Their ships were what made them infamous with carved dragon-prows and colourful sails, they could land easily on beaches or riverbanks, disgorging a large number of warriors with speed and ease. They fought primarily on foot, and were skilled users of the axe in battle. Like the English, warriors of higher social class wielded swords and had access to chainmail they used the bow as a hunting weapon, and horses were used for scouting and transport, not combat. They used the round shield and spear, wearing leather armour, or none at all. Their physical weapons were very similar to their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. It took a long time, more than 80 years, for their advances to be stemmed and gradually reversed. They deliberately used fear-tactics to intimidate a civilian population, and it worked. They spread destruction, rape, murder and theft, taking slaves, gold and plunder back to their homes across the North Sea.
Contemporary chronicles make for gripping reading, as Britain is plagued by these heathens from the sea they appear as brutal, invincible, cruel and utterly savage, with an almost supernatural ability to appear at any time, at any place. They immediately became a hated and feared foe the famous prayer, recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was, ‘From the Northmen’s fury, O Lord preserve us’. The Vikings had appeared on the shores of Britain before their infamous assault on Lindesfarne in 793, but this raid is significant for its impact and consequences, heralding as it did the beginning of the Viking Age. The word ‘Viking’ provokes a vivid landscape of images bearded axes and painted shields, longships pulling out of the mist, brutal contests of speed, skill and ferocity.īut, outside of the popular imagination, what were these Scandinavian warriors who came to Britain as raiders, really like as soldiers? How well do aspects of this myth compare to the historical record and why has the myth endured? My aim here is not to discredit the Vikings as combatants, but to create a more balanced picture of these Norsemen as raiders and warriors. An aura of romance and danger surrounds them. They are portrayed as existing in great freedom, able to move and raid at will, unbound by the stifling normality of the lives of more settled peoples. The impression is that Vikings are ferocious and cunning warriors, unmatched in battle, and able to overcome any enemy by either sheer force, or by a kind of lateral thinking that makes a mockery of their foes’ conventional tactics. The language of Viking combat is astonishingly well-known we are aware of a range of foreign and specialist words, such as ‘Valhalla’, ‘berserker’, or ‘valkyrie’, usually only known by academics and devotees of a historical field. They have lived on in the popular imagination, and the success of The Last Kingdom, Vikings and dozens of videogames and books feed an ever-growing appetite. It’s intriguing that Vikings as explorers and warriors regularly top polls of the greatest historical warriors.
THE NORDIC WARRIORS FREE
This is not an isolated occurrence in 2017 the videogame For Honor was released, announcing its Viking warriors as, ‘the greatest warriors the world had ever known’, who are ‘Wild, free and utterly without fear’, and went on be a widely popular game that still has an active following. As of 3 rd March, despite the game being still in early access, it has attracted more than 5 million players worldwide. On 2 nd February this year, the Swedish games studio Iron Gate released Valheim, a survival and crafting game set in an imagined Viking afterlife.
It is not an ethnic marker, but a description of an occupation, from the Old Norse meaning ‘pirate’, or possibly ‘inlet’. Viking – Scandinavians who raided the Britain and Ireland during the Viking Age.Valhalla – the mead-hall where the souls of slain warriors feasted and drank in preparation for Ragnarok.Hávamál – a book of proverbs from the Vikings, preserved as part of The Elder Edda, a repository of mythic and heroic material.They could work themselves into a berserk state, rendering them savage in battle and immune to the bite of weapons Berserker – perhaps meaning ‘Hair-shirt’ in Old Norse, these were warriors with mythical powers.Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – an account of the events in Anglo-Saxon England by year, possibly started under Alfred’s direction, abbreviated to ASC.
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