Viking Essay

In this essay, I am going to look at the Norsemen of Scandinavia. I will speculate on the way people may have lived in the three countries which spawned the distinctive Viking culture – Norway, Sweden and Denmark. I will focus on social hierarchy, social games, arms and armour, paganism, settlements, craftsmanship and burials. I will attempt to look at the Norse way of life in more detail than what is usually given, and leave the reader to decide whether they think the conventional views of the Norsemen are justified.

I think there is an important distinction to be made with the term "Viking". Although the word was invented and used during the Viking Age, it had a more specific meaning than what it carries today. It was first used in the

They were often slaves, usually taken as booty from a raid, and used as bondsmen to their owners. However, it was possible for any person within the existing Norse class system to fall to the status of Praell. This would generally occur if a man could not pay his debts – he would become tied to his debter until the price was paid. These people would have been given the harshest of jobs, and most likely would have had little armour and only the scraps of weapons in battle.

Much of what we know of the stories of Norse mythology seems to have been kept alive through oral tradition. Snorri Sturluson, a leading scholar of the twelth century, had the unique opportunity of writing what survived of these traditions. The stories inspired him to write extensively on the subject, from which he produced the "Prose Edda", where much of our knowledge of Norse stories comes from as a secondary source.

This makes his writings extremely valuable in understanding the many functions of Norse deities, and how they fit in to the every day folklore of Scandinavia. However, we must keep in mind that much of what Sturluson wrote was transformed into narrative poetry, where he created eleven "lesser gods" which were not based on oral tradition. Having said this, much of Sturluson's texts are verified by archaeological

The player holding the king had only a small number of playing pieces to protect the king from the larger number of playing pieces controlled by their opponent. It is possible that the Norse aquired other foreign games such as Shatranj, an early form of chess originating in Constantinople, through trading contacts. However, trade before the Viking expansion seems to have been extremely limited, probably to the simplest of items such as combs, clothes, food, weaponry and raw materials such as timber and bog