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Emily Lethbridge traces the story of Aud the Deep-Minded, one of Iceland's most prominent – and fascinating – early Norse settlers
It was the Vikings of northern Europe who first settled the harsh landscapes of Iceland in the ninth century. Most of the figures leading this movement were men – powerful chieftains who claimed vast swathes of land and parcelled it out to their followers. But among these pioneers was Aud the Deep-Minded: a woman who subverted the expectations of the Viking world. In this episode, Emily Lethbridge speaks to James Osborne about Aud's incredible life and legacy.
This morbid Viking Age death pit is more mystifying than it first seemed – here’s why
A newly discovered burial pit dating to the Viking Age contains the remains of at least ten young men. But were they victims of battle, execution – or something else entirely?
Violence was a defining feature of 9th-century Anglo-Saxon England. This was a period of aggressive Viking invasions, violent rivalry between Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and harsh systems of justice. Conflict could erupt between rival powers, or within communities themselves. Against this backdrop, archaeologists have uncovered a striking discovery at Wandlebury, Cambridgeshire: a 9th-century pit containing the remains of at least ten young men, all showing clear signs of a violent death. Much of the initial reaction to the find suggested that the buried individuals may have been Vikings from the famous Great Heathen Army that nearly toppled Anglo-Saxon England during the second half of the 9th century. But who these men really were – and why they were killed – remains uncertain. The 9th century saw a force of mainly Scandinavian warriors – known to Anglo-Saxon chroniclers as the “mycel here” or “hæþen here” and to modern readers as the Great Heathen Army – campaigning across Britain. The army landed in East Anglia in 865, and its activities in the area of the Wandlebury excavation included a prolonged stay over winter near Cambridge in 874–875. Historians and archaeologists increasingly refer to this period as the ‘Long Ninth Century’. Spanning the late 8th to the mid-10th centuries, it was a time of upheaval, as Anglo-Saxon kingdoms came under intense pressure and began to reshape themselves. In the long run, this period of disruption helped lay the foundations for new political entities, including the kingdom of England itself. Read more | The triumph of the Anglo-Saxons: how the kingdom of Mercia powered the rise of England But this wasn’t only a story of armies and kings. It was also a time when violence formed part of everyday life. Punishment could be severe, and both warfare and justice could end in brutal deaths. As early medievalist Alex Harvey emphasises, this violence in the uncovered Wandlebury excavation pit cannot be attributed solely to Viking activity. “While the discovery is fascinating on its own, we can’t yet be 100 per cent sure that Scandinavian plunderers were involved,” he says, speaking to HistoryExtra. “Violence and military activity occurred in ninth-century England with and without ‘Vikings’; Mercia, for example, battled Wessex and Kent in the Viking Age.” He adds that conflict could be far more localised than the headline-grabbing invasions suggest: “Raids launched from what are now the Midlands into Wales were also common. We cannot rule out that such skeletal evidence isn’t actually from domestic campaigns such as these, or even smaller unrecorded judicial skirmishes between petty districts in and around the Cambridgeshire fen.” This wider context is crucial. It means that the burial at Wandlebury could be explained in multiple ways – not only as the result of Viking warfare, but also as part of local conflict or systems of justice. The Wandlebury discovery What, precisely, was uncovered at Wandlebury? While conducting a training excavation, archaeologists uncovered a shallow pit containing at least ten young men, buried together with little care – suggesting they died at the same time and were quickly disposed of. Several skulls were grouped together. Chop marks on one of the jawbones indicate that at least one individual was decapitated, with the possibility of several more suggested by the pile of five heads. Notably, some of the skeletons were found in positions that suggest the binding of limbs – a feature seen in known Anglo-Saxon execution burials. Taken together, this appears to be evidence of deliberate killing. But who were these individuals? Were they Vikings, or Anglo-Saxons? Were they battle casualties, or executed criminals? Read more | Meet the mysterious leaders of the Vikings’ most fearsome army While ambiguous, the site does offer some clues. One complete skeleton belonged to a male aged between 17 and 24. He stood at around 6 ft 5 in – unusually tall for the period – and had a partially healed circular hole in his skull, likely the result of trepanation, a surgical procedure. Rather than indicating Scandinavian origin, however, his height may have been caused by a medical condition. The trepanation could have been carried out to relieve pressure headaches caused by a tumour affecting the pituitary gland, leading to excessive growth. In other words, while a ‘Viking’ explanation for his stature may be tempting, it cannot be taken as evidence of origin. All of these clues suggest that the dead may represent either a captured group of outsiders – perhaps Vikings – or local individuals executed under Anglo-Saxon law. The location of the burial may offer further insight. The pit lies close to Wandlebury Ring, an Iron Age hillfort that may have been used as a meeting or assembly place in the early medieval period, making it a plausible setting for executions. Other Viking Age burials in Anglo-Saxon England To better understand what might have happened at Wandlebury, the burial can be compared with similar sites from the same period. Viking groups sometimes buried their dead in large communal graves. One of the best-known examples comes from Repton in Derbyshire, where a mass burial of around 264 individuals has been linked to the Great Heathen Army. Read more | What do we know about Viking funerals? Scientific analysis of the teeth from these skeletons shows that many individuals grew up in different parts of northern Europe. This diversity is typical of Viking warbands, which were often composed of people from across the region. A similar pattern appears at other sites associated with violence between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, including mass graves at St John’s College, Oxford, and Ridgeway Hill in Dorset. Ridgeway Hill, in particular, offers a striking comparison. There, 54 men – mostly young – were executed by decapitation, with their skulls buried separately: widely interpreted as defeated Viking warriors executed by Anglo-Saxons. These comparisons demonstrate that both interpretations remain plausible. The dead at Wandlebury could have been members of a Viking group, or victims of an Anglo-Saxon execution. So which is it? Violence beyond the Vikings At present, the evidence does not allow for a definitive answer. Determining the origins of the buried men – whether they were part of a Viking warband or local individuals executed under the law – will require further scientific analysis. For archaeologist Dr Tenaya Jorgensen, however, the most important insight may lie not in spectacular explanations, but in the everyday realities of the period. “Discoveries of deviant burials always offer a fascinating window into the past, revealing at least as much about a time and place as more conventional finds,” she explains, speaking to HistoryExtra. “In the case of this ninth-century mass execution, for which little context exists beyond the skeletal remains themselves, it can be tempting to look to the most documented events of the period for answers.” But, she says, that instinct can be misleading. “Ordinary life continued largely as normal, and normal during this period could be both violent and brutal in its enforcement of the law.” In that sense, the Wandlebury burial may reflect not an exceptional moment of Viking violence, but a more routine – if still grim – aspect of early medieval life. “While Viking raids never fail to inspire excitement,” Jorgensen adds, “there is equal thrill in understanding these executions within the context of more everyday events.” What is clear, regardless of the ambiguity, is that the burial captures a moment of extreme violence – one that could be explained multiple ways, emphasising the harsh and often brutal realities of life in 9th-century Anglo-Saxon England. The Vikings | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | Join Professor Ryan Lavelle for our four-week course on the Viking period, covering everything from trading and raiding, to daily life. Explore the course now
In this four-part HistoryExtra podcast series, Viking expert Dr Eleanor Barraclough traces the struggle between Alfred and the Vikings
In this four-part podcast series, James Osborne is joined by Viking expert Dr Eleanor Barraclough to trace the struggle between Alfred and the Vikings, from the arrival of the Great Heathen Army in 865 to the decisive battle of Edington and its far-reaching aftermath. Across the series, they explore the story from both sides: the world of the Viking army and the realities of life within it, the collapse of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Alfred’s flight into the marshes, and the uneasy peace that subsequently reshaped England.
Meet the mysterious leaders of the Vikings’ most fearsome army
The Great Heathen Army wasn’t a single unified force, but rather a shifting coalition of warbands whose multi-layered leadership helped it outmanoeuvre the Anglo-Saxons
When the Great Heathen Army arrived in England in the mid-9th century, it marked a turning point in the history of Viking activity in the British Isles. Earlier Viking raids – such as the attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne in 793 – had been fast, opportunistic strikes. Viking aggression had continued like this for decades: plundering coastal regions for wealth, treasure, and people to enslave. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxons had grown accustomed to this style of attack from their Norse cousins from across the sea. That changed in the year 865, with the arrival of the Great Heathen Army. From then onwards, this force campaigned across Anglo-Saxon England, capturing kingdoms, overthrowing rulers and establishing long-term settlements. At the time, England didn’t even exist: Britain was a patchwork of rival states – including Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia and Wessex – often competing with one another as much as resisting external threats. This political fragmentation made coordinated defence difficult. The Great Heathen Army was able to make much headway: plundering, pillaging and – crucially – taking formerly Anglo-Saxon land, rather than heading back to Scandinavia. But while the label ‘Great Heathen Army’ captures two essential facts about this force of Viking invaders – its size, and its paganism – it might otherwise be misleading. Rather than a unified force under a single commander, the Great Heathen Army was a shifting alliance of warbands drawn together for a shared purpose but operating with considerable independence. It was a force with many leaders – not one. How big was the Great Heathen Army? Contemporary sources, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, offer only limited detail as to the size of the Great Heathen Army. Modern historians have attempted to reconstruct its scale using a combination of textual and archaeological evidence. “Some historians have thought it’s around a hundred ships,” explains Dr Eleanor Barraclough, an expert on the history of the Viking Age, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. A hundred ships, she says, could translate to “two or three thousand armed warriors.” By later medieval standards, that might not seem overwhelming. But in the context of 9th-century warfare, it represented a substantial and highly mobile force – especially one capable of moving quickly along rivers and coastlines by use of its ships. These boats – the infamous Viking longships – were shallow-drafted vessels that could travel both across open sea and far inland via river systems, allowing Viking forces to strike deep into territory with little warning. Where did these Vikings come from? While many members of the Great Heathen Army did originate from regions such as Denmark and Norway, Barraclough explains that “they’re not only coming across from Scandinavia, although lots of them certainly are.” By the mid-9th century, she says, Viking raiding, trading and settlement had created networks that extended well beyond Scandinavia itself. Viking groups had established bases in Ireland, particularly at Dublin, and were active along the coasts of Francia (modern France), the Low Countries and even as far as the Iberian Peninsula. These networks allowed people, goods and information to circulate widely. “We have to remember that this doesn’t come out of nowhere,” Barraclough explains. There had already been “a history of these protracted raids on the continent” and along the coasts of the British Isles. “So it’s quite possible that some of the people who are coming over are also coming, for example, from the Low Countries, from what we would call northern France, like Francia,” she notes. The Great Heathen Army, then, was not just Scandinavian. It was a product of a wider Viking world, drawing in fighters from multiple regions connected by mobility and shared experience. Leadership at sea In such a diverse group of warbands, how would leadership have functioned? To answer that question, Barraclough points toward the smallest unit of fighters: the ship. “There’ll be a leader on each of those ships,” she says. “We see that from ship burials,” Barraclough notes, citing the Salme ship burials in Estonia from around the year 750. These burials, associated with a group that had travelled from Sweden, reveal distinctions in status among those buried. “You can tell who the leader is because of how he’s buried, the weapons he’s buried with,” she explains. In one case, the presence of a gaming piece from the board game Hnefatafl placed in the mouth of the deceased may have symbolised command or authority. Scaling up from individual ships to an army composed of many warbands introduces more complexity. Nevertheless, “when you’re dealing with multiple warbands, you have to have some overall leadership,” Barraclough says. Read more | Reading the runes: what we can learn about everyday life in the Viking Age The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and later traditions provide names for some of these leaders. Among the most prominent are Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan Ragnarsson, and Björn Ironside . “Tradition says that these leaders are the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok,” Barraclough explains – a semi-legendary Viking figure whose historical existence remains debated. Guthrum, who would later become king in parts of England after converting to Christianity, was another key leader in the later stages of the conflict. “So, there are identified leaders,” Barraclough says. “But each ship would also have had its own leader. It’s complicated.” This layered structure meant that leadership was simultaneously centralised and decentralised. One way to think about it is that the Great Heathen Army was led by many generals, with many lieutenants, but no overall commander-in-chief. A flexible Viking war machine This system of overlapping leadership had practical advantages. “From the Viking point of view, it works well,” Barraclough explains, “because it means they can be more reactive and get ahead of the Anglo-Saxons easily.” Unlike the more rigid political structures of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms – which were highly stratified and organised around defined territories and royal authority – the Viking coalition could divide and recombine as needed. Anglo-Saxon militias, known as fyrds, were typically raised on a temporary basis from local populations and couldn’t remain mobilised indefinitely. This made it harder to respond to a fast-moving, professional raiding force, which had “different groups splitting in different directions at various points over the decade or so to come,” Barraclough says. This ability to fragment into smaller units and then regroup gave the army a strategic flexibility that its opponents struggled to match. It’s partly this fluid leadership that made the Great Heathen Army such a distinct threat to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. By the late 9th century, large parts of eastern and northern England had come under Viking control, an area later known as the Danelaw, where Scandinavian laws and customs held sway. If their goal was to take land, rather than just plunder it, this was a success for the Vikings. Eleanor Barraclough was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Beyond the podcast: Alfred vs the Vikings
In a four-part HistoryExtra podcast series, Viking expert Dr Eleanor Barraclough traces the struggle between Alfred and the Vikings, from the arrival of the Great Heathen Army in 865 to the decisive battle of Edington and its far-reaching aftermath. Below, find essential reading and listening to dive deeper into this pivotal moment in history
In the late ninth century, Anglo-Saxon England stood on the brink of collapse. A vast coalition of Viking warbands, remembered as the Great Heathen Army, swept across the country, shattering kingdoms that had endured for centuries. As Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia fell, only Wessex remained – ruled by a young and untested king named Alfred. For the Vikings, this was the culmination of decades of expansion and ambition; for the Anglo-Saxons, it was a fight for survival. In this four-part HistoryExtra podcast series, Viking expert Dr Eleanor Barraclough traces the struggle between Alfred and the Vikings, from the arrival of the Great Heathen Army in 865 to the decisive battle of Edington and its far-reaching aftermath. Across the series, we explore the story from both sides: the world of the Viking army and the realities of life within it, the collapse of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Alfred’s flight into the marshes, and the uneasy peace that reshaped England subsequently. Below, I’ve selected some essential reading and listening from our archives to deepen your understanding of this pivotal moment in Viking and Anglo-Saxon history – including insights into Viking culture, the everyday experience of Anglo-Saxon communities, Alfred’s use of religion and learning as tools of political renewal, and the long legacy of the Danelaw on English identity and culture.
From health to wealth, here are the strange secrets medieval toilets reveal about life in the Middle Ages
From lost silver coins to fossilised faeces, medieval cesspits have become some of the richest archives of everyday life in the Middle Ages
A cesspit isn’t where most people would choose to look to learn more about the story of the Middle Ages. Cesspits – lined shafts or dug-out pits designed to hold human waste – were a very ordinary feature of medieval towns and settlements. The Middle Ages saw towns’ populations growing in number and density, and that meant more waste – waste that needed managing. So, in towns from Anglo-Saxon Southampton to Viking York, pits were dug, lined with timber or stone, and periodically emptied. They were unglamorous but absolutely essential. Perhaps surprisingly, for archaeologists, these old waste chutes have become some of the richest sources of evidence for how people lived. Because cesspits were used daily by ordinary households rather than reserved for elite figures of society, they can preserve the material culture of everyday medieval life. “We need to remember that people dropped things in toilets then, as now,” says historian Katherine Weikert, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. The dense organic material at the bottom of a cesspit cushions whatever falls into it. “We often find things that are unexpected. You can find something in a cesspit and it’s intact. It lands in a smoosh, then it gets covered up.” Read more | What was life like in a medieval town? A historical A-Z Under certain conditions, these have become a treasure trove for archaeologists. “If that cesspit doesn’t get cleared out or gets abandoned, it’s just there waiting to be found, which is amazing.” In these sealed environments, various fragments of everyday life survived, waiting to be uncovered: pottery, leather, seeds, scraps of material and, in some cases, objects whose journeys began far beyond Britain. A silver coin from Córdoba One of Weikert’s favourite examples of an important archaeological find from within a cesspit comes from ninth-century Southampton, then known as Hamwic – an Anglo-Saxon trading centre on England’s south coast. Hamwic flourished between the 7th and 9th centuries as a port linking England to continental Europe and Scandinavia. Excavations have revealed workshops, imported pottery, glassware and evidence of long-distance exchange. Hamwic was one of several so-called ‘emporia’– which were seasonal or semi-permanent trading hubs that connected regional producers with international merchants. “There is a cesspit that was excavated there, and the archaeologists found a silver coin made in the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba,” says Weikert. The Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba, based in what is now southern Spain, was one of the most powerful and prosperous states of early medieval Europe and the wider Islamic world. Founded in the 8th century after the Islamic conquest of Iberia, it became a major centre of trade, scholarship and urban development. Its silver coinage – typically dirhams – circulated widely throughout Europe and was valued for its prestige. “This is a very valuable silver coin from far away, from Islamic Spain, moving from Córdoba to Southampton in the ninth century, only to be dropped in a cesspit,” Weikert says. Perhaps the owner of the coin didn’t notice. Or perhaps they did, and judged the rescue effort to be too unpleasant. Climbing into a cesspit to retrieve a coin would have been physically possible, but fraught with obvious hazards. The presence of the coin in Hamwic demonstrates how connected Anglo-Saxon England was to the Mediterranean world. Silver travelled across religious and political boundaries, passing through merchants’ hands, across markets and along sea routes. Islamic silver is known to have circulated widely in northern Europe during this period, sometimes melted down and re-struck into local coinage. “It’s such a great example of what we can find in toilets,” Weikert says. “What we find there gives us a massive picture of transnational trade and travel and people and life. It’s brilliant.” The York coprolite: a medieval health record In 1972, construction work in York uncovered an exceptionally well-preserved piece of fossilised human excrement. This dated to the 9th century, when the city was part of the Viking kingdom of Jórvík; Jórvík was a major urban centre under Viking rule, linking the British Isles to wider Viking trade routes across the seas. It quickly became known more colloquially as the ‘York poo’. This, as Weikert explains, “is a good example of how we can also learn about dietary trends.” “Scientific testing on it demonstrated that this person’s diet was largely composed of bread and meat,” she says, “which is slightly unusual because other people in that area had diets that included fruits, vegetables and other grains.” Toilets through time Member exclusive | What was it like to do your business in a Roman communal toilet? Why was the devil thought to lurk in medieval privies? And did constipation turn Henry VIII into a tyrant? In this four-part mini-series, David Musgrove heads down the u-bend in the company of leading historical experts to see what we can learn from the most universal of all experiences: going to the loo. Listen to all episodes now The sample also revealed evidence of ill-health. “It also demonstrated that this person had intestinal worms and could have suffered from things like anaemia, even blocked bowels if the infestation was advanced,” Weikert explains. Intestinal worms were common in pre-modern societies. “These worms can be spread in a number of ways, including faecal-oral contact, which can happen in many different contexts,” she notes, such as through contaminated water, unwashed hands or poorly cooked food. Without modern sanitation or germ theory, medieval communities had limited means of preventing such infections. Read more | Married three times by the age of 15: Margaret Beaufort, the woman who birthed the Tudor Dynasty Weikert says that this would have been painful for the person concerned, and that “they probably had stomach pains and cramping.” It is even possible that diet and illness were linked. “It could be that the bread, rather than the meat, was part of the diet to try to help heal or at least alleviate some of that discomfort.” Findings such as this demonstrate the value of cesspits as archaeological sites. Due to them having been used by ordinary households rather than curated as treasure hoards, they capture an unfiltered view of medieval life. For archaeologists, cesspits are invaluable precisely because they serve as an unbiased lens into what medieval people lost, traded and ate. Katherine Weikert was speaking to David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation. More from us HistoryExtra members can explore more medieval history with exclusive content from our archives Medieval manners and etiquette: dos and don’ts of the Middle Ages Medieval England's political miracle: how the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for modern Britain How to go on a medieval pilgrimage Why there’s no such thing as a typical medieval peasant Not a HistoryExtra member? Explore our latest membership offers
It was an "extravaganza of brutality": how the Vikings menaced the Mediterranean
Killing, burning, pillaging, enslaving. Even when heading to sunnier climes, Viking raiders deployed the same tactics that they had used along the shores of northern and western Europe, reveals Thomas Williams
The poor citizens of Al-Jazira al-Khadra never knew what hit them. In 859, an unfamiliar fleet sailed into the bay separating this Muslim settlement – which later evolved into the city of Algeciras, now in southern Spain – from Gibraltar. Making landfall nearby, the alien ships disgorged their fearsome crews: Vikings. In a sequence of events terrifyingly familiar to victims in more northerly parts of Europe, these formidable marauders wreaked havoc. They occupied the city, burned the mosque, ravaged the countryside – and then moved on to the next target, and the next. The campaign later known as the ‘Great Raid’ was well and truly underway – part of a chapter in Norse history that’s less known today, but no less bloody. Stone cold killers The Vikings of our imagination are emphatically creatures of the north – avatars of cold climes and bleak weather, manifestations of ice and snow made flesh and steel. Dragon-prowed ships slice through the frigid waters of steep-sided fjords swathed in midnight-green pine forests. Fur-clad adventurers hunt walrus amid the crashing icebergs of the northernmost seas. Giants haunt the ice-capped mountains in an unreal world of midnight sun and northern lights. We are used to reading tales of Viking rampages through lands both near and far from home: around the Baltic coastline, in Britain and Ireland, in what’s now northern France, Russia, even Canada. But none of these places seem so different from Scandinavia, in climate at least; indeed, some boast similar extremes of latitude. Even in the most temperate of these places, a sharp north-easterly or a rare winter snowstorm may come and go without raising an eyebrow. Likewise Vikings in times past. But, like the ice, it can feel jarring to find Vikings in places where we feel instinctively they don’t quite belong. Like Mallorca, southern France, even Egypt. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/CreditCopyright--Museo-San-Isidoro-de-Leon-Derechos-reservadosFRT2114webready-75aa086-e1768832592182.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A cylindrical wooden box with ornate patterns carved into it" title="An elaborately carved box made from reindeer horn around the turn of the 11th century and discovered in Spain, hinting at Viking contact there (Image by Museo San Isidoro de León-Derechos reservados)" /> Of course, summer does come to the north. Vikings didn’t spend the whole year swaddled in bearskins. Still, like many of us, the inhabitants of those northerly climes might well have dreamed wistfully of a sun-soaked break in the Med – not least those hardy souls beyond the Arctic Circle who endured weeks of crushing midwinter darkness. We don’t know exactly what sparked the Great Raid of 859–60, but we have a fair idea of at least some of what transpired. The expedition was supposedly led by Björn Ironside, son of the larger-than-life Ragnar Loðbrok (‘Hairy pants’), and Hastein, who was later involved in campaigns in Brittany, the Loire Valley and King Alfred’s Britain. Having entered the Mediterranean and started as they meant to go in Al-Jazira al-Khadra, the Viking fleet next hit the kingdom of Nakur (or Nekor) on the north African coastline. There, in the words of one Asturian chronicler, they killed “a vast number of Muslims” and captured many others for ransom or for sale as slaves. The raiders headed back north via the Balearics, molesting Murcia, Mallorca, Menorca and, perhaps, Ibiza and Formentera. Touching down on what’s now the Côte d’Azur, they pillaged their way through Perpignan, Narbonne, Nîmes, Arles and Valence. After a winter spent in the Camargue, the Vikings moved on to Italy, where they sacked Pisa. Thereafter, things get a little muddled. One far-fetched narrative has them aiming for Rome but getting confused, instead plundering the small port of Luni (a surprising mistake, given that Rome was far inland and to the south, and still possibly the largest and most architecturally impressive city in western Europe). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Greekfire-public-domain-CMYK-64ac2bc-e1768832114133.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration showing two black boats filled with men facing each other, with the group on the left shooting fire towards the ones on the right" title="A 12th-century manuscript illustration shows the use of ‘Greek fire’, an incendiary weapon wielded by Andalusian forces against Viking attackers to devastating effect" /> Whatever the truth of that tale, from Italy the fleet seems to have moved on to the eastern Mediterranean, and regions under the sway of the Byzantine empire. One chronicler even places Viking ships at Alexandria, near the mouth of the Nile. We do know that the campaign nearly ended in disaster – for the Vikings. En route home through the Straits of Gibraltar (or, as it was known in Old Norse, Nǫrvasund, ‘Narrow Sound’), longships were intercepted by the formidable galley fleet of Muslim al-Andalus under the command of Qarqashish ibn Shakruh and the admiral Khashkhash. Andalusian forces decimated Viking crews with arrows and incinerated ships with bursts of ‘Greek fire’ – the nautical napalm of the early medieval world – belched across the water. The Andalusians sailed close enough to engage the Vikings hand-to-hand across the ships’ bows: Khashkhash himself “fought them from the prow of his ship until he met a martyr’s death, may God have mercy on him”. Only a handful of Viking ships escaped the maelstrom – but those men who survived had gathered tales enough to fill many a long Nordic night. Read more | Forget the longships: this is the overlooked story of how the Vikings dominated eastern Europe Capital ideas The Great Raid was one of the largest, most dramatic and best remembered of the Viking adventures in the south, but it was far from the only such excursion. The sources rarely explain what inspired individual expeditions but, broadly speaking, adventures to such distant lands were animated by the same impulses that drove the Vikings to sail waters closer to home. The main driver of raiding – and, indeed, military employment overseas – was the acquisition of capital. This was both economic, in the shape of plunder and extorted wealth, and social, in the form of fame and prestige. Both could be leveraged to gain political power back home. Stories of awe-inspiring deeds, and possession of the wherewithal to reward and retain a warband, provided the basis for power in early medieval Scandinavia. Viking exploits around the storied and wealthy Mediterranean rim had the potential to provide generous helpings of both. Sometimes they could provide a springboard to the pinnacle of power and fame. When Harald Hardrada (more on whom later) returned to Scandinavia via what’s now Russia after a brutal mid-career sojourn in the employment of the Byzantine emperor, the poet Valgard of Voll said that: Harald, you launched your vessel Laden with a cargo of riches Freighted with hard-won honour And gleaming gold […] Through storm and gale, great king, You sailed your plunging vessel; And as the sea-spray was thinning You sighted at least Sigtuna. Inside a year, Harald was king of Norway. First fleet It was some 15 years before the Great Raid, and half a century after the pioneering attack on Lindisfarne, that Vikings first sailed into the Atlantic and steered determinedly south. The first known sortie to the Iberian peninsula was made in 844. The 54 ships that undertook that journey blazed a trail that others – the Great Raid included – would follow and greatly extend over centuries to come. Setting out from Brittany, the Viking fleet harried the Atlantic coast of Iberia, landing at A Coruña and launching raids inland, but ultimately came to grief at the hands of Asturian stone-throwers and the stalwart resistance of the Christian king Ramiro I. Thwarted there, the remaining Vikings cut their losses and headed south towards the Muslim emirate of al-Andalus. Their first stop was Lisbon, where they tarried for a couple of weeks to resupply their ships and terrorise the locals. Sailing on, the fleet sailed up the Guadalquivir river to menace the great city of Seville. Many of the inhabitants fled at the approach of the Norsemen, the reputation of these exotic marauders having preceded them. What followed was an extravaganza of brutality that was grimly familiar in Britain, Ireland and France, but which was terrifyingly novel in southern Iberia. Viking raiders disembarked from their ships to pillage and despoil the Andalusian countryside, slaughtering men, kidnapping women and children, and burning settlements. Seville itself was largely ransacked, only the walls of the inner citadel halting the attackers. Terrified citizens huddling for refuge within the great mosque of Ibn Abbas were massacred. Eventually, the emir, Abd al-Rahman II, got his act together. He mustered an army that confronted the Viking warband at an unidentified place recorded as Talyata where, according to the sources, 1,000 Viking warriors (or Majūs, ‘fire-worshippers’, as they are referred to in Arabic writing) were slain. Some 400 Norsemen were captured and executed in spectacular ways – decapitated or strung up on palm trees. According to the later source Ibn Idhari, Abd al-Rahman sent “the heads of the general, and of 200 of the noblest Viking warriors” to the tribes under Andalusian dominion in Africa. It was a warning and a reminder that his power, however much it had been tested by this novel threat, remained intact. Though they didn’t make it into the Mediterranean on that occasion, the Vikings had delivered a nasty shock to the Andalusians. As a result, city and coastal defences were strengthened and naval patrols were enhanced – as the returning ships of the Great Raid discovered to their cost on their way home 16 years later. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/WIKICredit-Didier-DescouensArsenaleVenice-FirstAncientGreeklionwebready-5971df2-e1768832842209.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a large stone lion, with a brick crenellated wall and black railings behind it" title="Runic inscriptions on the shoulders of this ancient Greek lion, now in Venice but originally in Piraeus, are believed to be 11th-century graffiti inscribed by Norse mercenaries serving in the Byzantine army" /> Suburban terrorists At around the same time that the Vikings of the Great Raid were pillaging their way around the western Med, another group were unleashing violence to the east. This was a sudden irruption of Rus – the adventurers of Scandinavian origin who settled between the eastern Baltic and Black Seas. Later establishing their epicentre in Kyiv, they sparked a long political and economic transformation of predominantly Slavic eastern Europe. In 860, these marauders launched an attack on the suburbs of Constantinople. The earliest account describes the Northmen burning and plundering their way to the walls of the mighty capital of the Byzantine empire, terrifying the inhabitants. Later sources describe the raiders spreading out around the Sea of Marmara south of the city, and pillaging and burning monasteries on the archipelago now known as Princes’ Islands. Capturing 22 of the exiled Patriarch Ignatius’ servants, the Rus took them “aboard their ships and cruelly dismembered them with axes, demonstrating their barbarity”. These attackers were the people whom Patriarch Photios of Constantinople – who lived contemporaneously with the events of 860, though didn’t record them directly – described as “a fierce and barbarous people, worshipping no gods and living in constant strife. Their coming brings destruction and sorrow to those lands they visit.” Sadly for the locals, it wouldn’t be the last time the Rus made their presence felt in the Bosphorus. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/PrinceOlegtheProphetridesonshipsputonwheelstoConstantinople2webready-ad9a5ea-e1768832311475.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="An illustration showing several groups of men in boats with wheels on the bottom. They are all dressed in red robes with blue hoods" title="Warships of the Kyivan Rus, the eastern European realm settled by Scandinavians, are fitted with wheels to attack Constantinople in 907, as imagined in a 16th-century Russian chronicle" /> In 907, for reasons unstated, the Rus again assaulted Constantinople. The events were recorded in detail by the compilers of the Russian Primary Chronicle; though open to sceptical assessment, their words certainly paint a vivid picture. The attack was led by the Rus warlord Oleg, whose name was recorded as a Slavic form of the Old Norse Helgi, and comprised “Varangians [ie Scandinavians], Slavs, Chuds, Krivichs, Meryans, Polianians, Severians, Derevlians, Radimichs, Croats, Dulebs and Tivercians” – various East Slavic tribes. According to this account, the Rus fleet comprised 2,000 ships, though Greek sources give the rather more credible figure of 350. Having landed outside the city, Oleg disembarked and led his army on another rampage through the suburbs, killing inhabitants, burning houses and razing churches. Prisoners were, so the chronicler recounts, “beheaded, tortured, shot or thrown into the sea”. Read more | "A Viking wedding involved a bed and eight people", plus four other facts about the Vikings you might not know... The most remarkable episode in this otherwise fairly typical account of Viking atrocities was the order that Oleg allegedly gave “to fit the ships with wheels. When a favourable wind rose up, they set sail and bore down upon the city by land.” The residents were, quite understandably, “frightened to see this”. It is difficult to understand how this would have worked in practice, attempted at short notice by a raiding army speaking disparate languages and who, we must assume, had never done such a thing before. The smouldering ruins of the suburbs would also have presented challenging terrain for Oleg’s marauding land-fleet. Whatever the true details of the assault, it’s recorded that the terrified city-dwellers “agreed to pay tribute, provide provisions and grant the Rus the right to trade in Constantinople tax-free”. A Rus-Byzantine treaty was indeed duly signed – and the Old Norse names of the Rus signatories leave no doubt as to their Viking origins. This treaty included provisions granting the Rus access to Constantinopolitan markets, provided they adhered to certain restrictions. They were to use only one designated gate; their numbers in the city were limited to 50 at any one time; they were to be accompanied by Byzantine guardsmen; and their weapons were to be left outside the walls. In return, they received food and an allowance for six months. If the attack had been a coordinated strategy to wring economic concessions for Rus traders in Europe’s greatest marketplace, then Oleg’s campaign – land-ships or no – had been a resounding success. Unruly contractors For all that the Vikings represented a menace, it was clearly preferable to have them working in the service of the Byzantine empire rather than camped belligerently outside the walls of its cities. So, for at least 200 years, Scandinavians were employed as mercenaries, hired to prosecute the empire’s wars in all quarters of the eastern Mediterranean. Northmen who served in this way, known as Varangoi by the Byzantines, were prized for their skills as sailors and fighters, and the empire’s far-flung interests took them all across the greater Byzantine world. From 902, when the first direct reference to Varangians appears in Greek sources, they could be found fighting the empire’s wars in Sicily, Italy, Crete, Croatia, Lebanon, Anatolia and Syria – not to mention Armenia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Georgia. And they left their mark in Constantinople: runic inscriptions in the stonework of the Hagia Sophia – the city’s great basilica, now a mosque – seem to be Varangian graffiti. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/dreamstimexl29748298webready-ab8436b-e1768832432639.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing a red stone building with several floors, a domed roof and a narrow, pointed tower at each corner" title="Istanbul’s sixth-century Hagia Sophia. Around the time of the Rus attack on the Byzantine capital, Scandinavians were hired as ‘Varangian’ soldiers, leaving runic graffiti in this basilica, now a mosque" /> The Varangian phenomenon was turbo-charged in 988 when Vladimir the Great of Kyiv despatched 6,000 men to Emperor Basil II Porphyrogenitus (the ‘Bulgar Slayer’). The Rus leader issued the revealing advice to “not keep them in the city, for then they will only give you trouble, as they have given me”, finishing with the weary plea to “not let one man come back here again”. Undesirable citizens they may have been, but these eastern Vikings quickly proved their military worth in Basil’s wars. Under pressure from within the imperial military hierarchy and from fractious neighbours in Bulgaria, Syria and Mesopotamia, the emperor was grateful for Vladimir’s assistance. He put his new recruits to immediate and effective employ, and Rus warriors were instrumental in crushing a revolt by the Byzantine general Bardas Phokas in 989. Thereafter, Varangians became increasingly commonplace in the Byzantine military, serving in the imperial bodyguard – though the significance of their contribution may have been exaggerated in some sources. This policy was an extension of a long tradition in the imperial army of employing foreign fighters of diverse origins, from within and without the boundaries of the empire. Read more | Reading the runes: what we can learn about everyday life in the Viking Age A legend in his lifetime No Varangian was more celebrated – particularly by himself – than the future Norwegian king Harald Hardrada (‘Hard Ruler’). British readers will remember Harald best for his part in the events of 1066, when he led a Viking force to defeat – and his own death – at Stamford Bridge at the hands of the English king Harold Godwinson. The demands of that clash exhausted and diverted English forces, easing the path to Norman victory at Hastings a few weeks later, and the subsequent conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy. A legend in his own lifetime, Harald travelled to the Byzantine imperial court via Kyivan Rus, and distinguished himself in campaigns fought on a number of fronts – most notably in Sicily, but also in the Greek islands and Bulgaria, and possibly north Africa, Syria and Anatolia. The most eye-catching of Harald’s postings was to the Middle East. In verses ascribed to Stuf Thordarson, who supposedly heard it from the lion’s mouth: With courage sharp as a sword-edge The all-triumphant warrior Left Greece to conquer Palestine – An easy task for Harald Tempting though it is to imagine Harald seizing control of the Holy Land with ease 60 years before the knights of the First Crusade achieved the same feat, in truth this is characteristic hyperbole. The future king seems rather to have been engaged in some sort of joint security operation designed to police the pilgrimage routes to Jerusalem under the terms of a deal between the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt and Emperor Michael IV. Nevertheless, while he was there Harald took opportunities hitherto open to very few Scandinavians: he bathed his weary bones in the river Jordan and paid his respects to Christ at the Tomb of the Holy Sepulchre. The Viking Age was coming to a close; the Age of the Crusades was near. But, as Harald’s tale shows, the boundary between these two epochs was not as clear-cut or impermeable as modern historiographical terminology implies. When the Norwegian king Sigurd Jórsalfari (‘Jerusalem-farer’) set sail in 1107 in search of adventure in the Holy Land, he followed in the slip-stream of his Viking forebears. He sailed down the coast of Iberia, through the straits of Gibraltar and on via the Balearics, pillaging as he went. The longships that arrived in 1110, and which blockaded the Fatimid controlled Levantine city of Sidon (now in Lebanon) as an ally of the Frankish king Baldwin of Jerusalem, bore all the hallmarks of the Viking fleets that had terrorised the Mediterranean in centuries past. On his return journey, during a pitstop at the old Varangian staging post of Constantinople, the Norwegian king made a gift to Emperor Alexios I Komnenos: “A very ornate dragon-head from the prow of his ship.” Thomas Williams is a historian of the early Middle Ages. His new book God’s Hammer: A History of the Viking Crusade is due out in October 2026 This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
Thor was the Vikings’ “archetypal masculine god” – so why did he dress as a bride?
One of the earliest Norse myths depicts the so-called god of thunder in women’s clothing. Far from undermining Thor’s power, the story speaks volumes about how the Vikings understood humour and the gods themselves
Thor, bearded with hammer in hand, is one of the central and most recognisable characters of Norse mythology. He was synonymous with strength, virility and thunder; a figure closely associated with physical labour, farming and warfare, all of which were aspects central to life across the Norse diaspora. In the context of the Viking Age, Thor was widely revered as a dependable presence in a dangerous world. And that makes the poem Thrymskvitha, one of the earliest surviving Norse myths about him, all the more surprising. “Thrymskvitha is the oldest complete poem we have about the gods,” says Dr Jackson Crawford, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. It’s preserved in the Poetic Edda – the compilation of Old Norse poems recorded in the 13th century – and tells of how Thor disguises himself as a bride-to-be and attends a wedding feast in order become the ‘wife’ of a powerful Jotun, a giant from the realm of Jotunheim. But it’s all a ruse. Planned alongside his adopted half-brother, the trickster god Loki, the disguise is part of a scheme for Thor to recover his precious hammer Mjölnir, which has been stolen by the Jotun. Thrymskvitha – or Þrymskviða – was likely composed and circulated well before the Norse conversion to Christianity. Crawford describes it as “a really goofy adventure-comedy story”, yet it also offers a revealing insight into how Viking Age audiences related to their gods. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-152204607-e0e1556-e1766500509342.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="This Viking Age relief from Gosforth churchyard depicts the god Thor fishing for the Midgard Serpent alongside the giant Hymir, a scene drawn from Norse Poetic Edda." title="Relief sculpture of Scandinavian origin from the Gosforth churchyard, depicts Thor fishing with the giant Hymir" /> Thor’s place in the Norse world Unlike Odin – Thor’s father, ruler of Asgard, who was associated with kingship, poetry and hidden knowledge – Thor was a more accessible god. He was invoked by farmers and travellers and was seen as a direct protector against the natural chaos of the world. His hammer, Mjölnir, was central to that role. As well as being a weapon, it was also a sacred object used to bless marriages and sanctify oaths and land. Small hammer amulets worn by Vikings attest to its everyday religious importance. And it’s with the hammer that the story begins. “Thrymskvitha starts with Thor waking up one morning and finding that his hammer is missing,” recounts Crawford. Without it, Thor is suddenly vulnerable. Thor summons Loki and demands that Loki uses his cunning and cleverness to help him retrieve the hammer. Loki borrows a feathered cloak belonging to the goddess Freyja, which allows him to fly, and travels to Jötunheim, the realm of the jötnar [giants], to investigate. There, Loki meets Thrymr, a powerful Jotun. “Thrymr says, ‘I’ve buried the hammer eight miles beneath the Earth and the only way you’re ever going to get it back is if you bring me Freyja as my bride.” Read more | Could you survive on the Vikings’ furthest frontier? Here’s the dark reality of Norse life on the edge Freyja was the famously beautiful goddess associated with love and fertility. Thor’s response is blunt. “Thor says, “We have to go and get Freyja and dress her up as a bride and send her to the giants because I need my hammer back.” And Freyja does not want to do this. She is not going to be forced to marry one of the jötnar.” At this point, the Viking gods meet to discuss their options. The solution comes from Heimdall, the god who served as watchman over Asgard, and he suggests something deliberately outrageous: Thor himself should dress as Freyja and go in her place. “Thor’s very resistant to this,” Crawford says. “Because this is Thor – the archetypal masculine god – being told he has to dress up as a bride.” As Crawford points out, much of the story’s humour is found in this contradiction: “Obviously, a lot of the comedy is in playing off gender roles.” Without Mjölnir, Thor is stripped of part of his own power. Despite his reluctance, he has no choice but to take up the plan. The Vikings | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | Join Professor Ryan Lavelle for our four-week course on the Viking period, covering everything from trading and raiding, to daily life. Explore the course now An unhappy Viking wedding A disguised and veiled Thor travels with Loki for eight days to reach Jötunheim, riding in Thor’s chariot, which was pulled by his goats. Thrymr greets them eagerly and lays out a lavish wedding feast. “Thor canonically has an enormous appetite, so he eats all the food and drinks all the mead. And Thrymr is very suspicious, but Loki keeps playing it off that she’s just that hungry, because she’s been travelling so long.” Read more | This is the overlooked story of how the Vikings dominated eastern Europe Eventually, Thrymr calls for the hammer to be brought out to bless the marriage, a reminder of Mjölnir’s ritual as well as martial role. The instant it is placed in Thor’s lap, he throws off the disguise, seizes the hammer, and takes his revenge. “He kills all the jötnar,” says Crawford. “That’s the end of the story.” Gods who could be laughed at In many later religious traditions, the idea that gods could be mocked would feel jarring – or even criminal. Many cultures’ gods are distant, and unimpeachable in their moral rectitude. Thrymskvitha shows something very different. “This is a reminder that as seriously as people who believed in these gods no doubt took them, they could also have fun with them,” says Crawford. This kind of humour would have been familiar in oral storytelling cultures, where gods were vivid characters as much as they were objects of worship. Modern portrayals of Norse religion often fixate on its violent fatalism and obsession with heroic death. Thrymskvitha adds nuance and texture to that picture. It shows a mythological tradition that valued wit and absurdity, and that trusted its gods were able to withstand being ridiculed. Dr Jackson Crawford was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Dr Jackson Crawford explores the history and stories of Old Norse mythology told in the Poetic Edda, including what we can learn about the relationships between men and women
What do we know for certain about Old Norse ideas about masculinity and femininity, and can Viking Age mythology provide any answers? In conversation with James Osborne, Dr Jackson Crawford discusses the second edition of his translation of the Poetic Edda, and explores what can still be learned from the collection of Old Norse narrative poems that forms the foundation of our understanding of Viking mythology.
Everything you think you know about Vikings is WRONG
You KNOW who the Vikings are – bearded, brutish, spoiling for a fight, and ever ready to raid an Anglo-Saxon monastery near you. Or do you?
The Vikings were bearded, brutish, spoiling for a fight, and ever ready to raid an Anglo-Saxon monastery near you. How true is that, really? It is a stereotype beloved across pop culture – most visibly in TV and film – but it’s also an oversimplified fiction. HistoryExtra’s Kev Lochun braves the ire of a sword-wielding colleague to break down what we get wrong about the Vikings – not least, that they didn’t even exist. Confused? It’s all downhill from the horned helmets. View Green Video on the source website