The Isle of Man is a small island in the Irish Sea between Ireland and England and is a Crown Dependency of the United Kingdom. Because the island was settled approximately 8000 years ago, it has a...
During the extension of the seaport of Wismar in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany, archaeologists discovered a number of shipwrecks . One of them, the last to be discovered, was resting in only...
A 14-year-old boy digging in a churchyard in Glasgow has rediscovered three rare medieval gravestones with highly-detailed interlacing carved patterns. The three very special gravestones were...
One would expect "boneless" to describe a man without a lick of bravery. Or perhaps a man without a shred of compassion in a heart of ice. Yet in the case of the infamous Ivar the Boneless, son of...
As science progresses and archaeologists are forging new positive relationships with developers around Irish heritage, more secrets from Ireland’s Viking past are coming to light, and they are not...
Before surnames became commonplace, a method was needed to differentiate between two or more people with the same name. Many surnames in the English language today are a result of this - John Smith,...
“Then the high-born lady saw them play the wounding game , she resolved on a hard course and flung off her cloak; she took a naked sword and fought for her kinsmen's lives , she was handy at fighting...
Kulning is a vocal art with its origins in the forests and mountains of Scandinavia. It was first used as a method to call back cattle who were left free to graze in the wild landscape, but it is...
Eirik was a stout handsome man, strong, and very manly, —a great and fortunate man of war; but bad-minded, gruff, unfriendly, and silent. -Saga of Harald Fairhair Eric Haraldsson, nicknamed Eric...
By Lucy Newton / The Conversation Recording the human face in art is a long-held tradition, from the Roman Bust to the 15th century Dutch painting. The portrait signals power, prestige and wealth...
Like many ancient societies, the Vikings believed in an afterlife, and these were based on the religious beliefs they held. The current understanding of Viking funerary practices has been discovered...
The ancient Viking language of Elfdalian has been almost entirely wiped out, with an estimate of only 3,000 people in a tiny forest community in Sweden currently keeping it alive. Now, people fight...
Any parent must agree that one of the greatest hardships experienced around the death of a family member is having to explain to children what happened and what happens next? Should you tell them the...
The legend of Sigurd is well known in both Norse and Germanic mythology and is included in texts from the Poetic Edda to Beowulf . Elements of the story have even been incorporated into modern tales...
In archaeology, anything from the past can be of great importance, including artifacts that may seem rather small and unremarkable at first glance. For example, archaeologists have just announced the...
Norwegian archaeologists have announced a very rare and “incredibly exciting” find. They have used georadar equipment to identify structures and burials, including a buried Viking age ship. The find...
There have been many remarkable discoveries in lakes, over the centuries. One such find has just been recently announced in Sweden. A young girl found an incredibly rare 5 th or 6 th century AD sword...
As the world awaits the second half of season five of History Channel’s epic show Vikings , which will premiere on November 28, 2018, archaeologists in Ribe, Denmark have been excavating a real life...
While others may have had weddings with a Viking theme, it has been said that Rune and Elisabeth Dalseth are the first couple in almost 1,000 years to have held a true Viking wedding that includes...
Researchers in Sweden have made an important discovery about one of the first cities in Sweden. They have conducted tests on a number of skeletons in Sigtuna and have found that many were Viking era...
Borgeby Castle in the Scania Country, in southern Sweden, was originally built in around 980 AD by Harald Gormsson (also known as Harald Bluetooth), an early Norwegian and Danish King. The Borgeby...
Described as “fierce, mightily cruel, and savage, pestilent, hostile, sombre, truculent, given to outrage, pestilent and untrustworthy, fickle and lawless” by his contemporaries, Hastein was one of...
The Icelandic Sagas tell of Erik the Red: exiled for murder in the late 10th century he fled to southwest Greenland, establishing its first Norse settlement. The colony took root, and by the mid-12th...
Scottish media is reporting a remarkable find of hand and knee prints that may have belonged to an individual from an enigmatic civilization. It is believed that the prints are those of a Pictish...