C.J. Adrien's Blog, page 14

How historical is historical fiction? An Interview with Bernard Cornwell

This past July, I attended and spoke at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. It was a tremendous honor for me to join fellow authors Justin Hill, James Aitcheson, and Kelly Evans on stage for a round table discussion on the topic of historical fiction and the role it plays in presenting the medieval world outside of academia. Yet as I sat among my peers at the session, I could not help but think that for such a prestigious event, with a room full of academics as our audience, one person remained conspicuously absent. That person was Bernard Cornwell.

Bernard Cornwell is arguably the most well known and widely read author of medieval historical fiction. With series spanning most of the medieval period and beyond, including his series Saxon Tales and Grail Quest, I felt that his insights on the topic we discussed would have been invaluable to us and to our audience. Although he had been invited to Leeds, he was unable to make it due to a previous engagement. However, I personally reached out to him to see if he might be interested in participating in our discussion post-conference to the benefit of my readers and, hopefully, some of the folks we had in the audience during the session. Bernard Cornwell graciously accepted my invitation to be interviewed on the topic.

The topic of the round table was defined as follows: “Fiction offers a degree of creative freedom unavailable to the scholar, yet as both readers and critics, we desire authenticity in these texts – particularly because, for many, such texts are the first point of contact with the medieval world. Thus, historical fiction as a genre raises important questions. How ‘historical’ is it? How does the fiction writer balance creativity against the restraints of historical ‘accuracy’? What is the relationship between research and storytelling? This round table discussion will explore these issues, as well as practical aspects of writing and publication, with published fiction writers whose works can be broadly classed as ‘medieval historical fiction’.”

A very special thanks to Bernard Cornwell for taking the time to answer my questions.
How historical is historical fiction? What does the term historical fiction mean to you?

It’s really a circular answer! If the novel isn’t historical then it isn’t historical fiction! What it means to me is that any historical novel tries to offer the reader a picture of another era, and tries to make that picture as accurate as possible. Writers create worlds, and the world of an historical novelist is the past!  I’m sure we don’t get it right much of the time, but still the background to the story should evoke a long-gone era to the reader…what it looked like, smelt like, was like! So the background world has to be as accurate as possible, regardless of what is happening in the story.

What is the relationship between research and storytelling?

The first rule of writing the book is to leave out all the irrelevant research (about 90%).

I can’t say there’s a huge relationship, though very often the research will suggest a story idea? You certainly can’t write an historical novel without doing vast amounts of research, but the first rule of writing the book is to leave out all the irrelevant research (about 90%).

What is historical ‘accuracy?’ Can authenticity exist in fiction writing?

You tell me! No one will probably ever know what it was truly like to live in a long-gone past, so we all make educated guesses and we hope we get it right! Plainly the more research a novelist does then the greater the chance that his guesses are accurate, and the more detail he amasses of the period then the greater the authenticity! And yes, authenticity certainly exists in fiction, it’s the authentic detail that creates the fictional world. Is it fully authentic? I doubt it, but we try!

How do you balance accuracy, authenticity, and creativity?

By remembering that I’m not an historian. I’m not here to teach Anglo-Saxon history or any other history. I’m a story-teller, so my first responsibility is to tell a story! That story is fiction, even if it’s based on a well-known episode of history. So accuracy and authenticity must take second place to the story. There’s obviously a limit to that; a fiction writer can’t get away with letting the French win the battle of Waterloo…if he or she does than it ceases to be an historical novel and becomes a fantasy novel. But we do all make changes. In Sharpe’s Company I have Richard Sharpe fighting his way through the breaches of Badajoz, and that never happened. But the drama of that night was in the dreadful breaches, not in the second assault (which worked), and if the book was to convey the full horror then Sharpe had to be where the fighting was at its worst. So I changed history to make a better story, but then confessed what I had done in the book’s historical note.

How do you access research materials? Does academia hold a monopoly on the information necessary for historical fiction writing?

I read books! I visit the places! I buy books! I read more! No, academia doesn’t hold a monopoly, but plainly it’s a great place to start! I’m hugely grateful to all the wonderful academics who do the original research which I use, but there are vast areas of life which are not covered by academia…the small details of life. Some of the best material comes from the weirdest places and some come entirely from the imagination!

What is the responsibility of the historical fiction writer?

To entertain! To give the reader a compelling story. Not to be dull. And to create a background which is as convincing as possible and, so far as it is possible, true to what we know about the past!

Thank you Bernard Cornwell for your answers!
Acknowledgements

None of this would have been possible without the hard work of the session organizers, Melissa Venables and Katrina Wilkins of Nottingham University, to whom I offer my sincerest gratitude and thanks. Thank you also to the other participants, Justin Hill, James Aitcheson, and Kelly Evans.

Photos from the Conference IMC 2017

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The Viking Raid at Lindisfarne: Who Attacked the Monastery?

It was an event that shook the Christian world to its core. So traumatic was its destruction that historians have agreed it should mark the official beginning of the Viking Age, even though it was not the first violence the British Isles experienced at the hands of the Vikings. The anglo-saxon chronicle records ‘terrible portents’ to the events at Lindisfarne in 793 A.D. Located on Holy Island in the far north of England, it is written that the monastery saw powerful storms on the eve of the Vikings’ arrival.

Who attacked Lindisfarne?

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes,

“793. Here terrible portents came about over the land of Northumbria, and miserably frightened the people: these were immense flashes of lightning,and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine immediately followed these signs; and a little after that in the same year on 8 January the raiding of heathen men miserably devastated God’s church in Lindisfarne island by looting and slaughter.”

The speed at which the Vikings are said to have arrived caught the monks completely by surprise. Reconstructions in past years have estimated that on a clear day a ship might only be seen as far as 18 nautical miles, a little over an hour’s journey for a longship with the wind at its back. If the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is to be believed, the Vikings neither arrived on a clear day nor did the monks appear to have had an hour to flee.

Wrote the monk Alcuin, a leading theologian of his day, of the event:

“We and our fathers have now lived in this fair land for nearly three hundred and fifty years, and never before has such an atrocity been seen in Britain as we have now suffered at the hands of a pagan people. Such a voyage was not thought possible. The church of St. Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishings, exposed to the plundering of pagans – a place more sacred than any in Britain.”

Alcuin’s description certainly lends to the idea that the clergy at Lindisfarne did little to flee their attackers. It may have been that the Vikings arrived so suddenly that they had no time to prepare at all. Yet for all the descriptions we have of the destruction caused at Lindisfarne, we have little in the way of a description of the men who carried out the raid, other than ‘heathen’ or ‘pagan’. Who were the men who raided the island? Where did they come from?

Were the Vikings at Lindisfarne from Norway?

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle lists an entry from the year 787 A.D., six years before Lindisfarne, in which ‘Danes’ arrived at the port of Portland. It describes a brief encounter in which the port authority was killed for attempting to levy a tax on the heathens. The chronicler Aethelweard further expounded on the events of that day, and mentions the men introduced themselves as being from the Hordaland region of Norway.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reads:

“A.D. 787. This year King Bertric took Edburga the daughter of Offa to wife. And in his days came first three ships of the Northmen from the land of robbers. The reve then rode thereto, and would drive them to the king’s town; for he knew not what they were; and there was he slain. These were the first ships of the Danish men that sought the land of the English nation.”

Aethelweard’s account tells us that Vikings from the Norway region had, at this time, the ability to sail from Norway to Southern England. It certainly contradicts Alcuin’s assertion of, “Such a voyage was not thought possible.” The account is also evidence that the Vikings of Norway were interested in and traveling to the British Isles, and so it is not a long leap to say that it is likely that the attackers at Lindisfarne may have been from Norway, not Denmark. Unfortunately, we cannot know for sure. The raiders at Lindisfarne did not introduce themselves as they had done in Portland.

Were the Vikings at Lindisfarne from Denmark?

There is one brief chapter in history that may lend itself to helping us understand who the first raiders were and, roughly, why they attacked. In 792 A.D. the Emperor Charlemagne moved to suppress a Saxon rebellion under the leadership of a man named Widukind. His action was decisive and bloody. During the battle on the banks of the Elbe River, the Franks captured 3,000 Saxon prisoners. As a means to send a message to the rest of the region, Charlemagne ordered the prisoners be baptized in the river. There, the priests recited their benedictions as the Frankish soldiers held their victims underwater until they drowned.

The event, known as the “The Massacre of Verdun” was perfectly in line with Charlemagne’s tactics to subdue pagan tribes. However, Widukind, the leader of the Saxons, was brother in law to the king of the Danes, Sigfred. News of the massacre undoubtedly reached the Danish court, and word of Charlemagne’s acts of violence would have spread across Scandinavia. It was yet another brutal, violent display of power by the Carolingians, the latest in a long series spanning decades.

From what historians can tell from the sources, Danish raids along the coast of Frisia intensified almost immediately, leading to an infamous raid on Dorestad, to which Charlemagne supposedly bore witness, if we are to believe the account given by the chronicler Einhart in his work, Two Lives of Charlemagne. The very next year, the attack on Lindisfarne occurred, and what happened there has led some to believe that there was a direct connection between the two events. A source about the attack by the twelve century English chronicler, Simeon of Durham, who drew from a lost Northumbrian annals, described the events at Lindisfarne thusly:

“And they came to the church at Lindisfarne, laid everything to waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars and seized all the treasure of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in fetters, many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea…“

Some historians have taken this last passage to mean that the Vikings purposefully took priests to the water to drown them in order to make the point that they were retaliating against the encroachment of Christendom on Denmark. Other historians have disputed this as mere coincidence. If true, it might mean that the men who attacked Lindisfarne were from Denmark, not Norway. They would have begun their raids in Frisia, and then made the leap across the channel and up the coast.

So, Who Attacked Lindisfarne???

Although there is some light evidence to suggest it was either Danes or Norwegians who attacked Lindisfarne, it is impossible to know for sure. It just as easily could have been a church conspiracy – an inside job – to incriminate the ‘heathens’ for a barbaric act to spur greater efforts to convert Scandinavia. One could say that Alcuin’s inconsistency, such as his assertion that, “Such a voyage was not thought possible,” despite knowing that Norwegians had already visited Portland, point to a cover-up and overt effort to demonize the men from the ‘North’. Perhaps Alcuin, who was in exile in Charlemagne’s court at the time, was the architect of a political hit job, and Lindisfarne was actually sacked by Frankish raiders under his orders – all so he could convince Charlemagne of the need to invade Jutland.

Of course the ‘inside job’ narrative is ridiculous, but it’s useful insofar as it showcases the nature of the study of the Vikings. We don’t actually know all that much about the Vikings and many of the major events that marked that time period, and even well-documented and ubiquitous events are based on extremely light evidence and few primary sources. Therefore, in answer to the question of who attacked Lindisfarne, all we can really say is it was probably Norwegians, maybe Danes, but ultimately we do not, and cannot, know for sure.

 

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Do You Use the Word Viking Correctly?

A contentious issue that has long plagued both the study of Vikings and the place of Vikings in popular culture is the proper, accepted usage of the word Viking itself. Language matters, and how a person uses language greatly affects their worldview and how they perceive people, objects, and concepts. It is no surprise, then, that there are a growing number of people who are dismayed by today’s liberal use of the word Viking to describe a great number of things that it originally did not. Here I will attempt to clarify the origins of the word Viking, its usage across the ages, and the evolution of its modern usage, specifically in non-Scandinavian languages.

The Origins of the Word Viking

The word Viking is derived from Old Norse. While its origins are not well understood, and historians are divided over where precisely the word originated, we do know the word began not as a noun, but as a verb. The Saga of Egill Skallagrimsson offers us one of the most compelling examples of the word’s original use, and his is the closest example to the actual usage of the word in its native language. In his opening passage, he describes a man named Ulfr as a man who, “lá hann í víkingu og herjaði,” which translates (roughly) to, “he was roving and fought.” In this context, the word Viking described an activity, roving, rather than the man.

Later in his saga, Egill goes on to use the word differently in the following passage:

‘With bloody brand on-striding

Me bird of bane hath followed:

My hurtling spear hath sounded

In the swift Vikings’ charge.

Raged wrathfully our battle,

Ran fire o’er foemen’s rooftrees;

Sound sleepeth many a warrior

Slain in the city gate.’

Here Egill uses the word to describe a group of people partaking in a certain action, which tells us the word Viking was also used to describe the men who partook in “roving and fighting”. It is this dual usage that has led historians to say that the word Viking described a profession. Jugglers juggle. Traders trade. Vikings go viking.

The Decline of the the Word Viking

As the Viking Age came to a close, so too did the profession of roving and fighting. Hence, usage of the word Viking declined. Old Norse spent the next several centuries morphing into the modern languages of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic. Although Icelandic is the closest modern language to Old Norse, Old Norse itself is considered a dead language, like Latin. In this context, the original usage of Vikings disappeared almost entirely for many centuries until it experienced a revival led by 19th Century historians from Western Europe.

Revival of the Word Viking

Spurred by the prevalent Romantic movement of the early 19th Century (1800-1850), a new interest in the medieval period took hold in Western Europe. Part of this movement saw a growing interest in a little-known, poorly understood part of early medieval history, the Viking Age. Historians flocked to the field with keen interest, seeking to shed light on this “dark” age. At the time, there was not yet the concept of the “Viking Age” but it is during this time that the concept was developed. It is also the 19th Century historians who first delineated the Viking Age between 793 A.D., the attack on Lindisfarne, and 1066 A.D, the Norman invasion of England.  Through their efforts they discovered an enigmatic people who plagued the early kingdoms of Britain and France, and whose origins they traced to Scandinavia.

We must remember that during the romantic period, there had not yet been any ship burial discoveries, no archeological digs of any significance, and the primary sources about the Viking Age were spread across Europe, many of them hidden away in age old university archives or privately owned by Europe’s gentry. Misconceptions abound in this early period, and it is within this context that the word Viking made its appearance in non-Scandinavian languages.

A new political force also began to take hold in Western Europe, a concept that would be responsible for the deaths of 100 million people in the following century: nationalism. Beginning in the mid 19th century, the governments of Europe, both nascent democracies and established autocracies, sought to bend the narrative of history to suit their political aims. In France, for example, the official national narrative was that modern France was the product of the Carolingian empire, a holy Christian institution that helped to stabilize Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. In England, the official historical narrative began with the Anglo-Saxon kings, like Alfred the Great, to emphasize that the English monarchy had a long and rich history, and to reinforce their legitimacy to the people they ruled.

It is within the context of nascent national fervor that the study of the Vikings began. Not surprisingly, they (the Vikings) were immediately painted as an enemy who threatened civilization and had to be defeated (us against them). In fact, the triumph of Christendom over “the ravages of heathen men”, as written in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, was regarded as a pivotal, divinely ordained achievement, exploited by the governments of Europe as a means to further incite national pride. This fearsome enemy from long ago, however, did not yet have a name. What then to call these invaders who attempted to thwart the Christian kingdoms of Europe?

No one really knows where 19th century historians, and later, society, picked up the word for use in non-Scandinavian languages. It may have been borrowed directly from the Scandinavians of the day, or perhaps taken directly from the Sagas of the Icelanders. Historian Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough explains in her book, Beyond the Northlands, that the first modern use of the word Viking was recorded in 1807, three years before Queen Victoria’s coronation. The word wasn’t reserved for the “men who roved”, but instead referred to the entire Norse world. It is, woefully, a product of the “us against them” mentality, and an unfortunate oversimplification and mischaracterization of a time and people we now know to have been far more complex than previously acknowledged. From 1807 forward, this usage dominated the histories and the arts of the 19th and 20th centuries, and is by-and-large how most people use the word today.

So, Do You Use the Word Viking Correctly?

It all boils down to effective communication. Who is the audience? What is their level of knowledge in regards to the Viking Age? In his most recent book, The Age of the Vikings, Historian Anders Winroth takes the time to define his own usage of the word Viking to make his use of it clear to his audience:

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His is a great example, and anyone who uses the word should be careful to define how they intend to use it, and to make clear the differences between its various usages. I, for example, use the word Viking more interchangeably because my intended audience are those just beginning to explore their interest in the Viking Age and who may not yet understand how its modern usage differs from the past (hopefully this article helps to clear that up!). However, in writing more in-depth histories, I focus my usage of the word on the “men who roved”.

How did the Vikings Treat the Elderly?

One would not be remiss for thinking that the elderly were few and far between during the Viking Age. Historical estimates for the average life expectancy in Dark Ages Europe are extremely low, something around 30 years, and so the issue of the elderly and how they were treated at the time has somewhat been ignored. Recent scholarship, however, has discounted the concept of average life expectancy because it was heavily skewed by child mortality rates. We’ve since learned that once an individual made it to adulthood, they stood a fair chance of making it to their golden years. So how did the Vikings treat the elderly? How did older individuals fit into their society?

Within the Context of Viking Society

The standard unit of society in the Viking Age was the Grand Family, meaning they lived together in shared longhouses, often with multiple generations and multiple family units. One household consisted of multiple couples of husbands and wives, their children, and if alive, their parents. Hence the famous longhouses, which were capable of housing a large number of people, estimated at anywhere from 10 to 20 members of the family. This much we know about the Vikings: the elderly would have lived in-home, and would have been cared for by their immediate family. This we know from the Icelandic Sagas.

We must be cautious, however, when dealing with any one particular source on Viking society. The Icelandic sagas are useful insofar as studying Icelandic society at the end of the Viking Age, but not necessarily applicable in regards to other Scandinavians at the time. Viking Age Scandinavia was a fragmented society, and individual communities had different practices, even different deities (the Pagan Norse were Polytheistic), and so knowing how Iceland did things is far and away from understanding how the rest of Scandinavia did them.

Within the Context of Archeology

Details on how exactly the elderly were treated are difficult to come by for the simple fact that the Vikings left no written record of their daily lives. Thus, historians have had to turn to archeology to find answers. Burial mounds and buried ships across Scandinavia, and even abroad, have proven to be an invaluable boon to our understanding of the Viking Age. In them, archeologists have found tools, weapons, clothing, bones, animal remains (all referred to as grave goods) that have greatly improved our understanding of their societal structure, technology, and to some extent, their culture.

Osteoarcheology, or the study of bones, has helped paint a picture of funerary practices, as well as identify the gender and age of individuals contained in burial mounds. This has helped, in part, to demonstrate that many of the people buried did reach older age. Some remains have been found to have belonged to individuals who exceeded sixty years of age. The Oseberg Ship Burial, for example, contained the bodies of two women, one of them estimated to have been between 60 and 70 years of age, and badly afflicted with arthritis. So we know that there were people who made it to an age that we would today consider elderly, but how exactly they were treated remains somewhat of a mystery.

So, how did the Vikings treat their elderly?

It’s impossible to say for sure, but what we do know is that there were elderly members of society, and if the Icelandic sagas are any indiction, they would have lived as part of a larger family unit and been cared for by members of their immediate family. In-home care, it seems, was the only option at the time.

What are the Icelandic Sagas?

What are the Icelandic Sagas?

The Icelandic Sagas are a large body of literature written during the medieval period about the history of Iceland and the families who lived there in the 9th, 10th, and 11th century. This period is known in Iceland as the “Saga Age” as opposed to the more common “Viking Age”. What makes the Icelandic Sagas special is that they are considered to be the most genuine glimpse into Viking Age society available. They stand in contrast to other sources, such as the various Christian chronicles, which were predominantly written by outside observers with a specific point to make.

Historicity of the Icelandic Sagas

Unfortunately, it is well known that the sagas were written centuries after the events they portend to describe. This poses a veritable problem for historians seeking to assess their historicity. How the stories contained therein survived into the medieval period was no doubt a result of an enduring oral tradition in Iceland. These stories, therefore, would have been commonly known and told at the time they were translated into the written word. Yet, as we know from studying other ancient cultures and societies, oral tradition tends to change certain aspects of stories and include a variety of fabrications. The question therefore becomes: how much of the Icelandic Sagas is history, and how much is fabrication? Ultimately, there is no definitive answer.

Using the sagas to Approach Viking Society

Outside of the body of archeological evidence, we realistically know very little about the cultural customs of the Vikings. Since they left no written record, piecing together their society has been extremely difficult. When dealing with this time period, it is not uncommon for historians to not entirely discount certain sources just because they were written post-fact. For example, the Russian Primary Chronicle is often cited as a source for piecing together the early history of the Muscovy state, even though the author takes tremendous allegorical and metaphorical artistic license in his description of certain events.

In this same way, the Icelandic Sagas are a commonly cited source for reconstructing Viking Age Scandinavian and Icelandic society. What makes historians comfortable in pointing to the Icelandic Sagas is their structure. Most of the sagas, written in prose, recount events in a linear, matter-of-fact manner that is not particularly embellished or fantastical (though there are exceptions). We must be cautious, however, in using the sagas to describe Viking Age society as a whole. Scandinavians at the time, although culturally distinct from other peoples of Europe, were a fragmented population who, in all likelihood, had significant cultural variations from one region to another, especially toward the end of the Viking Age in the 11th century. Therefore, the Icelandic Sagas should be cited with caution when speaking about Vikings from other regions.

What do the Icelandic Sagas tell us?

First and foremost, the sagas focus heavily on genealogy and family history. In so doing, the authors offer us a glimpse into the more mundane aspects of the lives of Icelanders at the time. For example, we learn through the sagas that family units consisted of 10 to 20 people who lived together in one longhouse, often with multiple child-bearing couples living in the same space, and often with multiple generations (this has also been supported through archeology). We learn that children were expected to work and contribute to the farm, and that society, at least as far as the family unit was concerned, was fairly egalitarian.

What we also learn from the sagas are a variety of cultural norms, as well as problems, of the day. The sagas tell of the courtship process, marriage, and even stories of marital problems. One such passage is the story of Helga, in the Saga of Gunnlaug Ormstungu, who, upon learning that her husband had deceived her into marriage, forever denied him intimacy. The sagas further expound on issues as diverse as fostering children, adoption, blood-oaths, among many others.

Of course the Icelandic Sagas also focus on conflict, warfare, and some government, but many of these things are fairly well documented by other sources, such as the Landnámabók (the Book of Settlements), so the Icelandic Sagas are but one more addition to these sources.

Where can I read the Icelandic Sagas?

There is a website dedicated to the online publication of the Icelandic Sagas, and they have multiple translations of each text. It is a treasure-trove for those interested in the history of Iceland and the history of Vikings in general. Visit The Icelandic Saga Database today to start reading and exploring.

Swedish Vikings: Who Were the Rus?

As I explained in my previous blog about the difference between the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Vikings, we know the most about the Danes because of the breadth of primary sources written about them by Frankish and English Chroniclers. Archeologically speaking, the Scandinavian culture of the time was distinct and fairly homogenous, although it diverged into distinct groups by the end of the Viking Age. Yet for all we know about the Danes, there is far less information on their Swedish cousins called the Rus who, despite how little we know about them at the outset of the Viking Age, left an incredible legacy for themselves in Eastern Europe. Here I will briefly overview what we know about the Swedish Vikings who were called the Rus, and the narrative, as best we know it, about their early activities across the vast lands that are today Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and even Turkey.

Primary sources for the early societal structure, culture, and activities of the Rus are practically non-existant. They did not leave any writings behind for us to find, and until the embassy of the missionary Anskar to Birka in the mid-9th century, primary sources are devoid of any substantive information about them. The Rus were, as far as we can tell, as active in raiding and foreign trading as the Danes, if not more. The people they attacked—chiefly those in Finland, then Slavs further east—were not literate like those the Danes terrorized, which further explains why sources are so sparse about their early activities. The earliest mention of the people called the Rus traveling outside of Sweden may be found in the Annals of Saint Bertin in which it is written that a group of traveling Rus visited the court of Louis the Pious, emperor of the Carolingian Empire, as part of a larger group of envoys from the Byzantine Empire.

The Rus’ arrival was marred by the fact that Anskar had already visited and returned from Birka (though this was not yet explicitly chronicled), and his testimony about the Swedes led the emperor to distrust his unexpected guests. In the annals it is said that Louis learned the Rus were, in fact, “people of the Swedes.” He detained the group to verify their claim that they only wished to travel peacefully, and from there the annals cease to mention what happened next. We do not know if they were allowed to return home, or worse, executed. While we are left in permanent suspense about the fate of these Rus, what this account tells us is that the Swedish Vikings had, by the mid-9th century, traveled far enough to the east to have established relations with the Byzantines. How, or why, or how long it took to arrive at this point is still not well understood.

How the Rus got their name is also somewhat of an enigma. Like the name “Viking” itself, the name Rus has several possible sources. In the Annals of Saint Bertin, and indeed in several other sources, they are referred to as the “Rhos” which has led historians to hypothesize a connection with their tribal home of Roslagen. Others think the name was given to them by the Finns, who today still call the Swedes Ruotsi, a word meaning, “those who row.” Again, there is no certainty as to the true origins of the name, but it is the name they would lend to one of the most powerful nations in modern history, Russia. If the second origin theory of the name Rus is correct—the theory tying it to the Finnish word Ruotsi—the name Russia may actually mean “the land of those who row.”

There are also arabic sources which chronicled embassies by eastern scholars to visit the Rus, and who refer to them as such. They also referred to the Vikings as Majus, but this was a name they tended to use in the West, in Al-Andalus (Spain). The sources are used sparingly and carefully where the Rus are concerned because academics are not entirely certain that they were referring to Vikings. What makes their writings somewhat unreliable are observations that were made that are not consistent with what we know about Viking Age Scandinavians from both written and archeological sources. But, even if there is a kernel of truth in the arabic writings, it underscores an easy and prevalent awareness of the Rus in the east, as well as proof of enduring contact.

Snorri Sturluson in his work titled Ynglingasaga, which recounts at a broad level the history of the kings of Sweden (it also recounts the history of the kings of Norway), gives us some insight into the early activities of the Rus on the Baltic. It is widely accepted that Snorri’s works are semi-legendary because he wrote his account several centuries after the fact, drawing his sources mostly from oral tradition, and as such he is not particularly reliable as a source.

There are, however, certain aspects to Snorri’s accounts that have proven useful insofar as they have spurred archeologists to search for evidence to support broad story themes in his work. In 1929, for example, the archeologist Birger Nerman discovered the remnants of a colony in Latvia of Swedish origin. His conclusions were that the colony had existed since the mid 7th century and likely had formed as a result of the expulsion of one third of the inhabitants of Gotland due to famine, a story that was told in Snorri’s Gutasaga. The discovery was the Viking equivalent of the discovery of the city of Troy, whose existence belonged to mythology until its discovery by Heinrich Schliemann in 1870.

Birger’s discovery has indeed proved paramount to help piece together the narrative of the early activities of the Rus in the east. The colony he discovered, known as the Grobin Colony, uncovered significant evidence in the form of burial mounds directly linking the inhabitants there to the Swedes of Gotland. Among the artifacts were picture stones in the shape and style of the Gotland stones, and further artifacts found within the burials were also of the style and construction known to have been common in Gotland. What is most interesting about the site is the progression of types of burials found. The oldest burials contained women, indicating that the colony had begun precisely as that, a colony. The younger of the burials, dating to the late 8th century, contained men with the typical weaponry of the day, indicating a change in the colony’s demographics where the ambitions of the Rus shifted toward traveling east for raids and trade rather than settlement on the Eastern Baltic. Grobin is not an isolated archeological find. Distinctly Scandinavian artifacts have also been found in Ladoga, which date back to the mid-8th century.

There is no doubt that the achievements of the Rus in the east were among the most impressive of their day. From the establishment of their first colonies on the shores of the baltic and Lake Ladoga, they established trade routes that made use of the complex interweave of river networks present in the eastern steppes. From there, they established trade with the Byzantines. Among the goods they brought were honey, wax, amber, blubber, furs, walrus tusks, and most importantly, slaves. They traded these goods for silver, and from an arabic coin minted in 786 (it says so on the coin) at Ladoga, we understand that trade between the Rus and the East was already well established by the end of the 8th century. This stands in contrast to the Danes and Norwegians whose exploits had barely begun by this period.

Massive hordes of arabic silver coins found in Sweden and Gotland over the years are evidence of how extensive their trade was. These hordes contained silver coins numbering in the tens of thousands in some cases, a massive fortune even by today’s standards. The sheer volume attests to a long term relationship between Sweden and the Byzantines, and one which endured several centuries.

From here, the story of the Rus shifts focus. The Russian Primary Chronicle, which tells of the early foundations of the modern country of Russia, tells of an event whereby the Slavs invited the Rus to rule over them. According to the account, the Slavs admitted to being unable to rule themselves, and so resorted to asking the Rus, considered strong leaders, to establish law and order. Similar to Snorri’s account, the Russian Primary Chronicle is considered semi-legendary. Therefore, the event commonly dubbed “The Invitation of the Rus” may not have ever actually happened. Instead, it may be an allegorical account to describe a process of usurpation that took much longer.

Whatever the true story, the Rus went on from this event to establish the principalities of Kiev and Novgorod, at which point they ceased to act in a manner we would today associate with Vikings. They took on the role of autocrats rather than raiders, and established dominion over the Slavs, and assimilated into slavic culture. The Rus’ conflicts with the Byzantines, as related through the Russian Primary Chronicle, and their conversion to the Christian Orthodox Church, all became part of the narrative of the founding of the Muscovy state, which would become Russia. And so as far as the “Viking” history of the Swedes and their eastern exploits are concerned, the story more or less ends there. Anything that came after is the subject of the early history of Russia.

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What Was the Difference Between Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Vikings?

Today we refer to Viking Age Scandinavians generally as Vikings as though they were one group. Linguistic nuances over the modern use of the word Viking aside, the fact is that the historical group known as “Vikings” were not a homogenous people. We know from various sources that from as early as the late 8th Century, broad geographically related forms of identity, such as Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian existed. These are not to be confused with the notion of national identity of the modern era—there were no unified forms of government that we would consider a nation-state quite yet, although they would develop closely thereafter through the late middle ages. Further confounding the subject of identity among Viking Age Scandinavians are regional differences. The Norwegian group who sacked the city of Nantes in 843, for example, referred to themselves as Vestfaldingi, or Men of Vestfold. This tells us that there were also regional differences among various groups within the context of their broader geographic affiliations.

Why do we think of the Vikings as one people?

Our sources for the Vikings and their culture are an accumulation of chronicles and histories written first and foremost by religious scholars. Even the Muslim chroniclers framed their examinations of the Vikings within the cultural lens of Islam. The historian al-Yaqubi, in his geographical study of the Mediterranean, linked the Scandinavians from Sweden known as the Rus to those from Denmark who sacked Seville, in Spain. He wrote that the attack on Seville, in 844 A.D. was carried out by, “the Magus, who are called the Rus.”

Back then, the monotheistic religions of Christianity and Islam sought to unite the peoples of the world under one god. Their convictions about their own faith created a perceptual lens about the world that today we would call “us against them.” The differences between outside groups were of little or no consequence because, ultimately, it was believed that they would eventually be converted and brought into the fold. Therefore, an extremely two-dimensional view of Viking Age Scandinavians was created, one which broadly described them all as “pagans.”

Fast forward to the 19th century when a renewed interest in the Viking Age began, the first scholars to approach the subject had little more than these religiously biased texts to go on. And let us not forget that the 19th century was still an age of belief, where Christian dogma was still (for the most part) universally accepted in Western Europe. What this allowed was for the same slanted view of Viking Age Scandinavians to persist for a time, which eventually led to the cultural perception that the Vikings were in no uncertain terms one people. We have since realized the inadequacy of this view. Unfortunately, the cultural perception of the Vikings continues to propagate the one-people myth.

So, What Was the Difference Between Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Vikings?

Most of what we know about the Vikings both politically and culturally is derived from analyses of the Danes. Chroniclers such as Dudo, Alcuin, Saxo Grammaticus, Rimbert, Notker, among others, all focus nearly exclusively on the Danish people to form their conclusions. Therefore, we know much, much more about Viking Age Danes and their exploits than any other group. This is not surprising since the Danes were far more involved with the politics of the continent than the Norwegians and the Swedes.

In contrast to their cousins in Norway and Sweden, the Danes consistently appear to have been a regional, cultural, and military power from the mid-8th century onward. Even the Franks admitted in the Annals of Fulda that the Danes were the most powerful among the Northmen. As a political power, the Danes also had the closest thing to a monarchy of any of the the three regions. Although they experienced political turmoil at the beginning of the 9th century, their rulers reigned fairly consistently throughout the Viking Age, giving the Danes a political and societal strength the others did not have.

The Danes were also heavily involved in regional politics. The Royal Frankish Annals recorded that the Danes sent an emissary in 782 to Charlemagne’s court, along with other Saxon leaders, to hold formal political discussions in response to the massacre of Verden, in which the Franks captured, forcibly baptized, and murdered three thousand Saxon warriors just miles from the Danish border. Although there is no mention of what came of that meeting, it demonstrates that the Danes were heavily involved in the events of the time and did not simply appear from nowhere.

Finally, the Danes developed far more ambitious plans for territorial conquest than any of the others. Their invasion of Britain, the establishment of the Danelaw, and the settlement of Normandy are a testament to their ambitions. Militarily, they are thought to have been more organized and disciplined, and probably better equipped, than their Swedish and Norwegian cousins.

It is against this body of knowledge about the Danes that we tend compare the other Vikings. Unfortunately, we do not know all that much about the early political formations of Norway and Sweden. The Ynglingasaga, the saga of the Yngling Dynasty in Norway, purports to tell of the events that led to the formation of Norway’s monarchy, but it offers very little in the way of substance about the structure of their society, the influence they exerted over neighboring peoples, and the cultural backbone that drove their ambitions. We do know that the Norwegians were poised to conduct raids before their Danish cousins—they were the first to attack Ireland and Western France, and are thought to have carried out the raid on Lindisfarne—but ultimately did not exert the same influence as the Danes across Europe. An example of this is the invasion Brittany in the late 9th Century where Norwegian Vikings took control of the regional center of Nantes. They held it for years until the Bretons expelled them, only to find a derelict city and no concerted effort to colonize the land as had been done in Britain and Normandy by the Danes.

Similarly, the Swedes, then known as Varangians, or Rus, were poised to discover and pillage new lands in the east along the Volga and Dniepper rivers. Their expeditions, however, were of a different sort than the Danes and Norwegians in the west. The goal of the Rus was primarily to trade (or so we think). They established long trade routes to the middle east and around the Black Sea and avoided much more than that until the late 9th century when, according to the Russian Primary Chronicle, the brothers Rurik, Askold, and Dir were “invited” by the slavs to be their rulers. To this day, why this event occurred is unclear, but most historians believe this was a capitulation by the Slavs to years of raids. What is clear is that the entire passage that speaks of the Rus is extremely short, and from this moment on, the Rus who did move east to join the ruling class quickly assimilated into Slavic culture and ceased to be what we would call “Vikings”.

We are lucky insofar as we know the Swedes were likely the most different among the three groups. The account of Ibn Fadlan during his embassy to the land of the Khazars demonstrates a few stark differences between the Rus and the Danes. For one, the Rus were allegedly covered in blue tattoos, which is not something that was commonly reported by Frankish scholars. The method of burial for their king, their grooming habits, among other things stand in contrast to their western cousins. Likewise, the Frankish chronicler Rimbert recounts the mission of Anskar to Sweden to convert them to Christianity where he describes the unusual and shocking religious rituals of the Swedes at Upsalla. This is evidence that from a cultural and religious standpoint, the Swedes were, for a time, very different from their Danish and Norwegian cousins.

The Danes: The True Vikings?

Due to our general ignorance of the political and cultural structure of early Swedish and Norwegian society, it may be said that the real difference between the three groups is how much we know about them. By that account, the Danes are far and above the most familiar to us, and drive our conception of what it was to be a Viking. From there, we can say that the Norwegians participated in Ireland and France, but culturally much of what we think we know about them is conjecture derived from our familiarity with the Danes. Likewise, much of what we think we know about the Swedes is a derivation of what we know about the Danes. Further reenforcing this notion is the idea that the greatest Vikings of the day were Danish. Therefore, dare I say, the Danes were the true embodiment of what we refer to today as “Vikings”.

The Vikings in Spain: A Brief History.

Islam spread quickly across the southern Mediterranean Basin during the life of its prophet Muhammad, and even faster after his death. Under the Umayyad Caliphs, their territorial expansion eventually created an empire that bordered China in the east, and the Atlantic Ocean in the West. The Abbasid Caliphs, who rose to power to replace the Umayyads, took a particular interest in the arts and sciences, with an intense fascination for Hellenistic (i.e. Ancient Greek) and Persian history and culture. Their infatuation led to a sort of cultural revolution, which heavily influenced the writings of the leading Islamic scholars of the day. The rapid expansion of Islam also led to a keen curiosity about all the peoples who were either conquered or encountered in this new global empire. Major advancements in the sciences, particularly in cosmology and mathematics, occurred throughout the 7th and 8th Centuries.

A key feature of this new empire was their advanced postal system, used to relay information across the vast expanses of their territory. It connected the furthest reaches of the empire with its administrative center, Baghdad. Through this postal system, the Islamic world was able to keep track of one particular people they encountered on the fringes of their lands. These were the Vikings, although the Muslims did not refer to them as such. In Arabic writings of the time, the Vikings were referred to by two names: ar-Rus and al-Madjus.

The name ar-Rus was used to describe the Swedish Vikings who sailed the Dnieper and Volga rivers, and who the Islamic world encountered on the shores of the Black Sea. The name al-Madjus described the Vikings in the West, those who terrorized the coasts of Ireland and France. It was not the Vikings who gave them this name. Arab scholars used the name al-Madjus as a means to describe the culture of the Vikings as they perceived it; a culture of fire-worshipers. They likened the al-Madjus to the Persian Zoroastrians, who they believed cremated their dead. The thirteenth century chronicler Ibn Said explained, “nothing seems more important to them than fire, for the cold in their lands is severe.” Ibn Said’s logic is a testament to the general ignorance of the Vikings’ culture in the Islamic world, but it does help to give us a glimpse into how this foreign culture was perceived.

From the earliest sources, we know that the Muslims of the 9th and 10th Centuries understood that they were dealing with a single people, whether they encountered them on the shores of Spain, in the Mediterranean, or in the Eastern Steppes. The historian al-Yaqubi wrote in his geographical study of the Mediterranean that the attack on Seville, in 844 A.D., was carried out by, “the Magus, who are called the Rus.”

Although there is evidence to suggest earlier incursions into Iberia by the al-Madjus, the currently accepted historical start of Viking raids in Spain date to the attack on Seville in 844 A.D. Using a mixture of Christian and Muslim Chronicles to track the Vikings’ movements, historians have over the years pieced together a fairly coherent narrative of the events that marked the opening of raids in Iberia. It must be noted that the Muslim Chronicles, while interesting and helpful, are a mosaic of reconstructed works that had been previously lost to history. The first chroniclers, such as the historian Ahmad al-Razi, his son Isa-ibn-Ahmad, and the scholar Ibn al-Qutyyia, have no surviving works to draw upon for study. We know their names only because later historians reference their works in their own reconstructions of the events of 844. The two most authoritative works about the attack on Seville that have survived to today are the anonymous meeting about the doctrines of the 10th-century scholar, Ibn Al Qutiyya, and Ibn Hayyan’s Al Muqtabis II-I, and II-II. To complement the Arabic sources, historians also have Christians sources, chiefly the Annales Bertinian from the Carolingian Empire and the Asturian Chronicles from Galicia. Additional sources from Christians include Dudo of Saint Quentin, William of Jumièges, the Annals of St-Bertin, the Chronicle of Regino de Prüm, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The First Wave of Vikings in Spain

From what the sources tell us, a fleet of ships who had raided in the Carolingian Empire sailed along the coasts of the Bay of Biscay into Northern Spain. There they raided a few settlements before encountering a large force of Asturians under the command of King Ramiro I. The Vikings suffered a crushing defeat and retreated back to the Bay of Biscay where it is surmised they had a base. There is much debate over the location of the base, but it may have been as close as Bayonne.

It did not take long for them to gather their forces. A few short months after the first excursion, a larger fleet of eighty ships appeared off the coast of Lisbon where they fought three sea battles with Muslim ships over the course of nearly two weeks. They then headed south to the mouth of the Guadalquivir. From there, they made their way inland via river and sacked the city of Seville, which they also occupied. The attack was so unexpected that Cordova, the administrative center of Islamic Spain, known as al-Andalus, responded slowly to the news. It took them quite some time to muster forces and equipment to drive out the Vikings from the city. On the heels of their victory, Muslim forces pursued and engaged their enemy, resulting in a decisive victory for the Emir Abd al-Rhaman II. Following the Vikings’ bold incursion into his lands, al-Rhaman ordered the construction of a new fleet of ships specifically to counter al-Madjus raids.

In response to this first raid, the Emir sent a Moorish ambassador named al-Ghazal to find and study the al-Madjus. His account tells of his voyage across the ocean to a splendid island described as having lush, flowering plants and abundant streams leading to the ocean. For years historians struggled to gather consensus on where he had actually travelled. Some believe he visited Ireland, while others believe he visited Denmark. The source for al-Ghazal’s embassy to Ireland is a document produced by Abu-l-Kattab-Umar-ibn-al-Hasan-ibn-Dihya, who was born in Valencia in Andalucia, about 1159 A.D. The facts and anecdotes in the story were derived from Tammam-ibn-Alqama, vizier under three consecutive amirs in Andalucia during the ninth century who died in 896. Tammam-ibn-Alqama had allegedly learned the details directly from al-Ghazal and his companions. The only manuscript of ibn-Dihya’s work was acquired by the British Museum in 1866. It is titled Al-mutrib min ashar ahli’l Maghrib, which translates to An amusing book from poetical works of the Maghreb.

al-Ghazal was not the only ambassador to travel north to meet the the Vikings, although he is thought to have been the only Muslim ambassador to have launched from Spain. Others, such as Ibn-Fadlan, visited the Rus in the East and studied them in detail. Ibn-Fadlan’s account is one of the most universally known and well studied documents about the Vikings produced by a Muslim.

The Second Wave

There is no record of any other attacks by the al-Madjus from 844 until 859 when an ambitious man by the name of Hastein made one of the most infamous Viking incursions into the Mediterranean. In 859 with the help of a man named Bjorn Ironside, a supposed son of Ragnar Lothbrok, Hastein sailed to Iberia where he hoped to gain fame and fortune by pillaging al-Andalus. At first, the expedition did not fare well. The Asturians of Northern Spain successfully fought them off, forcing the expedition to continue southward without any loot. They successfully pillaged coastal settlements until they arrived at the straight of Gibraltar where they encountered a sudden storm, which blew them off course. They landed in North Africa where they raided for slaves before resuming their original intended course into the Mediterranean. From there, they continued on toward Italy.

According to the chronicler Dudo of St. Quentin, Hastein was ambitious and sought to sack Rome itself. Unfortunately, the walls of the city were too tall and well fortified. Thus he hatched one of the more notorious plans to take the city by creating a ruse to trick the “naïve” Christians. They arrived at the city and sent a messenger to inform the bishop that their leader had been mortally wounded and, in his dying moments, wished to be baptized so that he may reach salvation. The bishop took pity on him and organized the ceremony. A day later, the Norsemen returned to the city to inform the bishop that their chieftain had died, and that he had requested to be buried in the city. Again, the bishop took pity on them and organized the funeral. Hastein’s body was placed on a bier and carried by his men into the city. A gathering of noblemen and clergymen joined them to begin the ceremony when Hastein rose from the dead, snatched the sword beside him, and cut down the bishop. His men of course followed suit and slaughtered the rest of Christians present.

The ruse had proved successful and the Vikings under Hastein loaded their ships with loot, proud that they had sacked the famed city of Rome. Yet as they sailed from the city, they realized they had made a navigational error. The city they had sacked was not Rome, but rather the smaller city of Luna some two hundred miles north of their intended target. Nevertheless, their ships were filled to the brim with plunder, so Hastein ordered a return to his base on the Loire. As they attempted to sail past Gibraltar, however, the Muslim fleet intercepted them, destroying a significant portion of the Viking fleet. Their chieftain survived and returned to his base on the island of Herius (today called Noirmoutier) with twenty ships, a mere third of the ships he had departed with three years earlier.

The Third Wave

Arabic sources tell of a third wave of attacks beginning in 966 A.D., over 100 years after the end of Hastein’s expedition. Where this fleet came from is not entirely clear, but there is strong evidence to suggest they launched from Normandy after having helped Duke Richard I suppress a rebellion in his duchy. They arrived in Galicia and did what they are known best for: they pillaged. In response to their attack, the bishop of Santiago de Compostela, already a major pilgrimage site, gathered an army to fend off the attackers. They experienced an initial success against the Vikings, but by sheer bad luck, the bishop took an arrow to the neck and died during their second battle. Devastated, his troops retreated and the Vikings continued their terrorizing of the surrounding countryside. For three years they attacked and plundered Galicia. Historians disagree over why their long term presence did not turn into settlement, as it had in Ireland, Britain, and Normandy. But in 972 they appear to have made one last major push for plunder, then returned home.

The Fourth Wave

Beginning in the year 1008, a new threat emerged from the north with its sights on Galicia. Again, regular seasonal raids struck terror in the hearts of the Spaniards. In 1038, a renewed raid struck the town of Tui, led this time by Olav Haraldsson, heir to the throne of Norway. They captured at the bishop and held him for ransom, though the sources do not give us much detail on this interaction. Olav’s chroniclers, Sigvat and Ottar, heavily reference their patron’s successes in Galicia, earning him the name “the Galician Wolf”.

Ultimately, Spain experienced less of the brunt of the Viking Age than other areas such as Ireland, Britain, and France. But they did experience a fair share, and both the Christian kingdoms and Muslim territories in Iberia suffered terrible wounds from the raids. Arguably, it was the Viking attacks on al-Andalus that encouraged the Muslims of Spain and North Africa to fortify their seaborne fleets, which helped the Islamic world maintain naval supremacy in the Mediterranean over Christendom until the high middle ages. This may have directly affected the course of the crusades, and indeed the course of history in Europe. Spain is not often the focus of Viking Age events, but their experience is crucial to understanding the Viking Age as a whole.

Human Sacrifice in Viking Society: Was it a Thing?

Did the Vikings conduct human sacrifice? It is a sensational claim. Not only does it make for an intriguing field of study, but it also makes fantastic television. The idea of human sacrifice is not new to the study of Vikings. There have been several bits and pieces of evidence recovered over the years to support claims made by some scholars and sensationalized by modern media. Where does the idea for human sacrifice in Viking society come from? I explore the evidence:

Textual Evidence for human sacrifice among the Vikings

One of the most well known attestations of human sacrifice in the historical record is that of Ibn Fadlan, an Arab chronicler who encountered the Rus, a tribe of Swedish Vikings, along the Volga river. In his writings, Ibn Fadlan describes the sacrifice of a slave girl, or thrall, who volunteered to join her lord in the afterlife. The ritual is described in gruesome detail, much of which may have been sensationalized by the author himself. Ibn Fadlan’s account is arguably the most widely known and recognized account of human sacrifice in the Viking world. His is also the earliest attestation by an outsider to the ritual of human sacrifice.

The works of Adam of Bremen, who worked as a missionary in Scandinavia in the 11th century and best known for his title work Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, observed and chronicled the rituals of paganism as they were in the 11th century in Uppsala, Sweden. In his description of the rituals, he describes the sacrifice as follows: “Of every kind of male creature, nine victims are offered. By the blood of these creatures it is the custom to appease the gods. Their bodies, moreover, are hanged in a grove which is adjacent to the temple. This grove is so sacred to the people that the separate trees in it are believed to be holy because of the death or putrefaction of the sacrificial victims. There even dogs and horses hang beside human beings.”

There are several other passages from other works that are thought to be of human sacrifice rituals, but are generally discounted as historical sources for being either too vague or written in a time and place apart from when such practices existed. Snorri Sturluson, as an example, briefly touches on the subject of ritual death, but does so in the context of the greater mythological significance, and is not indicative of any one singular event.

Accounts of human sacrifice in the written record have often been discounted as false propaganda against the pagan faiths during the Christianization of Scandinavia. However, the account of Ibn Fadlan has long stood against this idea as it was written by someone who neither had a stake in the conversions nor shared the faith of those historians accused of slander. Nevertheless, the textual evidence is too questionable to confirm that human sacrifice was a thing, and so we must turn to archeology for more concrete answers.

Archeological Evidence for human sacrifice among the Vikings

At Trelleborg, in Denmark, five wells dating back to before the building of a Viking fortress in the late 10th Century were discovered. Within them, archeologists found the mangled remains of various sacrifices, ranging from horses and dogs, to humans. What makes this site of special intrigue is the fact that among the human sacrifices were young children aged between 4 and 7. Their presence raises more questions than it answers. Whatever the significance of the children’s remains, the site remains among the most valid pieces of evidence for the practice of human sacrifice in the Viking Age.

Several burial mounds have been discovered to contain unusual finds that are thought to have been human sacrifices. At a royal center in Lejre, Denmark, for example, archeologists found two male skeletons with vastly different characteristics. The first skeleton was adorned with armor, weapons, and jewelry, and was laid to rest on his back. The second skeleton had been decapitated and was bound by the hands and feet. It is thought that this second skeleton was a thrall sacrificed alongside his master.

Another find in Denmark, at a site called Dråby, also contained two selections in differing positions. The first, a woman, was buried whole with jewelry and other grave goods. The second skeleton was that of a man whose head had been cut off. The presumption is that the male skeleton was that of a thrall sacrificed to follow his mistress into the afterlife. This grave find has lead historians to conclude that both men and women could receive human sacrifices for their burial, and that both men and women could be sacrificed.

There are a spattering of other such examples across Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and as far away as Iceland, the Orkneys, and Hebrides. Many of the suspected sacrifices are by no means conclusive, and therefore not concrete evidence. But there is ample evidence in the archeological record to prove that, to some extent, human sacrifice was indeed a “thing”.

Concluding Remarks

Human sacrifice is a sensational subject that certainly catches the attention of the general population. Unfortunately, the evidence for its prevalence during the Viking Age is light, and we must therefore be cautious with our conclusions. What can be said is that the textual and archeological evidence does prove that human sacrifice was a practice within the culture of the Vikings. However, there is not enough evidence to suggest that it was a common practice. In fact, the sheer number of burial mounds containing no human sacrifices compared to those that do is indicative that it was rare. Until more evidence is uncovered, it is difficult to know for sure. Did the Vikings conduct human sacrifice? The answer is yes, some Vikings did sacrifice humans.