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Compare all 13 shipsVikings / Life and culture
Beyond the raid
Life and culture
Most Vikings never went on a raid. They farmed, argued at the thing, built boats, traded silver, cut runes and told stories. Eight sections, 55 topics, each with its key facts, its sources and, where the experts disagree, the disagreement.
Search all 55 topics
55 topics
- Jarls, Karls and Thralls Society and law Viking-Age Scandinavia was a ranked society. The Eddic poem Rígsþula explains its three orders as the children of the god Ríg, usually identified with Heimdall: Þræll…
- The Thing: Law Without Kings Society and law Free men settled disputes and made law at the thing (Old Norse þing), an open-air assembly that met at fixed times and places. Local things dealt with neighbourhood…
- Lawspeakers: The Memory of the Law Society and law In a society that kept its law in the head rather than on parchment, the lawspeaker (Old Norse lǫgsǫgumaðr) was its living statute book. In Iceland he was elected for…
- Women: Keys, Property and Power Society and law Viking-Age women lived in a male-dominated society but had a stronger legal position than many European contemporaries. The mistress of a farm (húsfreyja) ran the…
- Marriage and Family Society and law Marriage in the Norse world was a contract between two families rather than a private affair. A betrothal was agreed between the suitor and the woman's guardian, sealed…
- Children and Fostering Society and law A Norse child became a member of the family when the father accepted it, sprinkled it with water and gave it a name, often that of a dead relative. Before then an…
- Thralls and the Slave Trade Society and law Slavery was a normal part of Norse society and one of the engines of Viking raiding. Thralls were captives of war, people born unfree, or debtors; they did the heaviest…
- Feud, Honour and Wergild Society and law With no state to punish crime, order rested on honour and the fear of revenge. An injury or insult to one person was an offence against the whole kin group, which was…
- Kings, the Hirð and the Rise of Royal Power Society and law At the start of the Viking Age Scandinavia was a patchwork of chieftains and petty kings whose power rested on personal followers, gifts and success in war. A king…
- The Longhouse and the Farm Daily life Most Viking-Age people were farmers, and their world centred on the longhouse. Built of timber, wattle and daub, or turf and stone where wood was scarce, it had slightly…
- Food and Drink Daily life The Viking diet was built on grain, dairy, and whatever meat and fish the region allowed. Barley and oats became porridge and flat bread; cows, sheep and goats gave milk…
- Clothing and Jewellery Daily life Norse clothing was made at home from wool and linen, and it advertised rank. Men wore a tunic over trousers, with a cloak pinned at the right shoulder to keep the sword…
- Hygiene and Grooming Daily life The image of the unwashed Viking does not survive the evidence. Combs of antler and bone are among the commonest finds from Viking sites and graves, alongside tweezers…
- Games and Sport Daily life Long winters and a competitive culture made the Norse keen players. The classic board game was hnefatafl ('fist-table'), in which a king at the centre of the board…
- Crafts and Ironworking Daily life Every farm did its own carpentry, weaving and basic smithing, but the Viking Age also saw specialist craft. Iron was smelted from bog ore in small clay furnaces and…
- Towns: Ribe, Hedeby, Birka and Kaupang Daily life Scandinavia had no towns before the 8th century. The first grew up as seasonal markets under the protection of kings, who taxed the trade. Ribe on Denmark's west coast…
- The Longship Ships and navigation The longship was the tool that made the Viking Age possible. Long, narrow and light, it could cross the North Sea under a single square sail, then be rowed up a river…
- The Knarr and Cargo Ships Ships and navigation Not every Viking ship was a warship. The settlement of Iceland and Greenland and the bulk trade of the North Sea depended on the knarr, a shorter, broader and deeper…
- Clinker Building and the Sail Ships and navigation Viking ships were built shell-first. On a long keel with curved stem and stern posts, shipwrights raised a skin of overlapping planks (strakes), each riveted to the one…
- Navigation: Sun, Stars, Birds and the Sunstone Question Ships and navigation Norse sailors crossed the North Atlantic without compass or chart. They coasted from landmark to landmark where they could, and on open-sea passages held a latitude by…
- Portages and River Travel in the East Ships and navigation East of the Baltic the Viking road was a river. From the Gulf of Finland ships passed up the Neva to Lake Ladoga and the Volkhov, and from there small boats could be…
- Weapons: Spear, Axe, Sword and Shield Warriors and weapons Every free Norse man was expected to own weapons, and they went with him to the grave. The spear was the commonest, used for thrusting and throwing. The axe, a working…
- Ulfberht Swords Warriors and weapons About 170 sword blades from the 9th to 11th centuries carry the inlaid iron inscription +VLFBERH+T. Ulfberht is a Frankish personal name, and the blades were most…
- Armour and Helmets: No Horns Warriors and weapons Vikings did not wear horned helmets. No Viking-Age helmet with horns has ever been found; the image was fixed in the 19th century by Romantic painters and by the…
- Tactics: The Raid and the Shield Wall Warriors and weapons Viking success rested on mobility and surprise rather than on superior arms. Shallow-draught ships let small forces appear without warning, strike monasteries, markets…
- Berserkers and Úlfheðnar Warriors and weapons Old Norse poetry and sagas speak of elite warriors who fought in a state of frenzy: berserkir, probably 'bear-shirts', and úlfheðnar, 'wolf-skins'. The earliest…
- Fortifications: Danevirke, Ring Fortresses and Longphorts Warriors and weapons The Norse were builders of fortifications as well as attackers of them. Across the neck of Jutland ran the Danevirke, a system of earth, timber and later stone ramparts…
- The Varangian Guard Warriors and weapons The Byzantines called Scandinavians Varangians, and from 988 they formed the emperor's personal guard. In that year Vladimir of Kyiv sent 6,000 warriors to help Basil II…
- Danegeld: Paying the Vikings to Go Away Warriors and weapons From the 9th century Frankish and English rulers often found it cheaper to buy off Viking armies than to fight them. Charles the Bald paid 7,000 pounds of silver to save…
- The Silver Economy Trade and silver Viking-Age Scandinavia ran on silver measured by weight. Coins, ingots, arm rings and jewellery were all bullion, and a payment was made by putting silver on a small…
- Trade Goods: Furs, Ivory, Amber, Slaves and Silk Trade and silver Norse merchants dealt in the raw wealth of the North. Furs of marten, beaver, sable and squirrel, taken as tribute from the Sámi and the peoples of the eastern forests…
- The Eastern River Routes Trade and silver Scandinavians from what is now Sweden, known as Rus' and Varangians, opened two great routes across eastern Europe. The older, the Volga route, led from Lake Ladoga to…
- Hoards: Spillings, Cuerdale, Vale of York, Galloway Trade and silver Without banks, people buried their silver, and what was never recovered tells the story of Viking wealth. The largest hoard known, found at Spillings on Gotland in 1999…
- Coinage and the First Scandinavian Mints Trade and silver For most of the Viking Age Scandinavians used other people's coins as bullion, but they also experimented with their own. Small silver sceattas circulated in Ribe in the…
- Norse Cosmology: Yggdrasil and the Nine Worlds Religion and the gods The Norse universe, as the Eddas describe it, hangs on a tree. Yggdrasil, an immense ash, links the worlds of gods, humans, giants and the dead; an eagle sits in its…
- Valhalla, Fólkvangr and Hel Religion and the gods The Norse imagined several destinations for the dead. Warriors killed in battle were chosen by the valkyries; half went to Odin's hall Valhalla, 'hall of the slain'…
- Ragnarök Religion and the gods Ragnarök, 'the fate of the gods', is the foretold end of the Norse world. It is announced by three winters with no summer between them, the Fimbulwinter, and the…
- Blót and Sacrifice Religion and the gods Norse religion had no creed and no professional clergy; it was practised through sacrifice (blót) and communal feasting. At set seasons, in autumn, at midwinter (Yule)…
- Seiðr and the Völva Religion and the gods Seiðr was a form of Norse magic concerned with seeing and shaping the future. Its chief practitioner was the völva, 'staff-bearer', a seeress who travelled between farms…
- Burial Customs and Ship Burials Religion and the gods There was no single Viking way of death. Bodies were burned or buried unburned, laid in simple pits, timber chambers, wagons, boats or under great mounds, depending on…
- The Conversion to Christianity Religion and the gods Scandinavia became Christian over some three centuries, and mostly from the top down. Missionaries such as Ansgar, who preached at Birka in 829, made few lasting…
- Runes: The Futhark Runes, sagas and art Runes are the alphabet of the Germanic peoples, made of straight strokes suited to cutting in wood, bone, metal and stone. The older row of 24 characters, the Elder…
- Runestones Runes, sagas and art About 3,000 runestones stand or once stood in Scandinavia, and they are the Vikings' own written record. Most were raised between about 980 and 1100, and most are in…
- Skaldic Poetry Runes, sagas and art The skalds were the court poets of the Viking Age, and their verse is the nearest thing to contemporary Norse testimony about kings and battles. Unlike the anonymous…
- The Eddas Runes, sagas and art Almost everything known of Norse mythology comes from two Icelandic books of the 13th century. The Prose Edda was written about 1220 by the chieftain and historian…
- The Icelandic Sagas Runes, sagas and art The sagas are prose narratives written in Iceland, mostly in the 13th and 14th centuries, in the Old Norse vernacular rather than Latin. The best known, the sagas of…
- The Six Viking Art Styles Runes, sagas and art Viking art is an art of ornament, applied to weapons, jewellery, ships, sledges and memorial stones rather than to pictures in frames. Its constant subject is the…
- Wood Carving and the Stave Churches Runes, sagas and art Wood was the Vikings' chief artistic material, and almost all of it has rotted away. The exceptions are spectacular. The Oseberg burial preserved a carved ship's prow, a…
- Old Norse Words in English Legacy Norse settlers in the Danelaw spoke a language close enough to Old English for neighbours to understand each other, and the two blended. The result is that English took…
- Norse Place Names in Britain, Ireland and Normandy Legacy Where Vikings settled, the map still speaks Old Norse. In eastern and northern England hundreds of villages end in -by ('farm, village'), -thorpe ('outlying hamlet')…
- Days of the Week Legacy Four English weekdays are named after gods the Vikings worshipped. Tuesday is the day of Týr, Wednesday of Odin, Thursday of Thor and Friday of Frigg. Strictly, the…
- Parliaments and Legal Legacy Legacy The Norse assembly tradition left living institutions. Iceland's Althing, founded about 930, is often called the world's oldest parliament, though it was suspended…
- Genetic Legacy Legacy Ancient DNA has added a new kind of evidence. In 2020 a team led by Eske Willerslev published in Nature the genomes of 442 people from Viking-Age sites between Greenland…
- The Viking Revival and the Modern Image Legacy The Viking as a cultural hero is largely a creation of the 19th century. As Old Norse texts were edited and translated, Romantic nationalists in Scandinavia found in…
- Vikings in Film, TV and Games Legacy Few historical peoples are as present in popular culture. Hollywood set the template with The Vikings (1958), starring Kirk Douglas, and comics softened it with Hägar…
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The eight sections
Pick a part of Viking life
Each section opens as a set of topics you can expand one at a time.
Society and law
Jarls, karls and thralls; the thing; lawspeakers; women, marriage and fostering.
- Jarls, Karls and Thralls
- The Thing: Law Without Kings
- Lawspeakers: The Memory of the Law
- + 6 more
Daily life
Farms, food, clothes, health, hair and hygiene: how most Vikings actually lived.
- The Longhouse and the Farm
- Food and Drink
- Clothing and Jewellery
- + 4 more
Ships and navigation
Longships, knarrs, sun-stones and sagas: the technology that made the Viking Age.
- The Longship
- The Knarr and Cargo Ships
- Clinker Building and the Sail
- + 2 more
Warriors and weapons
Swords, shield-walls, berserkers and fortresses; what a raid really looked like.
- Weapons: Spear, Axe, Sword and Shield
- Ulfberht Swords
- Armour and Helmets: No Horns
- + 5 more
Trade and silver
Hacksilver, markets, slaves and furs: the commercial web from Dublin to Baghdad.
- The Silver Economy
- Trade Goods: Furs, Ivory, Amber, Slaves and Silk
- The Eastern River Routes
- + 2 more
Religion and the gods
The gods, the nine worlds, Ragnarök, burial and conversion.
- Norse Cosmology: Yggdrasil and the Nine Worlds
- Valhalla, Fólkvangr and Hel
- Ragnarök
- + 4 more
Runes, sagas and art
The Younger Futhark, the sagas and Eddas, skalds and the animal styles of Viking art.
- Runes: The Futhark
- Runestones
- Skaldic Poetry
- + 4 more
Legacy
Borders, words, law and DNA: what the Vikings left behind.
- Old Norse Words in English
- Norse Place Names in Britain, Ireland and Normandy
- Days of the Week
- + 4 more
Where scholars disagree
What nobody can be sure of
36 of the 55 topics carry an open argument. This is what the sources cannot settle, stated plainly so that nothing here is more certain than it deserves to be.
- Jarls, Karls and Thralls The date of Rígsþula is disputed (proposals range from the 10th to the 13th century), so it may describe an idealised rather than a real Viking-Age order.
- Lawspeakers: The Memory of the Law How far the powerful Swedish lawspeakers of the sagas, such as Torgny, reflect Viking-Age reality rather than 13th-century ideals is uncertain.
- Women: Keys, Property and Power Whether Bj 581 and similar graves prove that women fought as warriors is disputed: critics argue that weapons in a grave do not establish what the dead person did in life.
- Marriage and Family Almost all detail comes from 12th–13th-century Christian-era laws and sagas, and scholars disagree on how much of it can be projected back to the Viking Age.
- Thralls and the Slave Trade Estimates of how large a share of the Scandinavian population was enslaved vary widely, because slaves leave little trace in the archaeological record.
- Kings, the Hirð and the Rise of Royal Power Harald Fairhair's unification of Norway, dated by tradition to the battle of Hafrsfjord about 872, rests on much later sagas, and its date and extent are disputed.
- Clothing and Jewellery The cut and layering of the women's strap dress is reconstructed from brooch positions and small textile fragments, and several competing reconstructions exist.
- Hygiene and Grooming Sources contradict one another: John of Wallingford's praise was written some two centuries after the events, while ibn Fadlan judged by the standards of Islamic ritual purity.
- Games and Sport The original rules of hnefatafl were never written down; modern versions are reconstructed from Linnaeus's 1732 description of the related Sámi game tablut.
- Navigation: Sun, Stars, Birds and the Sunstone Question No sunstone has been found on a Viking site, the texts naming it are 13th–14th-century, and the Uunartoq disc may not be a navigational instrument at all, so both ideas remain hypotheses.
- Ulfberht Swords Alan Williams has argued that the best blades were forged from crucible steel imported from Central Asia or Iran along the Volga route; other researchers think the steel could have been made in Europe, and the question is open.
- Tactics: The Raid and the Shield Wall The 'blood eagle' execution appears only in skaldic verse and late sagas; scholars are divided between a real rite, a literary invention and a misreading of a poetic image of carrion birds.
- Berserkers and Úlfheðnar The cause of the 'berserk fury' is unresolved: proposals include ritual trance, self-induced rage, alcohol, fly agaric mushroom (an 18th-century idea) and henbane (proposed in 2019), and none is supported by direct evidence.
- Fortifications: Danevirke, Ring Fortresses and Longphorts What the ring fortresses were for, whether barracks for the conquest of England, royal strongholds to control Denmark, or a defence against the German empire, is still debated; they were used for only a few years.
- Danegeld: Paying the Vikings to Go Away Many historians suspect that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's round figures are exaggerated, though the English coin finds in Scandinavia show that very large sums did change hands.
- The Eastern River Routes How large a part Scandinavians played in creating the Rus' state (the 'Normanist' controversy) has been argued since the 18th century; most scholars now see a Scandinavian elite that merged quickly with a Slavic majority.
- Hoards: Spillings, Cuerdale, Vale of York, Galloway Why so many hoards were never retrieved is debated: most are read as savings whose owners died or fled, but some may have been deliberate offerings; it is also uncertain who buried the Galloway Hoard.
- Coinage and the First Scandinavian Mints Whether the 8th-century 'Wodan/Monster' sceattas so common at Ribe were minted there or imported from Frisia is disputed.
- Norse Cosmology: Yggdrasil and the Nine Worlds All detailed accounts were written down by Christians in 13th-century Iceland, and scholars disagree on how faithfully they preserve Viking-Age belief and how far Snorri systematised it.
- Valhalla, Fólkvangr and Hel The tidy division of the dead between Valhalla, Fólkvangr and Hel comes largely from Snorri; older poetry and burial customs point to more varied and inconsistent beliefs.
- Ragnarök Scholars disagree on how far the renewal after Ragnarök reflects Christian influence, and whether the Fimbulwinter preserves a memory of the volcanic 'dust veil' of AD 536.
- Blót and Sacrifice Adam never visited Uppsala and wrote as a hostile churchman; excavations at Gamla Uppsala have found great halls and long rows of posts but no building securely identified as his temple, and the scale of human sacrifice is disputed.
- Seiðr and the Völva Whether the iron staffs really are seeresses' wands (rather than, say, roasting spits or measuring rods), and whether seiðr was a form of shamanism influenced by Sámi practice, are both debated.
- The Conversion to Christianity How quickly and how deeply ordinary people converted is debated; burial evidence shows Christian practice in some regions well before the official dates and pagan custom in others long after.
- Runes: The Futhark The origin of the runes is unresolved: most scholars derive them from a Mediterranean alphabet, Latin or a North Italic script, but when and where is disputed.
- Skaldic Poetry Because the stanzas survive only inside sagas written two or three centuries later, scholars debate which are genuine Viking-Age compositions and which were composed or reworked later.
- The Eddas The age of the Eddic poems is disputed, with individual poems dated anywhere from the 9th to the 13th century, as are the meaning of the word 'Edda' and the degree of Christian colouring in Snorri's account.
- The Icelandic Sagas How far the sagas preserve reliable oral tradition and how far they are 13th-century literary creations (the 'freeprose' versus 'bookprose' debate) is unresolved; historians treat them with caution.
- The Six Viking Art Styles The styles overlap in time, their absolute dates are still adjusted as tree-ring dates accumulate, and some scholars prefer other names or subdivisions (for example 'Broa' for the earliest phase).
- Wood Carving and the Stave Churches The older theory that stave churches descend directly from pagan temple buildings is now largely rejected in favour of development from earlier post-built Christian churches.
- Old Norse Words in English Linguists disagree on how deep the influence went: some credit Norse contact with speeding the loss of English word-endings, and a minority argue that 'they' has a native English origin.
- Norse Place Names in Britain, Ireland and Normandy Whether the density of Norse names reflects mass peasant migration or a smaller elite renaming estates has long been argued, and the element -fleur in Norman names (Harfleur, Honfleur) may come from Old English rather than Old Norse.
- Days of the Week Friday is usually assigned to Frigg, but the overlap between Frigg and Freyja means some scholars and many popular accounts connect it with Freyja instead.
- Parliaments and Legal Legacy The Wantage Code's twelve thegns have been proposed as a Scandinavian ancestor of the English jury, but most legal historians trace the jury mainly to the royal inquests of the Normans and Henry II.
- Genetic Legacy Geneticists and archaeologists caution that 'Viking' was an activity and a cultural identity rather than a genetic category, and that percentage estimates for modern populations depend heavily on the reference samples used.
- Vikings in Film, TV and Games Whether Vikings wore tattoos is uncertain: the only textual evidence is ibn Fadlan's description of dark designs on the Rus', and no tattooed skin survives.
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