5 Things Writers Should Know About “Vikings” and Norse Mythology

“Vikings” are currently a popular culture powerhouse. And as always, when something becomes popular, it can prompt an influx of information—and misinformation—to flood our social media feeds. From viral memes to TikToks, it’s sometimes hard to know what’s real and what’s not unless you take the time to go digging for reputable sources. Besides, what is “real” history, anyway? And why does that definition matter?

The Viking Age (c. 700–1100 CE) has been my special interest for over a decade, ever since I studied the Old Norse language and literary sources at university for my history BA and joined a living history group. And, having written two novels heavily inspired by this time period, I feel qualified to bust a few myths—or at least give you some food for thought so you can draw your own conclusions!

Let’s get into it! If you’re going to write about the Viking Age or Norse mythology, here are some things to keep in mind:

For a lot of Scandinavians in the Viking Age, “going viking” was a seasonal or temporary gig. Since these seafarers traveled widely and absolutely mingled with other populations (in one way or another) as they went, it’s more than possible that “the Vikings” weren’t all of Scandinavian descent, either; in fact, DNA evidence suggests that they were not genetically homogenous. So you probably don’t have “Viking blood,” and the idea that “Viking” is an ethnicity is heavily rooted in white supremacist ideology.

Though it was in fact a job, “Vikings” is often used as a catch-all to refer to Viking Age Scandinavians in their homelands, even though many of them never left the farm, let alone went on a raid. In many history books, the author will disclaim that they will also use it to refer to the population of Scandinavia at this time, and define which group (raiders or not) they’re talking about through context.

Because let’s face it—“tenth century Scandinavian layperson” doesn’t have the same ring to it as simply saying “Viking” to mean everyone in the society as a whole. Despite this, if you’re a Viking Age Scandinavian, you’re most likely a farmer, or a farm worker, or, unfortunately, an enslaved person, but if you’re going to use “Vikings” as shorthand, context is important!

One of the most impressive Viking Age graves at Birka, Bj 581, on the island of Björkö in Sweden, was long assumed to be a man’s grave based the weapons buried there. But in 2017, DNA studies proved that the skeleton in Bj 581 was biologically female. This ignited a flurry of debate among scholars about the “Birka warrior woman.”

Does this prove unequivocally the existence of Viking women warriors? Not necessarily. Just because someone was buried with weapons doesn’t necessarily mean they used them, for one thing; for another, this person may not have identified as a woman. But this does complicate the way we perceive of gender roles in the Viking Age.

Shieldmaidens are in fact awesome characters, but if you’re writing about women in the Viking age, remember that there were certainly other ways for women to have agency and power during this time period.

The sagas paint us a picture of the Viking Age as a hypermasculine, fiercely heteropatriarchal society with rigid gender roles, and laws against things like cross-dressing; in one saga, a man divorces his wife because she was accused of wearing pants. But a lot of queer things happen in the Norse myths—and I mean a lot—so how do we reconcile this?

As author Linnea Hartsuyker concludes in her 2019 Public Medievalist article, “gender roles have always been mutable, even in the most traditionally masculine societies. After all, the fact societies have always put energy into policing gender roles, means that they are not natural—if they were, no laws or mores would be needed to enforce them.”

Long story short, the presence of non-heteronormative behavior in the myths and sagas is unquestionable, whether or not it was actually accepted in the Viking Age is up for debate, and that’s something to keep in mind if you’re writing queer representation into your Viking novel.

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Scandinavians in the Viking Age didn’t write their own histories. They raised runestones and composed poetry and told tales, but their society was largely oral, and the contemporary accounts we have of them mostly came from people they raided.

Further complicating things, the literary sources from the Nordic countries themselves were written down hundreds of years after the end of the Viking Age. This means that everything that was passed down to us was by the descendants of the people who allegedly lived the sagas’ stories and revered the Norse gods.

Does that mean archaeology is more reliable? Not exactly—artifacts can’t talk. Relying on only the texts, or only the archaeology, will give you an incomplete picture of this time period, but combining both, the picture becomes a bit clearer (or sometimes, maddeningly, even more muddled).

Until we can get our hands on a TARDIS to travel back in time to the Viking Age, there’s a lot that we will simply never know. But if you want to write about this time period, don’t take my word for it; do your research! Here are some books to get you started:

Happy writing!

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