The Vikings had a very bizarre tradition that might be totally unique: they buried their own homes. From the Bronze Age until the Viking Age, historians have noted that burial mounds were placed on...
In 1748, two farmers stumbled upon an ancient stone tomb near the village of Kivik in southern Sweden while digging in a quarry. The tomb, now known as Kivik Kungagraven (‘King’s Grave of Kivik’),...
For centuries it has been speculated where the manor of the royal bailiff of Birka, Herigar, might have been located. New geophysical results provide evidence of its location at Korshamn, outside the...
This year has provided an array of exciting, and sometimes puzzling, discoveries for archaeologists and ancient history enthusiasts. Looking back to our most ancient ancestors, a few of the...
A recent analysis of the remains of a woman who lived in the Viking era sheds light on the earliest settlers of Iceland. Her short life hadn't been recorded by any written resource, but her bones...
The mummified remains of a 17 th century bishop will be laid to rest once again at Lund Cathedral, Sweden, following 15 months of scientific study on his remains. The bishop caused a stir earlier...
An American scholar did both his master’s thesis and his doctoral dissertation on old Norse nicknames as recorded in medieval literature to reveal a world of people with monikers like Wise of Dreams...
The lure of the [Viking] raid was… more than booty; it was about winning and preserving power through the enchantment of travel and the doing of deeds. Thus states a new paper by an archaeologists...
The fear and stigma attached to the terrible disease of leprosy has endured for millennia. Answers have long been sought regarding this mysterious ancient ailment, and now archaeologists have...
An 800-year-old enigmatic message has been found inscribed on a small wooden stick which was dug out of the ground in Odense, Denmark. The delicate stick is marked with 13 th century runic...
A team of scholars says their new research is rewriting when and where the Viking age began. The official date for the start of Viking voyages was a 793 AD raid in England. But researchers say people...
The tale of Norna-Gest goes down in literary record as a tale of destiny and a character’s attempt to fight it. Not one of the titular Icelandic sagas, Norna-Gest’s story was recorded around the year...
A silver ring from a Viking-era grave in Birka, Sweden, has a distinctive history: it is the first ring with Arabic inscription from that era found in Scandinavia. The ring, which has an inscription...
The Sagas of the Icelanders have long been preserved as the most comprehensive specimen of the literary culture of the 13 th and 14 th centuries of Iceland. In writing these sagas, many attributes of...
The notorious reputation of the Vikings spanned thousands of years and across many lands. Bloodthirsty invaders intent on raiding and plundering is what many still imagine when speaking of Vikings...
A small Roman bronze figure representing Silenus, the mythological companion and tutor to the wine god Dionysus, has been found on the Danish island of Falster. The miniature bust dates back nearly...
Archaeologists from the Museum Lolland-Falster in Denmark made an extremely rare discovery when they unearthed a complete hand axe with handle still attached in what was once a seabed in prehistoric...
Prior to Christianity, the lands of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway saw the worship of an amalgamation of deities known most widely as the Aesir and Vanir. The Aesir were the primary gods, ruled by the...
A new study published in the journal Science has revealed that Neolithic farmers assimilated local hunter-gatherers into their communities in Scandinavia, according to a new report in Phys Org . The...
