The Vikings Quotes

“A contemporary chronicler, John of Wallingford, complained sourly that the Danes were always combing their hair, changing their underwear and taking baths on Saturday “in order to overcome the chastity of the English women and procure the daughters of noblemen as their mistresses.”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“A likelier explanation for the increase in population was a change in the climate. Northern Europe was perceptibly warmer around 800 A.D. than it had been in preceding centuries. The glaciers receded all over Scandinavia. There was more land that could be used for crops or pasture. The winters were shorter and milder. So significant a factor was winter in the life of northern countries that the Vikings counted time not in years, but in winters. A long cold winter would mean that the provisions put away in the fall might run out while the weather was still too harsh to replenish them by hunting or fishing. It also would mean that the weak, the old, and the young would die. Gentler winters meant that more babies would survive, more would grow up to swell the active, turbulent pool of younger sons”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“The end is all;/Even now High on the headland/And face my own end Life fades, I must fall/And face my own end Not in misery and mourning/But with a man’s heart”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“Honor and daring, valor, strength and agility, all these were qualities the Vikings prized and upheld. There was another, somewhat less admirable side to their nature as warriors that the Vikings were only too pleased to highlight. This was their brutality toward their foes.”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“The Norsemen may have begun as raiders, but they developed into skilled conquerors and competent administrators.”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“Eirik Thorvaldsson Raudi - Eirik the Red - was red of hair and red of beard, bloody of heart and bloody of hand. He was a murderously bad neighbor, a scoundrel on a grand scale, a heathen to the core, and to the last of his life he remained unregenerate. Yet, he was a towering figure of a Viking. And others would follow him to the end of the world and live with him at the end of human existence.”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“Ireland’s social fabric was by now such a patchwork quilt that practically everyone had relatives on the adversaries’ side. Sigtrygg had Irish blood from his mother, a princess named Gormflaith, who had been married many times, once to Brian Boru, which made Brian one of Sigtrygg’s stepfathers. Sigtrygg, in turn, had married one of Brian’s daughters by another Irish wife, which made him a son-in-law of Brian’s. To top it off, the rebellious Maelmordha of Leinster was Gormflaith’s brother, which made him Brian’s brother-in-law and Sigtrygg’s uncle.”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“But then, according to legend, a curious thing happened to Thorgils, something he was powerless to defend against for all his thousands of retainers. The crafty King Maelsechlainn of Meath, sent out his daughter with fifteen warriors disguised as maidens, lured Thorgils and fifteen Viking captains to a lakeside tryst, and drowned the lot.”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“Nevertheless, he was in most respects a temperate, farseeing, realistic monarch. When his courtiers, bedazzled by his triumphs, told him he could make the tides stand still, he sat on his throne by the seaside, with the waves washing around him, to show them that he was human.”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“He let himself be baptized, and he lost no time in restoring the churches that he and his fellow Vikings had sacked. His newfound Christianity probably did not significantly affect his personal beliefs one way or another. It was later recounted that, on his deathbed, he asked to be buried in the cathedral of Rouen and ordered large sums of gold to be given to Christian churches. He also called for human sacrifices to be made to the pagan gods. Presumably, then, whether Saint Peter or Thor met him in the hereafter, he would be assured of a welcome.”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings

“The Vikings also devised a remarkable rudder. A stubby, modified steering oar, it was fixed to the starboard quarter of the craft on a large block of wood pegged so the oar would turn as a lever turns on a fulcrum. The helmsman used a tiller bar. Since the Norse word for steering board was stjornbordi, the rudder lent its name to the starboard, or right, side of the boat.”
― Robert Wernick, The Vikings