It has been a big year in Scandinavian archaeology, with several enormous hoards discovered, notably in Denmark. But now it is Finland that has revealed a massive silver hoard. What’s in the hoard, and what other Viking-related archaeological finds has Finland revealed? Finland in the Viking Age Before jumping in, it is worth remembering that…
Belts, a very useful accessory, have been around since ancient times. They have been worn since the Bronze Age (c. 2000 BC), and those worn by the Greeks and Romans would look familiar today. The Vikings also wore belts that would not be too out of place in a modern wardrobe. The belt itself was…
The way we envision the Vikings today has been greatly influenced by paintings composed centuries later during the Scandinavian Romantic Nationalism of the 18th and 19th centuries. In this period, artists looked to Norse mythology and the Norse Sagas for inspiration, inserting their own ideas, such as warriors in horned helmets and shieldmaidens as Greek…
Modern media often paints the Vikings as mud-splattered warriors clad in plain leather and rough furs, but the excavation of graves across the Viking world tells a drastically different story. From the bustling market streets of Hedeby to remote farmsteads in the Norwegian fjords, Norse people surrounded themselves with shimmering silver, cast bronze, and vibrant…
As the Vikings sat around their hearths at night, they had terrifying stories to recount of encounters with the undead that drove men to madness or destroyed entire villages. Old Norse literature records stories of hauntings, but they are not psychological thrillers; rather, they are brutal physical conflicts that demanded extreme interventions to permanently put…
Did the Vikings celebrate Halloween? The Norse warriors (and their children) certainly did not go trick or treating on the 31st of October, but this was still an important day in the Norse calendar. The end of October marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, which means long, dark days,…
The National Museum of Denmark has just announced a major interdisciplinary project to further investigate its approximately 260 surviving runestones. Dating from AD 600 to 1100, they are some of the few written records left behind by the Vikings themselves, making them invaluable for understanding the Viking Age. The project will use new technologies to…
You have probably heard somewhere that modern Heathens and followers of the Old Norse ways celebrate a version of Halloween as an important holiday, but under the traditional name Samhain. This is only partly true. The end of October and the start of November marked the end of the harvest season, which was certainly an…
The hall of the sea giant Aegir was meant to be a sanctuary of divine peace. Instead, it became the stage for the most brutal character assassination in Norse mythology. In the poetic masterpiece, the Lokasenna, the trickster Loki shatters the sacred laws of hospitality and weaponizes the darkest secrets of the Aesir and Vanir…
When you explore the VKNG Jewelry shop, you will notice that we have a large collection of Mjolnir pendants. You might wonder why Thor’s Hammer is so prolific in our store. Read on to learn everything you need to know about Thor’s Hammer in Norse mythology. Thor the Protector The name of Thor’s Hammer in…
