It is well known that the Vikings originally hailed from the modern Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, all of which were formed in the Viking age when areas ruled by chieftains were consolidated into confederated alliances. We also know that the Vikings raided around Europe and eventually began to settle in some of…
Questions of destiny and pre-determined fate loom large in Viking culture. They believed that the moment of every person’s death was preordained from the moment of their birth and that even the gods are subject to the laws of fate. The Ragnarok prophecy tells the story of the death of all the gods, which is…
Every year in the Danish city of Odense, named after the Norse god Odin, there is an annual flower festival. This reflects the importance of flowers in Scandinavian culture. You are unlikely to enter a home in Sweden or Norway without finding potted plants with carefully cared-for flowers. But were flowers equally important in the…
If you scan the surviving Scandinavian texts, you will find the names of many Norse gods and goddesses. But many are only mentioned in passing, and little is known about them beyond their name and the fact that they were considered among the Aesir. Forseti is one such god. His name only appears twice in…
If you watch the History Channel’s Vikings, you will notice that it is the kings of Wessex, rather than the other areas of England, that are held up as the main leaders of the resistance against the Danish encroachment. While the TV show takes a lot of liberties with its timeline, this is a reflection…
The appearance of Icelandic actress and former swimmer Ragga Ragnars as Gunnhild on the TV show Vikings has inspired a lot of interest in this powerful woman. In the program, she is a mighty shieldmaiden who was married to Jarl Olavsson. Following her husband’s death, she fell for and married Bjorn Ironside and returned as…
Freyr was a popular Norse god in the Viking age associated with fertility and virility. Snorri Sturluson says that he was the most renowned Norse divinities in 12th-century Iceland. Freyr lives in Asgard among the Aesir but is one of the Vanir gods who went to live there following the end of the Aesir-Vanir war,…
The event that rings loudest in Norse mythology is Ragnarok, which means “twilight of the gods”. This event has not yet happened, but there is a widely known prophecy that records what will happen. Loki will lead an army of jotun (giants), the dishonest dead, and other enemies of the Aesir gods against Asgard. Loki…
In the Norse sagas, it always seems like the protagonist of the story has an unbelievable life that spans the known world of the day and that they are blessed with uncanny luck until the end. It is not hard to believe that these warriors are touched by divine fate. The saga of Olaf Tryggvason…
It is well established that one of the ways that Christianity was able to convert Pagans and bring them into the Christian fold was to incorporate important Pagan practices into Christian rituals. As a result, many of the holidays that exist in the Christian calendar have clear Pagan roots both in terms of the date…
