Tag: featured
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Viking History: Northmen, Danes, and Swedes
The ‘Viking’ homeland was more diverse than you’d think—but of course we’re going to start with the classics: Northmen (aka Norwegians), Danes, and Swedes. We’ll cover their Old Norse names, the regions where each group primarily lived, and even talk about their natural resources and how they survived/shaped their cultural identities in their respective environments…
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Let’s Raid the Vikings
Vikings. What do you think when you hear that word? Whatever comes to mind, this video will help separate popular fantasy from historical reality.
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Harald Fairhair: Unification and Cultural Migration
This post was originally delivered as a virtual lecture to the New York Ancient Cultures MeetUp on September 20th, 2020. It was a group effort between myself (fjörn) and Joshua Gillingham (author of The Gatewatch). Below is the transcript I used while giving my portion of the talk. As such, I don’t have any footnotes,…
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An Icelandic Pilgrim amid the Crusades: Nikulás Bergsson
During the mid-twelfth century, an Icelander named Nikulás Bergsson went on a pilgrimage that took him over 4,000 miles away from his home in northern Iceland to Jerusalem in the Holy Land. We don’t know much about him, but it is clear that he was a lettered Benedictine monk.[1] Around the year 1153, however, Nikulás…
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Njal’s Saga: A Medieval Best-Seller Most People Haven’t Heard of
If you want to experience a medieval Icelandic ‘family’ saga at peak performance, then this is the saga to read. […]
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The Vikings and Their Era
Who were the Vikings? What were they really like? Were they really all violent berserks? What was their reputation? Is it true? And what was their world like? — Join me on this Raid to explore the history of the Vikings!
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Children, Adulthood, and the Social Functions of Arm-Rings in the Viking Age
Anonymous asked: Hello Fjorn! I have watched the tv show; Vikings, and wondered if you could tell us more about the vikings’ rite of passage into adulthood. There don’t seem to be much information available regarding this, and I’m curious of for example if they did give their children armrings like Bjorn and the other…
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More on Old Norse Orthography: Ö vs Ǫ
neonsuntan replied to your post: “How far should we go to preserve old Norse Orthography? Most…” Should we use ö, o, or ǫ for the first vowel in Voluspa? Also many of the original texts used an “av” ligature that simply isn’t supported in many fonts. (It’s Latin extended-d A739). Concerning ‘ǫ’ and ‘ö’: The ‘ǫ’ spelling is what…
