Welcome to the great Viking blog by Glanz & Gravur: 540 articles on Norse mythology, runes, gods, symbols, the history of the Vikings and their everyday life – honestly researched, with sources and a clear myth check. Bilingual in German and English.
Dive in by the great fields of knowledge – from the Norse gods and the runes to the history of the Vikings and the Germanic tribes. Every article cleanly separates evidence from interpretation.
A people named exactly once - and Tacitus turns it into a lesson about language and belonging.
Clients of the Arverni, then a civitas of their own - and a name that still lives on as the Velay.
A Liutizian people on the Tollense - and the river where, two thousand years earlier, entirely different people fought.
West Slavic, Lutheran, Pomeranian: between Lake Leba and Lake Garde lived a population whose language nobody speaks today.
Read more →Small, unspectacular and yet well attested: Caburus and his Roman citizenship, Procillus in chains before Ariovistus, Alba Helviorum and the name Vivarais.
Read more →One name in a list in Pliny and nothing else: no battle, no chieftain, no tombstone. A workshop report on where the source ends and guesswork starts.
Read more →Thor's hammer, Valknut, Vegvisir, Aegishjalmur, Web of Wyrd: which Norse symbols are attested from the Viking Age, which are modern, and which are…
Read more →What runes really are: a genuine script, not a magic alphabet. The three rune rows, the rune poems, rune stones and rune magic explained honestly…
Read more →Spear, axe, sword, shield, bow, seax, mail and helmet: the complete overview of Viking-Age weaponry – honestly sourced, with a clear line between…
Read more →Harald Fairhair, Bluetooth, Cnut the Great, Hardrada and Rollo: the key rulers of the Viking Age at a glance – honest, with a clear line between…
Read more →Frigg, Freyja, Iðunn, Skaði, Sif and the forgotten Ásynjur: an honest overview of the goddesses of Norse mythology – what the sources attest and…
Read more →Cold-blooded instigator of murder, or defiant heroine of Vinland? The Vinland Sagas tell of Freydís, daughter of Erik the Red, in two utterly…
Read more →Did shield-maidens really exist? Honestly separated: what Saxo and the sagas tell, what the Birka Bj 581 grave actually proves – and where fiction…
Read more →The great overview of Norse deities: Aesir and Vanir, Odin, Thor, Loki, Tyr, Baldr, Heimdall and more – explained honestly, with evidence, a…
Read more →Gullinbursti, Hildisvíni and Sæhrimnir: why the boar was sacred to Freyr and Freyja, what boar helmets really tell us, and where the myth begins.
Read more →Freyja's cat-drawn chariot, the cat as farm and ship animal, cat bones and the Viking-Age fur trade – plus an honest myth-check on breeds and names.
Read more →Wolf, raven, dragon, horse, boar, bear, cat and the creatures of Yggdrasil: the big overview of the animals of Norse mythology – honest, with…
Read more →What do Ragnar, Astrid, Björn or Sigrid mean? How Norse names are built, lists of well-known men's and women's names with origin and meaning –…
Read more →Who lived 2000 years ago between Aachen, Cologne and the Lower Rhine? The Eburones, Ubii, Treveri, Batavi and the Germani cisrhenani – an honest…
Read more →An accessible overview of Norse mythology: the Aesir and Vanir, the nine worlds and Yggdrasil, creation and Ragnarök – explained honestly, with a…
Read more →Which gemstones actually mattered in the Viking Age? Amber, carnelian, rock crystal, garnet and jet – where they came from, what finds and…
Read more →Longship, snekkja, skeið, drekar, karvi, knörr, byrðingr: which Viking ships existed, what they were built for, and why "drakkar" is a…
Read more →The great glossary of the Viking Age: blót, seiðr, ørlög, þing, drengr, kenning and more – Old Norse terms explained clearly, spelled correctly…
Read more →Edda, Sagas of Icelanders, legendary and kings' sagas: an honest overview of Old Norse narrative literature and its great stories – Sigurd,…
Read more →How did the Norse celebrate and sacrifice? An overview of Blót, Sumbel, rites of passage, oracles and oaths – honestly separating secure evidence…
Read more →How did children grow up in the Viking Age? Naming rites, toys, fosterage and hard reality — honestly split into what is proven and what is modern…
Read more →Beer (öl) was the daily drink of the Viking Age - not mead. Ingredients, the brewing process, beer in feast and cult, drinking vessels, and an…
Read more →Farmer, smith, weaver, bead-maker, skald: an honest overview of the trades and crafts of the Viking Age, evidence separated from legend. Why…
Read more →How family really worked in the North: the kindred (ætt) as bilateral kinship, names without surnames, marriage and the woman's role, fostered…
Read more →Did all brave Vikings really go to Valhalla? An honest look at the many realms of the Norse dead - Valhalla, Fólkvangr, Hel, the sea and the…
Read more →Ansgar (801–865) was among the first to bring Christianity to Hedeby and Birka. Who the monk from Corbie really was, what the Vita Anskarii tells…
Read more →Widukind, leader of Saxon resistance in the Saxon Wars (772–804): the Irminsul, Verden, flight to the Danes, baptism in 785. Evidence and myth…
Read more →To the Norse the wolf was both threat and companion: Fenrir, Sköll and Hati, Odin's wolves Geri and Freki, the Ulfheðnar and the double word…
Read more →Hugin and Munin, the raven as bird of battle and death, the Viking raven banner and Floki's ravens on the way to Iceland – explained honestly,…
Read more →Giant serpents, not movie dragons: Jörmungandr, Níðhöggr and Fáfnir explained honestly – what is attested, what is later myth, and why serpent…
Read more →What were Viking-Age fortresses really like? An honest guide to the Danish ring fortresses, the Danevirke, the Birka garrison and building in…
Read more →Were the Vikings Germanic? An honest guide: different eras, shared roots, and plenty of misconceptions. Evidence and myth kept firmly apart.
Read more →From the Germanic spear to the Viking shield wall: weapons, formations, sea battles and tactics – honestly researched, with a clear line between…
Read more →Red, blue and yellow from nature: the dye plants of the Viking Age, mordanting with alum, and an honest step-by-step guide to dyeing wool –…
Read more →From Oseberg to Urnes: the six Viking art styles with their diagnostic features, plus a practical step-by-step guide to drawing a real…
Read more →The Vikings were masters of woodcarving — but most of it is gone. Oseberg, Urnes, tools, techniques and an honest step-by-step guide to carving…
Read more →Filigree, granulation, niello and lost-wax casting: how the Vikings made their jewellery, which metals they really used, and why most of it was…
Read more →Which colours did the Vikings know, how did they make them and what did they mean? Red from madder, blue from woad, the double-edged blár, silk as…
Read more →How Proto-Germanic grew out of Indo-European, what Grimm's Law and the sound shifts did, and how Old Norse, Gothic and German are related –…
Read more →How did Germanic peoples and Vikings do justice? The Thing and the Alþingi, wergild, blood feud, oath-helpers, outlawry and the law codes –…
Read more →Antler combs, the grooming kit, the wash day laugardagr and hot springs: how clean were the Vikings really? Evidence and myth kept honestly apart.
Read more →What a sacred place in the Germanic-Norse world really was: holy groves, springs, mountains, bogs, burial mounds and assembly sites -…
Read more →Springs, wells and lakes as places of offering in the Germanic-Norse world: Mimir's well, Trelleborg, the Fontes Sequanae, the Rhineland Matronae…
Read more →The Semnones' grove, Thor's Oak, the Irminsul, the tree of Uppsala and the farmstead tree: what the sources really say about sacred trees and…
Read more →Why were mountains and rocks holy? Helgafell, the dead living inside the mountain, rock carvings and Sámi sieidi – an honest split of evidence and…
Read more →Weapons, wagons, butter and people: sacrificial bogs and bog finds explained honestly. Nydam, Illerup, the Tollund Man, Gundestrup – evidence and…
Read more →Where did the blót take place? Stone altar (hörgr), cult hall (hof) and open-air site – honestly explained: the evidence shows multi-purpose halls…
Read more →An honest look at amethyst: mineralogy, colour from iron and radiation, the name meaning "not drunk", Pliny, the bishop's ring, the…
Read more →Garnet cloisonné of the Migration and Merovingian periods, almandine from India and Sri Lanka, Sutton Hoo, and an honest look at the Viking Age –…
Read more →What moonstone really is: adularia, feldspar and the phenomenon of adularescence. Its name, Pliny's ancient account, its use as a gemstone, care…
Read more →How Ribe, Hedeby and Birka turned imported glass into beads: winding technique, millefiori, amber and carnelian, beads as women's dress and small…
Read more →The warp-weighted loom, spindle, wool and linen, tablet weaving, vaðmál and the enormous ship's sail: how Viking-age textiles were really made -…
Read more →Most Vikings were farmers, not warriors. How barley, livestock, dairy and the hay harvest decided life and death - historically grounded and…
Read more →Angelica archangelica, Old Norse hvönn: in the North this Arctic plant was a valued vegetable, seasoning and trade good – so valuable that…
Read more →Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) was highly poisonous yet meaningful: Fyrkat grave 4 held hundreds of seeds in a pouch at the belt. What the evidence…
Read more →How the Vikings used, rode, sacrificed and revered their horses: from the tough Icelandic horse and horse fighting to Odin's eight-legged…
Read more →Brown bear and polar bear in the life of the Norse: bear pelts in graves, bear-names like Björn and Bödvar Bjarki, the polar bear as a royal gift…
Read more →Who was Saxo Grammaticus? His Gesta Danorum, Amleth as the source of Hamlet, Baldr versus Hother, Starkad and Bravalla – and why Saxo shows a very…
Read more →Adam of Bremen (d. after 1081) wrote around 1075 the most important continental source on the Vikings: the Gesta Hammaburgensis. On the temple of…
Read more →From bog iron to sword: bloomery, pattern-welding and the Mästermyr tool chest.
Read more →Clinker planking, split oak and woollen sails – how longship and knorr were built.
Read more →Amber, carnelian and rock crystal in the North – really traded, honestly framed, no healing promise.
Read more →Clear quartz as amulet and the ground Visby lenses – and what modern esoterica makes of it.
Read more →Madder, woad and weld: the Norse loved bold colours – the grey Viking is a screen myth.
Read more →Two half-years, weeks and eykt instead of a clock: how the Vikings measured time.
Read more →Chieftain, poet, politician: the man we owe the Prose Edda to – read critically.
Read more →Furs, silver and thralls: most Vikings were traders, not raiders.
Read more →Thing, wergild and outlawry: law without state or prison – and why the Althing was no parliament.
Read more →The seeress with staff and blue cloak whom even Odin questioned – evidence and modern myth.
Read more →Seville 844, Hástein & Björn Ironside 859–862, Luni and the road via Byzantium to Sicily.
Read more →Hedeby, Birka, Wolin and the Wends – the Baltic as a Norse-Slavic trading world.
Read more →The hair-vow, the battle of Hafrsfjord and the unification of Norway.
Read more →Missionary king, the ship Ormrinn langi and the fall at Svolder around 1000.
Read more →The superhuman smith, captured and crippled – and his dark revenge.
Read more →How Freyr woos the giantess Gerðr – and loses the sword he will lack at Ragnarök.
Read more →An Anglo-Saxon whalebone casket from around 700 – Wayland, Rome and Christianity, in runes.
Read more →793 Lindisfarne, the Great Army, the Danelaw and Cnut the Great: the whole arc of the Vikings in England.
Read more →River raids, the siege of Paris, Rollo and the birth of Normandy – the Vikings in West Francia.
Read more →Varangians on the eastern rivers: the Rus, the road to Miklagard and the Volga route to the Caliphate.
Read more →Across the Atlantic: Iceland, Erik the Red in Greenland, Leif in Vinland and L'Anse aux Meadows (1021).
Read more →Dublin and Clontarf, the Earldom of Orkney, the Isle of Man and the Hebrides – the Vikings' western road.
Read more →From the formula „Thor hallow these runes“ through reddening, formula words and amulets to the poetry: all forms of rune consecration, attested and honestly separated from myth.
Read more →Where do the runes come from, and how did 24 characters become first 16 and elsewhere more than 30? A detailed, source-based treatise on the Elder, Younger and Anglo-Saxon Futhark.
Read more →Pliny names them between the Sunuci and the Baetasii. Beyond that only cohorts, diplomas and one very stubborn error remain.
Read more →Ten thousand men against Caesar, a theatre at Lillebonne and a landscape name that has outlived two thousand years.
Read more →On the lower Warnow lived a people that stood against its own confederates in the civil war of 1057. And its god was a misreading.
Read more →Tacitus says they were the first to be called Germani. Their capital Tongeren lies less than 40 km from Aachen.
Read more →Six hundred men sworn to die with their leader, and a people who went underground when war came.
Read more →Cyril and Methodius, a new script, ramparts on the Morava - and a realm whose own name remains unknown.
Read more →Tacitus calls them neighbours of the Batavi, Rome built Wiesbaden on their springs, and Martial bought their soap balls.
Read more →Caesar counts them among the Belgae, their coins name Ratumacos - the place became Rouen, the tribal name became the Vexin.
Read more →In 680 Asparuch's Bulgars crossed the Danube. What Theophanes says about the Slavic tribes - and what he leaves out.
Read more →Neighbours of the Sunuci, named by Pliny and Tacitus, later a cohort on the Antonine Wall in Scotland.
Read more →Caesar counts them among the levy for Alesia. Their name became a city, their sanctuary became Gisacum.
Read more →Three years of siege, a tribute and a move west. What the chronicles really say about the Ulici.
Read more →Between Aachen, Juelich and Eschweiler lived a people Tacitus names, whose goddess Sunuxsal was worshipped at Kornelimuenster.
Read more →Vercingetorix surrendered in their oppidum in 52 BC. Caesar left them to starve between the siege lines - and says so himself.
Read more →The Primary Chronicle calls them tolkoviny, interpreters, and places them along the river to the sea. What can actually be shown.
Read more →In 929 Henry I broke their stronghold Gana and founded Meissen. Thietmar tells of their holy spring Glomuzi.
Read more →One of the four peoples of the Liutizian federation - and in 1057 at the heart of the civil war that tore it apart.
Read more →Between Pripyat and Dvina, tributary to the Rus - with a distinctive bead jewellery still recognised today.
Read more →A goddess, a rash bargain with a king, and a single night in which four giant oxen rip a whole island out of the ground: the Gefjon story is one of …
Read more →A valkyrie punished by Odin with a sleep-thorn. A hero who rides through the flames. A betrayal that ends in blood. Brynhild is one of the mightiest …
Read more →Few characters have made the thunder god as famous as Marvel's Thor – and few have spread as many misunderstandings. Loki as a sulking brother, a …
Read more →The series „Vikings" brought the Viking Age to a whole generation – and along the way it compressed, condensed and invented a great deal. Ragnar …
Read more →A monastery on a tidal island off the coast of Northumbria, a summer's day in 793 – and a shock that echoed all the way to the cloister schools of …
Read more →About 30 kilometres west of modern Stockholm sits a small, unremarkable island in Lake Mälaren. Walk across Björkö today and you will see sheep …
Read more →The axe is the most honest tool of the Viking Age. It split firewood, built ships, cut paths through the forest - and, when it had to, it decided a …
Read more →If the axe was the weapon of the common man, the sword was its opposite: costly, rare, inherited and often given its own name. Few objects of the …
Read more →Sword and axe get the glory, yet the most common kit of the Viking warrior was round, wooden and surprisingly light: the round shield. It was no …
Read more →Odin, Thor, Freyja, Loki & the whole pantheon of Aesir and Vanir – with Edda sources.
Explore →Elder and Younger Futhark, meaning, rune stones – plus the rune-of-the-day tool.
Explore →Valknut, Vegvísir, Yggdrasil, Thor’s hammer – genuine or modern invention?
Explore →From Lindisfarne to the princely graves – Vikings and Germani in Germany.
Explore →Clothing, jewellery, food, craft, ships – real life in the north.
Explore →The great family tree of peoples – 170+ linked tribe articles.
Explore →The Vikings were Scandinavian seafarers, traders, farmers and warriors of roughly 793–1066. "Viking" describes an activity rather than a people – most lived settled lives as farmers and craftspeople.
No. There is not a single archaeological find of a horned helmet from the Viking Age. The image only arose in the 19th century through opera and painting.
In the Norse gods of the Aesir and Vanir – above all Odin, Thor, Freyja and Loki. Their world held nine realms around the world tree Yggdrasil.
Runes were the script of the Germani and Vikings – for inscriptions on stones, weapons and everyday objects. There is the Elder Futhark (24 signs) and the Younger Futhark (16). More in the rune lexicon.
The Edda is the most important source on Norse mythology: the Poetic Edda (Codex Regius) and Snorri’s Prose Edda (13th c.). Read many lays bilingually in our library.
Ragnarök is the prophesied doom of the gods – the last battle in which many gods fall and the world sinks. Yet from the end a new, greening world arises. More in the Ragnarök article.
The great overview: blót, Yule, Winter Nights, Álfablót, the Nerthus procession and the whole Germanic festival year – honestly separated from the modern eightfold reconstruction.
Weiterlesen →A grave almost 9,000 years old with an antler headdress – one of the oldest and most enigmatic burials in Europe.
Weiterlesen →A 2,400-year-old statue with a leaf crown, a golden neck ring, a lavish grave: the power of the early Celts – in the middle of Germany.
Weiterlesen →Thor’s hammer, Valknut, Yggdrasil, Vegvísir – which symbols are genuinely Viking-Age and which are modern.
Weiterlesen →Blót, sumbel, the feasts of the year, naming, burial – the rituals of the Vikings at a glance.
Weiterlesen →Horned helmets, dirty barbarians, skull cups – the honest fact check of the best-known clichés.
Weiterlesen →Europe's westernmost Slavic tribe in eastern Holstein: Starigard, the sacred grove of Prove and the end in crusade and settlement.
Read more →At Lake Ilmen the connection was forged from which the Rus emerged: Ladoga, Holmgard, Perun on the Volkhov and the birch-bark letters.
Read more →Gniezno, Mieszko I and the emperor who entered barefoot in the year 1000 and weeks later opened Charlemagne's tomb in Aachen.
Read more →The Primary Chronicle tells how the Avars harnessed Duleb women to their carts – and how the Avars themselves vanished without a trace.
Read more →Fourteen dukes baptised at Regensburg in 845, Wenceslas murdered, Cosmas inventing the ploughman – what of it is actually evidence.
Read more →From the duchy of Pomerelia to a recognised regional language – the one Baltic West Slavic group still alive today.
Read more →A small Weser tribe named by Tacitus as companions in the fate of the Cherusci – the rise and fall of a small people.
Read more →Seafarers of the far west of Brittany, tin traders and allies of the Veneti against Caesar.
Read more →A West Slavic fortress-people of Upper Lusatia – 30 forts, subjugation by Henry I, the legacy of the Sorbs.
Read more →Splendid helmets, boat graves, pressblech and animal style – the shining workshop where Viking art was born.
Read more →A small tribe in the Lüneburg region, named by Tacitus: what the sources give and what stays conjecture.
Read more →King Diviciacus ruled as far as Britain per Caesar; from their land grew Soissons.
Read more →The people of the fields on the Dnieper, from whom the Primary Chronicle grows Kiev and the Kievan Rus.
Read more →A small Germanic tribe in the northwest, named by Tacitus; its name may live on in the Hase.
Read more →According to Caesar the bravest tribe of the Belgae: 60,000 warriors, two revolts; from their land grew Beauvais.
Read more →Tribute to Khazars and Kiev, defeated by the Wolf's Tail in 984: neighbours and brother-people of the Vyatichi.
Read more →A Germanic tribe of the Lower Rhine, related to the Sugambri – from their land grew the Colonia Ulpia Traiana.
Read more →Their call for the German Ariovistus opened Caesar's door into Gaul – Vesontio became Besançon.
Read more →East Slavs on the Oka who resisted Kiev and Christianity longest – out of their land grew Moscow.
Read more →A small Germanic tribe in the east of the Netherlands, named by Tacitus – its name lives on in Twente.
Read more →From their chief town Condate grew Rennes – an Armorican tribe, allies in the revolt against Caesar.
Read more →Subject first to the Khazars, then to Kiev – a load-bearing tribe of the Rus, core of the principality of Chernigov.
Read more →A southern Swedish people from Götaland, home of the hero Beowulf – rivals of the Svear, root of Sweden.
Read more →Celtiberians on the Douro who redistributed their farmland yearly – tenacious against Hannibal and Rome.
Read more →West Slavs on the lower Elbe – in the Wendland their language survived into the 18th century.
Read more →A Germanic kingdom of central Germany, crushed on the Unstrut in 531 – King Hermanafrid falls at Zülpich. The name lives on in Thuringia.
Read more →From their chief town Caesarodunum grew Tours – allies of Vercingetorix, later the city of Saint Martin.
Read more →One of the earliest Slavic principalities – with the unique installation ritual on the Prince's Stone. Legacy: Carinthia & Slovenia.
Read more →A Belgic-Germanic tribe, according to Caesar descendants of the Cimbri – in 57 BC 53,000 were sold into slavery.
Read more →From their chief town Vesunna grew a splendid Gallo-Roman city – famed for the tower temple of the goddess Vesunna.
Read more →Like the Serbs they came from the north – but chose the Latin West. Constantine VII, Glagolitic, the Adriatic.
Read more →Reudigni, Aviones, Angles & co. jointly worshipped the earth goddess Nerthus according to Tacitus – wagon procession, island, sacrifice.
Read more →A Celtic mountain people around Rodez, famed for silver and red earth – their name lives on in the Rouergue.
Read more →The South Slavic branch: how a people, according to Constantine VII, moved from the north across the Carpathians to the Balkans.
Read more →In the Campine heath Julian settled the Salian Franks in 358 – the seed of the Merovingians and the Frankish realm.
Read more →A Celtic tribe of the pre-Alps with special status – the historian Pompeius Trogus came from it; Vaison & Die.
Read more →The forest tribe slew Prince Igor in 945 – Olga's fourfold revenge became the most famous scene of the Primary Chronicle.
Read more →Batavian neighbours in Holland, feared cavalry for Rome and co-starters of the revolt of 69 under Brinno – their land becomes Kennemerland.
Read more →A Celto-Ligurian league around the oppidum of Entremont – their fall in 123 BC gave Provence its name.
Read more →An East Slavic league around Smolensk and Polotsk – at their trading place of Gnyozdovo Slavs and Varangians met.
Read more →Varangians on the Russian rivers: Rurik, the road to Byzantium, the baptism of 988 – how Norsemen and Slavs became a realm from Novgorod to Kiev.
Read more →Prince Jaxa of Köpenick and the Slavic origin of Berlin: why the capital, its rivers and oldest districts carry Slavic names.
Read more →The only West Slavic tribe that has survived as a people with its own language in Lusatia to this day.
Read more →A Slavic tribe on the Havel around the Brennaburg whose last prince bequeathed his land to Albert the Bear.
Read more →Slavs on the Baltic between Oder and Vistula, with Wolin, the Triglav cult and Otto of Bamberg.
Read more →The mightiest Slavic federation on the western Baltic, allies of Charlemagne, with Reric, the Mecklenburg and Prince Niklot.
Read more →A league of free tribes without a prince, with the sanctuary of Rethra, the revolt of 983 and the alliance with the emperor.
Read more →A Slavic sea power on Rügen with the temple-fortress of Arkona and the four-headed god Svantevit, until the Danes came in 1168.
Read more →The only surviving pagan magic texts in German: Wodan heals Balder's horse.
Read more →The goddess after whom Friday is named, attested in the Second Merseburg Charm.
Read more →Tuesday to Friday: the gods Tiwaz, Wodan, Donar and Frija in the calendar.
Read more →Lot-twigs, sacred horses and bird flight: how the Germani questioned the future (and what that has to do with runes).
Read more →Between Tacitus's imageless cult and real wooden idols from the bogs.
Read more →Godesberg, Odense and more: where Germanic god-names still stand on the map.
Read more →A Germanic people in today's Sweden, praised by Tacitus for its fleets, forerunners of the Svear and the Vikings.
Read more →The amber gatherers of the Baltic: they gathered the gold of the sea that only trade with Rome made valuable.
Read more →A northern Germanic people whom Tacitus singles out because a woman ruled over them.
Read more →Two peoples in the midst of Germania who spoke Gaulish and Pannonian: not everything was Germanic.
Read more →A Suebian people on the edge of the Carpathians who coolly negotiated with Rome in the Marcomannic Wars.
Read more →A small Danube people, neighbours of the Marcomanni, whose leader defected to Rome in the Marcomannic Wars.
Read more →A Celtic power at the confluence of Sava and Danube, on the site of today's Belgrade.
Read more →The people of Boudicca: a broken promise, a humiliated queen and the greatest revolt in Britain.
Read more →Britain's strongest kingdom before the conquest, people of Cunobelinus and the resistance leader Caratacus.
Read more →Celts at the tin of Cornwall whose metal supplied all of Europe. Namesakes of Devon.
Read more →Celts in the Limousin, allies of Vercingetorix. From their land came Limoges and the Limousin.
Read more →Seafarers at the mouth of the Loire, neighbours of the Veneti. From their harbour came Nantes.
Read more →A Germanic war and thing god (Tiwaz) on Hadrian's Wall, worshipped by Batavian soldiers with two goddesses.
Read more →The strong god of the Lower Rhine, worshipped under the name of Hercules and probably a form of the thunder god Donar.
Read more →The goddess of the Marsi, whose famous sanctuary Germanicus levelled to the ground in AD 14.
Read more →The goddess in the sacred grove of the Frisians, where a Roman army perished in AD 28.
Read more →Who led the Germanic cult? Priests, lot-readers and highly revered seeresses from Veleda to the völva.
Read more →Sacred groves instead of temples, blót and bog finds: how the Germani sacrificed and where evidence ends and interpretation begins.
Read more →A mighty Germanic tribal league between Oder and Vistula, master of the amber road in eastern Germania.
Read more →Their sacred grove was dedicated to the divine pair Alcis, Germanic twin gods from an early age.
Read more →A people made homeless on the Ems and the moving speech of Boiocalus for a piece of land.
Read more →The Angrivarian rampart divided them from the Cherusci and became a battlefield against Germanicus in AD 16.
Read more →A Germanic cavalry people of the 3rd century that pushed to Italy, attested by the Augsburg victory altar.
Read more →Related to the Chatti, a Rhine tribe that merged into the Frankish league. Name in the district of Hattuaria/Hetter.
Read more →The Celts of Scotland whom Rome never subdued, and Calgacus with a line for the ages.
Read more →The unbending people of south Wales who gave Caratacus refuge and defied Rome for years.
Read more →Britain's largest people and Queen Cartimandua, who stayed loyal to Rome and handed over Caratacus.
Read more →A mountain people in north Wales near the druid island of Anglesey, who long defied Rome.
Read more →Celts of the Eastern Alps and core of the kingdom of Noricum, famous for Noric iron.
Read more →Celts on the Alpine edge, subdued by Rome in 15 BC. From their land came Augsburg.
Read more →From small Rhine tribes grew the mightiest Germanic league, which united Gaul under Clovis, with our home region as its heart.
Read more →A Germanic tribe on the Upper Rhine around Strasbourg, third in the Rhine-Germani trio beside Nemetes and Vangiones.
Read more →A Lower Rhine tribe that merged into the Frankish league, a prime example of how many peoples became the Franks.
Read more →One of the first Germanic peoples to meet Greeks and Romans, far to the east on the Black Sea.
Read more →Named by Tacitus on the Vistula: the early Goths with strong kingship, before they moved south.
Read more →The oldest and noblest Suebian people, keepers of the sacred grove in which the whole league saw its origin.
Read more →The Celtic peoples of the island and the bloody revolt of Queen Boudicca against Rome in AD 60/61.
Read more →Celtic warriors who moved as far as Asia Minor, to whom the biblical Letter to the Galatians is addressed.
Read more →Spain's Celtic warriors, famous for their sword and the resistance of Numantia against Rome.
Read more →The mightiest Celtic people of the Po plain and founders of Mediolanum, today's Milan.
Read more →The Celtic coastal people on the Channel whom the Romans regarded as the most remote of men.
Read more →A people on both sides of the Channel: prince Commius also founded a kingdom in Britain.
Read more →An East Germanic people closely related to the Goths who founded a kingdom on the Danube after Attila died.
Read more →The third tribe of the great migration to Britain: from Jutland to Kent and the Isle of Wight.
Read more →A North Sea tribe in the league of the Nerthus peoples, preserved in a law code of its own and in a tale by Procopius.
Read more →From this East Germanic people came Odoacer, who deposed the last Western Roman emperor in 476.
Read more →A Germanic Rhine tribe around Speyer, settled by Rome as a border people. From Nemetum came Speyer.
Read more →A Germanic Rhine tribe around Worms: from Borbetomagus came Worms, later seat of the Burgundians.
Read more →Their city Avaricum became in 52 BC the scene of one of the cruellest sieges of the Gallic War.
Read more →Celts on the Atlantic coast around Saintes, goal of the Helvetian migration and later a flourishing Roman civitas.
Read more →Celts in the marshes of the Rhine delta near our region, who eluded Caesar with guerrilla war.
Read more →Rome's allies around Langres, drawn into the Batavian revolt and the dream of a Gallic separate empire.
Read more →Shipbuilders on the Atlantic coast around Poitiers who built Caesar a fleet. Their name lives on in Poitou.
Read more →The last resistance of the Gallic War: Lucterius and the fortress of Uxellodunum in 51 BC.
Read more →A mighty tribe on the Lower Rhine, Rome's foe, immortalised in the baptismal words to Clovis: bow your neck, proud Sugambrian.
Read more →Two Germanic tribes whose Rhine crossing in 55 BC ended in a massacre for which Caesar was criticised even in Rome.
Read more →A Germanic tribe from today's Schleswig who moved to Britain and gave England (Angla-land) its name.
Read more →Rome's most loyal allies in Gaul around today's Reims, who held firm to Rome even in the great revolt of 52 BC.
Read more →Celts between Rhône and Alps, subdued early by Rome, whose envoys exposed the Catiline conspiracy.
Read more →From the legendary gold of Tolosa to the Galatians in Asia Minor, their name living on to this day in the words Welsh and Wales.
Read more →A free coastal people on dwelling mounds, traders and seafarers of the North Sea who long eluded Rome and the Franks.
Read more →From the east to North Africa: Geiseric's sea kingdom, the sack of Rome in 455, and why the word vandalism is a modern distortion.
Read more →A kingdom on the Rhine around Worms, the fall in 436, and from it grew the historical core of the Nibelung saga.
Read more →In the sacred centre of Gaul: here the druids assembled, here in 52 BC fell the spark of the great revolt.
Read more →Sea power of Celtic Brittany with ocean-going ships, whose fleet went down against Caesar in 56 BC.
Read more →The Celtic people on the Seine whose capital Lutetia became the world city of Paris.
Read more →A Germanic tribe on the Rhine whom Agrippa resettled to Cologne, in the heart of our home region. Their Colonia became Cologne.
Read more →Feared North Sea raiders, neighbours of the Vikings and Charlemagne's toughest foes, from Widukind to Christianisation.
Read more →From a legendary homeland in the north to the sack of Rome: Wulfila's Bible, Alaric, Theoderic, a people changes world history.
Read more →The people of Vercingetorix, who united all Gaul against Caesar, from Gergovia to the siege of Alesia.
Read more →Rome's brothers and kinsmen in Burgundy: mighty, allied and yet in the end part of the great revolt, with Bibracte at its heart.
Read more →The Celts who sacked Rome under Brennus in 387 BC crying Vae victis, the terror of the city on the Tiber long before Caesar.
Read more →Ambiorix destroyed a legion and a half in 54 BC in the land between Rhine, Meuse and Eifel, in the heart of our home region, and Caesar took terrible revenge.
Read more →Celts on Moselle and Rhine, the best horsemen of Gaul, namesakes of Trier, a people right on the border between the Celtic and Germanic worlds.
Read more →No wine, no luxury, no yielding: Caesar's bravest of the Belgae, who nearly drove his legions to destruction at the Sambre.
Read more →The great migration from the north, the catastrophe of Arausio in 105 BC and the Cimbrian terror that gripped Rome for generations.
Read more →From the Baltic coast to the Danube: an East Germanic wandering people whose kingdom Odoacer shattered in 487. Name → Rügen (disputed).
Read more →Feared warriors of the Migration Period, and the only people from whom Procopius records a return to the far north, to Thule.
Read more →Son of Olaf the White and Aud the Deep-Minded: he conquered large parts of northern Scotland, fell by betrayal, and his death triggered the emigration to Iceland.
Read more →Viking king of Dublin in the 9th century, husband of Aud and forefather of a dynasty reaching from Ireland to Iceland.
Read more →She secretly built a ship, led her kin across the sea and became one of the greatest first settlers of Iceland, one of the strongest women of the Viking Age.
Read more →Seafarers and pirates of the North Sea coast on dwelling mounds, praised by Tacitus as the noblest people, described by Pliny as poor mud-dwellers, early Vikings.
Read more →The Celtic tribe of Switzerland, whose great migration in 58 BC gave Caesar the pretext for the Gallic War. Name → Helvetia/CH.
Read more →A far-flung Celtic tribe from northern Italy to central Europe, whose name echoes to this day in Bohemia (Boiohaemum) and Bologna.
Read more →The earliest script of the Celts: notches on a stone edge, mostly names. The Celtic sister of the Germanic runes.
Read more →The sacred grove of the Celts: a cult place in the forest instead of a temple. Its name lives on across Europe, and it is akin to the Germanic grove.
Read more →Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh: the four fire festivals that structured the Celtic year, honestly separated from the modern eightfold Wheel of the Year.
Read more →The tribe and the sanctuary of the goddess Tanfana, which Germanicus razed to the ground in a single night.
Read more →Rome's restless neighbours on the Danube, allied with the Marcomanni, and the famous rain miracle of the Marcomannic Wars.
Read more →Home of the seeress Veleda, resistance against Rome, and one of the bloodiest fratricidal wars of the Germanic world.
Read more →The Celtic festival of the dead at the start of winter, when the boundary to the Otherworld grows thin. The real origin behind Halloween.
Read more →Hochdorf, Glauberg and the Heuneburg: gold, a bronze couch and an early town on a Mediterranean model, in the middle of Germany.
Read more →Long sword, golden torc and the cult of the head: fearless fighters who frightened even Rome, between evidence and legend.
Read more →King Marbod's kingdom in Bohemia and the great Marcomannic Wars against Marcus Aurelius, an early foreshadowing of the Migration Period.
Read more →From an Elbe tribe to a kingdom in Italy, and the origin legend in which Wodan gives them their name, evidence of the continental Wodan cult.
Read more →The Germanic seeress whose word steered war and peace in the Batavian revolt, venerated like a deity. On the power of seeresses.
Read more →The shining healing and light god of the Celts, worshipped from Gaul to the Adriatic. And his echo in the fire festival Beltane.
Read more →The enigmatic god with the axe who fells a tree from which a bull and cranes emerge. One of the great riddles of Celtic religion.
Read more →The Irish goddess of war, death and fate, a raven over the battlefield. A Celtic sister of the Valkyries.
Read more →Rome's Germanic elite riders in the Rhine delta who swam the Rhine in armour. Their revolt of 69/70 and the god Hercules Magusanus.
Read more →The confederation on the Upper Rhine, all men. From the Roman wars to Clovis, and the name by which half of Europe calls Germany.
Read more →Rome's most reliable trading tribe, the only one allowed to trade freely in the provinces, and their sacred salt war against the Chatti.
Read more →The Germanic thunder god with the hammer, before he was Thor. Lord of oak and storm, namesake of Thursday, brother in spirit of Thor and Taranis.
Read more →Celtic goddess of fire, healing and poetry, mistress of the festival Imbolc. And how the goddess became Saint Brigid of Kildare.
Read more →The Celtic horse goddess, so popular that even the Roman cavalry worshipped her and gave her a feast day. The goddess with the horse between Celts and Rome.
Read more →The shining master of all arts of the Celts: smith, warrior, poet and healer in one. His name lives on in Lyon (Lugdunum) and the harvest festival Lughnasadh.
Read more →The Celtic thunder god with the wheel, kin to Donar and Thor. Where Donar swings the hammer, Taranis holds the wheel, the same role in a different visual language.
Read more →The god of the tribe: his name (toutā = people) is cognate with Germanic *þeudō and thus with the word deutsch. A god of the people between Celts and Germanic peoples.
Read more →Priests, judges and scholars of the Celts with knowledge learned by heart for years. What Caesar reports, and why the romantic Druid image (Stonehenge!) is invented.
Read more →The horned lord of the animals, famous from the Gundestrup cauldron. A god we see but barely know from texts. Evidence versus modern interpretation.
Read more →The goddess of the North Sea traders with dog, cornucopia and ship. Over 300 votive stones attest her cult, religion and trade closely woven.
Read more →The oldest god of the Germanic peoples – cognate with Zeus and Jupiter. From sky to war god, Mars Thingsus, the Tiwaz rune, Tuesday and Týr's hand sacrifice.
Read more →Gods like Tiwaz, Wodan and Donar, sacred groves instead of temples, Nerthus and sacrifice: the belief of the Germanic tribes – from Tacitus and finds.
Read more →Druids, gods like Lugh, Taranis and Teutates, sacred groves – and the striking closeness to Germanic belief (Teutates ↔ *þeudō).
Read more →Beautiful from the front, hollow or with a tail from behind: the seductive forest woman of Scandinavian folklore – between seduction, forest guardian and animate nature.
Read more →The little house spirit of the farm – helpful but easily offended, with his bowl of buttered porridge. And a forerunner of today's Christmas gnome.
Read more →From the giants of the Edda to the mountain spirit of the tales: sometimes huge and dumb, sometimes small and cunning – and turned to stone in the sun.
Read more →The trinity knot from a single endless line: an ancient ornament from gold bracteates to the Book of Kells – and what its meaning really is (and what is interpretation).
Read more →Bent iron as protection against trolls: genuine old iron folk belief – but the amulet itself is modern (Sweden, 20th c.). Honestly explained.
Read more →Nine staves, the Norns' net of fate. Wyrd vs. urðr, and why the drawn symbol is young (Brian Bates 1983, motif only from the 1990s).
Read more →Banished for manslaughter – and founder of the Greenland settlement. The man who gave an icy island the alluring name “Greenland”.
Read more →In North America around the year 1000 – 500 years before Columbus. L'Anse aux Meadows proves it, the felling year 1021 dates it.
Read more →Mercenary in Byzantium, king of Norway, fallen at Stamford Bridge in 1066 – his death is seen as the end of the Viking Age. A life like a saga.
Read more →He united Denmark, raised the Jelling stones and brought Christianity – and sits in the Bluetooth logo to this day (bind rune ᚼ + ᛒ).
Read more →A Viking on England's throne: king of England, Denmark and Norway – and the often mis-told legend of how he commanded the tide.
Read more →From raider to duke: in 911 he received what became Normandy and became the ancestor of William the Conqueror. The real Rollo behind the “Vikings” show.
Read more →An early trading place in Pomerania with workshops, long-distance trade and mysterious stone ship settings – Norse customs on the German Baltic.
Read more →The “old fortress” of the Baltic Slavs in eastern Holstein: mighty ring rampart, trade, bishopric in 968 – neighbour of Danes and Saxons.
Read more →One of the largest trading towns of the Baltic at the Oder mouth – and the favourite candidate for legendary Jomsborg. What is documented and what stays legend.
Read more →Behind the market sat the power: the royal seat opposite Haithabu, probably the site of Füsing with a great hall and elite finds.
Read more →The Saxon land north of the Elbe – buffer zone between Franks and Danes. From Charlemagne's conquest through the fort Esesfeld to the border at the Danevirke.
Read more →Viking trade on the German Baltic coast: boat-building, long-distance trade into the Islamic world and a spectacular dirham silver hoard.
Read more →The mightiest border rampart of the North – some 30 km across Schleswig, strengthened against Charlemagne. UNESCO World Heritage on German soil, honestly dated (oldest section around 737).
Read more →In 808 King Godfred destroyed this Baltic market and forced the merchants to Haithabu – making the most famous Viking town great. Likely site: Groß Strömkendorf near Wismar.
Read more →The ancient north–south route along the dry geest ridge of Jutland – a hub at Haithabu and the Danevirke. With an honest check: “road” is too big a word.
Read more →Not a tribe but a mighty confederation of many peoples – marked by the Suebian knot. From the Semnones' grove to the Alemanni and the name “Swabia”.
Read more →How Germanic belief became Christianity – through mission, sword and compromise. And what remained of the old: in weekdays, customs and on the stone cross.
Read more →Before they were Odin, Thor and Tyr: the gods of the continental Germanic peoples – reconstructed from names, the Merseburg Charm and the weekdays.
Read more →A chieftain's son who knew Rome from within – and in autumn 9 AD let three legions perish in the forest. What Tacitus reports, and why the “liberator of Germania” is a 19th-century myth.
Read more →The sacred world pillar of the Saxons – felled by Charlemagne in 772. One of the few tangible symbols of Germanic belief, between evidence, kinship with Yggdrasil and later interpretation.
Read more →Rome's toughest opponents in Hesse: warriors of almost Roman discipline and a hair-oath as a test of courage. Their name (Chatti) became “Hesse”.
Read more →From Hedeby to Aachen: where the Norsemen really were in Germany – as neighbours, traders and, for a few hard years, raiders on the Rhine.
Read more →Tinnumburg, Archsumburg, Lembecksburg: refuge forts on Sylt and Föhr – visible Viking traces on the German North Sea coast.
Read more →Three mother goddesses with fruit baskets, hundreds of votive stones between Bonn and the Eifel – a Romano-Germanic cult right on our doorstep.
Read more →Mercury = Woden, Hercules = Thunor: how we know the gods of the continental Germanic peoples almost only through Roman eyes and votive stones.
Read more →A sworn warrior brotherhood, the fortress Jomsborg and death without trembling: the Vikings' most famous elite corps – between saga code and an archaeological gap.
Read more →Wrestling, a rough ball game, lifting stones and Hnefatafl: how the Vikings stayed fit and passed the winter – between saga and an honest look at the sources.
Read more →King's son, briefly king of Norway, then twice king of York: the last Viking king on English soil – between coin-find ("ERIC REX") and saga craft.
Read more →Across the river Gjöll, over the golden bridge Gjallarbrú and past the watcher Móðguðr: how the Norse imagined the last journey to the realm of the dead – and how much Snorri first ordered.
Read more →Around 1400 BC a bronze horse pulls the golden sun across the sky – and the same image returns far later in the Edda: Sól, drawn by Árvakr & Alsviðr.
Read more →Did Vikings wear horned helmets? No – but genuine Nordic horned helmets exist: the Veksø helmets from the Bronze Age, c. 900 BC. Cult helmets from the bog, not battle gear.
Read more →Warm, light, honey-gold: amber was the gold of the sea – prized from the Stone Age to the Vikings. What fossilised tree resin reveals about trade and jewellery.
Read more →A comb was the most common thing in a Viking bag – of antler, often from far away. How a modern protein test exposed long-distance trade, and that Northmen were well-groomed.
Read more →With Gorm the Old the firm line of Danish kings begins. His stone at Jelling honours his wife Thyra – and his son Harald Bluetooth built a whole kingdom on it.
Read more →In 1013 Sweyn Forkbeard became king of England – and died five weeks later. The Danish Viking king, father of Cnut the Great, turned Danegeld into conquest.
Read more →About 26 runestones recall the same catastrophe: Ingvar's voyage into the far east, from which almost no one returned. A monument to a lost generation.
Read more →On 29 July 1030 King Olav fell at Stiklestad – and became Norway's eternal saint. How a lost battle completed the Christianisation of the North.
Read more →In 991 Byrhtnoth fell at Maldon – and England paid the Vikings Danegeld for the first time: 10,000 pounds of silver. A tribute that made the North rich.
Read more →Grey and brown? Not at all. The Vikings wore glowing red, deep blue and rich yellow – from madder, woad and weld. The “grey Viking” is a film myth.
Read more →Deep black, feather-light, electric like amber: jet was prized by Romans and Vikings alike – a gemstone of fossilised wood credited with protective power.
Read more →Mugwort, plantain, leek – and Woden with nine glory-twigs: the Old English Nine Herbs Charm shows how Germanic healing lay between herbs, runes and gods.
Read more →Nine nights Odin hung on the tree to win the runes – then the Hávamál names eighteen spell-songs. Why “18 runes” is a stubborn misunderstanding.
Read more →In 1936 a farmer on Gotland found the largest tool chest of the Viking Age: about 200 tools of a smith and woodworker. The craft behind the beautiful things.
Read more →A king in the middle, surrounded by attackers: Hnefatafl was the board game of the Vikings, long before chess. An unequal game of breakout and encirclement.
Read more →About 170 swords bear the same name in the blade: +VLFBERH+T. Where the finest blade of the North came from, why it was so good – and how the Rhine is part of it.
Read more →A richly carved ship, two women, a cart and fourteen horses: the Oseberg grave of 834 is one of the most splendid of the Viking Age – full of riddles.
Read more →For almost a thousand years a centre of power and cult near Lund – with its own temple and gold in the ground. Southern Sweden's richest find site.
Read more →For long four ring fortresses were known. In 2014 researchers tracked down the fifth by geophysics: Borgring near Køge. Burnt gates, a perfect circle, UNESCO since 2023.
Read more →An arm-ring chopped and weighed: that is how people paid in the North, long before coins of their own. What hacksilver, dirhams and small test nicks reveal about the Viking economy.
Read more →On amulets and gold bracteates stand puzzling words: alu, laukaʀ, laþu. Were runes magic or just writing? An honest look at the formula words.
Read more →A tiny silver figure on a throne, two birds on the armrests: Odin on Hlidskjalf with Huginn and Muninn? The 2009 Lejre find – and the dispute over god or goddess.
Read more →In 2020 a detectorist found almost a kilo of gold near Jelling – huge bracteates and a line of runes: “He is Odin's man,” the oldest known mention of the god.
Read more →Glowing red carnelian beads from Viking-age graves came from thousands of kilometres away. What the red stone reveals about trade, rank and beauty.
Read more →Ship-shaped stone settings like Ales stenar still stand in the landscape: grave, monument and an image for the last voyage – a ship that outlives time.
Read more →Fine, interlaced animals and serpents: the Urnes style, the last great art style of the Viking Age. Its namesake is a carved church portal – today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Read more →Found in a Jutland bog in 1891: a dismantled silver cauldron full of gods, animals and riddles – Celtic in imagery, offered in the North. An honest look at Denmark’s most famous find.
Read more →A market by 700, minting by 720: at Ribe, Denmark’s oldest town, arose the first coins of Scandinavia – and on them looks a face called Woden.
Read more →A 1.8 kg gold ring, a 48-metre hall, weapons in the lake: at the “god’s lake” Tissø lay one of the largest royal seats of the Danish Viking Age.
Read more →Barely two centimetres, of paper-thin gold foil: around 3000 gold men, 2594 on Bornholm alone. Divine couples, dancers, offerings – and a riddle unsolved to this day.
Read more →Sunk around 1070 as a barrier, raised in 1962: five very different Viking ships – from an ocean freighter to a 30-metre warship built in Dublin.
Read more →On the altar lay a ring, reddened with sacrificial blood – on it the most sacred oaths were sworn. From Eyrbyggja saga to the 65 iron rings of Lilla Ullevi.
Read more →Perfectly circular, precise to the metre, with four gates: around 980 Harald Bluetooth built his ring fortresses. The fifth was found in 2014 by laser scan. A UNESCO site since 2023.
Read more →Two golden ceremonial horns, one of the oldest runic inscriptions of the North – and a spectacular theft in 1802. Gold, runes and a thriller, honestly told.
Read more →Called “Denmark’s adornment” on the Jelling stone – and, per a 2023 3D study, the most-named person of Viking-Age Denmark. Runestone, Danevirke legend, royal power.
Read more →Ægir, the gods' ale-brewer, hosts the feast – and Loki brings the peace crashing down. The giant cauldron, the golden hall, the flyting of the Lokasenna, honestly told.
Read more →How Thor slays the mightiest giant Hrungnir in single combat, why a whetstone shard is lodged in his skull, and what it all has to do with the valknut.
Read more →Loki in falcon guise, a raging river and a giant with a red-hot iron bar: how Thor travels to Geirröd's hall without hammer, belt of strength or iron gloves.
Read more →An eagle on the ox, an oath under duress and the stolen apples of youth: how the giant Thjazi steals Idun and nearly lets the gods grow old.
Read more →Mimir guards the well of wisdom beneath Yggdrasil. Why Odin gives an eye and consults a severed head - fact and interpretation kept apart.
Read more →How Odin slips into the mountain Hnitbjorg as Bolverk, steals the mead of poetry and rewards Gunnlod badly - the story of poetry, honestly told.
Read more →A builder offers to raise Asgard's wall in one winter - for Freyja, sun and moon. How Loki saves the day and Sleipnir comes into the world.
Read more →Nanna, wife of the shining god Baldr: when he dies, her heart breaks and she follows him onto the pyre and down to Hel. One of the most moving figures in the Edda.
Read more →When the gods cannot budge Baldr's funeral ship, they call Hyrrokkin: a giantess who rides a wolf and shoves the mighty Hringhorni into the water with a single push.
Read more →Loki kills an otter that was a man in animal form - and must pay for it in gold. The dwarf Andvari curses ring and hoard. So begins the tragic saga of Sigurd.
Read more →Angrboda, the giantess of the Iron Wood: Loki's lover and mother of Fenrir, the Midgard Serpent and Hel. What Edda and Snorri actually say – and what is interpretation.
Read more →Gullveig comes to the Aesir, is pierced and burned three times and rises three times. One of the most enigmatic figures of the Edda – and perhaps the spark of the first war.
Read more →The draugr is no see-through ghost but a bodily returned corpse: heavy, dark, monstrously strong. What the Icelandic sagas really tell us about the again-walkers.
Read more →Who were the disir? Female guardian and fate spirits bound to the family, honoured at the disablot - explained honestly, separating evidence from interpretation.
Read more →The fylgja as a personal following-spirit, the hamingja as inheritable luck: two Norse ideas of the self - between saga evidence and modern interpretation.
Read more →Place-bound land-spirits that were respected, fed and never angered: from the dragon-heads of the ships to Iceland's four great guardians - evidence and interpretation.
Read more →Bragi is the Norse god of poetry and the skaldic art, husband of Idun. Where his name comes from, what the sources say, and why a real-life skald may stand behind him.
Read more →Odr is Freyja's husband, who leaves on long journeys. Freyja weeps tears of red gold and seeks him among foreign peoples. What the sources say and why his name echoes Odin.
Read more →Why Yule is also a feast of the ancestors: food in the god's-corner, the hearth-fire as seat of the shades, the memory-draught – and a warm light for the dead in the darkest time.
Read more →The ship as the last voyage: three forms of interment, Ibn Fadlan's eyewitness account, Oseberg & Sutton Hoo – and an honest myth check on the flaming ship at sea.
Read more →Naming with water, wedding with handclasp and ring, a worthy farewell: how heathens mark the thresholds of life – and what becomes of them today.
Read more →The god who reconciles every quarrel – and the holy North Sea island of Fositesland, equated with Heligoland. A piece of heathen heritage off the coast.
Read more →The glorious archer on skis: ancient, more common in place-names than other gods, bound to the yew, the shield and the holy oath-ring.
Read more →Víðarr kills the wolf that swallowed Odin at Ragnarök; Váli avenges Baldr as a one-day-old child. Two gods of vengeance who outlast the end.
Read more →Funeral customs, the heir-ale and the memorial stones by the road (Hávamál): how our ancestors said farewell – and a quiet arc to today's memorial.
Read more →Barbarossa in the Kyffhäuser, Widukind in the mound, Alaric in the Busento: where the belief in the sleepers in the mountain comes from – and what the Icelandic sagas tell.
Read more →Ægir is the brewer of the gods, in whose hall they feast; Rán spreads her net and takes the drowned. The two faces of the sea – Skál included.
Read more →May-time, flax harvest, Winter Nights: three feasts on the seams of the year – lived custom, source and reconstruction kept apart.
Read more →Wonnemond, Hornung, Yule-month: before the Romans, time went by the moon. The old month names – from Bede to Charlemagne, honestly placed.
Read more →Tree burial and the heathen view of death: the tree as symbol, death as passage, the ancestors as an enduring bond. Reverent and honest.
Read more →The twelve nights between the years: from Bede's Modranecht through the Wild Hunt to the Rhineland Matronae – what is really old.
Read more →Blót and Sumbel explained: frith, the poured offering, the horn passed round. How modern heathens keep the old feasts – source and reconstruction kept apart.
Read more →The old faith is lived again: societies, structure, lived practice – and why honest source criticism is at its core.
Read more →Thor's hammer and the Valknut are real – Vegvísir and horned helmets aren't. The big overview: authentic vs. invented.
Read more →From Freyja to the shield-maiden: engraved gifts with meaning that women truly love.
Read more →'ek ann þér' – Norse words of love and honestly explained inscriptions for engraved couple's gifts.
Read more →Algiz for protection, Tiwaz for courage: the most popular runes and their meaning – honestly framed.
Read more →Odin, Thor, Loki or Freyja? Find out which Norse god matches your nature – and take the test.
Read more →The most famous Viking misconception comes from an 1876 Wagner opera. What real Vikings actually wore on their heads.
Read more →Ribs like wings: the most infamous Viking atrocity – or a misread skaldic verse? A source-critical check.
Read more →The skull-cup myth goes back to a 1636 mistranslation. What the Vikings really held in their hands.
Read more →Which material suits your motif? Natural slate, real wood and crystal glass compared honestly – straight from our workshop.
Read more →From the warrior to the sage: engraved gift ideas with character that actually land – sorted by type and occasion.
Read more →Wipe, oil, hang: the simple guide to keep your engraved slate plate looking its best for years.
Read more →Tree of life, Norns, runes and name engraving: meaningful gifts for weddings, christenings and naming days.
Read more →Why does engraving turn light on dark slate? The physics, the craft and why we love natural slate.
Read more →What Ibn Fadlan really wrote about the tattooed Rus – and why Vegvísir & co. are not Viking tattoos.
Read more →A comb in every grave, Saturday as wash-day, well-kept beards: the Vikings were anything but unwashed barbarians.
Read more →Wool, linen and vivid colour instead of the brown cliché – from the oval brooch to silk trim from the East.
Read more →Brooches, arm- and neck-rings, Thor's hammers: jewellery was beauty, status and chopped-up currency all at once.
Read more →Given name, father's name, earned byname – how Norse names work and how to write yours in real runes.
Read more →Freyfaxi, the horse of the god Freyr, and the strange household cult of the Völsa þáttr: how the old fertility faith lived on.
Read more →A hero wakes his dead mother so she may sing him nine protective charms – and in the end wins his destined bride Menglöd.
Read more →A valkyrie chooses her hero against fate and spends one last night with the dead man in the mound.
Read more →Twelve valkyries weave at a loom of entrails and heads the fate of the Battle of Clontarf.
Read more →Odin stakes his head against an all-knowing giant – and wins with a question no one but he can answer.
Read more →Tacitus describes the holiest cult of the Suebi: a wood no one might enter unbound. Right on our doorstep by the Elbe.
Read more →Nydam, Illerup, Ejsbøl: why Germanic victors sank the entire gear of defeated armies in the bog.
Read more →A one-eyed weapon-dancer and a warrior in a wolf-pelt on Vendel-age helmet plates – Odin and the berserkers in bronze.
Read more →Spillings, Cuerdale, Vale of York: three buried silver hoards and the Vikings’ worldwide trade network.
Read more →Repton and Torksey: a mass grave and a 55-hectare winter town make the Viking invasion of England tangible.
Read more →Two giantesses grind peace for the king, then vengeance – and explain, in passing, why the sea is salty.
Read more →A shield-maiden climbs alone at night to her father’s grave to wrest the cursed sword Tyrfing from him.
Read more →In York Egill composes for his head in a single night – and later mourns his drowned sons.
Read more →How a skald made a jarl immortal with a praise-poem – Einarr skálaglamm and the Vellekla.
Read more →Sentenced to death, Óttarr composes a praise-poem in three nights and saves his head – the Hǫfuðlausn.
Read more →Norway’s last court poet and his Hákonarmál – how Hákon the Good is received in Valhalla.
Read more →955 the ten-standard bluff, 961 the death of Hákon the Good – two battles, one king’s fate.
Read more →Three interlocking drinking horns and the title þulr – an enigmatic Danish runestone.
Read more →Denmark’s longest runic inscription, a Thor-blessing and a curse against grave-robbers – raised by a woman.
Read more →Tófa, daughter of the Obodrite prince, honours her mother – a stone between Denmark and the Baltic.
Read more →A freed slave thanks his lord in stone – Tóki the smith and the manumission.
Read more →A killer flees into a sanctuary and carves it into the rock – the oldest asylum of the North.
Read more →Around 800 a man falls in the east – one of the earliest witnesses of the Viking eastern voyages.
Read more →A father casts his son’s death into an image of the world’s end: earth and heaven are riven.
Read more →Arkil’s thing-site and Anundshög, Sweden’s largest burial mound – places of law and ancestor cult.
Read more →Ragnarök on Christian stones: Heimdall, the bound Loki and Odin in the jaws of Fenrir.
Read more →In 1073 a runic healing charm in England invokes Thor against a festering wound – heathen magic.
Read more →Gilded bronze at the mast of the longships – splendid art that later lived on atop church steeples.
Read more →Ancient butter buried deep in the bog: a natural fridge – or an offering to the powers of the deep?
Read more →Two goats pull Thor’s thunder-chariot – and he can slaughter and revive them next morning. As long as no bone is broken.
Weiterlesen →Freyr’s golden-bristled boar that glows in the dark and runs faster than any horse – from the dwarven forge.
Weiterlesen →The thin magic ribbon that holds the Fenris-wolf – from six impossible things. And Tyr’s sacrifice.
Weiterlesen →The greedy wolves at Odin’s feet: he gives them all his food and lives on wine alone.
Weiterlesen →Three-year-old Magni lifts Hrungnir’s leg, and after Ragnarök the two inherit the hammer Mjöllnir.
Weiterlesen →The dwarf Alvíss wants Thor’s daughter – until Thor draws him into a riddle-contest until the deadly sunrise.
Weiterlesen →The greatest of all ships bears the dead Baldr – and only the giantess Hyrrokkin can launch it.
Weiterlesen →The dwelling of the highest goddess – and the place where Frigg weeps for her son Baldr.
Weiterlesen →Nine nights on Sleipnir into the underworld to ransom Baldr – and all hangs on the tears of the world.
Weiterlesen →The boar Andhrimnir cooks each day – and who is whole again each evening. The endless feast of the Einherjar.
Weiterlesen →At Ægir’s ale-feast Loki exposes every god, one by one – until Thor’s hammer ends it. The most famous quarrel-poem of the North.
Weiterlesen →For the Norse a dream was a warning: Gísli's two dream-women, Guðrún's four marriages – the fate one reads but cannot turn aside.
Read more →The magic ride of the Norse night: gandr as staff, wolf and sent spirit at once – and why the witch's broom came much later.
Read more →Forget Santa: Iceland has 13 troll boys and their child-cooking mother. Ancient troll lore, a young Christmas role – told honestly.
Read more →Those without new clothes are taken by the giant Yule Cat. Behind the spooky tale lies the wool craft – and an honest myth check.
Read more →Made from a grave rib and stolen wool to carry milk home: Iceland's most uncanny house-spirit – early-modern folk magic, no Edda creature.
Read more →The Old Norse word for the quietest terror of seafaring: losing all bearings, drifting blind – and how hafvilla led Bjarni Herjólfsson to America.
Read more →A goat gives clear mead, a stag feeds every river: the two beasts on Valhalla's roof and the abundance from a single tree.
Read more →The end of the world begins with a rooster's crow – threefold: Gullinkambi in Valhalla, Fjalar in the wood, a rust-red cock in Hel.
Read more →The little creature that darts up and down Yggdrasil carrying insults between eagle and dragon – no cute mascot, but the engine of a feud.
Read more →Deep beneath Yggdrasil a dragon gnaws the world's order from below – and returns at the close of the Völuspá as a dark, enigmatic image.
Read more →Eight legs, Loki's strange child and Odin's mount all the way down to Hel. Origin, picture-stone evidence and an honest myth check.
Read more →Thought and Memory fly over the world each day. Why a god of all beings fears losing his ravens – and his memory.
Read more →Ivar the Boneless, Björn Ironside, Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye and the Great Heathen Army: the big deep-dive on Ragnar's sons – where saga, series and history meet.
Read more →Norsemen as the Byzantine emperor's bodyguard: from Harald Hardrada and the Greece runestones to Halfdan's runes in the Hagia Sophia.
Read more →Around 760 characters, a father, a dead son, riddles and ciphers – and the contested climate-anxiety theory of 2020. The Everest of runestones.
Read more →Found in Minnesota in 1898, supposedly from 1362. Why its language and runes expose it as a modern forgery – and where the real Norsemen truly landed.
Read more →The month is ancient, the feast was invented in 1873, the famous trough of food only in 1958. An honest myth-check of Iceland's winter festival.
Read more →They are taken for ancient Viking signs – but they are early-modern Icelandic magic-book symbols. An honest myth check that tells the true story.
Read more →TV hero, saga king, composite figure: how much history is really in Ragnar? The shaggy breeches, Aslaug, the sons and the laughing end in the snake pit.
Read more →On 25 September 1066 Harald Hardrada fell. Why the battle marks the end of an era – and why its famous bridge episode is only a late legend.
Read more →What may be the finest words of consolation in the Germanic world sit in a thousand-year-old poem – spoken by a singer who has just lost everything.
Read more →To see fate and re-weave it: the feared magic of the Vikings. Freyja brought it to the gods; Odin took the shame upon himself.
Weiterlesen →Two of the greatest philologists of their age – and the question: do their tales carry old gods like Frau Holle and the sleeping Brynhild?
Weiterlesen →Two wolves hunt the sun and moon across the sky – until they catch them at the end of the world. Origin, Mánagarmr and the wolf-age.
Weiterlesen →In the North the moon is a man: Máni (Old High German Māno) steers the moon-wagon, leads Bil and Hjúki – and flees the wolf.
Weiterlesen →Behind the Grimm tale stands the goddess Holda – mistress of the Twelve Nights, soul of the elder. And the Brothers Grimm, who rescued the heathen heritage.
Weiterlesen →Two stanzas on a blank monastery page – the only Old High German texts in which the heathen gods still act. With the full text and the manuscript.
Weiterlesen →Is Friday named after Freya or Frigg? The linguistic trail leads clearly to Frigg – and into the question whether the two were once one goddess.
Weiterlesen →The thorn that put the valkyrie Brynhild to sleep for years – and why today’s „Svefnthorn symbol" is an early-modern Icelandic stave.
Weiterlesen →The golden temple and the nine-year sacrifice in Adam of Bremen – and what archaeology (post rows, hall) really shows.
Weiterlesen →Over a thousand years of cult in the bog: Thuringia’s best-excavated Germanic sanctuary with wooden idols and bog bodies.
Weiterlesen →A „home of the gods" on Funen: a gold hoard, a 48-metre hall and the harbour of Lundeborg. A central place before the Viking towns.
Weiterlesen →Týr’s lake on Zealand: vast lordly halls, a cult precinct, weapon sacrifices in the water and a 2 kg gold neck-ring.
Weiterlesen →The „German Stonehenge" on the Elbe (c. 2300 BC): solar alignment, ritual shafts – and why it is not Germanic.
Weiterlesen →Germanic Midsummer, Celtic Litha, Slavic Kupala – fire, water, herbs. Honestly split into evidence and modern reconstruction.
Weiterlesen →Some Icelanders carry a gene line of indigenous Americans. Did a woman from Vinland come around 1000? Between evidence and hypothesis.
Weiterlesen →Was Ostara a real goddess? More Grimm than fact. What the Germanic peoples really celebrated in spring – and the truth about hare and egg.
Weiterlesen →In the North the sun is female: Sól in her chariot, chased by the wolf Sköll – and her daughter who shines after Ragnarök.
Weiterlesen →The veiled earth-goddess on the ox-cart (Tacitus, 98 AD) – and the riddle of her kinship with Njörðr.
Weiterlesen →A man from the Near East in Thuringia’s Germanic elite, the oldest West Germanic runic comb and a Norwegian woman.
Weiterlesen →Tacitus’s praise, seeresses, dowry – compared with Viking women (keys, inheritance, Bj 581). An honest comparison.
Weiterlesen →When Clovis beat the Alemanni and was baptised – and Europe became Catholic. Right on our doorstep.
Weiterlesen →The Vanir, father of Freyr and Freyja: sea-god, husband of Skaði – and the trail to the earth-goddess Nerthus.
Weiterlesen →Since 1878 the model warrior – in 2017 DNA showed: biologically a woman. What the grave really tells us.
Weiterlesen →4000 years ago: bronze, princely graves and the Nebra Sky Disc – one of the oldest depictions of the heavens.
Weiterlesen →In 723 Boniface felled the oak sacred to Donar – and no lightning came. What the source really says, and the Rhineland link.
Weiterlesen →The famous relief is Christian (c. 1170); the bent Irminsul is a 20th-century invention. Evidence over myth.
Weiterlesen →In 881 the Northmen sailed up the Rhine – through Jülich and Zülpich to the gates of imperial Aachen.
Read more →An Arab envoy describes the Rus on the Volga in 922 – and their startling ship burial.
Read more →Asselt, Nijmegen, Leuven: how the Vikings wintered on the Rhine and Meuse – and were stopped in 891.
Read more →An activity, not a people; traders, not just raiders; what the DNA study shows – and which myths (horned helmets & co.) are wrong.
Read more →Origins, every tribe from the Suebi to the Saxons, the Celtic comparison – and the religions of the Germani beside the Norse faith.
Read more →Princely graves, druids and gold hoards: who the Celts really were, why they were not one people – and what they left behind in the Rhineland.
Read more →How a teak engraving tells a 1,000-year-old heroic saga – and what the Gotlandic picture stones have to do with it.
Weiterlesen →Two supposedly „ancient“ sun wheels that are nothing of the sort: where they really come from, how they are misused – and why we do not engrave them.
Read more →From axe to hammer, over 1,000 amulets, and the honest answer: did only women really wear Thor's hammer?
Read more →Æsir and Vanir, every god explained one by one – from Odin to Freyja – with Edda quotes and an honest evidence/myth divide.
Read more →In the beginning there was no word, but a yawning void between fire and ice. What Ginnungagap means – and what scholarship says.
Read more →From a slain primal giant came the world, from driftwood the first human: the dark, grand creation myth of the North.
Read more →End or new beginning? The green world after, Baldr's return, Líf and Lífthrasir – and the question of Christian influence.
Read more →Asgard, Midgard, Jötunheim, Hel and the rest: the nine worlds on the world tree Yggdrasil – the map of the Norse cosmos.
Read more →The middle enclosure, built from Ymir's body, shielded by the wall of eyelashes and joined to Asgard by Bifröst.
Read more →Beyond the ice-waves and the never-freezing river Ífing: the world of the Jötnar, older and often wiser than the gods.
Read more →Frost, fog and the spring Hvergelmir from which all rivers flow – the cold counterpart to the fire from which life arose.
Read more →Embers, sparks and Surt with the flaming sword. From fire came the stars – and with it, in the end, Bifröst breaks.
Read more →The underground forge of the world-order: from here come Gungnir, Draupnir, Mjölnir and Sif's golden hair.
Read more →Home of Njörd, Freyr and Freyja – the fertility gods who came as hostages after the Æsir–Vanir war and stayed.
Read more →Over the river Gjöll and the golden bridge into Hel's still realm. Hermod's ride for Baldr – and why Hel is no place of torment.
Read more →Njord, Freyr and Freyja: gods of fertility, wealth and magic – and the question whether they ever existed as a family.
Read more →Urd’s well, Mimir’s well, Hvergelmir: fate, wisdom and the source of all waters – and why there may only ever have been one spring.
Read more →Nine sisters bore one god at the edge of the earth. The names, the lost chant and the famous wave theory, fact-checked.
Read more →An eye as a pledge for a draught from the well of wisdom – the most famous story of the price of insight.
Read more →A giant in whose glove one sleeps, and three hammer-blows that strike a mountain – the great illusion on the road to Utgard.
Read more →From two pieces of driftwood three gods made the first human pair – with breath, mind and warm blood. Where humankind comes from.
Read more →Four rivers of milk fed the giant Ymir, and from the salty ice the primal cow licked the first god. The world begins with care.
Read more →Odin's host of the fallen: they fight, fall, rise and feast – until the last morning. Valhalla as a training camp for Ragnarök.
Read more →Two humans survive Ragnarök in the wood of the world-tree and people the new earth. The most comforting message of Norse myth.
Read more →Sea-giant, brewer of the gods, and the goddess with the net. With sources.
Weiterlesen →Light-elves and dark-elves – origin, cult and afterlife. With sources.
Weiterlesen →Halls, wall-building and Loki's trick – the gods' fortress of the North. With sources.
Weiterlesen →The purest of the Æsir and his death by the mistletoe. With sources from the Edda.
Weiterlesen →The mistletoe, the funeral procession and Hermod's ride to Hel. With sources from the Edda.
Weiterlesen →The trembling bridge to Asgard, Heimdall's watch. With sources from the Edda.
Weiterlesen →Freyja’s treasure from the dwarf forge – story and sources.
Weiterlesen →Before the Vikings burned Aachen, they controlled trade in the Rhine delta – Dorestad and Rorik.
Weiterlesen →The ring that multiplies – from the dwarven forge of Brokkr and Sindri. Story and sources.
Weiterlesen →Seeress, queen of Asgard, mother of Baldr – with sources from the Edda.
Weiterlesen →Odin's unerring spear from the dwarven forge – story, powers, sources.
Weiterlesen →Tacitus’ black night army – evidence and interpretation honestly kept apart.
Weiterlesen →The dwarf smiths of Skíðblaðnir and Gungnir. With sources from the Edda.
Weiterlesen →All the important treasures of Norse mythology – story, powers, sources.
Weiterlesen →The origin of poetry – Kvasir, Suttung, Gunnlöd and Odin's theft. With sources.
Weiterlesen →Binding, venomous serpent and Sigyn's bowl – until Ragnarök. With sources.
Weiterlesen →Primal forces, chaos, kin of the gods – the giants of the North. With sources.
Weiterlesen →Thor's wife, the occasion of the dwarves' treasures, emblem of the harvest. With sources.
Weiterlesen →Loki's wife with the bowl – emblem of loyalty. With sources from the Edda.
Weiterlesen →The great smithing wager of the dwarves – how Mjöllnir came to be. With sources.
Weiterlesen →Hunt, mountains, skis – the giantess who became a goddess. With sources.
Weiterlesen →Muspelheim's guardian and the end-time flame. With sources from the Edda.
Weiterlesen →Thor's human servants and the matter of the goats. With sources.
Weiterlesen →The journey of illusions – Skrymir and the three contests. With sources.
Weiterlesen →The first war of the world – Æsir against Vanir, with sources from the Edda.
Weiterlesen →Odin's ghost host of the Yuletide nights – Norse and German. With sources.
Weiterlesen →Smiths of the gods’ treasures – origin, catalogue and sources.
Weiterlesen →Reared in Asgard, bound with Gleipnir, Tyr's sacrificed hand – and the wolf that devours Odin at Ragnarök.
Read more →The Midgard Serpent that encircles the world: Thor's fishing trip, the cat at Utgard-Loki and the deadly duel at Ragnarök.
Read more →Which Norse symbols really come from the Viking Age – and which first appeared in early-modern Icelandic grimoires.
Read more →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 →At the top of the world tree a nameless eagle keeps watch, the hawk Veðrfölnir between its eyes – and why it is NOT Hræsvelgr.
Read more →Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór nibble the world tree's crown – shadowy names, the dwarf overlap and the four-winds myth.
Read more →Góinn, Móinn, Grábakr and more feed on the roots, and Hvergelmir teems with them – but beware: this is not Jörmungandr.
Read more →From the antlers of the stag on Valhalla's roof drips the water from which all the rivers of the world spring.
Read more →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 →Loki’s daughter, half living and half dead: queen of all who died of sickness and age – cruel to some, gentle to others, to each as they deserve.
Weiterlesen →Not only Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld: all the known Norns, their differing descent, their work at the Well of Urðr and at the cradle – and everything the sources report about them.
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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