Horned helmets, the Vegvísir, the Black Sun & co. – where popular images come from and what the sources say.
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Few images from the Viking Age are as disturbing as the „blood eagle": a ritual killing in which the victim's ribs were supposedly severed from the …
Read more →To some an ancient Germanic sun-sanctuary, to others a Christian place of pilgrimage – the Externsteine in the Teutoburg Forest are above all a giant …
Read more →When thick flakes fall, people in many regions still say: „Frau Holle is shaking her beds." A harmless children’s saying – and at the same time the …
Read more →Friday – the finest working day carries a goddess’s name. But whose? Some swear by Freya, others by Frigg. The answer is surprisingly tangled, and it …
Read more →Most people know the Brothers Grimm as the two kindly gentlemen behind Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. But that is only half the truth. Jacob …
Read more →She enters Odin's hall, is pierced with spears and cast three times into the fire – and rises three times again. Gullveig is one of the darkest and …
Read more →The god Freyr stood for fertility, harvest and peace. Two very different sources show what his cult could look like in daily life – and how …
Read more →Two curved horns, a fierce beard, a mead horn in the fist – that is the Viking of nearly every film, every carnival stall and every football shirt …
Read more →A heavy grey slab covered in a long line of runes, dug out from under the roots of an aspen tree in Minnesota. The inscription tells of a Norse …
Read more →Two short stanzas, scribbled onto a blank page of a church book – and yet the most precious record we have of the heathen Germanic faith in the …
Read more →The market is full of "Norse" symbols: on pendants, T-shirts, tattoos and wall art. Many are sold as ancient and Viking-age — yet quite a few are …
Read more →Every Easter she makes the rounds again: „Ostara, the Germanic spring goddess". Only – she is largely an invention of Jacob Grimm. What did the …
Read more →It is one of the most stubborn images of the „wild Viking“: the bearded warrior sipping his mead from the hollowed-out skull of a slain foe. You meet …
Read more →The sun wheel is one of humanity's oldest signs – around the world, since the Stone Age. Precisely for that reason, care is needed: two wheel-shaped …
Read more →It is the most mysterious and most feared art of the North: seiðr, the magic with which one does not merely see fate but re-weaves it. Even Odin, the …
Read more →A single thorn – and even a valkyrie sleeps for years: the svefnþorn, the „sleep thorn," is one of the eeriest motifs of Norse literature. But …
Read more →They appear on T-shirts, tattoos, jewellery and in every second Viking TV series: the Vegvísir, the supposed „Viking compass", and the Ægishjálmr …
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