A tiny glass crown is being heralded as a rare archaeological artifact from the first wave of Viking raids in England. The small worked glass artifact was unearthed at an excavation site on the Holy...
Over the years there have been gods for creation, death, love, war, and everything in between. Zeus, Hera, and their companions on Mount Olympus, Odin, Frigg, and the rest of the Æsir, Osiris, Isis,...
Scholars have long been baffled by the coded runic message of the ‘Rök Runestone’ but a new interpretation claims it spells out a chilling Armageddon prophecy. One of the world's most famous Norse...
The mysterious disappearance of Greenland's Norse colonies sometime in the 15th century may have been down to the overexploitation of walrus populations for their tusks, according to a study of...
Christmas and mistletoe: have you ever simply asked yourself … why? I have studied plant parasites like mistletoe for almost ten years, and I’m here to tell you that the answer is absolutely...
National Socialism is one of the most unusual and documented regressus ad uterum historical events in modern times. It’s a unique case in history when a modern political party returned to its...
An international collaboration of scientists in Iceland , Denmark , and the Netherlands has for the first time used ancient DNA analyses and C14-dating to demonstrate the past existence of a unique...
Runes are the characters of the earliest written alphabet used by the Germanic peoples of Europe called Futhark. The runic alphabet was used within Germanic languages but primarily in Nordic...
Neo-Nazi groups in England have been carrying out sinister torchlit rituals and carving swastikas into trees at ancient sites across the country. An investigation by The Telegraph revealed that far-...
Archaeologists excavating on a tiny island off the north coast of Scotland have discovered an 800-year-old Viking ‘Bu’, or drinking hall , once serviced by a high-ranking Orcadian Norse chieftain...
Did the Norsemen of Scandinavia have tattoos? Did runic script adorn their arms as they sailed their longships down fjords? While material remains offer few clues, one piece of historical evidence...
History is full of stories that will grip you like a modern page-turner novel, but only a few can do it as easily as the tale of the Normans. Proud and fearsome, these Viking descendants were key...
An old heirloom looks likely to make a lucky family a fortune when it goes to auction . They found one of the Lewis Chess pieces that belongs to one of the most famous chess sets in all of history...
Today, the word ‘berserk’ is used to describe anyone in an irrational, agitated state of mind who cannot or does not control his or her actions. The meaning of the word originates with the Viking...
The Vikings used many symbols in accordance to Norse mythology. Such symbols were widely used in Viking society and they represented elements of their beliefs and myths. There are even some Viking...
In Norse mythology, Skaði (also anglicized as Skadi, Skade, or Skathi) is a giantess and goddess. She is most often associated with winter. Apart from that, Skaði is also connected with hunting,...
In 1643 a Bishop called Brynjolf Sveinsson was given 45 pieces of vellum containing poetry and prose from the heart of ancient Northern European indigenous culture. This collection is called The King...
One of the three children of Loki by a giantess (jötunn ) named Angrboða, Fenrir plays an imperative, though short, role in Norse mythology. A wolf of remarkable size and strength, Fenrir has one...
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,...
Vikings are pretty trendy of late. Marvel’s Thor films, for example, gave Viking mythology the Hollywood treatment and plonked its characters in contemporary America. There have been multiple Viking...
More so than females, the male Norse explorers who took residence in Iceland more than 1,000 years were buried with their horses and new DNA evidence proves that the horses slaughtered to accompany...
Turf houses are a distinctive type of dwelling found in Iceland with origins dating back to the 9 th century AD, which are attributed to the country’s Nordic settlers. The development of turf houses...
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...
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...
