Ancient Origins Guest Writer, William James Veall, is far afield from his usual research concerning Trans-Oceanic visitations to South America. On this occasion he turns his attention towards the...
By Stephen Harding Ancient records tell us that the intrepid Viking seafarers who discovered Iceland, Greenland and eventually North America navigated using landmarks, birds and whales, and little...
The Vikings are famous for their great feasting halls, in which an image of a rowdy bunch of beer-drinking men gnawing on meaty bones comes to mind. But what did they really consume besides beer and...
A hiker in Norway has discovered an ancient sword while walking an ancient route in the mountains of Haukeli. The well-preserved sword has been dated to the 8 th century and is typical of a sword...
According to legends, the Kingdom of Saguenay is a lost city supposedly ruled by blonde men rich with gold and jewels. No one knows if native Canadians in 1534 and 1535 hoaxed greedy Frenchmen and...
One of the puzzling mysteries of the Viking settlement during the Nordic Middle Ages may be solved by archaeologists armed with a pioneering scientific method and some ancient walrus tusks. The...
When Christians made their theological push into Europe, suppressing native religions and supplanting them with a foreign God, some pagans resisted by secretly practicing their old religion, while...
Archaeologists have discovered an ancient road and route along which Saxon troops retreated in 1066 when they were defeated by a Viking army in the Battle of Fulford. The finding has provided new...
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...
Early Viking settlers in Iceland were Pagan worshippers of the Aesir, the family of gods that included Thor and Odin. However in 1,000 AD Iceland converted to Christianity by decree of the country’s...
Archaeologists conducting an excavation in the center of Reykjavik, Iceland were actually looking for a farm cottage from 1799. Instead, they discovered something much older, a Viking longhouse 20...
Remarkably similar carvings and simple cross sculptures mark special sites or places once sacred, spanning a zone stretching from the Irish and Scottish coasts to Iceland. We can look to Skellig...
It is relatively well known that the Vikings were some of history's greatest travelers, traders, and mercenaries. Their reach extended far, as they are credited with finding North America and...
Archaeologists carrying out excavations in the port of Birka, Sweden’s oldest town, have unearthed a tiny dragon head once used on a Viking brooch. The bronze relic matches the shape of a mold that...
Scientists have been searching for answers on the puzzles of history by sifting through the genetic code of certain Icelanders. They have been looking to see if a Native American woman from the New...
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...
In AD 921, the Arab traveler and Islamic theologian Ahmad ibn Fadlan was sent by the Abbasid caliph, al-Muqtadir to the court of the king of the Volga Bulghars as part of a diplomatic party. During...
For the 10 th century holy man and jurist Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, the violent, orgiastic, drunken spectacle put on by mourning Vikings in Bulgaria must have been shocking. In Ibn Fadlan’s Muslim tradition...
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...
Considered an outlaw saga, the Gisla Saga survives in thirty-three manuscripts, first written in the 13 th century. It is notable for its psychological treatment of characters and its blatant...
Christopher Columbus is often remembered as the first European to discover the Americas, eventually leading to the colonization of these two continents by European powers. It is undeniable that...
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 stone with mysterious carvings, possibly dating from the Anglo-Saxon or Viking era, had been on sale as a garden ornament when television host and archaeologist James Balme bought it recently,...
In summer 2014 in just one Norwegian county a team of archaeologists found 400 Stone Age artifacts uncovered by glacial melt. “Mittens, shoes, weapons, walking sticks – lost in the high mountains of...
