Tag: medieval history
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Raid 3: Wends, Balts, and Finnar
We’re wrapping up our coverage of the people inhabiting the Viking Age North! This time we focus on the ‘side’ characters: Wends, Balts, and Sámi/Finns. As you’ll learn in the raid, these groups frequently mingled with the Norse, creating complex settlements and cultural expressions. We’ll also emphasize just how much environment affects cultural development, including…
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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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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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Saint Patrick
“My name is Patrick… I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburniae. His home was near there, and that is where I was…
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Introducing the Course: Medieval Iceland
“The story goes that some people wanted to sail from Norway to the Faroes—a viking called Naddodd, to name one of them. They were driven out to sea westwards, and came to a vast country.” (landnámabók, 16) Far to the north lies a small island called Iceland. Settled by vikings, it eventually would become an…
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The Geography and People of Medieval Scandinavia
As one might guess, Scandinavia is a cold place. It is no wonder why Hel is a cold place, and Niflhel even colder. Stretching upwards along the Scandinavian peninsula is The Keel, a vast mountain range between Norway and Sweden that stretches into Finland. The famous fjords were formed by ancient glaciers. The coast, particularly Norway’s west coast, was known as the “Northern…
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The Viking Age and Our Sources
Starting today (25th of March, 2016), I will begin a series of posts regarding Viking History. I have noticed that I have failed to present Viking History in a more condensed and unified way, and so I hope these posts will help solve that. I will do my best to post a lesson each Friday…
