HistoryExtra Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast 2026-10-23T09:16:17.000Z https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/feed/atom James Osborne <![CDATA[The Vikings had a terrifying myth about the end of the world. Was it inspired by a real deadly disaster?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/fimbulwinter-inspired-by-real-disaster/ 2026-10-23T09:16:17.000Z 2026-10-23T09:16:17.000Z The legend goes something like this: before the gods met their enemies in their final battle, an unprecedented winter would take hold. A thick blizzard would come down from every direction, blocking out the weakening sun. Three successive winters would pass, with no summer between them.
This is the story of Fimbulwinter, the “mighty winter” of Norse mythology: the prelude to the destruction of the world at Ragnarök. It’s a story preserved in the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda; one part of a broader suite of legendary tales from these two sources of Norse mythology.
But what if Fimbulwinter wasn’t just a story, but rather, a memory?
“We know beyond any doubt now there were a series of really drastic volcanic eruptions in the mid-500s, with enormous effects on Scandinavia, that really impacted the population” says Professor Neil Price, one of the foremost world experts on the Viking Age.
Scientific evidence confirms the eruptions, but establishing what they did to Scandinavian communities is harder, and tracing their effects into stories told centuries later is harder still. Price nevertheless suspects that accounts of the disaster survived through oral storytelling, eventually becoming preserved for evermore as part of the grand Norse vision of the world’s end.
A fragmented empire
The volcanic eruptions Professor Price describes struck more than two centuries before the conventional (though contentious) beginning of the Viking Age in the late eighth century. In this early medieval period, Scandinavians then lived in farming societies connected by trade, warfare and travel to the rest of Europe, where Roman imperial power had broken down. Some historians refer to this period of turbulence the Age of Migrations. But Professor Price argues that the vast movement of peoples was only part of the upheaval.
“What we're really looking at is the disintegration of a superpower,” he says, speaking on an upcoming episode of the HistoryExtra podcast. “What happens when something like the Roman Empire begins to come apart in different ways, at different speeds, in different places, all through its territory, and what comes out of that?”
- Read more | This Viking ruler begged to be dismembered – but his rival had something far worse in mind
Imperial rule in western Europe fragmented during the fifth century. Scandinavia had never been a Roman province, but its inhabitants were connected to the empire’s economic and military networks. Disruption farther south affected the movement of goods, wealth and people. “There is a decline in the numbers of settlements, the numbers of cemeteries, basically a decline in human habitation in Scandinavia at this time,” Price explains.
Amid this destabilisation, Scandinavian mercenaries returning north, Price suggests, could use their military experience to strengthen their position at home, consolidating power around themselves as regional warlords. So, communities were already dealing with economic disruption, conflict and shifts in political authority when the eruptions began.
Changing climates
In AD 536, observers around the Mediterranean reported an unusually dim sun. The historian Procopius, writing about the wars of the eastern Roman emperor Justinian, described weak sunlight resembling an eclipse. Other accounts recorded disturbed seasons and problems with food supplies. These witnesses were far from Scandinavia, so their reports show how widely the effects were felt.
Researchers can compare those accounts with records preserved in ice and wood, thanks to archaeological science. Ice cores contain sulphate deposited after volcanic eruptions; unusually narrow tree rings can indicate poor growing conditions. Together, they help researchers connect eruptions with periods of abrupt cooling.
This evidence points to major eruptions in 536 and around 540, followed by another in 547. In a short window, the climate suffered repeated, violent disturbances. As a result, says Price, “you end up with something resembling a volcanic winter.”
For communities of early medieval Scandinavia, these eruptions would have been catastrophic. “The margins of subsistence [in this region], in terms of the regular climate, the scarcity of agricultural land and so on, they're so much narrower than they are in, say, the Mediterranean.”
Unlike in the warmer climates of the Mediterranean, Scandinavian farmers needed enough warmth to bring in their harvest before autumn. They also had to gather fodder to keep livestock alive through winter. A poor growing season threatened both sources of food. Repeated agricultural failures would make survival nearly impossible.
“Some scholars have estimated that the combined impact just of the volcanic eruptions is a 50 per cent mortality rate, not universally across Scandinavia, but in some places,” says Price. “In social terms, that's catastrophic.”
Even where communities survived, their inhabitants faced years of disruption. “An awful lot of lives were not only ended, but the lives of all the survivors were also disrupted.”
A legendary truth?
Price thinks those experiences of intense climate disruption may help explain the legend of Fimbulwinter. He sees similarities between the environmental crisis and the wider mythology of Ragnarök: darkness, cold, hunger and the breakdown of social order; a memory of a real environmental catastrophe, passed down across generations, possibly transformed over the course of centuries into this frosty myth of the precursor to the end of the world.
But Ragnarök, despite all the death and despair, isn’t a tale of total doom. The stories also describe a world renewed after the destruction, though scholars debate how Christian influence may have shaped the surviving accounts. For Price, the prospect of life continuing after catastrophe is another possible connection with the sixth-century experience.
- Read more | This Viking warlord had a magical banner that promised victory. But it had a secret curse
“Ragnarök is not in the past tense. It's still in the future. [And] of course, in the 6th century, the world didn't actually end,” says Price. “People did get past that.”
Research into connections between natural events and traditional stories is called geomythology. These connections can be suggestive and persuasive, but similarities alone don’t prove that a story descended from a particular event. Could a culture that has had no experience of a long, harsh winter create a myth that tells of a long, harsh winter, drawn from imagination rather than reality? Logically, yes. Retaining some scepticism is important.
That’s why Price says “it's an interesting idea, but it's also a bit risky and like a circular argument because you find what you're looking for in the end.”
“But personally, I think the idea that there is an echo of that disruption, that trauma, centuries later in the Norse myth of the end of the world, I think it's very strong.”
Neil Price was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast.
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[This Viking ruler begged to be dismembered – but his rival had something far worse in mind]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/viking-leaders-orkney/ 2026-10-21T14:31:04.000Z 2026-10-21T14:30:39.000Z It’s Easter time, 1116. Hardly a fitting moment for an act of great treachery. Yet this was medieval Orkney, and treachery was very much on the menu.
That spring day 910 years ago, two powerful men came face to face on the island of Egilsay, in order to seal a peace agreement. Magnús Erlendsson and Hákon Pálsson were cousins and co-rulers of the Earldom of Orkney, and had been for years. But things were about to change.
Hákon had decided that he’d had enough of sharing power with his cousin, and so he lured Magnús into a trap. After a period of escalating tensions, Hákon had arranged what was ostensibly a peace meeting between the two rulers. But when Magnús arrived, he swiftly realised that he was outnumbered by eight warships to two – and that Hákon harboured violent intent.
- Read more | The real Viking Age: when did the era of Norse expansion start and end?
Magnús knew that he had been outwitted. And so he made Hákon three offers in an attempt to save his life. Firstly, Magnús offered to go to Rome and Jerusalem to “redeem both our souls” and never return. This was refused. Then he suggested going into captivity in Scotland. This, too, was turned down.
Then Magnús made a third offer: to be dismembered, or blinded, and imprisoned. Hákon was at first inclined to accept this bid. But Orkney’s chieftains were having none of it.
“We must kill one or the other of you now,” they declared. “And you shall not both rule the lands from this day forth.”
“Kill him then!” said Hákon. “Because I want to rule the territory and the lands before I die so suddenly.”
The killing of Magnús Erlendsson is arguably the central episode in The Saga of the Earls of Orkney, a narrative history of the Orkney and Shetland islands and Caithness in the medieval period, embellished with layers of fantasy.
In the Saga’s telling of this 12th-century showdown between co-rulers, Magnús’s martyrdom – not to mention a series of miracles attributed to him – led to his recognition as a saint two decades later. Over the following decades, Orcadians’ reverence for Magnús only grew – as did a building constructed to house his relics. That building, St Magnus Cathedral, still stands in the town of Kirkwall: Scotland’s oldest and most northerly cathedral and an impressive, Romanesque tribute to the slain earl.
The aftermath
Given Magnús’s status, it’s hardly surprising that the Saga was full of praise for his capabilities as a ruler. He was, we’re told:
“The most outstanding person, imposing in size, manly and intelligent-looking, well-mannered in his conduct, victorious in battles, wise in his understanding, eloquent and imperious... He gave many gifts to chieftains and powerful men, and yet he often showed the most care for poor people.”
But what of Hákon? Perhaps surprisingly, the Saga doesn’t paint the architect of Magnús’s death as wholly evil. After a brief period of oppressing Magnús’s followers, Hákon, we’re told, had a change of heart. He travelled to Rome and Jerusalem and bathed in the river Jordan. On his return to Orkney he became “a good ruler and brought peace to his territory... At this his popularity began to grow; in the end, the Orcadians wanted nothing more than to have Hákon and his offspring as their chieftains.”
So what was going on here? Why was the Saga willing to give Hákon, slayer of the saintly Magnús, such a positive press? The answer lies in the distinctive way power was inherited in the Earldom of Orkney.
Royal support
The origins of the earldom lie in the Viking Age settlement of parts of what is now Scotland in the ninth and tenth centuries. This meant that the earldom developed in a Norwegian tradition of inheritance, in which territory was divided between family members who had equal claims to it.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Earldom encompassed Shetland and Caithness as well as Orkney. It was soon established as a Christian polity presided over by earls who owed their power to the king of Norway. And because of that Norwegian inheritance system, there were often two or more earls, usually close kinsmen, ruling together.
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This was the context confronting the authors of the Saga when, in the early 13th century, they described Hákon’s deeds. The elevation of Magnús to sanctity suggests some disapproval – at least from the church – of such political killings. But the attitude of the chieftains, and Hákon’s popularity, opens a window on an alternative viewpoint in the Saga: that peace and prosperity could only be achieved when there was a single ruler.
The history of the Earldom of Orkney suggests that this viewpoint had more than a little merit. The death of Magnús at the hands of his cousin and co-earl is the best-known example of such a killing in the Saga. Yet it was far from the only one. In fact, the Saga is studded with examples of co-rulership ending in violence.
A beginner's guide to The Saga of the Earls of Orkney How do we know so much about the exploits of the rulers of early medieval Orkney? The answer lies in The Saga of the Earls of Orkney, otherwise known as the Orkneyinga Saga. The sagas are long, prose narratives of varying types. But those written with historical intent focus on the Viking Age (c750–1100) and the following centuries, and are mostly set in Iceland or Norway. The Saga of the Earls of Orkney is the only one of these set largely in the British Isles, reflecting the fact that parts of what is now Scotland then belonged culturally and politically to that Scandinavian world. It tells the story of the rulers of northern Scotland and their henchmen, taking the reader on a journey from their ancestry in Norway through to the beginning of the 13th century. Its account, particularly of the 11th and 12th centuries, presents a plausible, though certainly partial, outline of the main events of that time. Most of the action takes place in Orkney and Caithness, with occasional forays to Shetland. Readers are also taken to Ireland, and even the Holy Land via Galicia and Narbonne. The narrative is predominantly realistic, but it also has supernatural elements and a host of weird and wonderful characters. The Saga was compiled in Iceland in the early 13th century. It is, however, clearly based on the testimony of informants knowledgeable about northern Scotland, and on traditions from across the Viking diaspora. These traditions include the poetry quoted in the Saga, composed at the time of the events described. The narrative is firmly situated in the landscape of northern Scotland. As such it mentions locales that, in many cases, visitors to this beautiful part of the world can still see in the landscape today.
It all started in the early 11th century – decades before the rise of Hákon and Magnús – when the earldom was ruled by three of five brothers: Sumarliði, Einarr and Brúsi. When Sumarliði died, the youngest brother, Þorfinnr, staked his claim. Einarr was eliminated and Brúsi died of natural causes, leaving Þorfinnr to share power with his nephew, Rǫgnvaldr Brúsason.
But Þorfinnr was not inclined to rule alongside his nephew. And so, like Magnús in the following century, Rǫgnvaldr was killed by a follower of his co-earl – this time on the island of Papa Stronsay. And like Hákon, Þorfinnr went on to become a successful sole ruler, known as the ‘Mighty’.
Þorfinnr was succeeded by his sons, who got along just fine before their own sons – Magnús and Hákon – grew up. The Earldom of Orkney continued to follow the Norwegian model of co-rulers, and so the cycle of internecine violence was fated to continue.
As Magnús had no children, the rule then reverted to Hákon’s sons (by different mothers), Páli and Haraldr. This time, the elimination of one of the co-earls, Haraldr, happened by accident when he put on a deadly linen garment intended by his mother for his half-brother Páli.
Páli ruled alone until his second cousin, Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson), emerged to claim his part of the earldom. He was the son of St Magnús’s sister and had been brought up in Norway. His role in the capture and elimination of Páli by an enigmatic Saga character called Sveinn Ásleifarson is not clear, but it undoubtedly benefited him, clearing his way to the earldom.
But Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson) was not to rule alone. Páli’s sister, Margét, saw an opportunity for her son, Haraldr Maddaðarson, to replace Páli and rule as co-earl with Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson), who was persuaded by a couple of bishops to agree to this. The bishops perhaps did not anticipate any problems, as Haraldr was only three at the time. And the two earls ruled together quite successfully for 20 years. But then events took a familiar turn.
In 1158, Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson)’s life was brought to a violent end by a man called Þorbjǫrn, kinsman of Haraldr. In the Saga’s telling of events, Þorbjǫrn acknowledged his guilt but told Haraldr it was for his benefit:
“This deed that I have done is a great crime, and I am responsible, but all the territory has fallen into your power.”
Þorbjǫrn was right. Haraldr went on to become sole earl, ruling alone for 48 more years. However, unlike Hákon and Þorfinnr before him (those other earls who went on to enjoy long tenures in power following the deaths of their co-rulers), Haraldr didn’t get a particularly sympathetic hearing from the Saga. Other sagas show that he was also responsible for losing half of Caithness to the king of Scotland.
As for Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson), he fared a lot better in the Saga’s pages. Like his uncle Magnús, he was venerated as a saint:
“His death was much lamented, because he was very popular there in the isles and widely elsewhere. He had been of assistance to many people, generous with money, calm and loyal to friends, a man of many skills and a good poet.”
This was high praise indeed. But such praise was rarely lavished on the earls’ henchmen. In fact, in a trope widely found in medieval literature, the Saga repeatedly attributes the earls’ murderous actions to the malign influence of their advisers.
Of the bust-up between Þorfinnr and Rǫgnvaldr Brúsason, the Saga writes:
“There was always a good relationship between the kinsmen when they met, but if worse men intervened, then there were differences.”
The same applies for Magnús and Hákon. These co-rulers are shown to have cooperated in the defence of their lands, but “when the kinsmen had ruled the land for some time, then it transpired as it more often and regularly does that many ill-intentioned men took to destroying their relationship”.
Despite the Saga’s misgivings, power-sharing persisted until the early 1200s, a century after Magnús’s death. So what are we to make of the system of co-rulership practised in the Earldom of Orkney? Was it always destined to end in bloodshed? And why did it endure so long? To answer these questions, we need to look to the realm that exerted such power over the earldom in the Viking Age: Norway.
Single and stable?
In the 11th and 12th centuries, Norway was also often ruled by co-kings, always close relatives, often brothers. Some historians have argued that such power-sharing arrangements led to more stable societies than those in which power was concentrated in single hands.
However, just as it sets out the challenges presented by co-rulership in the Earldom of Orkney, so the Saga describes the spectacular breakdown in relations between Norwegian kings. For example, in an episode set in the 1130s, the Saga notes that:
“Magnús and Haraldr [who were nephew and uncle] were kings of Norway for three winters, while their agreement could be said to hold, but in the fourth summer they fought at Färlev.”
Whatever the pros and cons of co-rulership, by the mid-13th century Norway had adopted a sole monarchy, bolstered by detailed legislation, primogeniture and the support of the church. The Orkney Earldom could not go down this road as it was never a kingdom nor powerful enough to become one. Yet it’s hard not to conclude from the Saga that power-sharing usually worked for a time, but always ended badly.
- Read more | The Vikings brutalised our ancestors. So why do the English still love them?
Overall, there is a sense that neither the Icelandic compilers of the Saga nor their informants from Scotland were impressed by the earls, whether ruling jointly or singly.
What the general population thought of their rulers is harder to discern. The Saga tells us that when Earl Hákon Pálsson was struck down by disease, “people thought that was a great shame because it was very peaceful in his latter days and the householders were doubtful of any co-operation between the brothers Páli and Haraldr”. But the Saga focuses mainly on the doings of the earls and their closest associates. The ‘little people’ remain largely anonymous.
The last co-earls mentioned in the Saga were Haraldr Maddaðarson’s sons, Davíð and Jón. But Davíð died in 1214 and the Saga ends with Jón as sole earl of the Orkneys. By then, the islands were a part of a Norwegian empire that had also experienced its own period of civil wars, but had come through to establish a strong monarchy.
The earls of Orkney continued to wield a degree of power. But, over the following centuries – increasingly living in the shadow of the kingdoms of Norway and Scotland – that power would wane.
Judith Jesch specialises in Old Norse language and literature, and the Viking Age. Her translation of The Saga of the Earls of Orkney was published by Birlinn in 2025.
This article was first published in the November 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> James Osborne <![CDATA[This Viking warlord had a magical banner that promised victory. But it had a secret curse]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/viking-warlord-sigurd-the-stout-raven-banner/ 2026-10-20T14:59:20.000Z 2026-10-20T14:59:20.000Z Facing a Scottish army he believed outnumbered his own seven to one, the Viking warlord Sigurd the Stout went to his mother for help. According to Orkneyinga Saga, she had little sympathy – if any – for his concerns.
“She basically says, ‘Well, if I thought you would be worried about dying, I would have brought you up in my wool basket,’” Viking Age scholar Judith Jesch explains on the HistoryExtra podcast.
Despite her misgivings about her son’s courage, his mother had, however, made something for him: a banner bearing a raven, so skilfully worked that the bird seemed to fly when the cloth whipped in the wind. She promised that it would bring him victory, with one condition.
“She says, ‘This banner will help you win the battle, but whoever carries the banner will die.’”
Three standard-bearers were killed in the fighting that followed. “You'd think they would have heard that it was a bad idea to carry this banner,” Jesch says. “But Sigurd does eventually win the battle.”
Fighting for power in Scotland
Sigurd ruled Orkney in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. From the islands off Scotland’s northern coast, the Norse earls could reach allies and enemies across Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland. They also sought territory closer to home, across the Pentland Firth in Caithness.
The saga names Sigurd’s Scottish opponent as Earl Finnleik and places their battle at a site generally identified as Skitten, near Wick. Control of this part of the mainland was a recurring concern for Orkney’s rulers.
This account of the battle was written long after the fighting. Orkneyinga Saga, a history of the islands’ earls, is generally thought to have first taken shape around 1200, some two centuries after Sigurd’s lifetime. Its writers drew on earlier traditions, and the text underwent further revision.
We cannot recover a conversation between Sigurd and his mother from this scene, or establish what happened at Skitten through its account of an enchanted banner. We can, though, see what interested the storytellers who wrote this legend.
A taunting mother
“Her response to him is goading,” Jesch explains. “And this is a motif we find a lot in Icelandic sagas.”
In saga feuds, a killing or an insult could affect the standing of an entire family. Relatives had a stake in whether a man sought compensation, took revenge or did nothing, even if they would never fight themselves.
“It's often thought of as a very masculine world,” says Jesch. “It's the men going out and killing each other, basically. But as the sagas make clear, women also play a part in this process because they're part of the family group.”
That involvement often means “urging, encouraging the menfolk to go out” and commit violence, she explains, whether to avenge a wrong or for another purpose.
Sigurd’s mother uses the same pressure against her son. Her wool-basket remark paints a picture of an earl anxious about the odds as a child who still needs protecting – it’s emasculating. If he wants to be taken seriously, she implies, he must accept the possibility of death.
Such scenes tell us about the expectations of saga writers and their audiences. The woman who shames a reluctant man into fighting is a recurring literary figure – beyond this saga, too; think of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
But in this story, the notion of women encouraging men to commit violence is only one of several motifs.
“It's the combination of women giving advice, women with magical powers, and women goading men to go out and kill. These are three motifs that are entwined in this episode.”
Weaving the fate of warriors
Women who foresee events or practise magic appear elsewhere in Norse literature, among them the seeresses known as ‘völur’. The banner belongs to another strand of Norse storytelling, in which textile work gives women control over the fate of warriors. A poem preserved in Njál’s Saga describes valkyries, the supernatural figures associated with choosing the battlefield dead, weaving a fabric of war from human entrails and severed heads.
The raven, too, was familiar in accounts of battle. It fed on the corpses left after fighting and was associated with Odin, whose ravens Huginn and Muninn brought him knowledge of the world. On Sigurd’s banner, the bird is an appropriate emblem for a victory that will leave its bearers dead.
There is evidence for Vikings entering battles with raven standards outside the sagas. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the capture of a Viking war banner with the black bird in Devon in 878 – during the Viking attacks on Alfred the Great’s Wessex.
The death of Earl Sigurd
Sigurd died in 1014 at Clontarf, near Dublin, fighting in the coalition opposed to the Irish ruler Brian Boru. His allies included the rulers of Dublin and Leinster. With Irish and Norse interests entangled on the battlefield, the conflict neatly demonstrates how interlinked the Norse and broader Gaelic worlds had become.
- Read more | The history of Dublin: from Viking stronghold to international success story
His death is recorded beyond the Icelandic saga tradition. The Annals of Ulster name the earl of Orkney among the dead. And in Njál’s Saga, the raven banner returns to account for his end. Once again, its bearers are killed. This time, the surviving men refuse to take it. Sigurd takes the banner himself. As per his mother’s magic, he dies.
Judith Jesch was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]> James Osborne <![CDATA[The Vikings mutilated and maimed their defeated enemies. So why did Alfred the Great spare their leader?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/alfred-the-great-versus-guthrum-viking-leader/ 2026-09-11T10:20:54.000Z 2026-09-11T10:20:54.000Z How should a leader who has achieved victory on the blood-soaked field of battle treat their defeated opponent?
Throughout history, the usual answer has been: without mercy.
Take two examples. In AD 70, Roman forces crushed the First Jewish Revolt and retook Jerusalem, devastating the city, destroying the Second Temple – the holiest site in Jewish life – and imposing an onerous religious tax.
And in 1919, after defeat in the First World War, Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles – accepting loss of territory, severe military restrictions and huge reparation payments.
In both instances, the defeated were humiliated, politically subdued and economically debilitated – arguably fuelling renewed conflict in decades to come. Hence Winston Churchill’s declaration after the Second World War that the Allies should show “In victory, magnanimity” to halt an ongoing cycle of violence.
He wasn’t the first to see the wisdom in this approach. As early as the ninth century, an Anglo-Saxon king who paved the way for the foundation of England came to the same conclusion.
How Alfred the Great defeated the Viking invaders
King Alfred of Wessex – widely known today as ‘the Great’ – ruled at a time when Norse invaders seemed set to topple the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Britain. Wessex was, as the cliché goes, the last stronghold resisting the Great Heathen Army – a marauding force of Vikings battering the British Isles.
One by one, the kingdoms fell: Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia. By the time the Viking forces – now led by the enigmatic warlord Guthrum – turned their attention to Wessex, the outcome seemed inevitable.
The first of many pivotal moments came at the end of the Christmas period in 878. Alfred, a staunch Christian, was at Chippenham in early January, no doubt pondering how best to repel the Vikings. Surely he had a moment of respite: not only was it a holy season, but also winter – not the time for warfare.
Guthrum did not agree.
“This Viking army doesn’t play by the rules,” says Dr Eleanor Barraclough, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “It attacks at the time of a very holy Christian holiday.” Guthrum’s force launched its attack on Chippenham, probably on the night of 6 January – the feast of Epiphany – taking Alfred by surprise. He fled in panic, taking a small warband, and hid in the marshes of Somerset.
During his short time in the wilderness, Alfred gathered the remaining strands of Wessex resistance, bringing together disparate warbands and marshalling his people. With his renewed military force, he marched east to confront his foe, winning victory at the battle of Edington in what’s now western Wiltshire. Eventually, “ tired, hungry, cold, despairing, defeated, Guthrum surrenders to Alfred,” says Barraclough.
What did Alfred the Great do with his defeated enemy?
Having regained control of Wessex, how should Alfred treat his defeated foe – the enemy who had taken his land and killed his men? “This is a story that we would expect to end in the death of at least one of the leaders,” says Barraclough. “And it doesn't.”
Faced with his deadly enemy, Alfred instead turned to his Christian faith. He had Guthrum baptised, and sponsored the Viking warlord as his godson. Guthrum took the baptismal name Æthelstan – the same as Alfred’s later grandson – and subsequently ruled East Anglia. Alfred forgave him, “and they feast together for days afterwards,” adds Barraclough. “This is not only a political allyship but the start of what essentially is a personal relationship.”
For their remaining years, Alfred and Guthrum ruled as neighbours, largely in peace. Guthrum embraced Christianity, minted coins in his new name in an Anglo-Saxon style, and ruled in the manner of previous Anglo-Saxon kings.
With the defeat and conversion of Guthrum, the Great Heathen Army’s campaign was essentially brought to an end. Alfred’s war against the pagan men from across the North Sea did not resume in earnest, at least during his lifetime.
Alfred’s actions didn’t demonstrate pure mercy – strategic thinking also played a part. “One of the most useful things you can do with the defeated Viking is to make them an ally,” explains Barraclough. “If you can do that, not only are you cutting off that source of violence, you've also got someone who also is invested in not suffering more Viking attacks. The best way to do that from a Christian perspective – and, as we know, Alfred is a very religious man – is to convert your enemy.”
A pause in the Viking violence
True, the Viking threat later returned to haunt Anglo-Saxon England. Alfred’s own descendants – his daughter Æthelflæd and grandson Æthelstan among them – were forced to face the Vikings at battles such as Brunanburh (in 937), as were later kings such as Edmund Ironside and Æthelred the Unready.
Indeed, in the early 11th century, the mighty Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great – Danes in the Viking tradition – dominated the Anglo-Saxons completely, becoming kings of England and, under Cnut, bringing the country into the short-lived North Sea empire.
Sweyn Forkbeard’s invasion of England may, at least in part, have been motivated by revenge after Æthelred the Unready had, contrary to the example set by Alfred, ordered the killing of Danes whom he believed had betrayed him – an outburst of violence remembered as the St Brice’s Day Massacre.
In bringing Guthrum onside, rather than killing him and attempting to subjugate his people, Alfred won relative peace for years. And he did it with magnanimity. In his unremittingly violent era, that is an achievement worth reflecting on.
Dr Eleanor Barraclough was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]> Michael Wood <![CDATA[The Vikings brutalised our ancestors. So why do the English still love them?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-vikings-brutalised-our-ancestors-so-why-do-the-english-still-love-them/ 2026-09-28T10:47:25.000Z 2026-09-04T15:00:00.000Z The excitement of the World Cup is over – with all the ‘might have beens’. For England, one of the highlights of the tournament was the close-fought battle with the Norwegians, before ultimate defeat at the hands of Argentina.
As an early medieval historian, one intervention had me smiling: a message on social media purporting to be from a Norwegian ambassador (though quite likely a spoof):
Our world cup journey ends here, but respect remains. Vikings and Saxons share a long history and in many ways we are family. As I promised, if Norway fell tonight, I would proudly stand behind England for the rest of the tournament. Bring the World Cup home for the sons of Vikings and Saxons! On behalf of Norwegians, good luck cousins!
Cousins? Well, it is a long connection, especially in northern parts of Britain. In a Norse saga describing the events of 1066, when a fleeing Norwegian asks the way from a Yorkshire peasant, he replies: “You’re from Norway, I can tell by the way you speak.” They spoke a dialect of the same language.
In parts of the north, that lasted a very long time, as the pages of the Lakeland Dialect Society show. In 1940 in Narvik, Norway, the Westmorland and Cumberland Field Artillery could make themselves understood in the local shops. In the Wirral, the Norwegian Viking settlement in 902 has left distinctive family names, which are matched by distinctive DNA.
Britain, of course, has long been the goal of migrants coming westwards. Post-Roman settlements from modern north-west Europe transformed the identity of Britain, especially from Jutland, Denmark and Saxony (England, after all, got its name from Angeln in Schleswig), but also from southern Sweden and Norway.
There were intensive migration periods: one in the late Roman world and the so-called Dark Ages, and one in the ninth century, the Age of the Vikings. This had a profound effect on the nature of the English state that emerged in the 10th century. Æthelstan and Edgar ruled an Anglo-Scandinavian kingdom. “We Anglo-Saxons,” Lantfred of Winchester wrote, are a kingdom of “many different peoples, distinct in appearance, speech and custom.” In the 960s, parts of King Edgar’s law codes were “common to all the nation, whether English, Danes or Britons”. But others were regional: “For my Danish subjects, I leave it to them to establish the best secular laws as they see fit.” It was understood that no one law would work everywhere. So Englishness itself, you could say, was more about allegiance to the king, and the law made in his name, than to race or language.
This Anglo-Scandinavian state was ruled by Danish kings in the 11th century: Cnut, Harald and Harthacnut. Cnut ruled a North Sea empire, and for a time the crowns of England, Denmark and Norway were united. But all that changed in 1066 with the Norman conquest. Then a Norman-French aristocracy subdued the country with absolute ruthlessness in a massive rupture with the deep continuities of Anglo-Saxon England. The stark divisions of power, class and language were very long lasting. Some would say they are still with us.
So, the social media poster may have been having a bit of fun in the World Cup. But they justly drew attention to the long connections of England and Scandinavia. Back in the mists of time, the Norwegian kingdom was founded by Harald Finehair in the ninth century. Norwegian tradition says that Harald sent his son Hakon to Æthelstan’s court to learn the arts of kingship. Hence, the boy was known in all the later literature as “Æthelstan’s foster son”. That story has been doubted, but a now lost life of Æthelstan, written in the late 10th century, tells of an embassy of Harald to Æthelstan in York naming Norway’s first ambassadors to England: Helgrim and Osfrid. If we can rely on it, this is the earliest evidence of Harald’s existence, and perhaps, too, of the jesting relationship of the kings portrayed by later saga writers.
So another World Cup of disappointment for England. Friendship with Argentina, for historical reasons, still seems a long way off. But, by the same token, we’ll always have our Viking cousins in Norway!
This article was first published in the September 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> James Osborne <![CDATA[He was one of the greatest Viking warlords – and his death is still an unsolved mystery]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/olaf-tryggvason-viking-warlord-death-mystery/ 2026-08-17T08:51:51.000Z 2026-08-11T10:15:44.000Z Few Viking rulers forged themselves a story quite as dramatic as Olaf Tryggvason.
Warrior, adventurer, raider, king and missionary, Tryggvason belonged to the vast maritime world of the Viking Age: a world that, between roughly AD 750 and 1050, linked Scandinavia to an astonishing range of places, from North America to the Abbasid Caliphate.
According to medieval tradition, Tryggvason moved through many corners of that world. Sources place him in Russia, the Baltics, England, Ireland and Scandinavia before he eventually seized the Norwegian throne in the 990s. Many of the details about his life are recorded in later Old Norse sagas, and can’t be verified as historical fact. But together, they reflect the scale of his influence and reputation: Tryggvason was remembered not only as a local warlord, but as a titanic figure of the wider Viking world.
What made him truly consequential, in the years following his adventurous youth, was his attempt to reshape Norway from a loose collection of regional power bases into a more unified Christian kingdom. He was largely successful, centralising power in a way that was alien to the Vikings.
Then, at the height of his power, he disappeared.
Most medieval accounts state that Olaf died in a desperate naval battle at a place called Svolder. Surrounded by enemies and facing defeat, he supposedly leapt overboard in full armour and drowned.
But not everyone accepted that version of events. For centuries, stories circulated that Olaf had somehow survived.
The Viking who became a king
Olaf Tryggvason lived in a period of profound change in Scandinavia. Across Scandinavia, small-scale local rule was gradually giving way to larger kingdoms. Denmark, Norway and Sweden were beginning to emerge as recognisable political entities, though their borders were fluid and their authority often incomplete.
Norway in particular remained difficult to control. Its geography did little to encourage centralisation: mountain chains, deep fjords and long distances separated communities, while powerful local chieftains often exercised authority with little regard for any notional king.
Tryggvason wrestled to take power against this backdrop.
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The sagas portray him as a ruler formerly exiled from his homeland, who had lived adventure and warfare before returning to claim the throne. Like many ambitious Viking leaders, he seems to have built support through military prowess, personal alliances and the wealth that could be accumulated through raiding and overseas activity.
By the 990s, with many military victories behind him as a roving, raiding warlord, he had established himself as king of Norway.
But holding the kingship required more than military force. It also demanded a way to bind a disparate realm more closely together. That challenge was political, yes, but also, increasingly, religious.
The violent Christianisation of Norway
Christianity had been spreading into Scandinavia for generations before Tryggvason’s reign.
Missionaries had successfully come from Britain and the European continent to convert their pagan neighbours. Meanwhile, Norse merchants and travellers encountered the faith abroad. Some Viking rulers – including the likes of Guthrum, a leader of the Great Heathen Army more than a century before Tryggvason’s time, and the Rus king Volodymyr the Great – had already accepted baptism, at least in part because it offered diplomatic and political advantages.
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But conversion was patchy and incomplete.
Across Norway, many communities still honoured the traditional Norse gods, including Odin, Thor and Freyr. Religious practice varied from place to place, and older beliefs remained deeply rooted in local life.
As Don Hollway – author of Hammer of the Gods: King Olaf's Viking Conquest – noted on the HistoryExtra podcast, “Norway was a united country, but it was mostly still pagan” before Tryggvason’s stint as king.
The earlier ruler Earl Håkon, who ruled legendary Norway from about 975 to 995, was remembered in later tradition as a defender of the old religion. “When Håkon the Evil was ruling there, he was pagan, and most of the people went back to worshipping the old gods,” Hollway explains.
But for Tryggvason, Christianity offered itself as a useful tool for wielding personal power.
Across medieval Europe, Christianity was increasingly bound up with kingship and state formation. A Christian ruler could marry into other dynasties, participate in international diplomacy and strengthen ties with the institutional Church. A shared religion could also help legitimise royal authority and foster a stronger sense of unity.
Tryggvason embraced that model with violent vigour. He became notorious for the severity of his methods of conversion. “He doesn’t care who he’s going to kill, cripple, maim, or blind. He embraces that ethos, and converts all of Norway to Christianity.”
Historians are cautious about some of the more lurid accounts of Tryggvason’s zeal, many of which come from later saga writers who had their own literary and ideological agendas. Medieval authors often heightened both brutality and piety for effect. Even so, there is little reason to doubt that Olaf pursued conversion with great force – and urgency.
This policy strengthened his authority and tied Norway more closely to the Christian kingdoms of Europe. But it also earned him bitter enemies.
Some resented the erosion of local autonomy. Others remained attached to older religious traditions. Still others simply feared the expansion of Olaf’s power.
Those enemies would eventually find common cause.
The coalition forms
The most dangerous of Tryggvason’s enemies were the sons of Earl Håkon, who had fled Norway after Tryggvason’s rise.
In exile, they did not give up their ambitions. “They strike up a deal with the Swedish king and also with Olaf’s old friend, Sweyn Forkbeard.”
Sweyn Forkbeard, father of Cnut the Great, was one of the most formidable rulers in northern Europe: king of Denmark and later conqueror of England. He had every reason to be interested in weakening Olaf’s hold over Norway.
For Sweyn and the Swedish king – also called Olaf – the proposal made political sense. If Tryggvason could be overthrown, Norway could be divided again and brought partly under Danish and Swedish influence.
“So of course Sweyn Forkbeard and the Swedish king immediately agree to oust Tryggvason.”
The alliance that formed against Olaf was therefore driven by a mixture of personal vengeance, dynastic ambition and regional geopolitics. The next step was to catch him at a vulnerable moment.
The trap at Svolder
That opportunity came when Olaf travelled south to Wendland, along the Baltic coast – a region usually associated with Slavic territories in what is now Poland and northern Germany.
The Baltics was one of the busiest theatres of the Viking world. Scandinavian rulers travelled there regularly to negotiate marriages, forge alliances and pursue trade and diplomacy.
Tryggvason seems to have spent much of the summer there visiting relatives by marriage. But as the season drew on, many of his followers became eager to return home. The harvest was approaching, and even warriors remained bound to the demands of the agricultural year.
As the fleet sailed back north, it became stretched out. Olaf remained towards the rear with a diminishing number of ships nearby. This left him dangerously exposed.
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“As the lead ships are sailing home, the enemy fleets, which are all combined, are hidden behind an island,” Hollway says.
One by one, the leading Norwegian vessels passed by.
By the time Tryggvason’s ship came into view, much of his fleet had moved too far ahead to help. “Tryggvason is down to about 11 ships at the very end. That’s when the enemy fleet comes out to attack him.”
The ships ahead were too distant even to realise what had happened. Olaf was isolated, heavily outnumbered and trapped.
Tryggvason’s last stand
Later tradition turned the battle into one of the great set-pieces of Viking history.
At its centre stood Tryggvason’s great warship, the Long Serpent, one of the most famous vessels in saga literature. Enemy ships closed in from all sides, capturing Norwegian ships one by one until only Olaf’s flagship remained.
From there, the king is said to have fought on the deck of his ship while his fleet was destroyed around him. But aggressors had the upper hand. Most accounts agree on the basic ending. Olaf disappeared into the sea.
“Everybody thinks that he jumped overboard and drowned because he was wearing full armour,” Hollway says.
This remains the view accepted by most historians. But not all.
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Did Olaf Tryggvason really die at Svolder?
The uncertainty begins with the battle’s location.
“As I was researching it, I first had to find out where Svolder was, because nobody knows that for certain,” Hollway explains.
Over the centuries, various sites have been proposed. Some place the battle in the Baltic proper, others nearer the German coast. Hollway argues that an island off northern Germany may be the likeliest location. That geographical uncertainty matters because it affects how plausible Olaf’s supposed drowning really was.
“Most historians think that he died there,” Hollway says. “But as I was researching the location, I started to think that he could have survived.”
Part of the case rests on the design of Viking ships and the nature of coastal waters. Longships were shallow-draft vessels, drawing very little water. In such conditions, a man plunging overboard would not necessarily vanish into deep water. Depending on the location, he might have found himself standing in surprisingly shallow sea.
“If you went overboard, you could be underwater but standing on the bottom, in water shallow enough that you could get your head up and take a breath.”
“The more I researched it,” Hollway says, “the more I think it could have been done.”
But no contemporary source securely records such an escape, and the dominant tradition remains that Olaf died at Svolder. Still, the very existence of these doubts helps explain why the question never entirely disappeared.
Again and again, societies have generated rumours that a fallen leader escaped, will return, or was never truly lost. Historians have dubbed this the “king in the mountain” folkloric narrative: a trope in which a lost ruler is hiding, waiting to return.
Tryggvason made himself into an ideal subject to be slotted into this tradition.
His life already had the shape of saga: exile, adventure, warfare, distant travel, sudden rise and dramatic fall. He had survived danger before. He had crossed much of the known Viking world. He had risen from precarious beginnings to kingship. For admirers, a death by drowning may have seemed too ordinary an ending. A miraculous escape suited the story’s end better.
It also suited the moment.
Tryggvason’s death marked a turning point in Norwegian history. His kingdom was divided among rival rulers, but the broader process of Christianisation continued. Soon, the Viking world would be definitively Christian.
Don Hollway was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]> Dr David Musgrove, FSA <![CDATA[Norway’s ‘Viking row’: the real history behind the World Cup football chant]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/norway-viking-row-chant-world-cup-football/ 2026-07-11T00:43:25.000Z 2026-07-11T00:41:13.000Z Did the Vikings chant about death, sex and masturbation while they rowed on the raiding missions that terrorised Britain and Europe between the eighth and 11th centuries?
That’s a pertinent question in the context of this summer’s FIFA Men’s World Cup. If you’ve been following the tournament, you’ll have no doubt seen clips of Norwegian supporters honouring their Viking ancestry by pulling imaginary oars in unison to the beat of a manly roar, with a drummer keeping time. The football team themselves perform the same motion when they win a game, led in general by their talismanic striker Erling Haaland (pictured above).
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That is the so-called ‘Viking row’, apparently invented by a Norwegian fan only in the last year or so, but building on a tradition of mass-participation rowing and clapping among Scandinavian supporters. It’ll be a feature, no doubt, of the build-up to the big game on Saturday night, when Norway face England in the World Cup quarter-finals.
The idea of the mass-participation row is not only to celebrate Norway’s Viking past, but also create an intimidating stadium experience when Norway is playing, and help foster a strong team spirit among the footballers and their supporters.
It’s a nice idea, even if some people have questioned how far we should celebrate the Vikings who paired their great seafaring explorations with murder, pillage, rape and slaving.
Those ethical considerations aside, does the Viking row have a direct historical precedent?
Blood, sex and masturbation
The Vikings’ seafaring prowess was built on their ability to swap sails for oars when they got close to land, enabling them to engage in coastal raiding or trading. And, according to experts, it does seem that they combined their rowing with songs and chants.
“In Old Norse sagas, song and battle have a very close connection,” explains Dr Eleanor Parker, a leading expert in Old Norse and Old English literature at the University of Oxford and the author of Dragon Lords: The History and Legends of Viking England. “Viking warriors are often shown chanting poetry in the midst of fighting, or before and after combat.”
“Like war chants, these poems sometimes channel the collective voice of the army, urging them on against the enemy. There is one that has Viking sailors singing as they’re about to land in England: ‘Let us be brave in battle, let us shake our spears and shoot! Great numbers of the English take to flight before our blades’.”
A few years ago, Professor Richard Perkins also wrote an academic article about Viking rowing chants, and how their rhythmic metre might have formed the basis of a particular style of court poetry that developed in the early Viking period.
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However, the chants that Professor Perkins identified from the Viking period are a touch more involved than those we’ve already heard at the 2026 World Cup.
They generally have more of a story to them, sometimes employing dramatic language of violence (blood raining down, men smiting each other mightily) and sometimes delivering some pretty spicy innuendo (oars as penises, that sort of thing). One verse even hints at masturbation: “While we work the soft oar stiff on the gunwale”.
It certainly sounds like there was enough going on in the songs to keep the rowers’ minds off the hard task at hand, while also keeping them to time as they pulled hard to shore.
The original England–Norway showdown
Returning to Saturday’s quarter-final clash, much capital is being made of the parallel between the match and the battle of Stamford Bridge. It was there, in September 1066, that the English king Harold II defeated the renowned Norwegian ruler Harald Hardrada, and made the river run red with Viking blood.
According to his saga, Hardrada composed some warlike verse before this battle. It’s not clear whether that would have been part of a rowing chant, but it did him no good in the battle, as he died along with most of his men.
- Read more | What if Harold died at Stamford Bridge, not Hastings?
Some optimistic English pundits might hope that Hardrada’s demise offers some sort of precedent for this year’s tournament, while enthusiastic Norwegians will be trusting that their adoption of the Viking row will allow their players to harness the spirit of the raiding warriors.
The football Viking row is distinctly sanitised in comparison to the original. If the Norwegians truly want to channel their ancestral spirit, they need to be singing about death, sex and masturbation – which might not go down well with the American TV networks showing the game.
]]> James Osborne <![CDATA[How Orkney became the centre of Viking Age violence]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/how-orkney-became-the-centre-viking-age-violence-podcast/ 2026-05-26T08:04:03.000Z 2026-05-26T08:03:48.000Z For much of the Viking Age, the Orkney archipelago served as a vibrant hub of Norse activity. But these islands were also plagued by violence, not least between the Earls of Orkney themselves, as they vied for control. Speaking to James Osborne about her new translation of the Saga of the Earls of Orkney, Judith Jesch traces these centuries of conflict, and shares her insights into what they tell us about the Norse peoples who lived there.
]]> James Osborne <![CDATA[Olaf Tryggvason: life of the week]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/olaf-tryggvason-life-of-the-week-podcast/ 2026-05-12T14:08:15.000Z 2026-05-12T09:18:25.000Z From thrall to king; from pagan to Christian: Olaf Tryggvason was one of the titanic figures of the Viking Age, whose story straddles the line between fantasy and fiction.
Speaking to James Osborne about his life for this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, Don Hollway steps back into the 10th century to give an account of the drama and violence that defined the Norse warlord.
]]> James Osborne <![CDATA[What was it like to be a Viking in the Great Heathen Army?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-was-it-like-to-be-viking-great-heathen-army-video/ 2026-05-01T08:26:03.000Z 2026-05-01T08:25:29.000Z Known to contemporaries as the Great Heathen Army, this was no ordinary raid. It was a coordinated invasion, bringing together warriors from across Scandinavia with a clear aim: conquest.
HistoryExtra’s James Osborne explores how this formidable army was formed, and how it swept through Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, toppling rulers, seizing territory, and reshaping the political landscape of England. From the fall of Northumbria to the struggles of Wessex, it's the story of a turning point in British history.
How did the army come together, and what was it like to travel and camp with them? Who were the leaders behind the army? Why did they come? And how did Anglo-Saxon kings respond to this new kind of threat? You'll hear expertise from historian and broadcaster Dr Eleanor Barraclough, who takes us inside life in the camps.
Drawing on historical sources and archaeological evidence, we reveal how the Great Heathen Army transformed England and paved the way for the Viking age in Britain.