Women in the Viking age : death, life after death and burial customs
My main interest is to find out if it is possible to get a unitary picture of beliefs concerned with the fate of the Viking women after death.
Movie Preview: Vikingdom
Being released today in 21 cities across the United States, this Malaysian-made film is loosely based on Viking mythology.
From Flax to Linen: Experiments with flax at Ribe Viking Centre
The archaeological record shows that linen was an important part of Viking Age clothing. Linen cloth developed gradually from being virtually nonexistent in Scandinavia at the start of the first millennium AD…
What did Dragons look like for the Vikings?
While the modern image of the dragons often depicts a beast that has four legs, leathery wings and breathes fire, the medieval image of the creature could be very different. In the article, ‘Dragons in the Eddas and in Early Nordic Art,’ Paul Ackey shows that the Vikings and Norse society had their own ideas of what dragons looked like.
How Christian Were Viking Christians?
What did the Vikings know of Christianity, how did they appreciate Christian teaching per se and in comparison with their native beliefs, in what way was Christianity enrooted in the minds of pagan Scandinavians?
Reincarnation among the Norse: Sifting through the Evidence
This short article looks at the possibilty of reincarnation as a common alternative concept of life after death among Germanic heathens and then as a possible non-standard alternative belief.
Viking poetry of love and war – new book by Judith Jesch
They are most famous for being violent invaders of foreign shores but a new book by a University of Nottingham Viking expert shows they were also poetry lovers with a wicked sense of humour!
The Position of the Individual Gods and Goddesses in Various Types of Sources – With Special Reference to the Female Divinities
Old Norse religion is in itself an interdisciplinary subject. If we are to survey the whole subject, it will presuppose special knowledge of a great many fields.
Awkward Adolescents: Male Maturation in Norse Literature
Although medieval masculinities have become a subject of scholarly interest, there has been relatively little discussion of the transition in Old Norse until very recently.
Anaphrodisiac Charms in the Nordic Middle Ages: Impotence, Infertility, and Magic
This essay, however, looks to explore, not this seductive form of charm magic, but rather its opposite, ie charm magic that prevents the consumption of a relationship, or that makes a fruitful union impossible.
The Children of Ash: Cosmology and the Viking Universe
What I am really going to be talking about throughout these lectures is stories, the power of stories, and the role that narrative played in the life of the Vikings, its influence on their perception of the world in which they understood themselves to move.
Tolkien’s Cauldron: Northern Literature and The Lord of the Rings
Tolkien was a scholar of Old Norse literature and much of his work in the Lord of the Rings is informed by his knowledge of old Norse mythology, Eddic poetry, and saga. Tolkien’s use of these sources enriched this complex story of Middle-earth.
INTERVIEW: Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths
An interview with author Nancy Brown on her latest medieval offering: “Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths”.
Horses of Agency, Element, and Godliness in Tolkien and the Germanic Sagas
What is the contract between man and equine that allows a beast ten times our size and one hundred times our strength to willingly serve in our ambitions? What magnetism (and who placed it) is it that draws humanity and horses together?
Where does Old Norse religion end?
How did the believers of the Old Norse religion perceive other religions, and to what extent did people from the outside get in contact with myths and rituals?
Conquest or Colonisation: The Scandinavians in Ryedale from the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries
The study of settlement history has developed within the fields of history, archaeology and geography. As a result much of the work carried out in settlement studies has borrowed the research and conclusions of scholars from other disciplines.
An island archaeological approach to the Viking colonization of the North Atlantic
The present paper is a brief exploration of the application of methods commonly used in the archaeological study of the Pacific and Mediterranean islands to the expansion of the Vikings across the North Atlantic during the ninth to eleventh centuries AD.
Odin, Magic and a Swedish Trial from 1484
If we are to believe any number of histories, spiritual life in medieval Scandinavia, and especially the conversion to Christianity, is readily summarized: paganism collapsed against Christian conversion efforts in dramatic fashion at a meeting of the Alþing, or when a missionary bore hot iron, or an exiled king had a deep religious experience, or when a pagan revolt was finally overcome, and so on.
Early Religious Practice in Norse Greenland
How many Icelanders were Christian at the time of Greenland’s settlement? Were there any pagans? Did Greenland ever officially convert to Christianity and, if so, when?
The Good, the Bad and the Undead: New Thoughts on the Ambivalence of Old Norse Sorcery
When taken collectively those sources imply that seiðr was a kind of operative magic which – among other things – enabled its practitioners to foresee the future, heal the sick, change weather conditions, reveal the hidden, shift into animal form or travel to other worlds in a state of trance.