Stories, knowledge and myths about Vikings, runes and the Norse gods.
How a teak engraving tells a 1,000-year-old heroic saga – and what the Gotlandic picture stones have to do with it.
Weiterlesen →Odin’s mark of the fallen: what is truly attested – and which ‘Viking symbols’ were only invented in the 19th century.
Weiterlesen →Why the Bluetooth symbol on your phone is the bind-rune of a Danish Viking king.
Weiterlesen →Two books, one name: where all our knowledge of Odin, Thor and the Norse myths really comes from – and why it should be read with care.
Weiterlesen →The world ash that holds the nine worlds together: eagle, dragon, the squirrel Ratatoskr and the wells of the Norns – the Norse order of the cosmos.
Weiterlesen →An eye sacrificed, ravens, Sleipnir and nine nights on the world tree: why the all-father Odin is the most complex and uncanny of the Norse gods.
Weiterlesen →The god with the hammer Mjölnir: protector of humankind, foe of the giants – and, with over 1,000 amulets found, the most tangible Norse god in the archaeological record.
Weiterlesen →Love and fertility, but also war, death and seidr magic: Freyja chooses half of the fallen and is one of the mightiest goddesses of the North.
Weiterlesen →Shape-shifter, Odin’s blood-brother, father of Fenrir and Hel: Loki is the most ambivalent of all Norse gods – both fixer and cause of trouble in one.
Weiterlesen →Urd, Verdandi and Skuld at the Well of Urd: the women of fate whom even Odin cannot escape – and why fate was imagined as female in the North.
Weiterlesen →The Fimbulwinter, the wolf set loose, the dying of the gods – and the green world after: why the Norse end of the world is also a new beginning.
Weiterlesen →Where the runes came from, why they are angular, what the Elder Futhark is – and how Vikings really used them in daily life. An honest introduction.
Weiterlesen →No horns on helmets, no endless war: most Vikings were farmers and craftspeople. What everyday life in the smoky longhouse was really like.
Weiterlesen →Agile, fast, seaworthy: how the longships from Oseberg and Gokstad were built – and why they opened half the world to the Vikings.
Weiterlesen →Silver from the Orient, amber, furs and slaves: Hedeby was one of the largest trading hubs of the Viking Age and the gateway between the North and Baltic seas.
Weiterlesen →Riders on eight-legged horses, longships and gods: on the Gotlandic picture stones people told their sagas in stone – centuries before the Edda.
Weiterlesen →A royal ship full of gold beneath a mound and the famous ceremonial helmet: Sutton Hoo opens a window into the Germanic heroic world of Beowulf.
Weiterlesen →Harald Bluetooth’s mighty rune stone in Jelling – Denmark’s birth certificate and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The king who united a land and baptised his people.
Weiterlesen →Keys to the household, rights of inheritance and divorce, the enigmatic warrior grave of Birka: the strong yet limited role of women in the Viking Age.
Weiterlesen →Honey, water, time: how mead was brewed, why it flowed at every feast – and why poetry itself was known as the ‘mead of poetry’.
Weiterlesen →Warriors in sacred battle-fury, clad in bear or wolf pelt: what the sources really say about berserkers and úlfheðnar – and what is later legend.
Weiterlesen →Roofs of shields, spears for rafters, daily battle and nightly feasting: Odin’s hall of the einherjar and its meaning in the Norse worldview.
Weiterlesen →An assembly of free men, a law-speaker reciting from memory, the Icelandic Althing of 930: how the Vikings created law and order without a king.
Weiterlesen →About 500 years before Columbus: Leif Erikson, the Vinland sagas and the archaeological proof at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
Weiterlesen →Ship burial, cremation and many realms of the dead: how the Vikings honoured their dead and what they imagined of the afterlife.
Weiterlesen →The old god of law and war lays his hand in Fenrir’s jaws – knowing he will lose it. The most haunting tale of sacrifice in the Edda.
Weiterlesen →Guardian of the rainbow bridge Bifröst, with superhuman senses and the Gjallarhorn that heralds Ragnarök: a portrait of the most watchful of the gods.
Weiterlesen →The hero who slays the dragon Fafnir, understands the speech of birds and wins a cursed hoard – the great saga of the Völsungs, model for the Nibelungenlied.
Weiterlesen →On Odin’s behalf they choose the fallen, escort them to Valhalla and hand them the mead: the many-layered role of the valkyries in Norse mythology.
Weiterlesen →The older divine race of fertility: Freyr and Njörd, the war of the Vanir with the Æsir, and why Freyr gave up his sword for love.
Weiterlesen →The goddess whose apples grant the Æsir eternal youth – and what happens when a giant steals her away. A key tale about the mortality of the gods.
Weiterlesen →Shield to shield, spear forward: how the Vikings really fought – the shield wall, weapons, and why battle was more disciplined than the myth suggests.
Weiterlesen →The Norse winter feast at the solstice: mead, oaths and remembrance in the darkest time – and which traces of Jól reach all the way into our Christmas.
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