland in the 13th and 14th centuries, by Christian authors, two or three hundred years after the Viking Age. They are extraordinary literature, but they need to be read with care as historical evidence.
The Poetic Edda
A collection of anonymous mythological and heroic poems, best preserved in the Codex Regius, a manuscript written in Iceland in the later 13th century. It includes Völuspá (the seeress’s prophecy) and Hávamál (sayings of the High One).
The Prose Edda
Written by the Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson around 1220 as a guide for poets. It retells many myths, and is a key, if late, source for Norse mythology.
Kings’ sagas
Snorri’s Heimskringla tells the history of the kings of Norway. Orkneyinga saga (c. 1200) tells the story of the earls of Orkney.
Sagas of Icelanders
Prose stories of the first generations of Icelandic settlers and their feuds, such as Njáls saga, Egils saga and Laxdæla saga.
Skaldic verse
Court poets (skalds) composed intricate verse praising rulers, full of kennings: poetic phrases such as “horse of the sea” for a ship.
Reading the sources
Sagas mix remembered history, tradition and invention. Historians compare them with archaeology, runic inscriptions and other records.
Mythology & cosmology
In Norse belief the cosmos was held together by Yggdrasil, a vast ash tree whose roots and branches linked the different worlds. Beside it lived the Norns, who shaped the fates of gods and people.
Home of the Æsir, the gods led by Odin.
Home of the Vanir, gods linked with fertility and the sea.
Realm of the light elves.
The world of humans, joined to Asgard by Bifröst, the rainbow bridge.
Land of the giants (jǫtnar).
Home of the dwarves, skilled smiths.
A world of ice and mist.
A world of fire, home of the fire giant Surtr.
Realm of many of the dead, ruled by the being Hel.
The nine realms are never listed in one complete, consistent form in the medieval sources; this is a common modern reconstruction.
Odin
Chief of the gods, linked with wisdom, poetry and war. He gave an eye for wisdom and kept two ravens, Huginn and Muninn.
Thor
God of thunder and protector of gods and people, armed with the hammer Mjölnir. Small hammer pendants were worn as amulets.
Frigg
Odin’s wife, a goddess associated with the household and foresight.
Freyja & Freyr
Twin deities linked with love, fertility and prosperity. Freyja also received half of those who died in battle.
Tyr
A god of war and law, who lost his hand binding the wolf Fenrir.
Loki
A trickster who both helps and harms the gods, and fights against them at the end of the world.
At Ragnarök, the poems say, the gods fight their last battle and the world sinks into the sea, before a new, green earth rises again.After Völuspá, Poetic Edda
Society & daily life
The poem Rígsþula describes three ranks of society: a wealthy warrior aristocracy, free farmers (karlar), and enslaved people known as thralls. Most people lived on family farms in longhouses, raising cattle, sheep and pigs and growing barley and oats.
Free men met at an assembly called the Thing to settle disputes and make laws. Iceland’s Althing was founded in 930. In Britain the same word survives in place names such as Tingwall in Shetland, Dingwall in the Highlands and Thingwall on the Wirral.
Women ran households and farms, often while men were away, and some owned property and commissioned runestones.
Smiths, woodworkers, weavers and comb-makers.
WorkTrading centres such as Hedeby, Birka, Kaupang, Dublin and York.
TradePaid by weight, including “hacksilver” cut from jewellery and coins, much of it from Islamic dirhams.
MoneyAbout 8,600 items of silver found by the River Ribble in Lancashire in 1840.
British MuseumFound near Harrogate in 2007, buried around 927–928.
BM & YorkSeafaring & longships
Ships made the Viking Age possible. Shipwrights built clinker hulls of overlapping planks fixed with iron rivets, light and flexible enough to cross open sea yet shallow enough to row up rivers and land on beaches.
Longship
Long and narrow, with a single square sail and oars, built for speed and carrying crews.
Knarr
A broader, deeper ship that relied mainly on its sail, used to carry goods, people and animals.
Ship finds
The Oseberg and Gokstad ship burials in Norway, and the five Skuldelev ships sunk in Roskilde Fjord in Denmark, now displayed at the Viking Ship Museum.
- c. 870sIceland
Norse settlers arrive, many from Norway and the British Isles.
- c. 985Greenland
Erik the Red leads settlers to south-west Greenland.
- c. 1000North America
A short-lived Norse site at L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. Wood cut there has been dated to the year 1021.
- EastRivers to Byzantium
Norse traders and warriors travelled the rivers of eastern Europe; some served Byzantine emperors in the Varangian Guard.
The Vikings in Britain
- 793Lindisfarne
Raiders attack the monastery on Holy Island, Northumberland, shocking Christian Europe.
- 865The Great Army
A large Danish force, the “Great Heathen Army”, lands in East Anglia.
- 866Jorvik
The army captures York, which becomes the centre of a Viking kingdom.
- 878Edington
Alfred the Great defeats Guthrum. A later treaty sets a boundary; the lands under Danish law become known as the Danelaw.
- 9th centuryNorthern Isles
Norse settlers make Orkney and Shetland their home.
- 954End of Viking York
Eric Bloodaxe, the last Viking king of York, is driven out.
- 1016Cnut
The Danish king Cnut becomes king of all England.
- 1066Stamford Bridge
Harald Hardrada of Norway is defeated near York, weeks before the Battle of Hastings.
- 1468–69Orkney & Shetland
The islands are pledged by the Danish–Norwegian crown to Scotland.
York. Excavations at Coppergate between 1976 and 1981 uncovered timber buildings, workshops and thousands of everyday objects preserved in waterlogged soil. The JORVIK Viking Centre opened on the site in 1984.
Shetland & Orkney. The Northern Isles remained under Norse rule for centuries. Their language, Norn, was spoken until about the 18th century, and many place names and dialect words still come from it. Lerwick’s Up Helly Aa fire festival is a Victorian creation from the 1880s, celebrating that Norse heritage.
In the classroom. “The Viking and Anglo-Saxon struggle for the Kingdom of England” is a topic in the Key Stage 2 history curriculum in England, so this is a period many pupils study at primary school.
Further afield. Norse rulers also held the Hebrides and the Isle of Man until 1266, and founded Dublin as a trading base in the 9th century.
Legacy in words & places
Norse settlers and their English neighbours spoke related languages and lived side by side, so hundreds of Old Norse words entered English, including some of the most everyday words we have.
Farmstead or village: Whitby, Derby, Grimsby.
PlaceOutlying settlement: Scunthorpe.
PlaceClearing: Bassenthwaite.
PlaceHomestead plot: Lowestoft.
PlaceChurch: Ormskirk.
PlaceStreet (gata): Coppergate and Micklegate in York.
StreetDays of the week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are named after Tiw, Woden, Thunor and Frige, the Old English forms of gods the Norse knew as Tyr, Odin, Thor and Frigg. They come from shared Germanic tradition rather than from Norse settlers.
Try it. Look at a map of northern and eastern England and count the places ending in -by: there are hundreds, concentrated in the old Danelaw.
Myths & evidence
Did Vikings wear horned helmets?
No. No horned helmet has been found from the Viking Age. The image was popularised in the 19th century, especially by costume designs for Wagner’s operas.
Were Vikings dirty and unkempt?
Archaeology suggests otherwise: combs are among the most common finds, along with tweezers and ear-cleaning tools.
Did they drink from skulls?
There is no evidence. The idea seems to come from a mistranslation of a poetic phrase in early modern scholarship.
Was everyone from Scandinavia a Viking?
No. “Viking” describes raiders; most people were farmers, and many settlers came to farm and trade.
Resource library
Glossary
A warrior said to fight in a trance-like fury; perhaps “bear-shirt”.
Old NorsePayments made to buy off Viking attacks, later a tax in England.
Old EnglishName given to two medieval Icelandic books of myth and poetry.
Old NorseA runic alphabet, named after its first six letters.
ModernCut-up silver used as money, valued by weight.
ModernA Norse cargo ship.
Old NorseThe Norse language of Orkney and Shetland; also the beings who shape fate in myth.
Old NorseThe final battle and destruction of the world in Norse myth.
Old NorseA letter of a runic alphabet; the word also meant “secret” or “message”.
Old NorseA prose story or history, from the verb “to say”.
Old NorseA court poet.
Old NorseAn assembly of free people that made laws and settled disputes.
Old NorseAn enslaved person.
Old NorseOdin’s hall of warriors slain in battle.
Old NorseFurther reading
Collections including the Cuerdale and Vale of York hoards, the Lewis chessmen and Viking Age silver.
↗02JORVIK Viking CentreYork Archaeological Trust's centre on the site of the Coppergate excavations.
↗03York Museums TrustThe Yorkshire Museum, co-owner of the Vale of York Hoard.
↗04National Museum of DenmarkDenmark's national collections of Viking Age history and archaeology.
↗05Viking Ship Museum, RoskildeHome of the Skuldelev ships and working reconstructions.
↗06Museum of Cultural History, OsloUniversity of Oslo museum responsible for the Oseberg and Gokstad ship finds.
↗07National Museums ScotlandViking Age finds from across Scotland.
↗08Shetland Museum & ArchivesNorse Shetland, the Norn language and island heritage.
↗09English Heritage: Lindisfarne PrioryThe site of the raid of 793.
↗10UNESCO: L’Anse aux MeadowsThe Norse site in Newfoundland, World Heritage listed.
↗11BBC Bitesize: Vikings (KS2)Short lessons and videos for primary pupils.
↗External sites open in a new tab. Kubair Technologies is not affiliated with these organisations.