While most people have heard of the Knights Templar and now that they have something to do with the Crusades, few people know much about their history or their Viking connection. This is a brief history of the Knights Templar that highlights some of the practices that they seem to have borrowed from Viking warrior…
We know that the Vikings believed in life after death. What exactly they believed it looked like is unclear. While surviving sources provide descriptions of Valhalla, Odin’s hall in Asgard for brave fallen warriors, Helheim, the underworld, and other afterlives, these were written by Christian observers of Norse culture and were highly influenced by Christian…
Did you know that the Vikings were contemporary with the Crusades that saw Christians from the West try to recapture Jerusalem ? The Vikings were already officially converted to Christianity when the Crusades began, though pagan traditions continued. However, the Vikings did not join the main Crusades into the Holy Land. Instead, they had conquests…
When the Vikings landed on English shores they didn’t just take away slaves and previous goods to line their own pockets, they left quite a lot behind. Laying down roots as settlers from the mid-9th century, they had a pretty big influence on local culture and society. Let’s look at some of the ways that…
Many modern pagans, and other people who want to create greater alignment with natural cycles, celebrate the Wheel of the Year. These are festivals that align with important moments in the solar calendar, and therefore the seasons, such as the solstices and equinoxes. While there are many neo-pagan festivals based on the idea of the…
While we think of the Vikings as legendary warriors, the Vikings themselves had their own legendary heroes and fighters. There were the Berserker warriors believed to embody the spirit of the bear to become invincible in battle. Read our post on the Berserkers here. And there were also the Jomsvikings. The Jomsvikings were a semi-legendary…
Vikings have a reputation that’s larger than life. But beneath the surface of their fierce and fearsome persona lies a trove of lesser-known facts that might just change the way you think about them. For example, Vikings were legendary navigators, can you imagine that? They were capable of crossing vast and treacherous seas. But did…
Before the Vikings raided the monasteries of England and established Danelaw, before the Anglo-Saxons established their kingdoms, and before the Romans made Britannia one of its colonies, the island was occupied by the Celts. One of the most famous heroes of Celtic Britain is Boudica, also written Boudica or Boadicea, a queen of the Iceni…
On our blog, we share a lot of individual stories from Viking history, whether it was the time that Ragnar Lothbrok sacked Paris, when Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland and established the first Viking colony in Greenland, or when Harald Hardrada lost his life while disputing his claim to the English throne. While…
The torque, also spelled torc or torq, is a metal neck ring used by several European cultures from the 8th century BC onwards. It is mostly closely associated with the Celts, but similar neck rings, usually made in silver, were also commonly worn by the Vikings. But in this article, we are going to look…