9 misconceptions about Vikings we believe in TV shows and games

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The brutal northern barbarians actually loved makeup and bright clothes, and Ivar the Boneless could walk.

1. Vikings loved horned helmets

The stereotypical appearance of the Viking, supposedly resembling a character from Skyrim, has nothing to do with reality. No sane fighter will wear a helmet with decorative horns. Yes, such headdresses existed, but they were ceremonial armor worn during religious rites. Or used as a status item.

In battles, a helmet with a similar decoration is more likely to help the enemy kill you: if the weapon gets caught on the horn, it will seriously injure you.

Helmets were made smooth so that the enemy's weapons would slide on them when struck: this increases the chances of surviving. Therefore, on real Viking helmets, for example on the one that was found in 1943 at the Jarmundby farm in Norway, no horns are observed. On medieval images of the Scandinavians, they are also absent.

Most likely, the myth of the Vikings in horned helmets was caused by costume designer and illustrator Karl Emil Dipler. For the production of Wagner's opera Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1876, he created beautiful but unrealistic robes, among which were winged and horned helmets.

2. The Viking's standard weapon is a double-edged ax

This weapon is very popular in cartoons and viking games. And it really existed and was called labrys. One small but: the Vikings did not brandish such things, they were invented by the gunsmiths of the Cretan-Minoan civilization of the Bronze Age.

Later, the Greeks adopted this ax from the Minoans and made it an attribute of Zeus. Yes, Thor had the hammer Mjolnir, Zeus had an ax. And the labrys was, apparently, not a weapon, but a ceremonial object.

If the Vikings were handed such an ax, they would probably find it very inconvenient and impractical.

The Scandinavians used brodexes - axes with one crescent-shaped blade and skeggox - beard-shaped axes with a protruding lower part of the blade.

This is a handy and simple weapon. It is easier to wield than a sword, and easier to care for. Finally, the Scandinavian axes in peacetime or on long campaigns were used as a tool: chopping wood, cutting a board, hammering a nail into a drakkar. A double-edged ax would hardly do that.

And no, the Viking axes were not heavy weapons for real heroes. On average, they weighed from 800 g to 1.5 kg. In general, the most popular weapon of the Vikings was not even an ax, but a spear: it is much easier to make.

3. Vikings are such a people

If you think that the Viking is a representative of some northern people, you are wrong. Viking is not a nationality, but a type of activity.

In the Old Norse language there was the word Víking, meaning both a raid with the aim of robbery, and simply an expedition for peaceful purposes - for example, research or trade. And Víkingr is the one who takes part in such an expedition.

Swedes, Norwegians and Danes became Vikings. Other peoples designated them with the Latin term Norman - "northerner". In ordinary life, a Viking could do anything: be a farmer, artisan, farmer, raise livestock, hunt or fish. Such people were called bonds - free peasants with their own farms.

When a Scandinavian did not have enough livelihood or wanted adventure and travel or military glory, he nailed himself to other bonds of the same kind, and they went on a campaign to rob neighbors, find a better piece of land for themselves, or even just trade. And then he returned home and lived as before.

4. Vikings were mighty red giants

When you imagine the Vikings, you probably picture in your head mighty and tall red-haired barbarians with luxurious mustaches. Or fair-haired beauties with model looks like Travis Fimmel. However, the real Vikings will disappoint you a little.

According to archaeological finds, their average height was 172 cm, and the height of their women was 158 cm, which is 6-10 cm below the current average. Modern Scandinavians have become much higher than their ancestors. And this is quite natural, because they lived in very harsh conditions, did not eat so well and had a lower life expectancy. Not the conditions under which athletes and basketball players are born.

In addition, the hard physical work of the northerners led to health problems. Louise Kampe Henriksen, curator of the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, notes that arthrosis and dental diseases were common among the Scandinavians at the time.

The Norman warriors did not differ in particular brutality and masculinity of their faces. An archaeologist and anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen has this to say:

In fact, determining the gender of a Viking Age skeleton is difficult. Their male skulls were slightly more feminine than those of modern humans, and their female skulls were more masculine.

Liz Lock Harvig Fellow, Department of Forensic Medicine, University of Copenhagen

She adds that Viking women had prominent jaws and developed brow ridges, while men had more feminine features. And yet, according to the testimony of an Arab traveler who visited the city of Hedeby around 1000 AD. BC, northerners - both women and men - wore makeup to look more attractive.

As for red hair, they were not rare among the northerners, but there were also enough blondes, and brunettes, and fair-haired Vikings.

And they didn't wear that horrible, identical gray and black outfit like the Game of Thrones extras. The northerners preferred bright and colorful things, they loved silks and furs. The most popular colors were red and blue.

5. Vikings were dirty barbarians

No, the Scandinavians had nothing against hygiene. Unwashed savages, they were apparently christened by the British, who did not like the northerner invaders for obvious reasons. In fact, the Vikings bathed at least once a week, on Saturday, which was very good for that time.

Saturday in Old Norse was called Laugardagur - washing day. And, as archaeological finds show, the Vikings had tweezers, beard combs, tools for cleaning nails and ears, and toothpicks. The chronicler John of Wallingford wrote in the chronicle of 1220 that they washed, changed their clothes and combed their hair, and therefore enjoyed success with English women.

John disapprovingly called hygiene "a frivolous whim." What are these pagans not imagining?

The Vikings also styled and bleached their hair and applied eyeliner. By the way, in the last seasons of "Vikings" Ragnar Lothbrok sports a shaved head. And other characters like to wear spectacular hairstyles, shaving their heads in the best barbershops in Scandinavia.

But in reality, the Vikings cut their heads off criminals and slaves, and they themselves walked, with long hair.

6. They drank wine from the skulls of their enemies

It sounds very brutal, but this is also a myth - for the most part.

In general, there are many examples in history when various vessels were made from human skulls. The Scythians, Mongols, Chinese, Europeans, Slavs and Japanese dabbled in this. Most likely, some Vikings could also make goblets from skulls. However, it is unlikely that the manufacture of dishes from defeated enemies was a mass phenomenon.

Perhaps the myth arose from the fact that Ole Worm, a Danish physician and naturalist, in his book Runer seu Danica literatura antiquissima, published in 1651, incorrectly translated a fragment of Krákumál's poem, The Lay of Krak.

In ancient Scandinavian it said drekkum bjór af bragði ór bjúgviðum hausa - "drink beer rather from the curved branches of skulls." "The curved branches of the skulls" is kenning, a metaphor for "horn." Worm translated the fragment as follows: "The heroes hoped to drink in the hall of Odin from the skulls of those they had killed."It was just that there was no Google Translate back then.

Basically, Scandinavians made dishes from animal horns, as well as wood and metal.

7. Women in Viking society enjoyed equality

Often on the Internet you can find statements that Viking women had the same rights as men and even fought on an equal footing with them on campaigns. Unthinkable privileges for the 8th-11th centuries, when women of other nations were oppressed in every possible way. The Severians were lucky, weren't they? But it is not so.

Series like Vikings exaggerate the role of women in combat a little. Thus, researcher Judith Yesh from the University of Nottingham argues that brave female fighters were found only in the myths of the Normans and there is no evidence that they existed in reality. Other scholars speculate that female warriors did exist, but this was not common.

Such women were called Skjaldmær - "maiden of the shield".

And although northerner women enjoyed greater freedom than representatives of other peoples, there was no equality in the Viking society.

For example, the medieval Icelandic code of law, Grágás, prohibited women from wearing men's clothing, cutting their hair, or wielding weapons. They were not allowed to participate in most political or government events. Only men were admitted to the Ting, a public gathering of free northerners. A woman could also not become a judge and testify in court.

But northerners could own property, dispose of land inherited from her husband or inheritance, and demand a divorce if the spouses treated them badly. Not bad for the Middle Ages. In general, the Vikings respected their women, because they looked after the house and the harvest while the husband was out on the hike.

8. Favorite torture of Vikings - "bloody eagle"

Most likely, this terrible torture, when the back of a living person is cut and the lungs are taken out, was invented by Christian chroniclers who sought to present the northerners as terrible devils of hell.

Researchers are inclined to believe that the Vikings would not have thought of such an ingenious surgical operation.

But it is too difficult to cut out the lungs for profit: the victim will rather quickly die from painful shock and pneumothorax and will not have time to suffer.

It is possible that the bloody fantasies of ripped ribs and lungs sticking out of the back were born out of a mistranslation of the Ragnarssona þáttr saga, "The Strand of the Sons of Ragnar." In it, Ivar the Boneless takes revenge on King Ella II for his father. Vaguely interpreted words about eagles and a torn back may mean that Ivar simply threw Ella's corpse to a profit to the birds of prey, and they ate it.

9. Ivar the Boneless was weak

In the TV series "Vikings" Ivar was given the nickname because he is unable to walk due to osteogenesis imperfecta. But it is far from the fact that the real Ivar was so helpless. On the contrary, in the sagas he is called a cruel and fierce warrior, tall, handsome and the smartest of Ragnar's children.

The chronicler Saxon Grammaticus does not say anything about Ivar's absence of bones, although this seems to be a noteworthy part of his appearance. As a result, the exact history of the nickname is unknown. Perhaps the boneless leader of the Vikings was nicknamed because of problems with potency.

Ivar the Boneless was king in England for a long time. He had no children, because he was with women incapable of lust, but let no man say that he lacks cunning and cruelty.

Ragnarssona þáttr

Also, Ivar could be called in a similar way for his flexibility and mobility in battle. Well, or his nickname was simply incorrectly spelled out in Latin, and in fact he should have been called Ivar the Hateful.