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| My BWL books on Smashwords |
As you can probably guess I have a fascination for the Vikings. There
have been many tales told of them and their exploits, their travels, and above
all about their raiding, looting, ravishing, and brutality. Most of what we have learned
of their exploits comes from findings in graves and digs in places around the
world that they inhabited. My main fascination with them is because of their
great seamanship and their wonderful skills at building the ships that allowed
them to sail to far off places. Their navigational skills set them apart.
The Vikings came from all over the region known as
Scandinavia. They didn’t get along with each other and fought with their
countrymen as fiercely as they fought with their enemies. The word Viking comes
from “vikingr” which means pirate, or “Viken” the area around the Oslo fjord in
Norway. They were also called Norsemen (men from the north)
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| The deck of a longship |
Vikings were skilled in metal work and this helped their
society to create the sharp axes they used to cut down the wood needed for
building their famous ships and houses. After the trees were cut down the land
that was left was perfect for the farmers to grow their crops. The Vikings
prized their swords and it was said they even gave them names.
Warriors would
often be buried with their weapons so they could use them in the afterlife.
A Viking craftsman’s chest was discovered in Sweden in 1936
that contained amazing implements and tools that were used for metal working
and carpentry. Is it any wonder their longships were a masterful work.
The Vikings did not invent the runes but adapted a script in
use at that time in parts of central Europe. The Vikings had a 24 letter
alphabet that was reduced to 16 letters by AD800. Runes were replaced by the
Latin alphabet as the Vikings were converted to Christianity.
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| Viking 16 rune alphabet |
Vikings were masters of their environment and because of this
their culture flourished. So, coastal settlements obviously became
over-crowded. Thus the first adventurers set of in their wonderful ships to
find new lands. Early Viking raiders were known to arrive at a new land in
the spring, spend the summer there looting, then sail home for the winter.
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| A Viking jeweler's tools |
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| Domestic Viking objects found at Coppergate, York UK |
Vikings despised weakness. Even their poor babies who were
sickly were often thrown into the sea at birth or left outside to perish so
they would not be a burden to the family.
If you watched the series on TV last year “Vikings”, which I
would not have missed for the world, it had Ragnar’s wife in a quandary as by
rights she should have had one of their babies killed when it was born with a
slight deformity, but she refused and clung to the child, which caused all
sorts of problems between them. This series was not for the faint-hearted as it contained brutality of the worst kind.
The Vikings loved their rituals. Some were horrific by our
standards. They made sacrifices to their gods—of animals and people. Every nine
years they held a ceremony in Sweden (according to a writer named Adam of Bremen) where animals
and humans were sacrificed and their blood was offered to the gods
and their bodies were then hung from trees.
I could go
on for pages about the Norsemen, but guess this is where I should end.
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