HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/tag/viking-life-and-culture Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:31:04 GMT en hourly 1 This Viking ruler begged to be dismembered – but his rival had something far worse in mind https://www.historyextra.com/membership/viking-leaders-orkney/ Wed, 21 Oct 2026 14:30:39 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/viking-leaders-orkney/ Are two leaders better than one? Not if Viking Orkney is anything to go by. Judith Jesch journeys back to an earldom in which the practice of appointing co-rulers produced a cycle of treachery, intrigue and death 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.

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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.

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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

]]> Aud the Deep-Minded: life of the week https://www.historyextra.com/membership/aud-the-deep-minded-life-of-the-week-podcast/ Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:27:08 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/aud-the-deep-minded-life-of-the-week-podcast/ Emily Lethbridge traces the story of Aud the Deep-Minded, one of Iceland's most prominent – and fascinating – early Norse settlers It was the Vikings of northern Europe who first settled the harsh landscapes of Iceland in the ninth century. Most of the figures leading this movement were men – powerful chieftains who claimed vast swathes of land and parcelled it out to their followers. But among these pioneers was Aud the Deep-Minded: a woman who subverted the expectations of the Viking world.

In this episode, Emily Lethbridge speaks to James Osborne about Aud's incredible life and legacy.

]]> What are history's biggest misconceptions? 9 experts reveal what we get wrong about the past https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-are-historys-biggest-misconceptions-9-experts-reveal-what-we-get-wrong-about-the-past/ Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:30:41 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-are-historys-biggest-misconceptions-9-experts-reveal-what-we-get-wrong-about-the-past/ Our team of historians, broadcasters and authors take aim at the most egregious fallacies about the past Ancient Athenian democracy was democratic

There’s plenty to criticise about that ancient approach

We wouldn’t recognise the system practised in ancient Athens as democracy in the sense we understand it today. Women did not have the vote, and the entire society depended on a massive slave population to be able to function. Yet in other ways it was also more democratic than our democracies today. Every (male) citizen took an active role in governing the city, and every major decision was taken by a vote involving every citizen who attended.

An even more egregious misconception is the idea there is an unbroken link between ancient and modern democracy. Athenian democracy lasted for only around 200 years; since then, through most of the rest of antiquity, the Middle Ages and more modern historical periods, democracy has not been practised.

In more recent times, Athenian democracy has been held up as a system to avoid rather than imitate. During debates between the founding fathers about the Constitution of the United States in the 1780s, many argued that “even if every Athenian had been a Socrates [ie very intelligent], Athenian democracy would have been little more than mob rule”. It is only very recently that we have come (again) to admire Athenian democracy, and want to link our own system of government to that ancient ideal.

Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick

Most people in the past had much shorter lifespans

Many people died very young – but many others lived long lives

On paper, this seems to be true: today, the average global life expectancy is around 72, whereas for much of the medieval and early modern periods the figure hovered around 30–35. You might think, then, that modern medicine, public health initiatives and better nutrition have all combined to help us live longer than our ancestors.

In fact, though there has been a significant improvement in living conditions, the idea that there has been a corresponding increase in lifespan over the centuries is incorrect. The overall life expectancy has risen simply because more of us are living to older ages.

It’s important to understand the difference between life expectancy and lifespan. The former is an average – so, for example, if two people are born on the same day and one lives to the age of 80 but the other gets ill and dies before their first birthday, their average life expectancy is 40. Although that is statistically correct, we should be wary of drawing conclusions about typical lifespans. Using such figures doesn’t tell us that all (or even most) people in the past lived shorter lives.

For most of the medieval and early modern periods, infant mortality was high due to the prevalence of disease, the lack of vaccines and medical knowledge, poor hygiene and sanitation, and complications from childbirth. But if you made it through childhood, you had a fair chance of living for almost as long as the average person today.

There are plenty of historical examples of people living well into their seventies, eighties and beyond. Elizabeth I was in her 70th year when she died, and the Roman author and scientist Pliny the Elder recorded one musician who enjoyed good health until his death at the age of 105.

Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster

Every war ends at a single moment

The consequences of conflict can drag on for years

The greatest historical misconception is that wars come to an end neatly, on a specific date, with the signing of an armistice or surrender agreement. No war in history has ever ended happily-ever-after with a sudden return to normality. The consequences of war – famine, displacement, lawlessness and political violence – often last longer than the conflict itself.

The First World War is a perfect example. In our popular imagination, especially in the west, it came to an abrupt end on 11 November 1918. But the guns did not fall silent for long. Popular revolutions soon broke out in Germany, Austria, Hungary and many other places. Turkey was consumed by ethnic and religious violence, and vast battles took place between Poland, Ukraine and the new Soviet Union. Such events created an atmosphere of chaos that lasted well into the 1920s.

The same thing happened after the Second World War. Ceasefires in 1945 did not bring immediate peace. Instead, armed groups rushed to fill the power vacuum left by the defeat of Germany and Japan. Political violence became the norm, and full-blown civil wars erupted in Greece, Poland, China and Indonesia, among other places. That period of chaos lasted at least until the end of the 1940s.

War is sometimes unavoidable. But if we had a better historical understanding of the long-term consequences, perhaps we would prepare a little better for the period of instability that always comes afterwards. And maybe we would be less eager to embark on war in the first place.

Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)

• Read more | Is the Eastern Front the forgotten theatre of World War One?

History is written by the victors

Voices of the defeated often resonate the loudest

“History will be kind to me,” said Winston Churchill, “for I intend to write it.” Or such, at least, is the popular paraphrase of a line that Churchill trotted out on numerous occasions, always in jest. In reality, as he must have appreciated, no one gets to dictate how they are viewed by posterity. Nevertheless, the notion that ‘history is written by the victors’ is a persistent one.

Consider a few counter-examples from the broad sweep of British history. Our only narrative source for Britain at the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasions is Gildas, a British monk lamenting the arrival of the invaders. Similarly, when the Vikings were ravaging Europe in the ninth century, the tale of their bloody progress was recorded by their monastic victims. Even the Normans, who produced an abundance of propaganda to justify their conquest of England in 1066, did not get to control the narrative. One of the most insightful portraits of William the Conqueror is the obituary of him penned by an English monk. The king, we are told, “was stern beyond measure to those who opposed his will… In his time people suffered grievous oppression and manifold injuries.”

When Edward I conquered Wales in the late 13th century, no one (insofar as we know) celebrated his victory in verse, but Welsh poets did lament the passing of his vanquished opponent, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. The voices of the defeated are often the ones that resonate the loudest across the centuries.

Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster

Vikings drank from their enemies’ skulls

Those horned helmets are hooey, too

Lurid myths swirl around the Vikings: that they wore horned helmets, drank from the skulls of vanquished foes, and tortured and dispatched enemies by splaying their ribs in the gruesome ‘blood eagle’. It’s all nonsense.

We can blame the 19th century for the horned helmets. When translations of the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas were published, that headwear started to sneak into the illustrations. Wagner didn’t help. In 1876, for the first performances of his Ring cycle, costume designer Carl Doepler decided that horned helmets would be just the thing.

The idea of drinking from the skulls of enemies comes from a misreading of an Old Norse verse. That’s easily done, because the Norse wrote fiendishly complicated poetry that was deliberately difficult to unpick. One ode, Krákumál (‘The Lay of Kraka’), features a line about heroes drinking from the “curved branches of skulls”. It’s actually a poetic reference to animal horns, but 17th-century antiquarian Ole Worm translated it as heroes quaffing “from the skulls of those they had killed”.

The ‘blood eagle’ is trickier to unpick, but again Old Norse poetry might be the source. The sons of Ragnar Lodbrok (‘Hairy-Breeches’), it was written, murdered the king of Northumbria by cutting his ribs from his spine and drawing out his lungs so that they looked like gory wings. It has been argued that this is a misunderstanding rooted in knottily obscure Old Norse verse, and that no such form of torture was ever perpetrated.

The moral of the story? If in doubt, blame poets and costume designers.

Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands (Profile, 2024)

Pompeii was ‘frozen in time’

Most citizens of the Roman town escaped a violent volcanic demise

The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 didn’t happen in an instant. Nor was Pompeii buried in one swift sweep by lava. In fact, there was no lava at all.

On the morning of the eruption, a thin curl of smoke rose from Vesuvius. By midday, the volcano had erupted, sending a vast column of smoke, ash and pumice 16 miles into the sky. Pumice rained onto the surrounding towns, and over the next few hours many of their inhabitants started to flee. Sometime after 7pm, the column – now too heavy to support itself – collapsed. This sent a scorching gush of pumice, gas and ash known as a pyroclastic flow hurtling towards Herculaneum. The city was buried beneath 20 metres of volcanic material. There were no survivors.

It wasn’t until 6.30am the following day that the first pyroclastic surge reached Pompeii’s northern walls, sweeping about 200 metres into the city before losing momentum. Then, between 7.30 and 8am, the column above Vesuvius collapsed again – and Pompeii was engulfed. Any people remaining in the city were killed instantly, their bodies locked in a rigid ‘boxer pose’ as their muscles contracted rapidly in the fierce heat.

Though many died beneath collapsing structures or from suffocation during the first parts of the eruption, most residents escaped before the final lethal surges; the death rate in Pompeii may have been as low as 10 per cent. The eruption didn’t happen in an instant – and the destruction it wreaked took place over the course of some 24 hours.

Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author of The Lost Voices of Pompeii

• Read more | Your ultimate guide to Pompeii, plus 8 fascinating facts about the ancient Roman city

The North won the American Civil War

White racial democracy was not displaced even after Confederate defeat

Southern planters lost much when the American Civil War ended in 1865. The North’s victory in that conflict ensured that the Confederacy would never establish a global empire of cotton, and paved the way for emancipation, citizenship for freed people, and the franchise for black American men.

Yet white racial democracy was not displaced, even if the slaveocracy was somewhat diminished. For the remainder of the 19th century, white people mounted deadly battles against black voters, business owners and politicians. They raged against the short-lived experiment in full democracy known as Reconstruction until they struck a deal with the federal government to end it. By 1877, the rest of the country had left black southerners and their few allies to defend democracy alone.

Even more strikingly, white southern elites won a narrative war that changed Americans’ sense of what happened. Historians call it the myth of the ‘Lost Cause’: an understanding shaped in schoolbooks, monuments and popular media that the antebellum South was a place of romance, not horror, and that there was something noble in the region’s last stand. Secessionists were understood as rebels, not traitors, and freed people as, in the words of future president Woodrow Wilson, “dusky children untimely put out of school”.

“Whoever tells the best story wins,” it’s been said. The white South told such a compelling story that they secured Jim Crow segregation by 1900, bringing themselves back into the union on their own terms – and at the expense of black Americans.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University

The Victorians were po-faced prudes

The queen herself loved to laugh

"We are not amused.” These words, supposedly uttered by Queen Victoria, have burdened the 19th century with an unfair reputation for prudishness and humourlessness. Many still characterise the Victorian era as a stiff and solemn time when fun and pleasure were suffocated under a cloud of self-discipline and respectability. This, quite frankly, is nonsense.

Fun was a vital part of Victorian culture. Celebrity comedians packed music halls every night, the country’s most popular newspapers brimmed with jokes, and the saying “laugh and grow fat” – the belief that cheerfulness promoted health – was a familiar household phrase.

Victoria herself was no exception. Her diaries are packed with things that made her laugh. At one dinner party, she found herself talking to an elderly admiral who bored her with a story about a damaged ship. Hoping to change the subject, she asked after his sister’s health. Mishearing her, the admiral replied: “She’ll be fine, ma’am, when we turn her over and scrape the barnacles off her bottom.” Victoria shook with uncontrollable laughter until tears ran down her face.

It’s true that Victorian humour was less coarse than that of earlier generations. Jokes about sex, farts and other bodily functions fell out of favour – in respectable circles, at least – but puns became a national obsession, and the era’s comedians produced plenty of books, cartoons and one-liners that still have the power to amuse.

It’s high time we stopped treating the Victorians as solemn bores, and started laughing with them instead of at them.

Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University

• Read more | Think the Victorians were prudes? Their filthiest jokes will shock you

The Middle Ages were dismal

The Renaissance starts here

I am continually astonished by how often I hear the medieval period in Europe called the ‘dark ages’. One thousand years of history cannot be dismissed so quickly. This was a period of seminal political developments – of genuine statecraft. It was a period of architectural and visual glories. It was a period of outstandingly rich intellectual achievement. It encompassed the Carolingian Renaissance in the eighth and ninth centuries; the so-called 12th-century Renaissance, another period of great cultural revival and vibrancy; and the late 14th and 15th-century Renaissance. (Indeed, we can blame those latter Renaissance thinkers for the denigration of the earlier Middle Ages: they had a vested interest in making out their immediate predecessors to have been benighted and stupidly dogmatic.)

Modern intellectual approaches were developed in the 12th century, pioneered by the scholar Peter Abelard in his dialectical text Sic et non (‘Yes and no’). Abelard also wrote a text called the Ethics, which set the tone for many centuries of ethical thinking; he foregrounded the idea of intention, too, and promoted the dictum ‘Know thyself’.

On a more everyday note, the Middle Ages were also not as filthy as often assumed. By the later part of the period, urban authorities in particular were deeply concerned about hygiene, and regulated extensively.

The metaphor “standing on the shoulders of giants” is often attributed to Newton, but he was merely quoting a 12th-century philosopher, Bernard of Chartres: “We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants.” We should, like Bernard, acknowledge our intellectual debts to our medieval predecessors.

Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford

This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

]]> Who is the most overrated person in history? 9 experts reveal their choices https://www.historyextra.com/membership/who-is-the-most-overrated-person-in-history-9-experts-reveal-their-choices/ Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:30:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/who-is-the-most-overrated-person-in-history-9-experts-reveal-their-choices/ In the first of a new monthly series, we asked an expert team of historians to tackle one of the big questions about the past Homer

Composite figment of imaginations

The writer credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey, and often regarded as one of the most important authors of all time, is to my mind the most overrated historical figure. That’s mostly because it’s likely that there was no one person called Homer.

Careful study of those works, as well as other surviving epic fragments, has shown that they weren’t written at a single time by one person. Instead, it is likely that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed over generations by poetry performers known as rhapsodes. Each of these improved on the work of their predecessors, curating these epics and honing them to a point of perfection. From that time, probably around 700 BC, these works started to be transmitted in a more stable format. By around 550–500 BC, they were written down for the first time.

By then, the belief was circulating that their genesis lay with one particular poet, Homer – not least because the idea of a single, genius author is simpler and more attractive than a slow process of evolution involving hundreds. A whole narrative was woven about the likely fictitious Homer: that he lived on Chios, that he was blind, even that he may have had some divine parentage.

In fact, the notional Homer became so popular that later rhapsodes, doing performances of these now ‘finished’, stable poems, liked to claim themselves as ‘sons of Homer’ to give themselves more gravitas and fame. Ancient historians even wrote biographies of Homer as a historical figure, and busts were created of him. Yet, as a single man, he probably never existed at all.

Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick

Charles Dickens

Verbose Victorian who distorted views of his era

At the risk of being tarred and feathered next time I show my face at a Victorian history conference, I’d have to say that Dickens is overrated.

It’s not that I dislike his work. Critics usually object to his long-winded prose, or baulk at the mawkish sentimentality of characters such as Little Nell, but I enjoy his writing. The callous way he treated his wife is harder to forgive – but his claim to greatness never rested on his qualities as a husband.

No, my objection to Dickens is one that he – always a relentless self-publicist – might actually enjoy. He is simply too famous. Dickens is often feted as the greatest English writer since Shakespeare. Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol have been inflicted on generations of schoolchildren and adapted into endless period dramas (the best of which feature Muppets).

As a result, many people see the 19th century purely through a Dickensian lens: as a world of cruel workhouses, smoke-filled factories and desperate poverty. I’ve spent my career as a historian trying to reveal the lighter sides of Victorian life – to prove that things weren’t as miserable as some of Dickens’ more pointed critiques suggest.

Dickens was just one of many great writers who made their names in the Victorian era. I’m not suggesting that we consign him to the dustbin of history – but perhaps the time has come to stop him from hogging all of the limelight.

Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University

Mary, Queen of Scots

Unwise architect of her own downfall

Some historical figures, such as Richard III and Anne Boleyn, attract a cult following. Mary is another. She’s typically presented as a tragic heroine: a woman of courage who battled against adversity throughout her life, only to have it savagely cut short by her cold-hearted cousin, Elizabeth I.

Yet the truth is far removed from this beguiling image. Yes, Mary was dogged by tragedy in her life, but much of it could have been avoided if she had shown greater wisdom and restraint. Instead, she made a series of catastrophic decisions that eventually lost her the crown – and her life.

After a pampered upbringing in France, Mary returned to her native Scotland in 1561, aged 18. She then married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, one of the most unsuitable consorts in history, before eloping with the chief suspect in his murder, James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell.

• Read more | Mary, Queen of Scots: your guide to her life and times

Having lost all credibility, and been forced to abdicate in favour of her infant son, James, Mary fled to England, naively expecting that Elizabeth would help her regain her throne. She spent almost 19 years a prisoner there, during which time she was involved in numerous plots against the English queen, finally leaving a paper trail exposing her parts in conspiracies.

Mary’s execution in 1587 propelled her to the status of Catholic martyr and tragic heroine. In truth, she was not the hapless victim of circumstance but the architect of her own downfall.

Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster

Petrarch

Painted a dim picture of the Middle Ages

The writing of early Italian Renaissance poet Francesco Petrarch (1304–74) is certainly not overrated. He was responsible for an exquisite body of lyric poetry, an extraordinary scholar who rediscovered the letters of Cicero, and one of the greatest contributors to the Italian language. Reading or listening to his poetry truly feeds the soul.

As a medieval historian, though, I am bound to take issue with Petrarch’s comments on the nature of history – because these truly are overrated. His remarks have long misled and deceived, producing a vision of world history that has become embedded in the European and American historiographical imagination.

It was Petrarch who came up with the idea of the ‘Dark Ages’. He described the Middle Ages as a period of intellectual obscurity in which the glories of the great Roman empire had been forgotten, inhabited by benighted and stupid people. “This sleep of forgetfulness will not last forever,” he opined. “When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.”

This condemnation of 800 years of history was taken up by 16th-century Protestants and then 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers. It’s still common today, with the Middle Ages often dismissed as poorly documented, boring and dogmatic. It’s just not true! These were centuries of extraordinary intellectual discovery, of philosophical thinking about the nature of the self and society, of artistic vibrancy and sophisticated political theory. The Middle Ages matter: we study them to challenge our assumptions and better understand our common humanity.

Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford

Cicero

Rome’s most shameless self-promoter

The first-century BC Roman statesman and writer is often hailed as the voice of Republican virtue and a defender of democracy, justice and reason in a corrupt age. But this reputation owes more to his own words than to his actual achievements. In truth, Marcus Tullius Cicero was one of history’s most successful self-publicists.

Cicero was elected consul in 63 BC. It was a remarkable achievement for a novus homo (‘new man’ without aristocratic ancestry) – and he never stopped reminding people of it. That same year, he crushed a conspiracy to overthrow the Republic, and had several citizens executed without trial – an act he later declared showed moral courage. In reality, it was a serious abuse of power, and deeply divisive.

Despite his modest background, Cicero consistently sided with Rome’s conservative elite, opposing reforms that might have redistributed wealth or power to the poor. He praised virtue, yet defended the clearly guilty Milo on a murder charge. He was undeniably a gifted speaker and writer, but as a statesman he was relatively irrelevant. He had no army, no loyal faction and little influence over the major figures of his time, such as Caesar, Pompey and Octavian (later Augustus).

More than 800 of his letters and 58 speeches survive, far more than those left by any contemporary, giving his version of events an over-amplified voice. Through them he cast himself as the Republic’s moral guardian – but without them he’d be remembered as what he truly was: a gifted lawyer with more bluster than power.

Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author

Winston Churchill

A flawed leader who could never live up to his idealised image

Churchill is one of Britain’s greatest heroes. He’s the subject of countless movies and television shows. His statue stands in Parliament Square. In a nationwide poll in 2002, he was voted the greatest figure in British history. Ever.

Though I have great respect for Churchill as a symbol of British courage and determination during the Second World War, the man himself cannot possibly live up to this image. In many ways, he was a terrible politician. Even by the standards of the time, his views were objectionable. He actively opposed equal rights for women, and he frequently made racist comments – particularly about Indians, calling them a “beastly people with a beastly religion”. During most of the 1930s he was shunned by the political establishment, including many in his own party. He was often drunk on the job.

There is no question that Britain needed a leader with Churchill’s energy to see it through the war. Yet his own Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Alan Brooke, claimed that Churchill often made it impossible for the armed forces to do their work. He came up with ridiculous plans, then acted “like a spoilt child” when military experts pointed out that they were impossible.

• Read more | Winston Churchill: is he still the greatest Briton in history?

Churchill was certainly a heroic figure. He was one of the very first to oppose Hitler, and his inspiring speeches galvanised the country in its hour of need. But can he live up to our idealised image of him? Of course not. How could anyone?

Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)

Erik Bloodaxe

Spectacular nickname, underwhelming legacy

I love a Viking-Age hero with a dramatic nickname as much as the next person, but let’s not kid ourselves: they were masters of their own propaganda. Look for the men behind the myths (and we are mostly talking men here) and the historical reality can be a little… underwhelming. Take Erik Bloodaxe, twice ruler of Northumbria in the mid-10th century. Most of what we think we know about his colourful life comes from the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas, recorded long after his lifetime.

In these, he’s portrayed as a larger-than-life character: favourite son of King Harald Fairhair, slayer of his own brothers, locked in a bitter feud with Icelandic poet Egill Skallagrimsson. His wife, Gunnhild, is depicted as a shapeshifting, murderous sorceress said to have commissioned another source for Erik’s life – or, rather, afterlife – the poem Eiríksmál (‘The Lay of Erik’), in which the god Odin orders his warriors and Valkyries to prepare Valhalla for the arrival of this great hero.

But beyond the vivid details of his legend, what do we know about the historical figure? Coins and chronicles tell us that he was a key political player in 10th-century Northumbria. But his brief reigns (947–48 and 952–54) were turbulent, to say the least, challenged by Anglo-Saxon Wessex to the south and Viking Dublin to the west. In 954, he came to a sticky end, driven from York and ambushed in the wilds of Cumbria. His death brought an end to Viking rule in the north of England. So, not a brilliant legacy. But still a great nickname.

Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024)

Ronald Reagan

Seemingly a candidate for sainthood – but with questionable principles

Making heroes out of historical figures requires some selective forgetting. In the US, where the cult of Ronald Reagan has many adherents, forgetting is almost an art form. Popular writing treats Reagan as a principled example of free-market rectitude who ended the Cold War and heralded morning in America. Critics of the contemporary Republican Party often invoke Reagan to signal how far his heirs have gone astray. The GOP is “no longer the party of Reagan”, critics lament in publications such as The Washington Post, Time or USA Today. Rhetorically, harking back to Reagan makes a claim of legitimacy and ideological fidelity. To invoke Reagan is to touch the hem of the saints.

This gives Reagan too much credit for accomplishments that were not his, and overlooks wrongdoing that was. Did Reagan end the Cold War? Many would argue that dynamics within the USSR – Mikhail Gorbachev’s embrace of democratic socialism, for example – sparked the transformation of the Soviet Union more than any external force did. Was Reagan’s administration principled? Anyone recalling the manipulative illegality of the Iran–Contra Affair might marvel at the question.

• Read more | Did Ronald Reagan 'Make America Great Again'?

Did Reagan mean “morning in America” to apply to all Americans? As candidate, he gave a speech celebrating “states’ rights” in Neshoba County, Mississippi near where three voting rights activists had been murdered in 1964. For years, he publicly ignored the decade-defining public health crisis that was the HIV epidemic. He scaled back on social programmes while intensifying the war on drugs. He busted unions while preaching ‘trickle-down’ economics.

Without selective forgetting, the Reagan era feels less like the antithesis of our present and more like its progenitor.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University

Simon de Montfort

A history of violence

Some 760 years after his death, Simon de Montfort still enjoys a fairly sturdy reputation as a social reformer – the man who summoned what’s claimed to have been the first English parliament. A portrait of him is carved above the doors of the US House of Representatives, among a pantheon of democratic worthies. An English university was named after him as recently as 1992.

But this reputation rests almost entirely on modern myth. Kings of England had been summoning consultative assemblies for hundreds of years before Montfort did so in 1265, and were calling them parliaments as early as 1236. Montfort’s contribution was long reckoned to have been the introduction of representation by including knights and townsmen, but both these groups had already been attending parliaments for several decades.

Montfort was undoubtedly a skilled politician – clever, persuasive and quick-witted – but his preferred method of getting things done was usually violence. He had put himself into power in 1263 by leading attacks on the supporters of his brother-in-law, Henry III, and he reduced Henry to a puppet the following year by defeating him in battle.

Montfort was also a pioneering antisemite. As soon as he became Earl of Leicester in 1231, he expelled all of the Jews from that town – the first such expulsion in England – and in the 1260s he led violent massacres of other Jewish communities. A capable warrior and a charismatic leader, Montfort was expert at exploiting the grievances of others for his own ends. A founder of parliamentary democracy he was not.

Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster

This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine

]]> It was an "extravaganza of brutality": how the Vikings menaced the Mediterranean https://www.historyextra.com/membership/it-was-an-extravaganza-of-brutality-how-the-vikings-menaced-the-mediterranean/ Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:30:53 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/it-was-an-extravaganza-of-brutality-how-the-vikings-menaced-the-mediterranean/ Killing, burning, pillaging, enslaving. Even when heading to sunnier climes, Viking raiders deployed the same tactics that they had used along the shores of northern and western Europe, reveals Thomas Williams The poor citizens of Al-Jazira al-Khadra never knew what hit them. In 859, an unfamiliar fleet sailed into the bay separating this Muslim settlement – which later evolved into the city of Algeciras, now in southern Spain – from Gibraltar. Making landfall nearby, the alien ships disgorged their fearsome crews: Vikings.

In a sequence of events terrifyingly familiar to victims in more northerly parts of Europe, these formidable marauders wreaked havoc. They occupied the city, burned the mosque, ravaged the countryside – and then moved on to the next target, and the next. The campaign later known as the ‘Great Raid’ was well and truly underway – part of a chapter in Norse history that’s less known today, but no less bloody.

Stone cold killers

The Vikings of our imagination are emphatically creatures of the north – avatars of cold climes and bleak weather, manifestations of ice and snow made flesh and steel. Dragon-prowed ships slice through the frigid waters of steep-sided fjords swathed in midnight-green pine forests. Fur-clad adventurers hunt walrus amid the crashing icebergs of the northernmost seas. Giants haunt the ice-capped mountains in an unreal world of midnight sun and northern lights.

We are used to reading tales of Viking rampages through lands both near and far from home: around the Baltic coastline, in Britain and Ireland, in what’s now northern France, Russia, even Canada. But none of these places seem so different from Scandinavia, in climate at least; indeed, some boast similar extremes of latitude. Even in the most temperate of these places, a sharp north-easterly or a rare winter snowstorm may come and go without raising an eyebrow. Likewise Vikings in times past. But, like the ice, it can feel jarring to find Vikings in places where we feel instinctively they don’t quite belong. Like Mallorca, southern France, even Egypt.

Of course, summer does come to the north. Vikings didn’t spend the whole year swaddled in bearskins. Still, like many of us, the inhabitants of those northerly climes might well have dreamed wistfully of a sun-soaked break in the Med – not least those hardy souls beyond the Arctic Circle who endured weeks of crushing midwinter darkness.

We don’t know exactly what sparked the Great Raid of 859–60, but we have a fair idea of at least some of what transpired. The expedition was supposedly led by Björn Ironside, son of the larger-than-life Ragnar Loðbrok (‘Hairy pants’), and Hastein, who was later involved in campaigns in Brittany, the Loire Valley and King Alfred’s Britain.

Having entered the Mediterranean and started as they meant to go in Al-Jazira al-Khadra, the Viking fleet next hit the kingdom of Nakur (or Nekor) on the north African coastline. There, in the words of one Asturian chronicler, they killed “a vast number of Muslims” and captured many others for ransom or for sale as slaves. The raiders headed back north via the Balearics, molesting Murcia, Mallorca, Menorca and, perhaps, Ibiza and Formentera.

Touching down on what’s now the Côte d’Azur, they pillaged their way through Perpignan, Narbonne, Nîmes, Arles and Valence. After a winter spent in the Camargue, the Vikings moved on to Italy, where they sacked Pisa. Thereafter, things get a little muddled. One far-fetched narrative has them aiming for Rome but getting confused, instead plundering the small port of Luni (a surprising mistake, given that Rome was far inland and to the south, and still possibly the largest and most architecturally impressive city in western Europe).

Whatever the truth of that tale, from Italy the fleet seems to have moved on to the eastern Mediterranean, and regions under the sway of the Byzantine empire. One chronicler even places Viking ships at Alexandria, near the mouth of the Nile.

We do know that the campaign nearly ended in disaster – for the Vikings. En route home through the Straits of Gibraltar (or, as it was known in Old Norse, Nǫrvasund, ‘Narrow Sound’), longships were intercepted by the formidable galley fleet of Muslim al-Andalus under the command of Qarqashish ibn Shakruh and the admiral Khashkhash. Andalusian forces decimated Viking crews with arrows and incinerated ships with bursts of ‘Greek fire’ – the nautical napalm of the early medieval world – belched across the water.

The Andalusians sailed close enough to engage the Vikings hand-to-hand across the ships’ bows: Khashkhash himself “fought them from the prow of his ship until he met a martyr’s death, may God have mercy on him”. Only a handful of Viking ships escaped the maelstrom – but those men who survived had gathered tales enough to fill many a long Nordic night.

• Read more | Forget the longships: this is the overlooked story of how the Vikings dominated eastern Europe

Capital ideas

The Great Raid was one of the largest, most dramatic and best remembered of the Viking adventures in the south, but it was far from the only such excursion. The sources rarely explain what inspired individual expeditions but, broadly speaking, adventures to such distant lands were animated by the same impulses that drove the Vikings to sail waters closer to home.

The main driver of raiding – and, indeed, military employment overseas – was the acquisition of capital. This was both economic, in the shape of plunder and extorted wealth, and social, in the form of fame and prestige. Both could be leveraged to gain political power back home. Stories of awe-inspiring deeds, and possession of the wherewithal to reward and retain a warband, provided the basis for power in early medieval Scandinavia. Viking exploits around the storied and wealthy Mediterranean rim had the potential to provide generous helpings of both.

Sometimes they could provide a springboard to the pinnacle of power and fame. When Harald Hardrada (more on whom later) returned to Scandinavia via what’s now Russia after a brutal mid-career sojourn in the employment of the Byzantine emperor, the poet Valgard of Voll said that:

Harald, you launched your vessel

Laden with a cargo of riches

Freighted with hard-won honour

And gleaming gold […]

Through storm and gale, great king,

You sailed your plunging vessel;

And as the sea-spray was thinning

You sighted at least Sigtuna.

Inside a year, Harald was king of Norway.

First fleet

It was some 15 years before the Great Raid, and half a century after the pioneering attack on Lindisfarne, that Vikings first sailed into the Atlantic and steered determinedly south. The first known sortie to the Iberian peninsula was made in 844. The 54 ships that undertook that journey blazed a trail that others – the Great Raid included – would follow and greatly extend over centuries to come. Setting out from Brittany, the Viking fleet harried the Atlantic coast of Iberia, landing at A Coruña and launching raids inland, but ultimately came to grief at the hands of Asturian stone-throwers and the stalwart resistance of the Christian king Ramiro I.

Thwarted there, the remaining Vikings cut their losses and headed south towards the Muslim emirate of al-Andalus. Their first stop was Lisbon, where they tarried for a couple of weeks to resupply their ships and terrorise the locals. Sailing on, the fleet sailed up the Guadalquivir river to menace the great city of Seville. Many of the inhabitants fled at the approach of the Norsemen, the reputation of these exotic marauders having preceded them.

What followed was an extravaganza of brutality that was grimly familiar in Britain, Ireland and France, but which was terrifyingly novel in southern Iberia. Viking raiders disembarked from their ships to pillage and despoil the Andalusian countryside, slaughtering men, kidnapping women and children, and burning settlements. Seville itself was largely ransacked, only the walls of the inner citadel halting the attackers. Terrified citizens huddling for refuge within the great mosque of Ibn Abbas were massacred.

Eventually, the emir, Abd al-Rahman II, got his act together. He mustered an army that confronted the Viking warband at an unidentified place recorded as Talyata where, according to the sources, 1,000 Viking warriors (or Majūs, ‘fire-worshippers’, as they are referred to in Arabic writing) were slain. Some 400 Norsemen were captured and executed in spectacular ways – decapitated or strung up on palm trees. According to the later source Ibn Idhari, Abd al-Rahman sent “the heads of the general, and of 200 of the noblest Viking warriors” to the tribes under Andalusian dominion in Africa. It was a warning and a reminder that his power, however much it had been tested by this novel threat, remained intact.

Though they didn’t make it into the Mediterranean on that occasion, the Vikings had delivered a nasty shock to the Andalusians. As a result, city and coastal defences were strengthened and naval patrols were enhanced – as the returning ships of the Great Raid discovered to their cost on their way home 16 years later.

Suburban terrorists

At around the same time that the Vikings of the Great Raid were pillaging their way around the western Med, another group were unleashing violence to the east. This was a sudden irruption of Rus – the adventurers of Scandinavian origin who settled between the eastern Baltic and Black Seas. Later establishing their epicentre in Kyiv, they sparked a long political and economic transformation of predominantly Slavic eastern Europe.

In 860, these marauders launched an attack on the suburbs of Constantinople. The earliest account describes the Northmen burning and plundering their way to the walls of the mighty capital of the Byzantine empire, terrifying the inhabitants. Later sources describe the raiders spreading out around the Sea of Marmara south of the city, and pillaging and burning monasteries on the archipelago now known as Princes’ Islands.

Capturing 22 of the exiled Patriarch Ignatius’ servants, the Rus took them “aboard their ships and cruelly dismembered them with axes, demonstrating their barbarity”. These attackers were the people whom Patriarch Photios of Constantinople – who lived contemporaneously with the events of 860, though didn’t record them directly – described as “a fierce and barbarous people, worshipping no gods and living in constant strife. Their coming brings destruction and sorrow to those lands they visit.” Sadly for the locals, it wouldn’t be the last time the Rus made their presence felt in the Bosphorus.

In 907, for reasons unstated, the Rus again assaulted Constantinople. The events were recorded in detail by the compilers of the Russian Primary Chronicle; though open to sceptical assessment, their words certainly paint a vivid picture. The attack was led by the Rus warlord Oleg, whose name was recorded as a Slavic form of the Old Norse Helgi, and comprised “Varangians [ie Scandinavians], Slavs, Chuds, Krivichs, Meryans, Polianians, Severians, Derevlians, Radimichs, Croats, Dulebs and Tivercians” – various East Slavic tribes.

According to this account, the Rus fleet comprised 2,000 ships, though Greek sources give the rather more credible figure of 350. Having landed outside the city, Oleg disembarked and led his army on another rampage through the suburbs, killing inhabitants, burning houses and razing churches. Prisoners were, so the chronicler recounts, “beheaded, tortured, shot or thrown into the sea”.

• Read more | "A Viking wedding involved a bed and eight people", plus four other facts about the Vikings you might not know...

The most remarkable episode in this otherwise fairly typical account of Viking atrocities was the order that Oleg allegedly gave “to fit the ships with wheels. When a favourable wind rose up, they set sail and bore down upon the city by land.” The residents were, quite understandably, “frightened to see this”. It is difficult to understand how this would have worked in practice, attempted at short notice by a raiding army speaking disparate languages and who, we must assume, had never done such a thing before. The smouldering ruins of the suburbs would also have presented challenging terrain for Oleg’s marauding land-fleet.

Whatever the true details of the assault, it’s recorded that the terrified city-dwellers “agreed to pay tribute, provide provisions and grant the Rus the right to trade in Constantinople tax-free”. A Rus-Byzantine treaty was indeed duly signed – and the Old Norse names of the Rus signatories leave no doubt as to their Viking origins.

This treaty included provisions granting the Rus access to Constantinopolitan markets, provided they adhered to certain restrictions. They were to use only one designated gate; their numbers in the city were limited to 50 at any one time; they were to be accompanied by Byzantine guardsmen; and their weapons were to be left outside the walls. In return, they received food and an allowance for six months. If the attack had been a coordinated strategy to wring economic concessions for Rus traders in Europe’s greatest marketplace, then Oleg’s campaign – land-ships or no – had been a resounding success.

Unruly contractors

For all that the Vikings represented a menace, it was clearly preferable to have them working in the service of the Byzantine empire rather than camped belligerently outside the walls of its cities. So, for at least 200 years, Scandinavians were employed as mercenaries, hired to prosecute the empire’s wars in all quarters of the eastern Mediterranean.

Northmen who served in this way, known as Varangoi by the Byzantines, were prized for their skills as sailors and fighters, and the empire’s far-flung interests took them all across the greater Byzantine world. From 902, when the first direct reference to Varangians appears in Greek sources, they could be found fighting the empire’s wars in Sicily, Italy, Crete, Croatia, Lebanon, Anatolia and Syria – not to mention Armenia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Georgia. And they left their mark in Constantinople: runic inscriptions in the stonework of the Hagia Sophia – the city’s great basilica, now a mosque – seem to be Varangian graffiti.

The Varangian phenomenon was turbo-charged in 988 when Vladimir the Great of Kyiv despatched 6,000 men to Emperor Basil II Porphyrogenitus (the ‘Bulgar Slayer’). The Rus leader issued the revealing advice to “not keep them in the city, for then they will only give you trouble, as they have given me”, finishing with the weary plea to “not let one man come back here again”.

Undesirable citizens they may have been, but these eastern Vikings quickly proved their military worth in Basil’s wars. Under pressure from within the imperial military hierarchy and from fractious neighbours in Bulgaria, Syria and Mesopotamia, the emperor was grateful for Vladimir’s assistance. He put his new recruits to immediate and effective employ, and Rus warriors were instrumental in crushing a revolt by the Byzantine general Bardas Phokas in 989.

Thereafter, Varangians became increasingly commonplace in the Byzantine military, serving in the imperial bodyguard – though the significance of their contribution may have been exaggerated in some sources. This policy was an extension of a long tradition in the imperial army of employing foreign fighters of diverse origins, from within and without the boundaries of the empire.

• Read more | Reading the runes: what we can learn about everyday life in the Viking Age

A legend in his lifetime

No Varangian was more celebrated – particularly by himself – than the future Norwegian king Harald Hardrada (‘Hard Ruler’). British readers will remember Harald best for his part in the events of 1066, when he led a Viking force to defeat – and his own death – at Stamford Bridge at the hands of the English king Harold Godwinson. The demands of that clash exhausted and diverted English forces, easing the path to Norman victory at Hastings a few weeks later, and the subsequent conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy.

A legend in his own lifetime, Harald travelled to the Byzantine imperial court via Kyivan Rus, and distinguished himself in campaigns fought on a number of fronts – most notably in Sicily, but also in the Greek islands and Bulgaria, and possibly north Africa, Syria and Anatolia.

The most eye-catching of Harald’s postings was to the Middle East. In verses ascribed to Stuf Thordarson, who supposedly heard it from the lion’s mouth:

With courage sharp as a sword-edge

The all-triumphant warrior

Left Greece to conquer Palestine –

An easy task for Harald

Tempting though it is to imagine Harald seizing control of the Holy Land with ease 60 years before the knights of the First Crusade achieved the same feat, in truth this is characteristic hyperbole. The future king seems rather to have been engaged in some sort of joint security operation designed to police the pilgrimage routes to Jerusalem under the terms of a deal between the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt and Emperor Michael IV. Nevertheless, while he was there Harald took opportunities hitherto open to very few Scandinavians: he bathed his weary bones in the river Jordan and paid his respects to Christ at the Tomb of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Viking Age was coming to a close; the Age of the Crusades was near. But, as Harald’s tale shows, the boundary between these two epochs was not as clear-cut or impermeable as modern historiographical terminology implies. When the Norwegian king Sigurd Jórsalfari (‘Jerusalem-farer’) set sail in 1107 in search of adventure in the Holy Land, he followed in the slip-stream of his Viking forebears. He sailed down the coast of Iberia, through the straits of Gibraltar and on via the Balearics, pillaging as he went.

The longships that arrived in 1110, and which blockaded the Fatimid controlled Levantine city of Sidon (now in Lebanon) as an ally of the Frankish king Baldwin of Jerusalem, bore all the hallmarks of the Viking fleets that had terrorised the Mediterranean in centuries past. On his return journey, during a pitstop at the old Varangian staging post of Constantinople, the Norwegian king made a gift to Emperor Alexios I Komnenos: “A very ornate dragon-head from the prow of his ship.”

Thomas Williams is a historian of the early Middle Ages. His new book God’s Hammer: A History of the Viking Crusade is due out in October 2026

This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine

]]> Everything you think you know about Vikings is WRONG https://www.historyextra.com/membership/viking-myths-video/ Thu, 11 Dec 2025 15:50:14 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/viking-myths-video/ You KNOW who the Vikings are – bearded, brutish, spoiling for a fight, and ever ready to raid an Anglo-Saxon monastery near you. Or do you? The Vikings were bearded, brutish, spoiling for a fight, and ever ready to raid an Anglo-Saxon monastery near you. How true is that, really?

It is a stereotype beloved across pop culture – most visibly in TV and film – but it’s also an oversimplified fiction. HistoryExtra’s Kev Lochun braves the ire of a sword-wielding colleague to break down what we get wrong about the Vikings – not least, that they didn’t even exist. Confused? It’s all downhill from the horned helmets.

View Green Video on the source website]]> In his mother’s womb, he was fated to avenge his father – how was pregnancy understood in the Viking age? https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/in-his-mothers-womb-he-was-fated-to-avenge-his-father/ Fri, 13 Jun 2025 13:48:47 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/in-his-mothers-womb-he-was-fated-to-avenge-his-father/ A powerful prophecy was made in the Laxdaela Saga, a tragic 13th-century Icelandic tale filled with gory twists and turns. It concerned the unborn child of the beautiful Guðrún, a woman caught in a violent sequence of love, betrayal and revenge… Guðrún was pregnant by her husband Bolli, though their marriage was not happy. After a series of taunts and insults played out between Guðrún, Bolli and Kjartan, Bolli had participated in the murder of Kjartan, who Guðrún had once loved the most. Seeking revenge for that death, a man named Helgi murdered Bolli, in front of Guðrún. Helgi then wiped the blood from his deadly spear on the shawl covering Guðrún’s belly, saying, “I think that under of the corner of that shawl dwells my own death”.

Helgi’s words became reality. The child she was carrying would one day grow up and kill him.

This striking story is one of only a few references found in Old Norse texts to pregnant women and their unborn children. But how typical is it? And what does it tell us about how Vikings understood pregnancy, unborn life and the women who carried it?

New research into Viking understandings of pregnancy

Those are the questions that new research, published in May 2025, has sought to answer, aiming to unpick the ambiguity and uncover what pregnancy was really like for Viking women, and examine its place within Old Norse culture and society.

In ‘Womb Politics: The Pregnant Body and the Archaeologies of Absence’ (Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2025), Marianne Hem Eriksen, Katherine Marie Olley, Brad Marshall and Emma Tollefsen examined 300 years of Viking texts, images, and burial evidence – and what they found was a culture that had surprisingly mixed views on pregnancy. In some places, the unborn were seen as people with destinies of their own. In others, pregnancy was treated more like a health condition, with no suggestion that the fetus had a separate identity at all.

What’s most striking, though, is how often pregnancy is simply left out of the record – not missing by accident, the authors say, but likely made deliberately invisible.

Women in the Viking Age

Hem Eriksen notes that there was no one way of experiencing life as a woman in the Viking Age. Most people lived on rural farmsteads where everyone had to do their part, and agricultural tools have been found in both male and female burials. Based on grave goods, some women seem to have been associated with long-distance trade or metalworking. One task that seems particularly female-gendered, however, is textile production, yet this task would probably look quite different whether you were a subaltern woman doing large-scale textile production in a pit-house, or a high-status woman weaving by the hearth in the feasting hall.

What women across social groups and standing may have had in common, was the experience of pregnancy. As the research explains, women who lived before effective forms of contraception likely spent much of their adult lives being pregnant, recovering from pregnancy, and nursing. Yet despite this centrality, pregnancy is rarely talked about in the written sources.

So the researchers dug deeper. Looking across sagas, poems, law codes and Christian writings, they searched for hints about how Vikings understood pregnancy.

• Read more | Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers

Legends and language

While most Old Norse descriptions of pregnancy were inferred rather than described, literature and language do provide some useful insight into how Vikings thought of pregnancy.

Guðrún’s story in the Laxdaela Saga is a potent example of when the Vikings gave “more existential weight to the fetus,” say the study’s authors. The story of Guðrún and her unborn son shows how the Vikings could sometimes imagine the fetus as a separate person, with its own fate.

When Helgi wiped the blood on her shawl, he was already seeing Guðrún’s fetus as a boy with a destiny, independent from his mother. Other Old Norse phrases for being pregnant – such as “to go not a woman alone” and “to walk with child” – support this interpretation too.

So, then, did Vikings see unborn children as integrated social persons? It might not be that straightforward.

Researchers also found words that emphasise the mother’s physical, or embodied, experience of being pregnant. When describing pregnant women, Old Norse societies used adjectives like ‘bellyish’ and ‘unlight’. Meanwhile, ‘health-lack’, ‘unstrong’ and ‘sickness’, highlighted the physical impact of pregnancy and labour, essentially viewing pregnancy as a female health condition.

It's a view that contradicts the story in the Laxdaela Saga – pointing to the idea that Vikings could also see the unborn as not yet having their own individual identity or personhood.

A pregnant warrior?

Away from textual sources, the researchers also sought out information from physical evidence: burials and artefacts.

Across the Viking Age, only one convincing visual representation of Viking pregnancy survives: a silver figurine, discovered in the 1920s in a burial mound in Aska, Sweden. The object is just 3.8cm tall and it depicts a circle with a human in its centre, cradling a round belly with her arms. It’s widely understood to represent pregnancy.

Intriguingly, this woman may also be wearing a helmet with a cloverleaf-shaped nose guard. When seen against the mounting evidence that some women were buried with full weapons' gear: could pregnant Viking women, alongside their unborn children, also be seen as warriors?

According to the authors, the artefact provides firm evidence that the notion of “a pregnant woman in arms was not an unthinkable concept”.

The burial record

Meanwhile, one of the most puzzling parts of the study comes from the burial evidence. Across the thousands of Viking Age burials that have been recorded by archaeologists, the authors of the new research found only 14 examples of a mother being buried with her infant: a number that’s misaligned with the fact that death during or around pregnancy was extremely common in medieval Scandinavia.

What could have caused this “extremely low” number of burials of mothers and infants together? The authors don’t believe this low number could be down only to poor preservation of the remains, nor that Viking women and infants who died in pregnancy and childbirth were exclusively cremated rather than buried. Instead, they suggest a third possibility: that mothers and their newborn children were separated, rather than being buried together.

• Read more | Gods, myths and rituals: what we know about Viking religious beliefs

This is one explanation as to why burials with Viking women and newborns are so rare – despite the evidence that death rates were so high – and the study suggests this was intentional by the Vikings.

The authors suggests a couple of theories for why this might have happened. The newborns might have been used as ‘grave-goods’ in the burial of other bodies, in the same way the Vikings buried adults with animal bodies – or used in other ritual practices. Alternatively, perhaps the newborns weren’t formally buried at all – which gives rise to the as yet unanswered, unsettling question of whether Vikings saw dead babies as worthy of grieving over at all.

A culture of contradictions?

In the end, the Viking view of pregnancy appears full of contradictions. The unborn could be seen as future warriors – or not as people at all. Pregnancy could be seen as powerful, or as a health burden to endure. It’s an ambiguity that seems paradoxical given how preoccupied the Vikings were with kinship and family.

Were the unborn their own beings with their own lives ahead of them, or not? Was pregnancy simply a state of health? Could the pregnant women even be warriors, in some form or another? And what happened to the mothers and infants who didn’t survive the experience?

Without clear evidence one way or another, the Viking Age understanding of pregnancy remains a complex puzzle: one in which birth, life and death were ever-present and deeply intertwined.

]]> Reading the runes: what we can learn about everyday life in the Viking Age https://www.historyextra.com/membership/viking-age-runes-decipher-everyday-life-death-love-poetry-travel/ Tue, 15 Oct 2024 16:26:41 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/viking-age-runes-decipher-everyday-life-death-love-poetry-travel/ Runes – those instantly recognisable characters inscribed on stone, wood and bone – are filled with mystery, but can reveal little-known aspects of everyday Viking life. Eleanor Barraclough deciphers runes that recount tales of love, lust, travel and tragedy from a millennium ago The Vikings are best known for their bloody raids, bawdy gods and buried ships. But they are also famous for the runes – the Nordic branch of the spiky north Germanic alphabet still so familiar today.

Though Viking Age culture was largely non-literate, runes were the chief exception, lying at the intersection between text and object. In the same way that the word ‘alphabet’ is derived by combining the Greek letters ⍺ (alpha) and β (beta), the Nordic equivalent, ‘futhark’, is derived from the first six letters of the writing system: ᚠ (f), ᚢ (u), ᚦ (th), ᚬ (a), ᚱ (r), ᚴ (k).

Surprisingly, because they represent such a recognisable and well-known form of ancient writing, no one knows for certain where runes came from. It’s probably no coincidence that many of the oldest interpretable runic inscriptions discovered – dating from the second century AD – were found in a context that shows evidence of contact with the Roman empire.

The shape of runic characters are similar to many letters of the Latin alphabet, but with an angular shape more suited for carving into hard materials such as wood, bone and stone. It’s likely that knowledge of the Roman writing system travelled north with people who had spent time on both sides of the imperial frontier along the Rhine, whether as mercenaries, traders or craftspeople.

Want to know more about the Vikings? Professor Ryan Lavelle leads our four-week HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course, available to HistoryExtra subscribers

This might also explain one possible meaning of the word ‘rune’ itself: something secret or hidden, originally reserved for a particular segment of society – an elite group. As the centuries passed, though, knowledge and use of runes spanned an ever-broader proportion of society.

The Viking Age is typically considered to encompass roughly the years 750–1100 AD – the period during which people of Scandinavian origins and heritage took part in overseas raiding, trading and settlement. At its height, the Norse diaspora they created stretched from Arctic Greenland in the west to the Eurasian waterways of the east.

• Listen | Neil Price takes us inside the Viking mind to explain how the Norse raiders viewed the world and what drove them to expand across the seas

Designating dates for a ‘Viking Age’ is a useful way to situate ourselves in time. But runes remind us that any historical age rarely has neat edges to mark its beginning and end. Runes were used in the Norse world several centuries before the infamous international raids started, and their use continued for centuries afterwards.

From the intimacies of daily life to the grand sweep of history, runes were used to record lives and deaths, preserving people’s names, their emotions, their humanity. Through them we come within touching distance of the people of the past, with their kaleidoscope of voices, experiences, emotions, relationships and beliefs.

Here, we will see how deciphering runes allows us to catch glimpses of five key aspects of Norse culture, spanning the commemoration of death, love and lust, drinking, word games, and the realities of travel in the Viking Age world.

Remembering a life

Many runestones were carved to mark the passing of beloved individuals, recording details of their lives and travels

The Norse inscriptions most familiar to us today are probably official runestones, typically commissioned to commemorate departed loved ones.

If you’ve passed through Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport, you might have walked straight past one such monument. Looming above the bustle of modern-day travellers, this incongruous lump of stone features the fading outline of two carved snakes arching round the edge and looping back on themselves. The bodies of the snakes are adorned with runes that translate as: Gunnar and Bjorn and Thorgrim raised this stone in memory of their brother Thorstein, who died in the east with Yngvar, and made this bridge.

• Read more | Test your knowledge of the Vikings with our ultimate quiz

This runestone was originally erected in the mid-11th century alongside a road and the bridge mentioned in the inscription, where it could be admired by travellers passing along the busy route. Commissioning such a stone was an expensive act that not only commemorated Thorstein’s life but also immortalised his three brothers.

The runestone mentions that Thorstein “died in the east with Yngvar”. In the region around Lake Mälaren, near Stockholm, are many other runestones that commemorate husbands, fathers, sons and brothers who, like Thorstein, went on that same eastern expedition – possibly in the direction of the Caspian Sea – and never returned.

Some of these runestones still stand where they were erected. Others have been built into the walls of churches and cathedrals. In all, some 20 names survive on various stones: Thorstein, Gunnleif, Harald, Saebjorn, Baggi, Gunnvid, Ulf, Gauti, Belgir, Hrodgeir, Tosti, Hugi, Thorbjorn, Skarf, Skardi, Bjorstein, Osnikin, Orm, Onun and, of course, Yngvar himself. Each runestone is a public testament to private family loss, grief and pride.

Love letters

Norse people recorded romantic passions and secret desires in runes

Many runic inscriptions from the Norse world were not meant for public consumption. Rather, they were the equivalent of the scrappy sticky notes, every day text messages and crude toilet graffiti of their time. Written on wood, metal, bone and stone, a number of the surviving messages record strong emotions: loves, lusts, rejections.

Some express fluffy sentiments of the sort that might appear in a packet of Love Hearts or on Valentine’s Day cards: “Think of me, I think of you! Love me, I love you!”

• Read more | How to write a love letter: 6 tips from the historical figures who did it best

Others provide the names of the ones doing the loving and the lusting. Runes on a piece of cow bone from Oslo read: “Asa loves St____”, with the latter word broken off after the first two characters. Asa is a woman’s name, and St____ is likely the fractured remains of a man’s name: Stein or Stefan, perhaps. In this case, Asa’s feelings don’t seem to be much of a secret, because the final runes on the bone spell out the word ek uæit – “I know.”

Other runic inscriptions hint at the sort of messy gossip that goes hand in hand with the human condition but which rarely survives for posterity: hints of same-sex acts, affairs, indiscretions and one-night stands. One carver tells us: “The clever woman lets loose for her lover, but folk still think she’s a virgin.” Another remembers the good times: “Ingibjorg loved me when I was in Stavanger.” Another spills the beans: “Clumsy-Kari and Vilhjalm’s wife are shacked up together.”

Some tell of people who have been unhappily friend-zoned: “I love another man’s wife so much that fire seems cold to me, and I am a friend of this woman.” Others hint at rejection or love affairs gone sour. One such, a 10th-century square weaving tablet made from bone, found in Lund (then in Denmark, now in Sweden), provides two out of three names in what appears to be a love triangle: Sigvor (female) and Ingimarr (male). The unnamed carver of the runes is most likely female, and the runes appear to form a curse, directed particularly at Ingimarr: the translatable part reads “Sigvor’s Ingimarr will have my weeping!”

There are examples of runic messages that were hidden in Norwegian stave churches, which tell us that private passions burned in these holy houses. A wooden runestick found in Urnes stave church at Sogn og Fjordane in south central Norway declares: “Arni the priest wants to have Inga.” Whether this was a confession by Arni himself or a scurrilous rumour started by a member of the congregation, we can’t know.

Another stick, found in Lom stave church in the same part of Norway, was inscribed by a man called Havard to woman identified only by the first letters of her name, possibly Gudny or Gunnhild. He is proposing marriage – but it seems that he’s not her only option, because “it is my full desire to ask for you” is followed by “…if you don’t want to be with Kolbein”.

Someone has attempted to conceal the identities of the people involved by scratching out the three names in this potential love triangle and dropping the wooden runestick surreptitiously between the church’s floorboards. Gudny/Gunnhild herself is a possible culprit – the wooden stick was found in the area of the church where women sat for mass – but we can only guess at the emotions that were going through their head at the time.

Booze-fuelled banter

Runes were used to summon errant husbands and make crude jokes

The biggest haul of everyday runic inscriptions was found at the medieval harbourside of Bryggen in Bergen, Norway. There were nearly 700 at latest count, most inscribed on little sticks discovered by archaeologists after some of the wooden buildings were destroyed by fire in the 1950s.

One, etched by a woman named Gyda around AD 1200, reads ᚵᛦᛆ:ᛍᛅᚼᛁᚱ:ᛆᛐᚦᚢ:ᚴᛆᚴᚼᛅᛁᛘ – transliterated into Roman letters as gya : sæhir : at þu : kak hæim. In English, that roughly translates as: “Gyda says that you should go home.”. Judging from where the stick was found, it seems likely that Gyda sent the message to her husband down at the tavern, telling him to finish up his drink and come home. On the other side of the stick are a flurry of indecipherable runes – perhaps a reply to Gyda carved by a husband too drunk to hold his knife steady.

Other runic inscriptions found in Bergen also bear the hallmarks of inebriation. One carved into a wooden handle reads: “If only I might come nearer to the mead-house much more often.” Elsewhere, a cow bone was scored with runes that proclaim: “Now there’s going to be a fight,” followed by an undecipherable reply in another hand – perhaps scratched by a couple of drinkers about to witness a noisy punch-up, one of them too inebriated to carve a coherent sentence.

Such inscriptions tell us that medieval Scandinavians could be as immature as the rest of us. We can almost hear sniggering across the centuries as someone takes up their knife to carve: “Sit down and interpret the runes, stand up and fart.”

And from toilet-based humour it’s only ever a hop, skip and jump to genital-based jokes. One line of alliterative poetry carved onto a length of wood might be translated as: “The vagina is lovely, may the penis serve it a drink.” Like all groundbreaking forms of technology, humans found a way to make it about bums and boobs.

Playing with words

Norse people enjoyed composing poetry and inventing linguistic games to help pass the time

Wordplay, poems and brain teasers were beloved by people across all strata of Norse society. It’s relatively rare to find evidence of these preserved in runes because such verbal games were predominantly oral rather than written. But some surviving runes reveal the diverse ways those living across the Norse world amused themselves.

One runestick dating from c985–1025 AD in the earliest decades of the settlement in Greenland tells us something about the sort of wordplay enjoyed by those who lived in the farthest-flung Norse communities. The stick involved is a four-sided piece of pinewood around 43cm long, with a natural knot at one end that resembles a birdlike creature.

• Read more | Old Norse poetry: how the Vikings viewed the world

It was discovered in 1953 by someone from the town of Narsaq who, while foraging for good-quality mud and soil for gardening, found themselves digging in what had been the living room of one of the earliest Norse farms.

Runes are inscribed on four sides of the stick. On one side, transliterated into the Roman alphabet, the runes read: o : sa : sa : sa : is : o sa : sat. Several interpretations of these runes have been suggested, with variations along the lines of “On a tub saw the person, who sat on a tub,” or “On the sea that seemed to be, which you did not see on the sea.”

Whatever the correct interpretation – and perhaps there was never meant to be just one – this is a fascinating example of word play using homonyms: words that have the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings. There are many examples of this in modern Nordic languages, one being the Icelandic sentence Afi á Á á á á á: “Grandpa from Á [a place] has a sheep by a river.”

Travel diaries

Items carved with runes provide evidence of the travels of Norse folk during the Viking Age

The previous example of runic wordplay from Norse Greenland, with its allusions to the sea, reminds us that this was a culture predicated on travel, both on land and on water. Other little scraps of runic inscriptions occasionally provide the names of ordinary individuals who travelled extraordinary distances, sometimes under extraordinary circumstances.

One of these inscriptions was found in a wooden coffin in the Norse graveyard of Herjolfsnes, close to the southernmost tip of Greenland. The coffin contained no body, only a wooden stick carved with runes that read: “This woman, who was called Gudveig, was laid overboard in the Greenland Sea.” She died on the voyage west, it seems, so this was as close to a burial as she could be given.

• Read more | Global Vikings: how the impact of the raiders and traders went far beyond Britain

Another example was discovered near the high pass of Lendbreen, in the mountains of south central Norway. This pass lay on an ancient highway – a track along which farming families moved up to and down from their summer pastures, as well as a route used by traders and long-distance travellers bound for other parts of the country and even across the sea.

As climate change bites, glacial archaeologists are racing to recover ephemera that were preserved here in ice for the past millennium. An extraordinary range of artefacts has been discovered, including farming equipment, a woollen mitten, a lot of frozen horse poo – and a relic revealing the name of at least one of the travellers who used this route during the Viking Age. Carved onto a wooden walking stick around AD 1000 are runes that read: “Ivar owns this.”

Wherever Ivar was heading, he had to reach his destination unaided by his stick – which lay frozen in ice for the next thousand years.

Eleanor Barraclough is a broadcaster, writer and historian based at Bath Spa University, and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024)

This article was first published in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine

]]> Ordinary Vikings: hidden histories of the Nordic world https://www.historyextra.com/membership/ordinary-vikings-podcast-eleanor-barraclough/ Mon, 07 Oct 2024 06:00:21 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/ordinary-vikings-podcast-eleanor-barraclough/ Eleanor Barraclough explores the daily lives of the Vikings who weren’t warlords or kings, but farmers, merchants, wives and lovers We know the Vikings best as brutal, seafaring, pagan raiders – and that’s an important part of their lives and histories. But it’s only one aspect: what about their love lives, experiences of travels, and attitudes to religion? Speaking with James Osborne, Eleanor Barraclough unpicks the day-to-day lives and culture of the Vikings across their vast – and complicated – geographic domain and timeline.

Eleanor Barraclough is the author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile Books, 2024)

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]]> Norse gods and goddesses: 14 of the most important deities venerated by the Vikings https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/norse-gods-goddesses-figures-guide-who-vikings/ Wed, 03 Jul 2024 15:11:57 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/norse-gods-goddesses-figures-guide-who-vikings/ Names like Odin and Thor are commonly known. But if can’t tell your Aesir from your Vanir, or don’t know what animals pulled Freyja’s chariot, or which of the gods and goddesses survived Ragnarök, here is a guide to some of the key figures and events in Norse mythology Before the existence of humans, before the cosmos, before the gods, there was the Ginnungagap: a gaping, primordial void. On one side of this yawning nothingness was an icy realm called Niflheim, and on the other was the land of fire, Muspelheim.

When the realms expanded and the ice and fire clashed together, a burning frost formed and sent heated water droplets into the Ginnungagap. There, they merged into the form of a being; the first life, a giant named Ymir, according to Norse mythology.

It was from Ymir that other lives emerged, among them the god Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve, who killed the giant and created the world from his corpse. His flesh became the earth and his blood the seas, oceans and rivers; his skull was turned into the sky and his brain used for clouds, while his bones made the mountains and his teeth the stones. The brothers then made humans from ash and elm trees.

From there, the legendary pantheon of Norse gods and goddesses burst forth, complete with a rich and complex set of beliefs that, today, we still know little about. Yet the names and images have lodged themselves in our consciousness, from Thor’s hammer to the afterlife at Valhalla.

Who are the most famous Norse gods and goddesses?

• Odin – The All-Father, god of war, wisdom, poetry, prophecy, runes and the dead
• Frigg – Goddess of motherhood, love and marriage
• Thor – God of thunder, the sky and agriculture
• Freyr – God of peace, prosperity and fertility
• Freyja – Goddess of beauty, gold and fertility
• Loki – The trickster god
• Heimdall – The watchman of the gods
• Balder – God of light, purity and summer sunshine
• Tyr – God of war, law and justice
• Njord – God of the sea, wind and bounty
• Hel – Keeper of the land of the dead
• Bragi – God of poetry and music
• Idunn – Goddess of youth, rejuvenation and spring
• Skadi – Goddess of winter, mountains, skiing and bow hunting

Odin: Norse god of war, wisdom and the dead

Known as: the All-Father, Father of Men, Woden

Known for: Ruler of Asgard, he was the supreme deity who sacrificed his eye for wisdom

Family: Husband to Frigg, father to many gods including Thor, Balder and Heimdall

Odin is the chief deity in the Norse pantheon and ruler of Asgard, worshipped as a god of war, wisdom, poetry, prophecy, runes and the dead.

Portrayed as a tall, aging man with a great beard, he would be accompanied by two ravens (Huginn and Muninn, who brought him news of everything they saw) and two wolves, and rode an eight-legged flying horse called Sleipnir.

He often hid his appearance by wearing a broad-brimmed hat and cloak to walk unrecognised among the humans of Midgard.

Odin craved knowledge, so much so that he sacrificed one of his eyes in return for perception of the cosmos, and he let himself be hanged on the world tree, Yggdrasil, for nine days and nights to gain understanding of the runes.

Norse warriors revered him, for he welcomed those who died in battle and were chosen by the Valkyries (Odin’s fierce and loyal shieldmaidens) to Valhalla, a magnificent hall in Asgard.

There, they trained all day in preparation for Ragnarök, the end of the worlds of gods and men, at which Odin was destined to meet his fate fighting the monstrous wolf, Fenrir.

• On the podcast | From Thor to Odin, Carolyne Larrington discusses the legendary figures of Viking mythology

Frigg: Norse goddess of motherhood, love and marriage

Known as: Frija, Frea

Known for: Her powers of prophetic visions and her doomed attempt to save her son from deat

Family: Wife of Odin, mother of Balder and Hodr

As Odin’s queen, Frigg – meaning ‘beloved’ – was the only goddess allowed to sit alongside the All-Father as an equal in the great halls of Asgard. She also resided in her own dwelling, Fensalir, or the hall of the marshes.

Despite her status as perhaps the most important goddess in the Norse pantheon, surprisingly little is known about her. Such is the confusion that there is a theory that Frigg and another goddess, Freyja, were actually the same person.

Frigg was gifted with the power of divination, although she never revealed what her visions showed her. This proved to be her torment: having prophesised the death of her son Balder (though in some tales, Balder prophesies his own demise), she travelled the Nine Worlds taking the oaths of all things, from beings to the elements, that they would not harm him. But the trickster Loki discovered the loophole that led to Balder’s fate.

Thor: Norse god of thunder, the sky and agriculture

Known as: Thunor, Thonar, Donar

Known for: The protector of humanity, he was a mighty warrior wielding his hammer, Mjolnir

Family: Son of Odin, husband to Sif

Famed for his skills in battle and his control over the storms that affected crops and sailing, Thor was one of the most popular and worshipped gods among the Norse people. Particularly in Norway and Iceland, he was the ultimate everyman god, called upon for myriad purposes.

Often portrayed as red-bearded, the son of Odin boasted such strength (and a fierce temper) that he could fight giants, armed with his enchanted belt and iron gloves that let him wield his famous weapon, the hammer Mjölnir, which had been forged by the dwarfs and could level mountains.

Mjölnir became a ubiquitous symbol in Norse art and culture, and remains one of the most important images of the Viking Age. Thor, however, once lost it to the giants and had to disguise himself as the beautiful goddess Freyja to get it back.

If not wielding his hammer, Thor (meaning ‘thunder’) was often depicted riding a chariot drawn by two huge goats – which he could kill and eat, then resurrect each day – or at Ragnarök, where he would kill the Midgard-encircling serpent Jörmungandr before dying of his wounds.

• Read more | Christians and pagans in Norse society: the real religious rifts between Vikings

Freyr: Norse god of peace, prosperity and fertility

Known as: Yngvi, Frey

Known for: For his associations with fertility, he was one of the most worshipped gods in Sweden

Family: Son of Njord, twin brother of Freyja

As son of the sea god Njord, Freyr was one of the Vanir who came to Asgard as a hostage following the war between the two tribes of gods. While still a baby, he was gifted Alfheim, one of the Nine Worlds where the elves lived.

His name meaning ‘lord’, he became one of the most venerated of the gods as a symbol of peace, prosperity and fertility, especially in Sweden where he has even been linked to the royal house.

His worship included offerings for a good harvest or virility, the latter explaining why many of his depictions included a particularly large phallus.

Freyr also owned a sword that could fight on its own, and a golden boar. But his prized possession was a ship that always had a favourable wind and comfortably fit the entire Norse pantheon inside, and yet could be folded up and put in his pocket.

Freyja: Norse goddess of beauty, gold and fertility

Known as: Mardöll, Hörn, Gefn, Syr

Known for: Beautiful and pleasure-seeking, she chose half of the Norse warriors who died in battle

Family: Daughter of Njord, twin sister of Freyr

While half of the warriors who died in battle were selected to go to Valhalla, the other half went to the meadow of Fólkvangar, presided over by Freyja. One of the Vanir, she also introduced the magic of seidr (prophecy) to the Aesir.

Famed for her ties to love and sex, Freyja (meaning ‘lady’) had a reputation for pleasure-seeking, and as she was also associated with gold, she craved material possessions.

Chief among them was her beautiful necklace, Brísingamen, made by four dwarfs. According to the legend, she spent a night with each of them to acquire it.

Freyja also had a cloak of falcon feathers that let her fly – which she loaned to other gods – and a chariot pulled by two cats named Bygul and Trjegul, given to her by Thor.

Loki: Norse trickster god

Known as: Lokki, Lokkemand, Lokke, Luku, Hvedrungr

Known for: His mischievous, often cruel pranks, and for siding against the gods at Ragnarök

Family: Son of a giant, father to Hel and the creatures Fenrir, Jörmungandr, births Sleipnir

Loki was a trickster, a shapeshifter, an agent of chaos. The child of a giant welcomed among the gods as a blood brother of Odin, he proved time and time again not to be trustworthy.

He sired the goddess of death Hel, as well as the monsters Fenrir (a wolf) and Jörmungandr (a serpent so large that it encircled Midgard).

By turning himself into a female horse and seducing a stallion, he gave birth to Odin’s eight-legged horse Sleipnir, too.

Perhaps the cruellest of Loki’s pranks was to trick Frigg into revealing that her son Balder’s only weakness was mistletoe, then getting Balder’s own brother, the blind god Hod, to kill him with a sharpened branch of the plant.

For that, Loki was bound to a rock with a snake dripping venom on him, with only his wife Sigyn to hold a bowl to catch the poison. He remained in that torture until Ragnarök , when he sided with the giants and was slain by Heimdall.

Heimdall: Norse watchman of the gods

Known as: Gullintani, Rig, Hallinskidi, Vindler

Known for: Keeping watch over Asgard and warning the gods of Ragnarök

Family: Possibly a son of Odin and nine mothers

From his fortress Himinbjorg, Heimdall stood watch over the rainbow bridge that connected Asgard and Midgard, while keeping an eye out for the first signs that Ragnarök had begun. If so, he would sound the Gjallarhorn (‘hollering horn’) to warn the other gods.

Heimdall could survive on as little sleep as a bird, see over huge distances and hear the grass growing. He was known as the shiniest god, partly for the whiteness of his skin but also for his gold teeth, hence his nickname Gullintanni (‘gold tooth’).

He was associated with sheep and rams – he could also hear the wool grow on a sheep’s back – and rode a great horse named Gulltoppr. When the time of Ragnarök did come, he was destined to meet his long-time enemy Loki in battle, where they would kill each other.

Balder: Norse god of light, purity and summer sunshine

Known as: Baldr, Baldur

Known for: A favourite of the gods, he was accidentally killed by his blind brother

Family: Son of Odin and Frigg, brother of Hodr and Hermodr

One of the best-known stories in Norse mythology is the death of Balder. Associated with light and purity, he was the fairest of the gods representing all that was good in Asgard. He had the greatest of all ships, Hringhorni, and the most beautiful hall of Breidablik.

As son of Odin and Frigg, his name means ‘prince’. But when his mother had a vision of his death, she sought to prevent it by seeking an oath from all things vowing not to harm him. Some stories tell how other gods then amused themselves by throwing objects at Balder, knowing he was immune.

But he had a weakness: Frigg had deemed mistletoe too small and harmless to worry about. Loki discovered this and tricked the blind god Hodr to throw a sharpened mistletoe branch at Balder, thus killing the ‘best of gods’.

Balder’s other brother Hermodr travelled to the land of the dead to plea and made a deal that he could return as long as everything in the Nine Worlds wept for him. The only being not to do so was a giantess (actually Loki in disguise), and so Balder remained in the land of the dead until Ragnarök.

Tyr: Norse god of war, law and justice

Known as: Tiw, Tiwaz, Ziu

Known for: In a selfless act of courage, he had his hand bitten off by the wolf Fenrir

Family: Possibly the son of Odin or of a giant

One of the oldest gods in the pantheon (his name simply means ‘god’), Tyr joined the likes of Odin and Thor in an association with war. More than that, he was interested in those wars being carried out according to law and justice, so he became linked to truces and peace.

Despite the presence of other war gods, Tyr held a status as one of the chief deities in the Norse pantheon. His most famous act of bravery did not come in battle, though. It came from the gods’ attempts to bind the great wolf Fenrir.

They went to the dwarfs to create an unbreakable chain, Gleipnir, made of the sounds of a cat’s footsteps, the beard of women, the roots of mountains, bears’ sinews, the breath of fish, and the spittle from birds.

When they tried to attach it, Fenrir demanded that one of the gods put their hand in his jaws as a sign of good faith. Tyr volunteered, but lost his right hand when Fenrir, realising the chain would not break, bit down in anger.

Njord: Norse god of the sea, wind and bounty

Known as: Njordr

Known for: He survived both an unhappy marriage with a giantess and Ragnarök

Family: Father of Freyr and Freyja

As one of the water gods, Njord could ensure safety at sea by controlling the waves, sending fair winds and quelling storms, and be called upon for plentiful fishing trips. Unsurprisingly, he was revered in the seafaring communities of Scandinavia.

He was also one of the leading members of the Vanir, who came to live in Asgard with his children Freyr and Freyja. There, he married the giantess Skadi, but they soon separated. He preferred to live at his dwelling by the sea, Noatun, while she wanted to be in the mountains.

Njord also holds a rare place of honour as being one of the few in the Norse pantheon to make it out of Ragnarök alive.

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Hel: Norse keeper of the land of the dead

Known as: Hela

Known for: She presided over the land of the dead for those who died of old age or sickness

Family: Daughter of Loki

While the name Hel (meaning ‘to cover’ or ‘to hide’) obviously evokes the modern-day notion of Hell, the land of the dead that the goddess Hel presided over was not solely a place of torment and eternal suffering.

Murderers, adulterers and oath-breakers faced punishments such as serpent venom and a dragon sucking their blood; for everyone else, it was simply where those not slain in battle went after death.

The daughter of Loki and the giantess Angrboda (not Odin and Frigg, as Marvel would have you believe), Hel was often depicted as having half the face of a normal woman while the other half was deathly pale, even blue, as if already a corpse. She was not a goddess to be worshipped, but a representation of death.

Bragi: Norse god of poetry and music

Known for: His love of poetry saw him become the skald of Asgard

Family: Possibly a son of Odin, husband of Idunn

Poetry was an important part of Norse culture, used to pass down stories and heroic deeds through oral tradition, and the bards and skalds were significant figures. The same was true for the gods: Bragi was wise and learned, and entertained in the halls of Asgard.

Despite claims that he was one of Odin’s sons, there is no evidence that he was worshipped as a god. In fact, he may have been based on a ninth-century poet, Bragi Boddason, who could have been deified and his name honoured in the pantheon.

According to legend, Bragi married the goddess Idunn, who helped him get out of a potentially life-threatening argument with Loki, who belittled his place among the gods. As a sign of his love of poetry, Bragi was said to have runes carved across his tongue.

Idunn: Norse goddess of youth, rejuvenation and spring

Known as: Ydun, Idun, Ithunn, Idunna

Known for: Keeping the magic apples that made the gods immortal

Family: Wife of Bragi

She may not be one of the most famous Norse gods and goddesses, but Idunn had one of the most important roles in Asgard. She looked after the magic apples – golden, in some of the sources – that the gods ate to achieve long life.

As such, Idunn (meaning ‘ever young’) was worshipped as the representation of youth and the new life that came every spring. She was also associated with fertility.

However, Loki played a trick on her. Luring her into a trap with the claim that he had discovered apples even better than the ones she cared for, Loki brought her and the apples to a giantess in the form of an eagle, who took her to Jotunheim.

When the gods began to age, they immediately suspected Loki and made him put things right. He saved Idunn by flying to the giants’ realm as a falcon and transforming her into a nut to be carried back to Asgard.

Skadi: Norse goddess of winter, mountains and skiing

Known as: Skade, Skathi

Known for: The giantess was a skilled bow hunter in the mountains, famed for her snowshoes

Family: Husband of Njord

As part of the goddess Idunn’s escape from Jotunheim, the giant Thiazi was killed. His daughter, Skadi, put on her war gear and went to Asgard for revenge, but was convinced to accept one of the gods as a husband in compensation.

She also demanded that one of the gods make her laugh, which Loki achieved by tying a rope to a goat at one end and his testicles at the other, then squealing in pain when the rope got pulled. (Later, it would be Skadi who placed the venomous snake over Loki for his torture when bound to a rock.)

The one condition for Skadi with selecting her new husband was that she could only see the gods’ feet. She picked who she hoped was the fair and handsome Balder, but ended up with Njord.

The marriage did not last, since they could not tolerate living in the other’s preferred environment. Skadi dwelt in the mountains, hunting with a bow, skiing and wearing her famed snowshoes.

Did any Norse gods and goddesses survive Ragnarök?

At Ragnarök, the gods were destined to be defeated in the great final battle of the cosmos against the a formidable set of opponents: giants; an army of the dead led by the goddess Hel; and the monstrous creatures sired by Loki; the wolf Fenrir and world serpent Jörmungandr.

With the Nine Worlds turned to darkness and engulfed in flames, the majority of the Norse gods and goddesses perished, including Odin, Thor, Heimdall, Freyr and Tyr. Loki, who sided against the gods, also died.

From the cataclysm, so the legend has it, a handful of gods survived and a new world would emerge. There is no known mention of what happened to the goddesses. Among them were Thor’s sons Magni and Modi, Odin’s sons Vali and Vidar (who killed Fenrir), Hoenir and the sea god Njord.

Balder and Hodr, who died before Ragnarök, returned from the land of the dead to live in the new world, and even two humans, Lif and Lifthrasir, managed to escape the destruction.

Where do the Norse gods and goddesses live?

The Norse gods and goddesses live, according to legend, on Asgard, one of the Nine Worlds of the cosmos. At least, the Aesir do. Other gods, the Vanir, live on Vanaheim (more of that below). Midgard is the realm of humans, while the giants and elves dwell on Jotunheim and Alfheim respectively.

A rainbow bridge, the Bifrost, links Asgard and Midgard, but all of the Nine Worlds are connected by the branches and roots of Yggdrasil, the mighty and sacred ash tree at the centre of the cosmos.

• Read more | Gods, myths and rituals: what we know about Viking religious beliefs

How many Norse gods and goddesses are there?

Without a full encyclopaedic knowledge of Norse mythology – the sources are scant and contrary, ranging from stone carvings and mentions in poetry to the Prose Edda, a handbook for Skaldic poetry from 13th-century Iceland – there is no knowing how many gods and goddesses were venerated by the Vikings.

The number 66 is often cited, but other sources say only a couple of dozen stand above as the main deities that were worshipped over the centuries. Here are some of the key figures in the pantheon, and their key characteristics according to legend.

What is the difference between the Aesir and the Vanir?

The Aesir and Vanir can essentially be seen as two different tribes of Norse gods.

The larger group is the Aesir, made up of some of the most recognisable names in the pantheon (Odin, Frigg, Thor, Loki and Heimdall among them). They are more warlike than the Vanir, a group mostly associated with fertility and the power to see the future. They include Njord and his children Freyr and Freyja.

Early in the mythology, the Aesir of Asgard and Vanir of Vanaheim went to war. With neither able to claim victory, though, they agreed to a truce in which hostages from both sides were taken.

What days of the week are named after Norse gods and goddesses?

Nearly all the days of the week in the modern English language got their names from Norse gods and goddesses, somewhat indirectly. The Romans had named the days after the Sun, Moon and planets linked with their gods; these were then given an Anglo-Saxon adaptation, whose gods had roots in the Norse pantheon.

So, while Sunday and Monday are named for the Sun and Moon respectively (Sol and Mani in Norse), Tuesday honours the war god Tyr; Wednesday is named after Odin (or Woden); Thursday marks Thor’s day; and Friday got its name from Frigg (or possibly Freyja, or both if they were indeed the same person).

The exception is Saturday, which comes from the Roman god Saturn. For the Norse, this was laugardagur, or ‘washing day’.

Discover more learning from week three of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course

Video: Daily life, with Professor Ryan Lavelle – watching time 19 mins What was life like for Viking women? – reading time 7 mins Inside the Viking mind – reading time 10 mins Podcast: What Norse poetry reveals about the Viking Age – listening time 48 mins Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers – reading time 7 mins How England rode the Viking storm – reading time 12 mins Viking ‘warrior women’ – reading time 3 mins

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