Viking warriors from the Jorvik Viking Festival

Three Viking warriors in a reenactment from the Jorvik Viking Festival (2012).

Reenactors and creators of the helmets, armour, clothing etc, are unknown: kudos to them for their marvelous work.

Raiding on DNA to explore Vikings’ genetic roots

Republication from  national geographic

Image credit: Wikimedia commons

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By Erin Blakemore

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While our modern ideas of these ancient seafarers paint a very homogenous picture, their reality was decidedly diverse.

In popular imagination, Vikings were robust, flaxen-haired Scandinavian warriors who plundered the coastlines of northern Europe in sleek wooden battleships. But despite ancient sagas that celebrate seafaring adventurers with complex lineages, there remains a persistent, and pernicious, modern myth that Vikings were a distinctive ethnic or regional group of people with a “pure” genetic bloodline. Like the iconic “Viking” helmet, it’s a fiction that arose in the simmering nationalist movements of late 19th-century Europe. Yet it remains celebrated today among various white supremacist groups that use the supposed superiority of the Vikings as a way to justify hate, perpetuating the stereotype along the way.

Scandinavian warriors found in medieval graves in Poland

Republication from the history blog  

Z-type sword found in chamber grave. Photo by J.Szmit.

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Four richly-adorned graves found in a medieval cemetery in the village of Ciepłe, Eastern Pomerania, Poland, contained the remains of Scandinavian men, not the early Piast elite. The burials date to the time of the first king of Poland, Bolesław I the Brave (b. 967 – d. 1025) and were located in the center of the cemetery. They are the oldest of the 60-plus graves unearthed thus far and stand out for their high quality and their grave goods.

Varangians

 

An interesting reenactment of Varangian warriors. Note their full-body mail cuirass. Creator and reenactment group unknown – felicitations on their work.

The term ‘Varangians’ was actually a generic term for the Byzantines, describing

Mysterious Viking boat graves unearthed in central Norway

Republication from Norwegian scitech news

The oldest grave is from the 8th century. But why were these two people buried together? (Illustration: Arkikon)

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Two people died roughly 100 years apart. Nevertheless, they were buried together. In boats.

In the second half of the 9^th century, an important woman dies at the farm now known as Skeiet at Vinjeøra, in central Norway. Her dress is fastened at the front with two large shell-shaped brooches of gilded bronze along with a crucifix-shaped brooch, made from an Irish harness fitting. She is then placed in a boat, about seven or eight metres long. Grave goods are also buried along with body, including a pearl necklace, two scissors, a spindle whorl– and a cow head.