Abstract: The Norse and Danish invaders – commonly called Vikings – who occupied Britain in the ninth and tenth centuries, brought with them their own pagan gods. Odin, Thor, Tyr, Loki and Freya left their trace on the British landscape, in the form of scenes from their mythology carved on stone slabs, and Viking paganism has a further considerable legacy of material evidence in richly furnished graves, especially on the Isle of Man.
Introduction: The last half a century has seen a transformation in historians’ attitudes to the Vikings. The traditional picture of them was that of plundering psychopaths in helmets and beards who destroyed civilization wherever they found it. From the 1970s Peter Sawyer led the way to a more supportive view, arguing that the Vikings were great civilizers themselves, as explorers, traders, founders of towns and kingdoms, and talented poets and craftspeople. It seems now that both views are true: they arrived as looters and turned into farmers, traders and town-builders.
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Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is now a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Learned Society of Wales. Click here to view his university webpage.
Viking Pagan Gods in Britain
Lecture by Ronald Hutton
Given at Gresham College on March 8, 2023
Abstract: The Norse and Danish invaders – commonly called Vikings – who occupied Britain in the ninth and tenth centuries, brought with them their own pagan gods. Odin, Thor, Tyr, Loki and Freya left their trace on the British landscape, in the form of scenes from their mythology carved on stone slabs, and Viking paganism has a further considerable legacy of material evidence in richly furnished graves, especially on the Isle of Man.
Introduction: The last half a century has seen a transformation in historians’ attitudes to the Vikings. The traditional picture of them was that of plundering psychopaths in helmets and beards who destroyed civilization wherever they found it. From the 1970s Peter Sawyer led the way to a more supportive view, arguing that the Vikings were great civilizers themselves, as explorers, traders, founders of towns and kingdoms, and talented poets and craftspeople. It seems now that both views are true: they arrived as looters and turned into farmers, traders and town-builders.
Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He took degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford Universities, and was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is now a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Learned Society of Wales. Click here to view his university webpage.
For more details and to read a transcript, please visit the Gresham College website.
Top Image: The skull of the upper body in the Ballateare mound. © Manx National Heritage
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