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In his mother’s womb, he was fated to avenge his father – how was pregnancy understood in the Viking age?
A powerful prophecy was made in the Laxdaela Saga, a tragic 13th-century Icelandic tale filled with gory twists and turns. It concerned the unborn child of the beautiful Guðrún, a woman caught in a violent sequence of love, betrayal and revenge…
Guðrún was pregnant by her husband Bolli, though their marriage was not happy. After a series of taunts and insults played out between Guðrún, Bolli and Kjartan, Bolli had participated in the murder of Kjartan, who Guðrún had once loved the most. Seeking revenge for that death, a man named Helgi murdered Bolli, in front of Guðrún. Helgi then wiped the blood from his deadly spear on the shawl covering Guðrún’s belly, saying, “I think that under of the corner of that shawl dwells my own death”. Helgi’s words became reality. The child she was carrying would one day grow up and kill him. This striking story is one of only a few references found in Old Norse texts to pregnant women and their unborn children. But how typical is it? And what does it tell us about how Vikings understood pregnancy, unborn life and the women who carried it? New research into Viking understandings of pregnancy Those are the questions that new research, published in May 2025, has sought to answer, aiming to unpick the ambiguity and uncover what pregnancy was really like for Viking women, and examine its place within Old Norse culture and society. In ‘Womb Politics: The Pregnant Body and the Archaeologies of Absence’ (Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2025), Marianne Hem Eriksen, Katherine Marie Olley, Brad Marshall and Emma Tollefsen examined 300 years of Viking texts, images, and burial evidence – and what they found was a culture that had surprisingly mixed views on pregnancy. In some places, the unborn were seen as people with destinies of their own. In others, pregnancy was treated more like a health condition, with no suggestion that the fetus had a separate identity at all. What’s most striking, though, is how often pregnancy is simply left out of the record – not missing by accident, the authors say, but likely made deliberately invisible. Women in the Viking Age Hem Eriksen notes that there was no one way of experiencing life as a woman in the Viking Age. Most people lived on rural farmsteads where everyone had to do their part, and agricultural tools have been found in both male and female burials. Based on grave goods, some women seem to have been associated with long-distance trade or metalworking. One task that seems particularly female-gendered, however, is textile production, yet this task would probably look quite different whether you were a subaltern woman doing large-scale textile production in a pit-house, or a high-status woman weaving by the hearth in the feasting hall. What women across social groups and standing may have had in common, was the experience of pregnancy. As the research explains, women who lived before effective forms of contraception likely spent much of their adult lives being pregnant, recovering from pregnancy, and nursing. Yet despite this centrality, pregnancy is rarely talked about in the written sources. So the researchers dug deeper. Looking across sagas, poems, law codes and Christian writings, they searched for hints about how Vikings understood pregnancy. Read more | Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers Legends and language While most Old Norse descriptions of pregnancy were inferred rather than described, literature and language do provide some useful insight into how Vikings thought of pregnancy. Guðrún’s story in the Laxdaela Saga is a potent example of when the Vikings gave “more existential weight to the fetus,” say the study’s authors. The story of Guðrún and her unborn son shows how the Vikings could sometimes imagine the fetus as a separate person, with its own fate. When Helgi wiped the blood on her shawl, he was already seeing Guðrún’s fetus as a boy with a destiny, independent from his mother. Other Old Norse phrases for being pregnant – such as “to go not a woman alone” and “to walk with child” – support this interpretation too. So, then, did Vikings see unborn children as integrated social persons? It might not be that straightforward. Researchers also found words that emphasise the mother’s physical, or embodied, experience of being pregnant. When describing pregnant women, Old Norse societies used adjectives like ‘bellyish’ and ‘unlight’. Meanwhile, ‘health-lack’, ‘unstrong’ and ‘sickness’, highlighted the physical impact of pregnancy and labour, essentially viewing pregnancy as a female health condition. It's a view that contradicts the story in the Laxdaela Saga – pointing to the idea that Vikings could also see the unborn as not yet having their own individual identity or personhood. A pregnant warrior? Away from textual sources, the researchers also sought out information from physical evidence: burials and artefacts. Across the Viking Age, only one convincing visual representation of Viking pregnancy survives: a silver figurine, discovered in the 1920s in a burial mound in Aska, Sweden. The object is just 3.8cm tall and it depicts a circle with a human in its centre, cradling a round belly with her arms. It’s widely understood to represent pregnancy. Intriguingly, this woman may also be wearing a helmet with a cloverleaf-shaped nose guard. When seen against the mounting evidence that some women were buried with full weapons' gear: could pregnant Viking women, alongside their unborn children, also be seen as warriors? According to the authors, the artefact provides firm evidence that the notion of “a pregnant woman in arms was not an unthinkable concept”. The burial record Meanwhile, one of the most puzzling parts of the study comes from the burial evidence. Across the thousands of Viking Age burials that have been recorded by archaeologists, the authors of the new research found only 14 examples of a mother being buried with her infant: a number that’s misaligned with the fact that death during or around pregnancy was extremely common in medieval Scandinavia. What could have caused this “extremely low” number of burials of mothers and infants together? The authors don’t believe this low number could be down only to poor preservation of the remains, nor that Viking women and infants who died in pregnancy and childbirth were exclusively cremated rather than buried. Instead, they suggest a third possibility: that mothers and their newborn children were separated, rather than being buried together. Read more | Gods, myths and rituals: what we know about Viking religious beliefs This is one explanation as to why burials with Viking women and newborns are so rare – despite the evidence that death rates were so high – and the study suggests this was intentional by the Vikings. The authors suggests a couple of theories for why this might have happened. The newborns might have been used as ‘grave-goods’ in the burial of other bodies, in the same way the Vikings buried adults with animal bodies – or used in other ritual practices. Alternatively, perhaps the newborns weren’t formally buried at all – which gives rise to the as yet unanswered, unsettling question of whether Vikings saw dead babies as worthy of grieving over at all. A culture of contradictions? In the end, the Viking view of pregnancy appears full of contradictions. The unborn could be seen as future warriors – or not as people at all. Pregnancy could be seen as powerful, or as a health burden to endure. It’s an ambiguity that seems paradoxical given how preoccupied the Vikings were with kinship and family. Were the unborn their own beings with their own lives ahead of them, or not? Was pregnancy simply a state of health? Could the pregnant women even be warriors, in some form or another? And what happened to the mothers and infants who didn’t survive the experience? Without clear evidence one way or another, the Viking Age understanding of pregnancy remains a complex puzzle: one in which birth, life and death were ever-present and deeply intertwined.
Reading the runes: what we can learn about everyday life in the Viking Age
Runes – those instantly recognisable characters inscribed on stone, wood and bone – are filled with mystery, but can reveal little-known aspects of everyday Viking life. Eleanor Barraclough deciphers runes that recount tales of love, lust, travel and tragedy from a millennium ago
The Vikings are best known for their bloody raids, bawdy gods and buried ships. But they are also famous for the runes – the Nordic branch of the spiky north Germanic alphabet still so familiar today. Though Viking Age culture was largely non-literate, runes were the chief exception, lying at the intersection between text and object. In the same way that the word ‘alphabet’ is derived by combining the Greek letters ⍺ (alpha) and β (beta), the Nordic equivalent, ‘futhark’, is derived from the first six letters of the writing system: ᚠ (f), ᚢ (u), ᚦ (th), ᚬ (a), ᚱ (r), ᚴ (k). Surprisingly, because they represent such a recognisable and well-known form of ancient writing, no one knows for certain where runes came from. It’s probably no coincidence that many of the oldest interpretable runic inscriptions discovered – dating from the second century AD – were found in a context that shows evidence of contact with the Roman empire. The shape of runic characters are similar to many letters of the Latin alphabet, but with an angular shape more suited for carving into hard materials such as wood, bone and stone. It’s likely that knowledge of the Roman writing system travelled north with people who had spent time on both sides of the imperial frontier along the Rhine, whether as mercenaries, traders or craftspeople. Want to know more about the Vikings? Professor Ryan Lavelle leads our four-week HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course, available to HistoryExtra subscribers This might also explain one possible meaning of the word ‘rune’ itself: something secret or hidden, originally reserved for a particular segment of society – an elite group. As the centuries passed, though, knowledge and use of runes spanned an ever-broader proportion of society. The Viking Age is typically considered to encompass roughly the years 750–1100 AD – the period during which people of Scandinavian origins and heritage took part in overseas raiding, trading and settlement. At its height, the Norse diaspora they created stretched from Arctic Greenland in the west to the Eurasian waterways of the east. Listen | Neil Price takes us inside the Viking mind to explain how the Norse raiders viewed the world and what drove them to expand across the seas Designating dates for a ‘Viking Age’ is a useful way to situate ourselves in time. But runes remind us that any historical age rarely has neat edges to mark its beginning and end. Runes were used in the Norse world several centuries before the infamous international raids started, and their use continued for centuries afterwards. From the intimacies of daily life to the grand sweep of history, runes were used to record lives and deaths, preserving people’s names, their emotions, their humanity. Through them we come within touching distance of the people of the past, with their kaleidoscope of voices, experiences, emotions, relationships and beliefs. Here, we will see how deciphering runes allows us to catch glimpses of five key aspects of Norse culture, spanning the commemoration of death, love and lust, drinking, word games, and the realities of travel in the Viking Age world. Remembering a life Many runestones were carved to mark the passing of beloved individuals, recording details of their lives and travels The Norse inscriptions most familiar to us today are probably official runestones, typically commissioned to commemorate departed loved ones. If you’ve passed through Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport, you might have walked straight past one such monument. Looming above the bustle of modern-day travellers, this incongruous lump of stone features the fading outline of two carved snakes arching round the edge and looping back on themselves. The bodies of the snakes are adorned with runes that translate as: Gunnar and Bjorn and Thorgrim raised this stone in memory of their brother Thorstein, who died in the east with Yngvar, and made this bridge. Read more | Test your knowledge of the Vikings with our ultimate quiz This runestone was originally erected in the mid-11th century alongside a road and the bridge mentioned in the inscription, where it could be admired by travellers passing along the busy route. Commissioning such a stone was an expensive act that not only commemorated Thorstein’s life but also immortalised his three brothers. The runestone mentions that Thorstein “died in the east with Yngvar”. In the region around Lake Mälaren, near Stockholm, are many other runestones that commemorate husbands, fathers, sons and brothers who, like Thorstein, went on that same eastern expedition – possibly in the direction of the Caspian Sea – and never returned. Some of these runestones still stand where they were erected. Others have been built into the walls of churches and cathedrals. In all, some 20 names survive on various stones: Thorstein, Gunnleif, Harald, Saebjorn, Baggi, Gunnvid, Ulf, Gauti, Belgir, Hrodgeir, Tosti, Hugi, Thorbjorn, Skarf, Skardi, Bjorstein, Osnikin, Orm, Onun and, of course, Yngvar himself. Each runestone is a public testament to private family loss, grief and pride. Love letters Norse people recorded romantic passions and secret desires in runes Many runic inscriptions from the Norse world were not meant for public consumption. Rather, they were the equivalent of the scrappy sticky notes, every day text messages and crude toilet graffiti of their time. Written on wood, metal, bone and stone, a number of the surviving messages record strong emotions: loves, lusts, rejections. Some express fluffy sentiments of the sort that might appear in a packet of Love Hearts or on Valentine’s Day cards: “Think of me, I think of you! Love me, I love you!” Read more | How to write a love letter: 6 tips from the historical figures who did it best Others provide the names of the ones doing the loving and the lusting. Runes on a piece of cow bone from Oslo read: “Asa loves St____”, with the latter word broken off after the first two characters. Asa is a woman’s name, and St____ is likely the fractured remains of a man’s name: Stein or Stefan, perhaps. In this case, Asa’s feelings don’t seem to be much of a secret, because the final runes on the bone spell out the word ek uæit – “I know.” Other runic inscriptions hint at the sort of messy gossip that goes hand in hand with the human condition but which rarely survives for posterity: hints of same-sex acts, affairs, indiscretions and one-night stands. One carver tells us: “The clever woman lets loose for her lover, but folk still think she’s a virgin.” Another remembers the good times: “Ingibjorg loved me when I was in Stavanger.” Another spills the beans: “Clumsy-Kari and Vilhjalm’s wife are shacked up together.” Some tell of people who have been unhappily friend-zoned: “I love another man’s wife so much that fire seems cold to me, and I am a friend of this woman.” Others hint at rejection or love affairs gone sour. One such, a 10th-century square weaving tablet made from bone, found in Lund (then in Denmark, now in Sweden), provides two out of three names in what appears to be a love triangle: Sigvor (female) and Ingimarr (male). The unnamed carver of the runes is most likely female, and the runes appear to form a curse, directed particularly at Ingimarr: the translatable part reads “Sigvor’s Ingimarr will have my weeping!” There are examples of runic messages that were hidden in Norwegian stave churches, which tell us that private passions burned in these holy houses. A wooden runestick found in Urnes stave church at Sogn og Fjordane in south central Norway declares: “Arni the priest wants to have Inga.” Whether this was a confession by Arni himself or a scurrilous rumour started by a member of the congregation, we can’t know. Another stick, found in Lom stave church in the same part of Norway, was inscribed by a man called Havard to woman identified only by the first letters of her name, possibly Gudny or Gunnhild. He is proposing marriage – but it seems that he’s not her only option, because “it is my full desire to ask for you” is followed by “…if you don’t want to be with Kolbein”. Someone has attempted to conceal the identities of the people involved by scratching out the three names in this potential love triangle and dropping the wooden runestick surreptitiously between the church’s floorboards. Gudny/Gunnhild herself is a possible culprit – the wooden stick was found in the area of the church where women sat for mass – but we can only guess at the emotions that were going through their head at the time. Booze-fuelled banter Runes were used to summon errant husbands and make crude jokes The biggest haul of everyday runic inscriptions was found at the medieval harbourside of Bryggen in Bergen, Norway. There were nearly 700 at latest count, most inscribed on little sticks discovered by archaeologists after some of the wooden buildings were destroyed by fire in the 1950s. One, etched by a woman named Gyda around AD 1200, reads ᚵᛦᛆ:ᛍᛅᚼᛁᚱ:ᛆᛐᚦᚢ:ᚴᛆᚴᚼᛅᛁᛘ – transliterated into Roman letters as gya : sæhir : at þu : kak hæim. In English, that roughly translates as: “Gyda says that you should go home.”. Judging from where the stick was found, it seems likely that Gyda sent the message to her husband down at the tavern, telling him to finish up his drink and come home. On the other side of the stick are a flurry of indecipherable runes – perhaps a reply to Gyda carved by a husband too drunk to hold his knife steady. Other runic inscriptions found in Bergen also bear the hallmarks of inebriation. One carved into a wooden handle reads: “If only I might come nearer to the mead-house much more often.” Elsewhere, a cow bone was scored with runes that proclaim: “Now there’s going to be a fight,” followed by an undecipherable reply in another hand – perhaps scratched by a couple of drinkers about to witness a noisy punch-up, one of them too inebriated to carve a coherent sentence. Such inscriptions tell us that medieval Scandinavians could be as immature as the rest of us. We can almost hear sniggering across the centuries as someone takes up their knife to carve: “Sit down and interpret the runes, stand up and fart.” And from toilet-based humour it’s only ever a hop, skip and jump to genital-based jokes. One line of alliterative poetry carved onto a length of wood might be translated as: “The vagina is lovely, may the penis serve it a drink.” Like all groundbreaking forms of technology, humans found a way to make it about bums and boobs. Playing with words Norse people enjoyed composing poetry and inventing linguistic games to help pass the time Wordplay, poems and brain teasers were beloved by people across all strata of Norse society. It’s relatively rare to find evidence of these preserved in runes because such verbal games were predominantly oral rather than written. But some surviving runes reveal the diverse ways those living across the Norse world amused themselves. One runestick dating from c985–1025 AD in the earliest decades of the settlement in Greenland tells us something about the sort of wordplay enjoyed by those who lived in the farthest-flung Norse communities. The stick involved is a four-sided piece of pinewood around 43cm long, with a natural knot at one end that resembles a birdlike creature. Read more | Old Norse poetry: how the Vikings viewed the world It was discovered in 1953 by someone from the town of Narsaq who, while foraging for good-quality mud and soil for gardening, found themselves digging in what had been the living room of one of the earliest Norse farms. Runes are inscribed on four sides of the stick. On one side, transliterated into the Roman alphabet, the runes read: o : sa : sa : sa : is : o sa : sat. Several interpretations of these runes have been suggested, with variations along the lines of “On a tub saw the person, who sat on a tub,” or “On the sea that seemed to be, which you did not see on the sea.” Whatever the correct interpretation – and perhaps there was never meant to be just one – this is a fascinating example of word play using homonyms: words that have the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings. There are many examples of this in modern Nordic languages, one being the Icelandic sentence Afi á Á á á á á: “Grandpa from Á [a place] has a sheep by a river.” Travel diaries Items carved with runes provide evidence of the travels of Norse folk during the Viking Age The previous example of runic wordplay from Norse Greenland, with its allusions to the sea, reminds us that this was a culture predicated on travel, both on land and on water. Other little scraps of runic inscriptions occasionally provide the names of ordinary individuals who travelled extraordinary distances, sometimes under extraordinary circumstances. One of these inscriptions was found in a wooden coffin in the Norse graveyard of Herjolfsnes, close to the southernmost tip of Greenland. The coffin contained no body, only a wooden stick carved with runes that read: “This woman, who was called Gudveig, was laid overboard in the Greenland Sea.” She died on the voyage west, it seems, so this was as close to a burial as she could be given. Read more | Global Vikings: how the impact of the raiders and traders went far beyond Britain Another example was discovered near the high pass of Lendbreen, in the mountains of south central Norway. This pass lay on an ancient highway – a track along which farming families moved up to and down from their summer pastures, as well as a route used by traders and long-distance travellers bound for other parts of the country and even across the sea. As climate change bites, glacial archaeologists are racing to recover ephemera that were preserved here in ice for the past millennium. An extraordinary range of artefacts has been discovered, including farming equipment, a woollen mitten, a lot of frozen horse poo – and a relic revealing the name of at least one of the travellers who used this route during the Viking Age. Carved onto a wooden walking stick around AD 1000 are runes that read: “Ivar owns this.” Wherever Ivar was heading, he had to reach his destination unaided by his stick – which lay frozen in ice for the next thousand years. Eleanor Barraclough is a broadcaster, writer and historian based at Bath Spa University, and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024) This article was first published in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Ordinary Vikings: hidden histories of the Nordic world
Eleanor Barraclough explores the daily lives of the Vikings who weren’t warlords or kings, but farmers, merchants, wives and lovers
We know the Vikings best as brutal, seafaring, pagan raiders – and that’s an important part of their lives and histories. But it’s only one aspect: what about their love lives, experiences of travels, and attitudes to religion? Speaking with James Osborne, Eleanor Barraclough unpicks the day-to-day lives and culture of the Vikings across their vast – and complicated – geographic domain and timeline. Eleanor Barraclough is the author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile Books, 2024) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones
Norse gods and goddesses: 14 of the most important deities venerated by the Vikings
Names like Odin and Thor are commonly known. But if can’t tell your Aesir from your Vanir, or don’t know what animals pulled Freyja’s chariot, or which of the gods and goddesses survived Ragnarök, here is a guide to some of the key figures and events in Norse mythology
Before the existence of humans, before the cosmos, before the gods, there was the Ginnungagap: a gaping, primordial void. On one side of this yawning nothingness was an icy realm called Niflheim, and on the other was the land of fire, Muspelheim. When the realms expanded and the ice and fire clashed together, a burning frost formed and sent heated water droplets into the Ginnungagap. There, they merged into the form of a being; the first life, a giant named Ymir, according to Norse mythology. It was from Ymir that other lives emerged, among them the god Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve, who killed the giant and created the world from his corpse. His flesh became the earth and his blood the seas, oceans and rivers; his skull was turned into the sky and his brain used for clouds, while his bones made the mountains and his teeth the stones. The brothers then made humans from ash and elm trees. From there, the legendary pantheon of Norse gods and goddesses burst forth, complete with a rich and complex set of beliefs that, today, we still know little about. Yet the names and images have lodged themselves in our consciousness, from Thor’s hammer to the afterlife at Valhalla. Who are the most famous Norse gods and goddesses? Odin – The All-Father, god of war, wisdom, poetry, prophecy, runes and the dead Frigg – Goddess of motherhood, love and marriage Thor – God of thunder, the sky and agriculture Freyr – God of peace, prosperity and fertility Freyja – Goddess of beauty, gold and fertility Loki – The trickster god Heimdall – The watchman of the gods Balder – God of light, purity and summer sunshine Tyr – God of war, law and justice Njord – God of the sea, wind and bounty Hel – Keeper of the land of the dead Bragi – God of poetry and music Idunn – Goddess of youth, rejuvenation and spring Skadi – Goddess of winter, mountains, skiing and bow hunting Odin: Norse god of war, wisdom and the dead Known as: the All-Father, Father of Men, Woden Known for: Ruler of Asgard, he was the supreme deity who sacrificed his eye for wisdom Family: Husband to Frigg, father to many gods including Thor, Balder and Heimdall Odin is the chief deity in the Norse pantheon and ruler of Asgard, worshipped as a god of war, wisdom, poetry, prophecy, runes and the dead. Portrayed as a tall, aging man with a great beard, he would be accompanied by two ravens (Huginn and Muninn, who brought him news of everything they saw) and two wolves, and rode an eight-legged flying horse called Sleipnir. He often hid his appearance by wearing a broad-brimmed hat and cloak to walk unrecognised among the humans of Midgard. Odin craved knowledge, so much so that he sacrificed one of his eyes in return for perception of the cosmos, and he let himself be hanged on the world tree, Yggdrasil, for nine days and nights to gain understanding of the runes. Norse warriors revered him, for he welcomed those who died in battle and were chosen by the Valkyries (Odin’s fierce and loyal shieldmaidens) to Valhalla, a magnificent hall in Asgard. There, they trained all day in preparation for Ragnarök, the end of the worlds of gods and men, at which Odin was destined to meet his fate fighting the monstrous wolf, Fenrir. On the podcast | From Thor to Odin, Carolyne Larrington discusses the legendary figures of Viking mythology Frigg: Norse goddess of motherhood, love and marriage Known as: Frija, Frea Known for: Her powers of prophetic visions and her doomed attempt to save her son from deat Family: Wife of Odin, mother of Balder and Hodr As Odin’s queen, Frigg – meaning ‘beloved’ – was the only goddess allowed to sit alongside the All-Father as an equal in the great halls of Asgard. She also resided in her own dwelling, Fensalir, or the hall of the marshes. Despite her status as perhaps the most important goddess in the Norse pantheon, surprisingly little is known about her. Such is the confusion that there is a theory that Frigg and another goddess, Freyja, were actually the same person. Frigg was gifted with the power of divination, although she never revealed what her visions showed her. This proved to be her torment: having prophesised the death of her son Balder (though in some tales, Balder prophesies his own demise), she travelled the Nine Worlds taking the oaths of all things, from beings to the elements, that they would not harm him. But the trickster Loki discovered the loophole that led to Balder’s fate. Thor: Norse god of thunder, the sky and agriculture Known as: Thunor, Thonar, Donar Known for: The protector of humanity, he was a mighty warrior wielding his hammer, Mjolnir Family: Son of Odin, husband to Sif Famed for his skills in battle and his control over the storms that affected crops and sailing, Thor was one of the most popular and worshipped gods among the Norse people. Particularly in Norway and Iceland, he was the ultimate everyman god, called upon for myriad purposes. Often portrayed as red-bearded, the son of Odin boasted such strength (and a fierce temper) that he could fight giants, armed with his enchanted belt and iron gloves that let him wield his famous weapon, the hammer Mjölnir, which had been forged by the dwarfs and could level mountains. Mjölnir became a ubiquitous symbol in Norse art and culture, and remains one of the most important images of the Viking Age. Thor, however, once lost it to the giants and had to disguise himself as the beautiful goddess Freyja to get it back. If not wielding his hammer, Thor (meaning ‘thunder’) was often depicted riding a chariot drawn by two huge goats – which he could kill and eat, then resurrect each day – or at Ragnarök, where he would kill the Midgard-encircling serpent Jörmungandr before dying of his wounds. Read more | Christians and pagans in Norse society: the real religious rifts between Vikings Freyr: Norse god of peace, prosperity and fertility Known as: Yngvi, Frey Known for: For his associations with fertility, he was one of the most worshipped gods in Sweden Family: Son of Njord, twin brother of Freyja As son of the sea god Njord, Freyr was one of the Vanir who came to Asgard as a hostage following the war between the two tribes of gods. While still a baby, he was gifted Alfheim, one of the Nine Worlds where the elves lived. His name meaning ‘lord’, he became one of the most venerated of the gods as a symbol of peace, prosperity and fertility, especially in Sweden where he has even been linked to the royal house. His worship included offerings for a good harvest or virility, the latter explaining why many of his depictions included a particularly large phallus. Freyr also owned a sword that could fight on its own, and a golden boar. But his prized possession was a ship that always had a favourable wind and comfortably fit the entire Norse pantheon inside, and yet could be folded up and put in his pocket. Freyja: Norse goddess of beauty, gold and fertility Known as: Mardöll, Hörn, Gefn, Syr Known for: Beautiful and pleasure-seeking, she chose half of the Norse warriors who died in battle Family: Daughter of Njord, twin sister of Freyr While half of the warriors who died in battle were selected to go to Valhalla, the other half went to the meadow of Fólkvangar, presided over by Freyja. One of the Vanir, she also introduced the magic of seidr (prophecy) to the Aesir. Famed for her ties to love and sex, Freyja (meaning ‘lady’) had a reputation for pleasure-seeking, and as she was also associated with gold, she craved material possessions. Chief among them was her beautiful necklace, Brísingamen, made by four dwarfs. According to the legend, she spent a night with each of them to acquire it. Freyja also had a cloak of falcon feathers that let her fly – which she loaned to other gods – and a chariot pulled by two cats named Bygul and Trjegul, given to her by Thor. Loki: Norse trickster god Known as: Lokki, Lokkemand, Lokke, Luku, Hvedrungr Known for: His mischievous, often cruel pranks, and for siding against the gods at Ragnarök Family: Son of a giant, father to Hel and the creatures Fenrir, Jörmungandr, births Sleipnir Loki was a trickster, a shapeshifter, an agent of chaos. The child of a giant welcomed among the gods as a blood brother of Odin, he proved time and time again not to be trustworthy. He sired the goddess of death Hel, as well as the monsters Fenrir (a wolf) and Jörmungandr (a serpent so large that it encircled Midgard). By turning himself into a female horse and seducing a stallion, he gave birth to Odin’s eight-legged horse Sleipnir, too. Perhaps the cruellest of Loki’s pranks was to trick Frigg into revealing that her son Balder’s only weakness was mistletoe, then getting Balder’s own brother, the blind god Hod, to kill him with a sharpened branch of the plant. For that, Loki was bound to a rock with a snake dripping venom on him, with only his wife Sigyn to hold a bowl to catch the poison. He remained in that torture until Ragnarök , when he sided with the giants and was slain by Heimdall. Heimdall: Norse watchman of the gods Known as: Gullintani, Rig, Hallinskidi, Vindler Known for: Keeping watch over Asgard and warning the gods of Ragnarök Family: Possibly a son of Odin and nine mothers From his fortress Himinbjorg, Heimdall stood watch over the rainbow bridge that connected Asgard and Midgard, while keeping an eye out for the first signs that Ragnarök had begun. If so, he would sound the Gjallarhorn (‘hollering horn’) to warn the other gods. Heimdall could survive on as little sleep as a bird, see over huge distances and hear the grass growing. He was known as the shiniest god, partly for the whiteness of his skin but also for his gold teeth, hence his nickname Gullintanni (‘gold tooth’). He was associated with sheep and rams – he could also hear the wool grow on a sheep’s back – and rode a great horse named Gulltoppr. When the time of Ragnarök did come, he was destined to meet his long-time enemy Loki in battle, where they would kill each other. Balder: Norse god of light, purity and summer sunshine Known as: Baldr, Baldur Known for: A favourite of the gods, he was accidentally killed by his blind brother Family: Son of Odin and Frigg, brother of Hodr and Hermodr One of the best-known stories in Norse mythology is the death of Balder. Associated with light and purity, he was the fairest of the gods representing all that was good in Asgard. He had the greatest of all ships, Hringhorni, and the most beautiful hall of Breidablik. As son of Odin and Frigg, his name means ‘prince’. But when his mother had a vision of his death, she sought to prevent it by seeking an oath from all things vowing not to harm him. Some stories tell how other gods then amused themselves by throwing objects at Balder, knowing he was immune. But he had a weakness: Frigg had deemed mistletoe too small and harmless to worry about. Loki discovered this and tricked the blind god Hodr to throw a sharpened mistletoe branch at Balder, thus killing the ‘best of gods’. Balder’s other brother Hermodr travelled to the land of the dead to plea and made a deal that he could return as long as everything in the Nine Worlds wept for him. The only being not to do so was a giantess (actually Loki in disguise), and so Balder remained in the land of the dead until Ragnarök. Tyr: Norse god of war, law and justice Known as: Tiw, Tiwaz, Ziu Known for: In a selfless act of courage, he had his hand bitten off by the wolf Fenrir Family: Possibly the son of Odin or of a giant One of the oldest gods in the pantheon (his name simply means ‘god’), Tyr joined the likes of Odin and Thor in an association with war. More than that, he was interested in those wars being carried out according to law and justice, so he became linked to truces and peace. Despite the presence of other war gods, Tyr held a status as one of the chief deities in the Norse pantheon. His most famous act of bravery did not come in battle, though. It came from the gods’ attempts to bind the great wolf Fenrir. They went to the dwarfs to create an unbreakable chain, Gleipnir, made of the sounds of a cat’s footsteps, the beard of women, the roots of mountains, bears’ sinews, the breath of fish, and the spittle from birds. When they tried to attach it, Fenrir demanded that one of the gods put their hand in his jaws as a sign of good faith. Tyr volunteered, but lost his right hand when Fenrir, realising the chain would not break, bit down in anger. Njord: Norse god of the sea, wind and bounty Known as: Njordr Known for: He survived both an unhappy marriage with a giantess and Ragnarök Family: Father of Freyr and Freyja As one of the water gods, Njord could ensure safety at sea by controlling the waves, sending fair winds and quelling storms, and be called upon for plentiful fishing trips. Unsurprisingly, he was revered in the seafaring communities of Scandinavia. He was also one of the leading members of the Vanir, who came to live in Asgard with his children Freyr and Freyja. There, he married the giantess Skadi, but they soon separated. He preferred to live at his dwelling by the sea, Noatun, while she wanted to be in the mountains. Njord also holds a rare place of honour as being one of the few in the Norse pantheon to make it out of Ragnarök alive. Read more | Fire gods and goddesses: 14 fire deities from world history Hel: Norse keeper of the land of the dead Known as: Hela Known for: She presided over the land of the dead for those who died of old age or sickness Family: Daughter of Loki While the name Hel (meaning ‘to cover’ or ‘to hide’) obviously evokes the modern-day notion of Hell, the land of the dead that the goddess Hel presided over was not solely a place of torment and eternal suffering. Murderers, adulterers and oath-breakers faced punishments such as serpent venom and a dragon sucking their blood; for everyone else, it was simply where those not slain in battle went after death. The daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboda (not Odin and Frigg, as Marvel would have you believe), Hel was often depicted as having half the face of a normal woman while the other half was deathly pale, even blue, as if already a corpse. She was not a goddess to be worshipped, but a representation of death. Bragi: Norse god of poetry and music Known for: His love of poetry saw him become the skald of Asgard Family: Possibly a son of Odin, husband of Idunn Poetry was an important part of Norse culture, used to pass down stories and heroic deeds through oral tradition, and the bards and skalds were significant figures. The same was true for the gods: Bragi was wise and learned, and entertained in the halls of Asgard. Despite claims that he was one of Odin’s sons, there is no evidence that he was worshipped as a god. In fact, he may have been based on a ninth-century poet, Bragi Boddason, who could have been deified and his name honoured in the pantheon. According to legend, Bragi married the goddess Idunn, who helped him get out of a potentially life-threatening argument with Loki, who belittled his place among the gods. As a sign of his love of poetry, Bragi was said to have runes carved across his tongue. Idunn: Norse goddess of youth, rejuvenation and spring Known as: Ydun, Idun, Ithunn, Idunna Known for: Keeping the magic apples that made the gods immortal Family: Wife of Bragi She may not be one of the most famous Norse gods and goddesses, but Idunn had one of the most important roles in Asgard. She looked after the magic apples – golden, in some of the sources – that the gods ate to achieve long life. As such, Idunn (meaning ‘ever young’) was worshipped as the representation of youth and the new life that came every spring. She was also associated with fertility. However, Loki played a trick on her. Luring her into a trap with the claim that he had discovered apples even better than the ones she cared for, Loki brought her and the apples to a giantess in the form of an eagle, who took her to Jotunheim. When the gods began to age, they immediately suspected Loki and made him put things right. He saved Idunn by flying to the giants’ realm as a falcon and transforming her into a nut to be carried back to Asgard. Skadi: Norse goddess of winter, mountains and skiing Known as: Skade, Skathi Known for: The giantess was a skilled bow hunter in the mountains, famed for her snowshoes Family: Husband of Njord As part of the goddess Idunn’s escape from Jotunheim, the giant Thiazi was killed. His daughter, Skadi, put on her war gear and went to Asgard for revenge, but was convinced to accept one of the gods as a husband in compensation. She also demanded that one of the gods make her laugh, which Loki achieved by tying a rope to a goat at one end and his testicles at the other, then squealing in pain when the rope got pulled. (Later, it would be Skadi who placed the venomous snake over Loki for his torture when bound to a rock.) The one condition for Skadi with selecting her new husband was that she could only see the gods’ feet. She picked who she hoped was the fair and handsome Balder, but ended up with Njord. The marriage did not last, since they could not tolerate living in the other’s preferred environment. Skadi dwelt in the mountains, hunting with a bow, skiing and wearing her famed snowshoes. Did any Norse gods and goddesses survive Ragnarök? At Ragnarök, the gods were destined to be defeated in the great final battle of the cosmos against the a formidable set of opponents: giants; an army of the dead led by the goddess Hel; and the monstrous creatures sired by Loki; the wolf Fenrir and world serpent Jörmungandr. With the Nine Worlds turned to darkness and engulfed in flames, the majority of the Norse gods and goddesses perished, including Odin, Thor, Heimdall, Freyr and Tyr. Loki, who sided against the gods, also died. From the cataclysm, so the legend has it, a handful of gods survived and a new world would emerge. There is no known mention of what happened to the goddesses. Among them were Thor’s sons Magni and Modi, Odin’s sons Vali and Vidar (who killed Fenrir), Hoenir and the sea god Njord. Balder and Hodr, who died before Ragnarök, returned from the land of the dead to live in the new world, and even two humans, Lif and Lifthrasir, managed to escape the destruction. Where do the Norse gods and goddesses live? The Norse gods and goddesses live, according to legend, on Asgard, one of the Nine Worlds of the cosmos. At least, the Aesir do. Other gods, the Vanir, live on Vanaheim (more of that below). Midgard is the realm of humans, while the giants and elves dwell on Jotunheim and Alfheim respectively. A rainbow bridge, the Bifrost, links Asgard and Midgard, but all of the Nine Worlds are connected by the branches and roots of Yggdrasil, the mighty and sacred ash tree at the centre of the cosmos. Read more | Gods, myths and rituals: what we know about Viking religious beliefs How many Norse gods and goddesses are there? Without a full encyclopaedic knowledge of Norse mythology – the sources are scant and contrary, ranging from stone carvings and mentions in poetry to the Prose Edda, a handbook for Skaldic poetry from 13th-century Iceland – there is no knowing how many gods and goddesses were venerated by the Vikings. The number 66 is often cited, but other sources say only a couple of dozen stand above as the main deities that were worshipped over the centuries. Here are some of the key figures in the pantheon, and their key characteristics according to legend. What is the difference between the Aesir and the Vanir? The Aesir and Vanir can essentially be seen as two different tribes of Norse gods. The larger group is the Aesir, made up of some of the most recognisable names in the pantheon (Odin, Frigg, Thor, Loki and Heimdall among them). They are more warlike than the Vanir, a group mostly associated with fertility and the power to see the future. They include Njord and his children Freyr and Freyja. Early in the mythology, the Aesir of Asgard and Vanir of Vanaheim went to war. With neither able to claim victory, though, they agreed to a truce in which hostages from both sides were taken. What days of the week are named after Norse gods and goddesses? Nearly all the days of the week in the modern English language got their names from Norse gods and goddesses, somewhat indirectly. The Romans had named the days after the Sun, Moon and planets linked with their gods; these were then given an Anglo-Saxon adaptation, whose gods had roots in the Norse pantheon. So, while Sunday and Monday are named for the Sun and Moon respectively (Sol and Mani in Norse), Tuesday honours the war god Tyr; Wednesday is named after Odin (or Woden); Thursday marks Thor’s day; and Friday got its name from Frigg (or possibly Freyja, or both if they were indeed the same person). The exception is Saturday, which comes from the Roman god Saturn. For the Norse, this was laugardagur, or ‘washing day’. Discover more learning from week three of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course Video: Daily life, with Professor Ryan Lavelle – watching time 19 mins What was life like for Viking women? – reading time 7 mins Inside the Viking mind – reading time 10 mins Podcast: What Norse poetry reveals about the Viking Age – listening time 48 mins Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers – reading time 7 mins How England rode the Viking storm – reading time 12 mins Viking ‘warrior women’ – reading time 3 mins
Old Norse poetry: how the Vikings viewed the world
Old Norse poetry isn’t just a rip-roaring account of the exploits of bloodthirsty warriors, or the intrigues of gods and giants. It is those things, but it’s also an indispensable portal into how the Vikings understood the universe. Alicia Maddalena and Matthew Townend give us a whistle-stop tour of a glittering art form
“King, you made a great attack on the family of princes. Gracious leader, you reddened broad Kantaraborg in the morning.” With these words, an early 11th-century poet, Óttarr the Black, praises one of the martial feats of his patron, King Óláfr Haraldsson of Norway. Kantaraborg is the Old Norse form of the name of Canterbury; the event that is being commemorated here is the capture of the city by a Viking army in 1011. Its sequel the following year was the shocking martyrdom of Archbishop Ælfheah. For the English writers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, the capture of Canterbury was a grievous event: the 1011 entry laments that “there misery could be seen in the place where joy was often seen previously”. But that is not at all how the taking of Canterbury is viewed in Óttarr’s verse. Here, the assault offers grounds for celebration, an instance of the king’s military prowess. Old Norse poetry such as Óttarr’s, in other words, gives us access to a perspective on the Viking Age from the Vikings themselves. Such poetry is full of journeys and battles, dominated by charismatic war-leaders who wield weapons, conquer lands, and share out treasure to their followers. What did the Vikings use poetry for? The stereotype of the Vikings as great warriors derives largely from this self-image that was cultivated by their poets. But that is by no means the only subject matter that we find in this body of verse. In the Viking Age, poetry was used to tell mythological stories about the gods and their cosmos, celebrate special occasions, woo prospective lovers, insult rivals, and commemorate everything from a generous gift to a well-decorated interior. Composed in the Old Norse language, Viking poetry is the great under-used resource for exploring and understanding the early medieval Scandinavian world. Only in such poetry, and in the less eloquent corpus of runic inscriptions, can we hear the Vikings speak for themselves. Given that their actions and ideas have predominately been mediated to us through texts produced by their victims – in places such as England and France – its value cannot be overestimated. And the value of the verse is by no means purely historical. This is powerful and even dizzying poetry, marked by verbal ingenuity, imaginative invention and sheer, varied humanity. Listen | Browse our archive of HistoryExtra podcasts on Vikings Old Norse poetry was oral: it was composed without writing, recited publicly at social gatherings, received through the ear, and transmitted through memorisation. It was only decades or even centuries later that it was committed to writing, especially in Iceland, in the later medieval age of literacy. Oral poetry is different from literate poetry in multiple ways. To compose oral poetry, you have to learn linguistic and metrical systems, and internalise a repertoire of potential words and phrases and formulae. The oral poet also has to command the attention of a public audience, not all of whom may be connoisseurs of such an art form. And you have to appeal to the ear, with arresting sound patterns and memorable locutions. Two types of Old Norse poetry: eddic and skaldic Viking poetry has customarily been divided into two main types, called ‘eddic’ and ‘skaldic’. These terms are modern rather than medieval ones, but they act as helpful labels for a distinction that seems to have been recognised by the Scandinavians themselves. Eddic poetry was anonymous, easy to understand, mythological or legendary in content, and composed in a metre very similar to that used in other Germanic poetries (such as the Old English Beowulf). Most of the eddic poetry that we have is preserved in the Codex Regius manuscript, so named because it was gifted to the King of Denmark, having been discovered in Iceland by Brynjólfur Sveinsson, bishop of Skálholt, in the 17th century. This collection of poetry has come to be known as the Poetic Edda, and contains 29 poems. These include tales about the beginning and the end of the Norse cosmos, poems that tell stories of the gods Odin and Thor, and ones dedicated to heroes such as Sigurd, who killed the dragon Fafnir and claimed his cursed gold for his own. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/AKG606889webready-b4516f0.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Old Norse poetry celebrated the exploits of figures such as the warrior Hogni, shown here having his heart cut out in a 12th-century carving in a Norwegian church (Photo by Nicholas Saunders/akg-images)" title="Old Norse poetry celebrated the exploits of figures such as the warrior Hogni, shown here having his heart cut out in a 12th-century carving in a Norwegian church (Photo by Nicholas Saunders/akg-images)" /> Skaldic poetry tended to be composed for specific events or patrons, and it is often attributable to named poets whose itinerant careers can be reconstructed. We know that Óttarr the Black composed not only for Óláfr Haraldsson of Norway, but also for a Norwegian magnate called Dala-Guðbrandr, for the Danish monarchs Swein Forkbeard and Cnut the Great, and two Swedish kings as well. We also know something of Óttarr’s family background: he was an Icelander, and probably the nephew of Sigvatr Þórðarson, the pre-eminent poet of the early 11th century. Skaldic poetry was, then, an international medium. It can also be connected to historical facts – named poets, datable poems and known locations – in a way that is rare for early medieval poetry. It was composed in a dense, intensive style, and poets both drew on communal traditions and endeavoured to outshine each other with ingenious innovations. Óttarr’s poem for Óláfr Haraldsson is called Höfuðlausn or Head-Ransom (later traditions claim that the poet had offended the king, and had to save his skin, or ransom his head, by composing a praise-poem). It begins with both a call for hearing and an assurance of the poet’s own excellence: “Listen, noble king with your retinue, to the memory of the dark one (ie Óttarr), because I know how to compose.” As the example of Óttarr suggests, skaldic poets were not noted for their modesty. A famous 10th-century skald, Egill Skalla-Grímsson, came to the court of King Eric Bloodaxe in York and declared that he “carried poetry to the fields of England”, as if the country had been hitherto lacking in such a prestige item. The first two lines at the start of this article read in Old Norse: Atgöngu vannt, yngvi, / ætt siklinga mikla. Although skaldic poetry alliterates like other early verse (here, At-, yng- and ætt alliterate with one another as they all start with vowels), it also shows a number of other demanding features not found in poetry such as Beowulf. These include a precise counting of syllables (six to each line) and a bravura pattern of internal rhyme. There is a specialist vocabulary to draw on – here yngvi is a poetic term for ‘king’ or ‘ruler’ – and a system of metaphors called ‘kennings’, whereby a ship can be the ‘reindeer of the ocean’, or a sword can be the ‘lightning of battle’. Elsewhere in his Head-Ransom, Óttarr praises the king as the “feeder of the ospreys of the wound-sea”: the wound-sea is blood, the ospreys of blood are carrion birds, and the feeder of the carrion birds is therefore the king as warrior, generously despatching a pile of enemies as the sign of a good day’s work. Divine verse: gods and giants in Viking poetry Norse gods don’t fight battles as often as kings such as Óláfr Haraldsson. Yet they, too, have their problems and in Viking poems are constantly at odds with their enemies, the giants. The giants (or jötnar in Old Norse) of mythology are not fairy-tale creatures – they are instead depicted as having social structures similar to that of the gods themselves, and can communicate eloquently. It is not uncommon for a god (particularly Odin) to find himself in a wisdom contest with a giant, as in the poem Vaþrúðnismál or Vafthrudnir’s Sayings. Here, Odin and the giant Vafthrudnir set their wits against each other and ask and answer questions about the Norse mythical world, its origins and cosmology. For example, Odin asks Vafthrudnir about the beginnings of the world, inquiring: “Whence came the Earth / or the sky above?” to which Vafthrudnir answers that: “Of the flesh of Ymir / was the Earth shaped, / and cliffs of his bones, / the sky of the skull / of the hoar-frost-cold giant, / the sea of his sweat.” The violent destruction of the primordial giant Ymir’s body to create the Earth is attested in a number of other Old Norse sources, including the eddic poem Völuspá (The Seeress’s Prophecy), which is the first poem in the Poetic Edda. Read more | Viking gods, goddesses & tricksters: 12 figures from Norse mythology The wisdom contest format allows us to observe not only the authority of Odin – he always wins – but also to learn about the Viking cosmos and world-view as the contestants ask and answer their questions. Viking poetry is often competitive, and insults can loom large, as part of the honour and shame culture of the early medieval world. The eddic poem Lokasenna or Loki’s Quarrel is full of insults of sexual indiscretion. Among the cutting accusations that Loki hurls at the other gods is the suggestion that the wife of the martial Tyr has borne Loki’s child, and he says to the war-god that “not an ell nor a penny / have you ever had for this / injustice, wretched one”. So not only has Tyr been cuckolded by Loki, but he also hasn’t received any compensation for the offence. Tyr has not done what would normally have been considered the manly thing in this culture and taken vengeance on Loki, thus rendering this insult doubly shameful. Competition also features in verses by a female poet called Steinunn Refsdóttir. Composing in late 10th-century Iceland, in the last years of paganism there, Steinunn used her verse to brag that a missionary’s ship had been destroyed by the power of Thor. The god, she said, broke “the bison of the place of the gull” (ie ship), after Christ “did not protect” it. Here, poetry gives us an insight into religious rivalries in the age of conversion. In a head-to-head comparison between the vigorous Thor and the ineffective Christ, Steinunn declares a clear win for the former. Viking humour and tragedy within the verse A different sort of rivalry can be found in verses attributed to two other Icelandic poets who were competing for the attention of the same woman, and used poetry as the medium through which to pursue their long-running feud. One of them, Björn Arngeirsson, insulted his opponent by accusing him of being a rusilkvæðr (‘rubbish poet’) whose mother became pregnant through swallowing a hrognkelsi or lumpfish. In response, the rival poet, Þórðr Kolbeinsson, responded that Björn was “removed from truth and wisdom” and could produce only hvítmál (‘white or cowardly speech’). So Viking poetry could be low and lampooning as well as lofty and panegyric. And as these verses suggest, such poetry also enables us to access Viking humour. The poet Sigvatr, Óttarr’s uncle, composed a set of Austrfararvísur (Verses on a Journey to the East), a comic travelogue about all the misfortunes that befell him on a diplomatic mission to Sweden. These included blisters on his feet, leaking boats and excessively cumbersome luggage. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/05/2B02TM9webready-63c47bf.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Norse mythology is full of sexual indiscretions. The god Tyr (shown in an 18th-century manuscript) is cuckolded by his fellow deity Loki, and then taunted for not exacting revenge (Photo by CPA Media Pte Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Norse mythology is full of sexual indiscretions. The god Tyr (shown in an 18th-century manuscript) is cuckolded by his fellow deity Loki, and then taunted for not exacting revenge (Photo by CPA Media Pte Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Viking poetry could also transport its audience into the realms of tragedy. Norse poets understood love and loss just as keenly as we do and expressed those feelings in poignant verse. Among the tragic figures of the Norse legendary corpus is Brynhild. Stripped of her role as a Valkyrie when she falls in love with a man on the battlefield, Brynhild is later tricked and manipulated into marrying a man she doesn’t love. Heartbroken and furious, she orchestrates the murder of the one who wronged her and sets herself alight on a pyre. As she recounts the wrongs done to her and predicts devastation to come, the dying Brynhild addresses her husband, saying: “I call many things to mind, how things went against me / when you dealt me the wounds of betrayal; / deprived of desire I was while I lived.” Brynhild was certainly no stranger to pain, but her suffering is matched by that endured by Gudrun, the wife of the dragon-slaying Sigurd. Gudrun is the grand tragic heroine of eddic poetry, and in her last moments she recounts the many losses she has endured. These include waking up in the blood of her husband, who has been killed in bed beside her, and the death of her daughter Svanhild, who was falsely accused of infidelity and murdered by her husband. Gudrun describes her daughter as being sem væri sœmleitr / sólar geisli (“as fine to look at as a ray of sun”), and laments that “it was the hardest of my harms, / when the shining-white hair of Svanhild / they trod into the mud under the hooves of the horses”. The stark contrast between the shining gold of her daughter’s hair and the dull brown of the mud makes this mother’s lament all the more unbearable. Although its content may often have been bloody and brutal, Viking poetry was a complex and ornate art form, the verbal equivalent of exquisite medieval jewellery or sculpture. And in such poetry, we encounter the Vikings in their own words. It is a remarkable body of verse. Although there is certainly poetry that portrays Vikings as violent and war-hardened, there are also many examples of Old Norse poetry that convey emotion, humanity and even vulnerability. Alicia Maddalena and Matthew Townend are members of the Department of English and Related Literature, and the Centre for Medieval Studies, at the University of York This article first appeared in the June 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
"A Viking wedding involved a bed and eight people", plus four other facts about the Vikings you might not know...
Ryan Lavelle, who is teaching our new HistoryExtra Academy course, shares five surprising facts about the raiders, pirates and traders from medieval Scandinavia
A Viking wedding involved a bed and eight people The people of medieval Iceland are best known for their sagas – vivid stories written about their Viking ancestors. Yet they also possessed a lawcode, and these laws reveal a curious marriage custom that shines a light on gender relations in Icelandic society. For a marriage to be legitimate, a groom had to be seen by six witnesses entering the same bed as his new wife, “without concealment”. The idea that marriage was witnessed ensured that children from the union were seen as legitimate – an important matter for the descent of property and for family honour. After all, the keeping of mistresses was far from uncommon and the sexual mistreatment of female slaves so widespread it appears that it was barely worth recording in sagas. Read more | Viking gods, goddesses & tricksters: 12 figures from Norse mythology All this is worth bearing in mind when considering the Viking cemetery in Birka, Sweden – in which a skeleton buried with an array of weapons turned out to be biologically female. Many Viking women enjoyed greater freedoms than their counterparts across Europe. But there were still limits to their power. Did the person buried at Birka express their identity like that of a male warrior because of such limits? The Vikings with Ryan Lavelle In this four-week short course, you'll discover everything you need to know about the Viking period, guided by Ryan Lavelle, Professor in Early Medieval History at the University of Winchester. Find out more Vikings converted to Christianity earlier than we thought In c965 AD, King Harald Bluetooth made a bold – and striking – claim. On a runestone erected at Jelling on the Jutland peninsula, the Danish monarch declared that he had “made all the Danes Christian”. It was the earliest ‘official’ statement on Christianity made in Viking Scandinavia. So does that mean that Christianity didn’t gain much traction in the Viking lands until the late 10th century? Perhaps not. For, in 2016, on the Danish island of Funen, a metal detectorist discovered a Scandinavian gold crucifix pendant from the early 10th century. Read more | When did Christianity first arrive in Britain? Two centuries before that, in the early 800s, the Frankish bishop St Anskar led a mission to Scandinavia that, tradition has it, met with little success. The Aunslev crucifix shows that perhaps Anskar’s efforts – or, maybe, the influence of Vikings returning home from Christian lands – bore some fruit after all. Harald Bluetooth was no friend of the Vikings Harald Bluetooth is one of the most famous Danish kings of the Viking Age. But it seems that he was anything but a Viking himself. The king – who was named ‘Bluetooth by a 12th-century chronicler, perhaps on account of a bad tooth – never took part in a Viking expedition and ordered no raiding expeditions. In fact, Harald projected himself as a king of a united Denmark through a series of massive building projects that were designed to repel Viking raiders. These included a network of circular ring fortresses (known as Trelleborg fortresses, after the first such one to be discovered) that could house many hundreds of soldiers. Designated by Unesco as world heritage sites in 2023, Trelleborg fortresses were constructed across the territories of Denmark, probably with the aim of bringing the Danish kingdom together – something that Harald Bluetooth claimed on the Jelling runestone. With such fortresses, as with the Anglo-Saxon burhs of Wessex and Mercia a generation or so earlier, any marauding Vikings could be prevented from wreaking havoc within Harald’s realm. The legend of William Tell may derive from a Viking story Harald Bluetooth’s massive building projects were costly, straining relations between the king and his nobles. Saxo Grammaticus, a 12th–13th-century Danish writer, tells that on hearing one of his nobles boast that he was a deadshot with a bow, Harald ordered the man, Toki, to prove it in a way that tested his loyalty to the limits. And so Toki displayed that loyalty by shooting an apple from his son’s head. When Harald asked Toki why he had brought more arrows from his quiver, Toki replied that, had he missed the apple, he would not have missed the king. Whether or not we choose to believe Saxo, his tale reveals to us that saga-like storytelling traditions didn’t only hail from Iceland. And Saxo hadn’t finished with Harald quite yet. The Danish writer tells us that the king was driven out of his kingdom by his rebellious son, Swein Forkbeard. Harald’s attempt to claim back a foothold in Denmark was, Saxo writes, scuppered when, in a quiet moment in a battle, he headed off into a wood to answer the call of nature. Watching him was Toki, again ready with his bow. Naturally, he did not miss. The Viking Age began before the Lindisfarne raids “Who could have known that such an inroad from the sea could be made?” lamented the Northumbrian churchman Alcuin on hearing the news of the Viking raid on the island monastery of Lindisfarne. That terrible attack, in 793, is widely believed to have fired the starting gun on the Viking Age. But some historians now argue that this era in medieval history may have been under way earlier than that. The most compelling evidence for this arrived in the early 2000s with the discover- ies of two war boats with skeletons at Salme on the Estonian island of Saaremaa. These finds date from around 750. Archaeologists remain puzzled by the finds, which include Scandinavian weapons, dogs and hawks. Many of the skeletons have revealed extensive evidence of injuries. Was this a diplomatic mission gone wrong (with dogs and hawks intended as gifts?), the fate of unsuccessful raiders, or the burial of a group of would-be settlers? Whatever the case, there’s little doubt that, almost a millennium after it drew to a close, the Viking Age continues to throw up surprises.
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In week three of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course, Professor Ryan Lavelle explores how people lived, loved, worked and worshipped throughout the Viking world
View Green Video on the source website Discover more learning from week three of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course What was life like for Viking women? – reading time 7 mins Inside the Viking mind – reading time 10 mins Viking gods, goddesses & tricksters: 12 figures from Norse mythology – reading time 8 mins Podcast: What Norse poetry reveals about the Viking Age – listening time 48 mins Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers – reading time 7 mins How England rode the Viking storm – reading time 12 mins Viking ‘warrior women’ – reading time 3 mins
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Jomsvikings: legendary Viking mercenaries or men of myth?
How much do we know about the semi-legendary order of Viking mercenaries? Dr Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir explains what the sagas can tell us, and what we should make of their appearance in Vikings: Valhalla
Who were the Jomsvikings? According to the sagas, the Jomsvikings were a band of Norse warriors based in Jomsborg, which means ‘Jom Fortress’. It was called after its location on the island Jom, somewhere on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in Pomerania (either modern-day Germany or Poland), described as ‘Wendland’ in Old Norse sources. The Jomsvikings were originally from Denmark, and Jomsborg was a sort of Danish colony, which makes sense since the distance between the two is short by sea, but Vikings from all over Scandinavia and the North Sea eventually joined in. The sagas agree that Jomsborg was the base of a fearsome Viking army, but one saga in particular – the Saga of the Jomsvikings (Jómsvíkinga saga) – depicts it as a highly selective warrior band which subscribed to a more stringent set of rules than other groups. What did the Jomsvikings do? The Jomsvikings of saga tradition were an elite band of mercenary warriors who fought for the king of Wendland, and later, for Danish kings. The sources agree that the Jomsvikings were on the losing side in the battle of Hjörungavágr, a naval battle which was fought when the Danes tried to invade Western Norway. According to the Saga of the Jomsvikings, when not fighting and plundering abroad, the Jomsvikings stayed in their stronghold. Presumably they mostly spent their time with their fellow warriors, given that women were not allowed in the fortress. Read more | What was life like for Viking women? What makes the Jomsvikings different from other Vikings? The Jomsvikings had a reputation for their rigour and exclusivity, and many applicants were rejected from their company. Members of the Jomsvikings had to be between 18 and 50 years of age, courageous and scrupulously loyal to their fellow warriors. They were to avoid gossip and keep each other company – Jomsvikings were prohibited from bringing women into the fortress, nor could they be away for more than three nights without permission from their leader. All spoils of war were to be divided equally between the group, and they had to promise to avenge each other as if they were brothers. Compared to other saga descriptions of Viking armies, this group seems more disciplined than most, and their fearlessness in the face of death evokes legendary heroes from heroic epic. Opinion | The trouble with viking hypermasculinity What do the sagas say about the Jomsvikings? The Saga of the Jomsvikings, written in the first half of the 13th century, is – as its name suggests – the source that gives us most information about the Jomsvikings. However, the saga is considered hyperbolic and obviously influenced by legend and fantasy. For example, it describes the harbour in Jomsborg as having a berth for 300 ships, a fleet larger by far than even the royal fleets described elsewhere in the sagas. Even more fantastically, at the end of the saga one of the Jomsvikings, Búi, is said to have turned into a dragon. Earlier in the saga, Búi is characterised as an ostentatious man fixated on wealth, and his transformation evokes the dragon Fáfnir of Norse legend – a greedy man who jealously hoarded his gold, which rendered him monstrous. Read more | How do you really kill a dragon? Here are 10 tricks from medieval literature... Although the Saga of the Jomsvikings might contain a kernel of truth, modern historians have understandably shied away from trusting it much. Instead, they have turned to more sober accounts, including the collection of kings’ sagas known as Heimskringla. This text relates that, cAD 986, King Harald Bluetooth’s son Svein Forkbeard enlisted the Jomsvikings when he successfully rebelled against his father’s rule. A Danish army led by the Jomsvikings subsequently plundered in Norway on behalf of Svein in order to oust his father’s former ally and de facto ruler of Norway, Hakon Jarl, but the Norwegians were ultimately victorious. Where was Jomsborg? In the Viking Age, trading posts and seasonal markets sometimes grew into proto-urban settlements, and archaeological digs have revealed several emporia (small market towns) along the southern Baltic coast. Since the sagas do not give Jomsborg’s specific location, any one of these could theoretically be it, but the island Wolin is considered by far the most likely place. Read more | The life and legacy of Thorkell the Tall In his Deeds of the Bishops of Hamburg (dating to the 1070s), the German cleric Adam of Bremen described a prosperous trading town at the Oder estuary named Iumne, and this place name is believed to be the same one as Old Norse Jóm. Modern-day Wolin is located at the mouth of the river Oder on the coast of what is now western Poland, close to the border to Germany. Moreover, most of the Norse settlements seem to have been similar to Norse emporia elsewhere, where the townspeople included women and children. But excavated sources suggest that Wolin had a small, Norse elite consisting mostly of men living amongst an otherwise Slavic population, and it stands out for that reason. And although the evidence is not strong, most of these men seem to have been warriors. Read more | From Nan Madol to Karakorum: 7 cities that history forgot A third reason is that, unlike the other settlements along the coast, Wolin was fortified with a wall, which is much more consistent with the literary representation of the Jomsvikings’ military stronghold than unfortified market towns made up of families, merchants and craftspeople. By piecing together this evidence, scholars have made a good case for connecting Wolin with the Norse Jomsborg. On the other hand, in the Saga of the Jomsvikings, Jomsborg is more of an imagined than a real place, and some historians have even dismissed the Jomsvikings’ existence as the stuff of legends. More from this author | How the real Viking prince Amleth, hero of The Northman, inspired William Shakespeare Who founded the Jomsvikings? In the Saga of the Jomsvikings, a Viking named Pálnatóki gets on the wrong side of the Danish king Harald Bluetooth. Escaping the wrath of the king, he makes his way to Wendland, where the Wendish king offers him a piece of land in exchange for protecting his kingdom against other invaders. Pálnatóki goes on to establish the Viking colony Jomsborg, and this becomes the headquarters of his followers, the Jomsvikings. Other, more reliable, sagas attribute the foundation of Jomsborg to King Harald Bluetooth, but they don’t give any explicit reason or backstory for it. It is likely that establishing a military outpost on the Baltic coast helped the king gain a foothold in the region as he sought to capitalise on trade in the Baltic and the Rus’ (Russia and Ukraine). Read more | Who were the Kievan Rus and what do they have to do with the Vikings? What happened to the Jomsvikings? The Norwegians thwarted the Jomsvikings’ invasion cAD 986, and according to Heimskringla, in 1043, King Magnus, the son of King Olaf Haraldsson, sacked and burned Jomsborg, conquering some of its inhabitants, while others fled. Excavations in Wolin have so far not given any firm answers as to whether this could be true, but as the Viking Age drew to a close, kingdoms became stronger, independent warrior bands found it more difficult to operate, and Heimskringla’s version of events cannot be excluded. Did the Jomsvikings really exist? It is very likely that there were one or more Viking warrior bands in the late Viking Age, perhaps based in Wolin, then called Jom by the Norse. Whether they called themselves the Jomsvikings, and subscribed to the ideals and rules outlined in the Saga of the Jomsvikings is another matter, but there is no reason to exclude it completely either. Something must have given rise to the legendary-flavoured stories about the Jomsvikings. Read more | "Vikings didn't wear horned helmets," plus 7 more Viking myths busted The Jomsvikings in Vikings: Valhalla <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/03/VAL201Unit01265RC-f49687f-e1678806749437.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Frida Gustavsson as Freydis Eriksdotter, Leo Suter as Harald Sigurdsson, Sam Corlett as Leif Eriksson in Vikings: Valhalla" title="Frida Gustavsson as Freydis Eriksdotter, Leo Suter as Harald Sigurdsson, Sam Corlett as Leif Eriksson in season 2 Vikings: Valhalla" /> The Jomsvikings appear in the second season of Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla, which follows the real-life historical figures of Harald Sigurdsson (later Harald Hardrada) and the explorer Leif Eriksson, and his semi-mythical sister Freydis Eiriksdottir as they navigate the end of the Viking Age. The Jomsvikings of the show are still a military order, based in the hidden fortress of Jomsborg somewhere in Pomerania, but they are not mercenaries – instead they are portrayed as being dedicated to protecting the ‘old ways’ and worship of the Norse gods in the face of Christianity’s spread. They fulfil this mission in Vikings: Valhalla by rescuing Norse smallfolk from being slaughtered for their pagan beliefs, but their actions are quickly shown to have ulterior motives. Read more | What is Valhalla in Norse mythology? Those rescued are shown to be banned from holding weapons and excluded from the town of Jomsborg; they are instead forced to live in the nearby forest, where they are made to make weapons for the Jomsvikings. The order’s leader, Harekr, goes so far as to say that the Jomsvikings are ‘superior’ to other Vikings, and none are allowed to join unless they have a Jomsviking ancestor. What of real history? The cleric Adam of Bremen claims that although Iumne was a heathen town, Christians were allowed to live there and remain true to their faith so long as they kept a low profile. This agrees with the flexibility and pragmatism that characterised many parts of the Viking world when it comes to religion. Read more | Christians and pagans in Norse society: the real religious rifts between Vikings Neither the archaeological remains nor written sources suggests that the Jomsvikings were fervently religious, or that they went about saving Norse pagans from oppressors. The Jomsvikings allegedly fought on behalf of King Harald Bluetooth, who boasted on the Jelling runestone of having Christianised his kingdom, while his Norwegian opponent Hakon Jarl was portrayed as a strict pagan in Heimskringla. This suggests that the Jomsvikings were more pragmatic than dogmatic when it came to faith and did not see anything wrong with fighting on the Christian side. Written sources suggest that knowing one’s ancestry was vitally important in the Viking Age, and there is an idea that certain qualities – including heroism and good or bad luck – were passed down the family line. Given that these sources are so far removed in time and space from the Jomsvikings – if they ever existed – it is impossible to access what their idiosyncratic beliefs and views would have been, but the show’s writers draw on aspects from elsewhere in Norse culture to breathe life into the Jomsvikings as a unique group. On the podcast... Vikings: Valhalla showrunner Jeb Stuart explains why he chose ‘Valhalla’ to encapsulate his entire series on this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast