177 Fun Facts About Vikings

To win back his stolen hammer, Thor went to the giant Thrym's hall disguised as what?

A bride: veiled and in a wedding dress, Thor nearly gave himself away by eating a whole ox and eight salmon at the feast, then seized the hammer when it was laid in his lap.

Iceland spar crystals, proposed as Viking navigation aids on overcast days, are nicknamed what?

Sunstones, likely calcite (Iceland spar), polarise light so the sun's position can be estimated under cloud; such a crystal was found in the 1592 Alderney shipwreck.

Which Norse explorer is thought to have been the first European to set foot on continental America, about 500 years before Columbus?

Leif Erikson reached a land the sagas call Vinland around 1000; on the way home he rescued a shipwrecked crew, which earned him the nickname Leif the Lucky.

The raid on what monastery in 793 CE is often considered the beginning of the Viking Age?

Lindisfarne's sack in 793 shocked Christian Europe: the scholar Alcuin wrote in anguish to its bishop, and chroniclers later claimed fiery dragons flying in the air had foretold the raid.

Which Danish king won the throne of England in 1016 through conquest?

Cnut the Great, son of Sweyn Forkbeard, became king of all England when his rival for the throne died in November 1016, and later ruled Denmark and Norway as well.

Which group formed the aristocracy at the top of Viking society's three-tier class system?

Jarls take their name, in the poem Rígsþula, from a boy called Jarl: the wandering god Ríg fathers the founder of each class in turn, but teaches only Jarl the runes.

Which weapon was the most common among the Scandinavian peasant class in the Viking Age?

Spear: like the axe it was a weapon the broader population could afford, while the costly sword marked the elite.

Old Norse 'rannsaka', the source of the English verb 'ransack', was a term for doing what?

Searching a house: rann meant 'house' and saka 'to search', and the Norse word covered a search for evidence of a crime, not the wrecking of the place.

In 845, a Viking fleet sailed up which river to plunder a great Frankish city until its king paid them to leave?

Seine: the fleet followed it to Paris under a chief the Frankish annals call Reginherus, who may be the man behind the legend of Ragnar Lodbrok.

Which 1066 clash, where Harald Hardrada was killed, is often cited as the end of the Viking Age in England?

Stamford Bridge, fought on 25 September 1066, saw Harold Godwinson destroy the Norwegian invasion force; less than three weeks later he was dead himself, killed at Hastings.

A medieval Swedish law barred inheritance while in 'Greece' to stem emigration to which Byzantine unit?

The Varangian Guard drew so many Swedes that the law disinherited any man still living in 'Greece'; after 1066, Anglo-Saxons dispossessed by the Normans filled more and more of its ranks.

What hull feature let Viking longships row far up rivers and land directly on beaches?

Shallow draft let longships float in very little water, so crews could strike far inland by river, land on any beach and be gone before a defence gathered.

Old Norse 'húsbóndi', the likely source of English 'husband', meant what?

Master of a house: a bóndi was a man with his own land and stock, and the head of a household was usually a spouse too, which is probably how the word narrowed to a married man.

Which English weekday takes its name from the hammer-wielding Germanic god?

Thursday is 'Thunor's day', after the Old English form of Thor; it was coined to translate the Roman 'day of Jupiter', pairing one thunder god with another.

By his own account in the saga, why did Erik the Red call his icy new land 'Greenland'?

To attract settlers: Erik said people would be keener to go there if the land had a good name, and he was soon leading a fleet of Icelanders to settle its fjords.

What was the main aim of the Great Heathen Army that landed in England in 865?

To conquer the four kingdoms, not to raid and leave, was the Great Heathen Army's aim: within thirteen years three of them had fallen, and only Wessex still held out.

Which part of his body did Odin famously sacrifice to drink from Mímir's well and gain immense wisdom?

An eye was Odin's price for a drink from Mímir's well of wisdom; to win the runes he also hung for nine nights, wounded, on a windswept tree.

What is the name of Thor's hammer in Norse mythology?

Mjölnir, Thor's hammer, was forged by the dwarves Brokkr and Eitri; Loki's meddling during the forging left its handle famously short.

In Norse mythology, what is Odin's hall called, where warriors killed in battle feast until Ragnarök?

Valhalla has 540 doors, and its warriors spend every day fighting and killing one another, then rise again to ride home and feast together.

According to one Norse account, who first sighted an unknown coast west of Greenland after being blown off course?

Bjarni Herjólfsson, blown off course in 986 on his way to join his father in Greenland, sighted three unknown coasts but refused to land, though his crew begged him to.

What is the overlapping-plank method used to build Viking longships called?

Clinker-built hulls, their overlapping planks riveted together, have been made in the Nordic lands for almost two thousand years; UNESCO listed the living craft as heritage in 2021.

Which day of the week did the Norse call laugardagr, meaning 'bath day' or 'washing day'?

Saturday is still lørdag in Danish and Norwegian, a worn-down form of laugardagr; whether the name began with a weekly wash or with church cleansing rites is disputed.

What name did the Norse give to Constantinople?

Miklagarðr, 'the great city', was the Norse name for Constantinople; runic graffiti scratched by a Norse visitor survives on a marble balustrade in the Hagia Sophia.

Besides his hammer, the thunder god's equipment includes iron gloves called Járngreipr and which belt?

Megingjörð, the 'power belt', doubles Thor's strength when he buckles it on; Gleipnir is the fetter that binds the wolf Fenrir, and Draupnir is Odin's gold ring.

Erik the Red left Norway as a boy after his father Thorvald was banished for what?

Manslaughter got Thorvald Asvaldsson exiled from Norway, and he took his young son to Iceland; Erik was later outlawed there for killings of his own.

The runic alphabet is known as the futhark; where does that name come from?

Its first six letters, f, u, th, a, r and k, spell out 'futhark', exactly as 'alphabet' is built from the Greek letters alpha and beta.

What name, meaning 'Forest Land', did the Norse give the timber-rich coast west of Greenland?

Markland, 'Forest Land', was probably the Labrador coast; the Norse of treeless Greenland are thought to have sailed back there for timber long after the Vinland voyages.

Odin's name stems from a root for being possessed or inspired, and is usually glossed as what?

Lord of frenzy is the usual gloss of Wōðanaz; the same root covered both battle rage and poetic inspiration, fitting a god of war and of poetry alike.

By 1103 the first archbishopric in Scandinavia had been founded in which town, then part of Denmark?

Lund, Danish until 1658, became seat of an archbishop for the whole Nordic region in 1103, ending the northern churches' dependence on a German archbishop.

The first permanent Norse settlement in Iceland is traditionally attributed to which settler?

The Book of Settlements (Landnámabók) says Ingólfur Arnarson made his homestead at Reykjavík in 874, giving the future capital its name.

In the Norse creation myth, what kind of animal licked the first ancestor of the gods out of salty ice?

A cow, Auðumbla, licked the salty, frost-covered stones for three days until a man named Búri stepped free; he was the grandfather of Odin.

Which plant, thought too young to swear an oath, became the dart that killed the god Baldur?

Mistletoe was the one thing Frigg had not made swear to spare Baldur; Loki learned of it, made a dart and guided the blind god Höðr's hand to throw it.

Which island's parliament, the Tynwald, descends from its centuries of Norse rule?

Isle of Man: its Tynwald, named in Old Norse for an 'assembly field', still meets in the open air on Tynwald Hill each July to proclaim the island's new laws.

Some Norse warships were called 'dragonships' because of a dragon decoration where?

Atop the bowstem is where tradition put a carved dragon's head, with its tail at the stern; yet such heads were far from standard, and are known mostly from texts and carvings.

Which Frankish king granted the Viking leader Rollo the lands that became Normandy?

Charles the Simple made the grant in 911; legend says that when told to kiss the king's foot, Rollo had a follower do it, who lifted the foot so high that the king fell over.

In Norse myth, the gods fenced the human world off from the giants using which part of the slain giant Ymir?

His eyebrows: nothing of Ymir was wasted, for the gods made the sea from his blood, the rocks from his bones and the heavens from his skull.

What did the Norse find growing wild in Vinland, alongside self-sown wheat?

Grapes, the sagas say, gave Vinland ('Wine Land') its name; wild grapes grow no farther north than the Gulf of St Lawrence, a clue to how far south the Norse sailed.

What was the name of the eight-legged horse ridden by Odin in Norse mythology?

Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse, was foaled by Loki, who had turned himself into a mare to lure away the stallion of a giant builder and so cheat him of his wages.

The Épinal-Erfurt glossary of c. 700 translates the Old English word 'wicing' into Latin as what?

Pirate: the glossary renders 'wicing' as Latin piraticum around 700, almost a century before the first recorded Viking raids on England, so the word is older than the Viking Age itself.

The big square sails of Viking longships were made mainly from which material?

Wool was the sailcloth of the Viking Age; experiments with replica ships show that a single sail took huge quantities of fleece to spin and weave.

Which Norse goddess of love, fertility, war and death claims half the fallen for her realm, Fólkvangr?

Freyja shares the battle-dead equally with Odin; when her husband Óðr went wandering she searched the world for him, weeping tears of red gold.

The only confirmed Norse site in North America outside Greenland was found in 1960 on which island's northern tip?

L'Anse aux Meadows sits at the northern tip of Newfoundland; butternuts found there, from a tree that does not grow on the island, point to voyages as far as New Brunswick.

Which Norse deities are associated with fertility, peace and prosperity, in contrast to the warlike Æsir?

Vanir and Æsir fought a war that ended in a truce and an exchange of hostages, which is how the sea god Njörðr came to live among the Æsir.

Which runic alphabet is recorded in full on the Kylver Stone of around 400 CE?

Elder Futhark runes run in full along the Kylver Stone, a slab from a grave whose runes faced inward, perhaps as a charm to bind the dead to the tomb.

English 'bylaw' began as a Norse compound in which 'by' meant what?

A town or village: a bylaw was at first a township's own local rule, and 'by' is still the ordinary Danish word for a town.

Which of the Nine Worlds is the realm of humans in Norse cosmology?

Midgard means 'middle enclosure'; in Snorri's telling the gods walled it round to keep the giants out.

Why did Viking bands raiding Ireland from 795 strike monasteries first?

They were rich and undefended: monasteries stood on exposed coasts and islands with no garrison, and raiders took captives as well as treasure.

The semi-legendary Viking Rurik is said to have taken control of which northern city in 862?

Novgorod is where the Primary Chronicle settles Rurik in 862; his kinsman Oleg took Kiev twenty years later, and their dynasty ruled Russian lands for more than seven centuries.

Naglfar, the ship that sails against the gods at Ragnarök, is built from dead men's what?

Nails: the Prose Edda warns that anyone who dies with untrimmed nails adds material to Naglfar, a ship that gods and men alike hope will be finished as late as possible.

What was the legislative assembly founded by Norse settlers in Iceland around 930 AD called?

Althing sessions were held in the open air at Þingvellir for two weeks every summer; the assembly still sits today, in Reykjavík, among the world's oldest parliaments.

Which ninth-century agreement established the Danelaw's boundaries and allowed Danish self-rule there?

Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum: it ran the border up the Thames and the Lea, then on to Watling Street, and set the same blood-price on an Englishman's life as on a Dane's.

What kind of animal is Sæhrímnir, cooked each day for the einherjar and whole again by evening?

Boar is what Snorri makes Sæhrímnir; Odin himself eats none of it, giving his share to his wolves and living on wine alone.

Broader, deeper Norse ships known as knarrs were built primarily for what?

Carrying cargo was the knarr's job: broad and sturdy, it relied on sail rather than oars and supplied the Norse settlements across the North Atlantic.

What was Erik the Red's main estate, deep inside Eriksfjord in Norse Greenland, called?

Brattahlid is where Erik's wife Thjodhild, newly Christian, had a small church built at a distance from the house, while Erik himself was cool towards giving up the old gods.

In legend, how did King Ælla kill the captured Ragnar Lodbrok?

In a snake pit: the sagas make this the reason Ragnar's sons led the Great Heathen Army to England, though no chronicle of the time links the invasion to revenge.

What bait did Thor use when fishing for the serpent that encircles the world?

An ox's head: in Snorri's telling Thor wrung it from the giant Hymir's largest ox and hauled the serpent up to the boat's side, but as he raised his hammer the terrified giant cut the line.

Björn Ironside is said to have co-led a large raid in 859–861 into which sea?

The Mediterranean raid, begun from the Loire in 859, reached Luna in Italy, which a Norman chronicler claims the raiders mistook for Rome.

Which Frankish ruler ordered a fleet and coastal guards against Viking raids around 800?

Charlemagne had a fleet built on the rivers flowing to the North Sea and posted guards at harbours and river mouths; even so, a Danish fleet ravaged the Frisian coast in 810.

What did Rollo agree to in 911 to keep his lands around Rouen?

Baptism: Rollo took the name Robert and swore to guard the river mouths against other Vikings, and the lands he kept grew into the duchy of Normandy.

Which king is traditionally regarded as the first King of Norway, reigning from about 872?

Harald Fairhair is said to have vowed not to cut or comb his hair until he ruled all Norway; the sagas say it stayed matted for ten years, until his victory at Hafrsfjord.

Harald Bluetooth was the son of which Danish king?

Gorm the Old raised a runestone in memory of his wife Thyra; their son Harald Bluetooth later set a far larger one beside it in memory of them both.

Olaf Tryggvason is said to have founded which Norwegian city in 997?

Trondheim began, the sagas say, as a merchant town Olaf Tryggvason laid out at the mouth of the river Nid; the shrine of a later king, St Olaf, then drew pilgrims there for centuries.

Olaf II, killed at Stiklestad in 1030, was later given a Latin title meaning what?

Eternal King of Norway, Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae: a bishop declared Olaf a saint within about a year of his death, and he became one of northern Europe's most important saints.

Eric Bloodaxe was twice king of which Anglo-Saxon kingdom?

Northumbria twice took Eric Bloodaxe as king at York and twice drove him out; after his death in 954 it never had a king of its own again.

Which Viking Age board game pitted a king and his defenders against a larger attacking force?

Hnefatafl set a king at the centre of the board with his defenders against twice as many attackers; the Norse carried it across northern Europe until chess gradually displaced it.

Which Somerset marsh refuge sheltered Alfred the Great in early 878 before he rallied Wessex?

Athelney, an island in the Somerset Levels, was Alfred's base in early 878 after the Danes' surprise attack on Chippenham; from it he gathered the army that won at Edington.

Which brother of Ivar the Boneless shared out land among his men in 876, turning raiders into farmers?

Halfdan Ragnarsson 'divided the land' in 876, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says, and his men became its 'harrowers and plowers'; within a year he was dead, killed fighting in Ireland.

Which river carried the Rus' south to the Black Sea on the route to Constantinople?

The Dnieper carried Norse traders from the Baltic towards Byzantium; Emperor Constantine VII described the Rus' hauling their boats overland past its rapids while watching for nomad raiders.

The Norse traders and warriors who founded Kievan Rus' came mostly from which modern country?

Sweden was their homeland: when envoys calling themselves Rhos reached the Frankish court in 839, Emperor Louis the Pious had them questioned and found they were Swedes.

The name Rus' is thought to derive ultimately from an Old Norse root meaning what?

Rowing is the favoured guess: Rus' is thought to come, through a Finnic word, from Old Norse rōþr, 'rowing', and the oarsmen's name passed to the lands they ruled, surviving in Russia and Belarus.

Which Norseman gave Iceland its name after seeing drift ice in a fjord, according to Landnámabók?

Flóki Vilgerðarson, nicknamed Hrafna-Flóki for the ravens he released to find land, named the island Ísland after seeing a fjord full of drift ice from a mountain.

A Gokstad ship replica named Viking crossed the Atlantic in 1893 for which city's World's Fair?

Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition welcomed Viking after Magnus Andersen and eleven crewmen sailed it from Bergen, then up the Hudson and through the Erie Canal and Great Lakes; the ship survives in Illinois.

Which Danish city's Viking Ship Museum displays five ships sunk to block its fjord against attack?

Roskilde was shielded by the five Skuldelev ships, filled with stones and sunk across the fjord's main channel; raised in 1962, they include a 30-metre warship that had been built in Ireland.

Which Frankish king's Edict of Pîtres in 864 banned selling arms or horses to the Northmen?

Charles the Bald's Edict of Pîtres made selling horses to the Northmen punishable by death and ordered fortified bridges built at river towns to stop their longships sailing inland.

The word 'berserkr' most likely meant what?

Bear-shirt is the likelier reading (ber-, 'bear', plus serkr, 'shirt'), for warriors who fought in a battle rage; the rival reading, 'bare-shirt', has them fighting without armour.

What does the word 'valkyrie' mean?

Chooser of the slain is the literal sense of Old Norse valkyrja; in one Old Norse poem valkyries settle a battle by weaving on a loom strung with men's entrails and weighted with severed heads.

What kind of tree is Yggdrasil?

Ash is what the Eddas call it: askr Yggdrasils. The gods ride there daily to hold court, and Odin is said to have hung from it, wounded, as an offering to himself to win hidden wisdom.

Which squirrel lives within Yggdrasil in Norse myth?

Ratatoskr the squirrel runs up and down Yggdrasil carrying insults between the eagle at its crown and the dragon Níðhöggr gnawing its roots; Veðrfölnir is a hawk.

After Ragnarök, which two humans repopulate the world?

Líf and Lífþrasir survive Ragnarök hidden in Hoddmímis holt, live on the morning dew, and repopulate the world, as the poem Vafþrúðnismál tells it.

Which son of Odin is foretold to kill Fenrir after the wolf devours Odin?

Víðarr, Odin's son, avenges his father by killing Fenrir — in Snorri's account by pinning the wolf's lower jaw with his thick shoe and tearing its mouth apart.

In Norse myth, which burning rainbow bridge links the human world to Asgard?

Bifröst burns, Snorri explains, because its red band is fire that keeps the giants from climbing to heaven; the gods ride over it daily, and it is doomed to break at Ragnarök.

Which watchman of the Norse gods is said to be the son of nine mothers?

Heimdall, born of nine sisters, needs less sleep than a bird and can hear grass grow; when the giants march at Ragnarök he blows the Gjallarhorn to rouse the gods.

Which Roman god did Latin writers usually equate with Týr?

Mars was the Roman equivalent of Týr, which is why dies Martis became Tuesday, 'Tiw's day'; Týr lost his right hand to the wolf Fenrir.

Odin cast the goddess Hel into which world of cold and mist to rule over the dead?

Niflheim became Hel's realm for those who die of sickness or old age; when Baldr came to her, she agreed to free him only if everything in the world wept for him, and one giantess refused.

The name of the Norn Urðr means what?

Fate is the sense of Urðr, cognate with Old English wyrd; that word gave Shakespeare the 'weird sisters' of Macbeth, long before weird came to mean strange.

Norse Greenlanders exported the tusk of which Arctic animal, prized in medieval Europe as unicorn horn?

Narwhal tusks, taken on summer hunts far up Greenland's west coast, were prized at royal courts as proof against poison; the unicorn trade faded once the real animal became widely known in the 1600s.

Iðunn, keeper of the apples of youth, is the wife of which god?

Bragi, the god of poetry, is Iðunn's husband; when the giant Þjazi carried her off in the shape of an eagle, the gods lost her apples and began to turn old and grey.

Harald Bluetooth's great memorial stone, boasting that he made the Danes Christian, stands in which Jutland town?

Jelling's larger stone, raised around 965, is nicknamed Denmark's baptismal certificate, and its carved figure of Christ is printed inside every Danish passport.

Aggersborg, Fyrkat and Trelleborg are Danish examples of what kind of Viking structure?

Ring fortresses were laid out as exact circles with gates at the four compass points; tree rings date Trelleborg's timber to 980–981, yet the forts were soon abandoned and no written record mentions them.

Which Viking Age trading town on a Lake Mälaren island is regarded as its country's oldest town?

Birka, on the island of Björkö, grew up in the eighth century and traded as far as the Islamic world; it was abandoned in the later 900s, as Sigtuna rose nearby.

Which is the oldest town in Denmark?

Ribe began around 705 as a seasonal marketplace, laid out in plots where comb-makers and metal-casters sold to Frisian and English traders; coins found there in their hundreds were probably struck in the town.

Which 11th-century chronicler described the pagan Temple at Uppsala?

Adam of Bremen, working from what he heard at the Danish court, claimed that every nine years men and animals were sacrificed at Uppsala and their bodies hung in a sacred grove beside the temple.

Which earthwork wall, strengthened by Viking kings, was last manned by soldiers in 1864?

The Danevirke, begun before the Viking Age across the neck of Jutland, was garrisoned by Denmark in 1864, then abandoned when a hard frost froze the inlet and marshes on its flanks and let the enemy threaten to go round it.

In Saxo Grammaticus's legends, which shieldmaiden became the first wife of the Viking hero Ragnar Lodbrok?

Lagertha caught Ragnar's eye by fighting in the front rank with her hair loose over her shoulders; Saxo says he later divorced her, yet she still sailed to his rescue with 120 ships.

The 67-kilogram Viking Age Spillings Hoard, rich in Islamic coins, was found in 1999 on which island?

Gotland's hoard lay in two caches under the floorboards of a Viking Age building, hidden some time after its newest coins were struck, around 870, and never reclaimed.

Which count led the defence of Paris during the Viking siege of 885–886?

Odo, Count of Paris, held the city with a few hundred men; Emperor Charles the Fat then bought the Vikings off instead of fighting, and after his death in 888 the nobles chose Odo as king.

A Danegeld payment of 10,000 pounds to Viking raiders followed which English defeat on the Essex coast in 991?

Maldon, fought in August 991, ended in English defeat; Archbishop Sigeric advised buying the raiders off, but the payment only brought them back for ever larger sums.

Which English king ordered the St. Brice's Day massacre of Danes in November 1002?

Æthelred the Unready later called the killing 'a most just extermination' in a 1004 charter, which tells how Oxford's Danes fled into St Frideswide's church and the townsfolk burned it down around them.

Which Irish high king was killed at Clontarf in 1014?

Brian Boru's army won the day, but the aged king took no part in the fighting: Irish accounts have him praying in his tent when the Viking leader Brodir found him and cut him down.

Which English earl led the doomed defence beside the River Blackwater in 991?

Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex, had the raiders penned on a tidal causeway until, the Old English poem says, pride made him let them cross to fight on open ground, where he was cut down.

Æthelstan defeated an alliance of Norse-Irish, Scots and Strathclyde Britons at which 937 battle?

Brunanburh saw Æthelstan crush the kings of Scotland, Strathclyde and the Irish Norse, yet the site of so famous a victory was forgotten; many rival places have been proposed, Bromborough on the Wirral among the favourites.

During his years as a mercenary captain, Harald Hardrada fought the Arabs in 1038 on which island?

Sicily was invaded in 1038 by the general George Maniakes, with Harald's Norsemen in his army; Harald came home so rich that his nephew King Magnus agreed to share the throne for a share of the treasure.

Which envoy from Baghdad left an eyewitness account of a Viking ship cremation on the Volga?

Ahmad ibn Fadlan, secretary to a caliph's embassy, set down the Rus' funeral he watched in unsparing detail; Michael Crichton spun his report into the novel Eaters of the Dead, filmed as The 13th Warrior.

Snorri Sturluson, author of the Prose Edda, twice held which elected office in medieval Iceland's national assembly?

Lawspeaker was the commonwealth's one public office: its holder had to memorise the laws and recite them aloud at the assembly. Snorri was murdered in 1241 by men claiming to act for King Hákon.

Which medieval Icelandic manuscript forms the basis of the Poetic Edda?

Codex Regius, 'the king's book', was named after an Icelandic bishop sent it to Denmark's king in 1662; Denmark returned it in 1971, by ship under military escort because flying it seemed too risky.

The modern image of horned Viking helmets was popularised by whose operas?

Richard Wagner's Ring cycle put horned helmets on stage in Carl Emil Doepler's costumes of the 1870s; the Viking helmet dug up at Gjermundbu in 1943 is a rounded iron cap with a visor for the eyes and nose, and no horns.

The TV drama Vikings, created by Michael Hirst, premiered in 2013 on which channel?

History's tale of Scandinavian raiders was shot mostly in Ireland: its sets stood at Ashford Studios in County Wicklow, and the Wicklow lake Lough Tay played the fjord at Kattegat.

Most of the Lewis chessmen are carved from what material?

Walrus ivory, with a few pieces in whale tooth, was carved into the 12th-century set found on Lewis in 1831; four of its rooks are berserkers, biting their shields in battle fury.

Which university acquired the Vinland Map, later shown to be a 20th-century forgery?

Yale University unveiled the Vinland Map the day before Columbus Day 1965 as proof the Norse had mapped America; in 2021 its own scientists found the ink full of a titanium compound first made in the 1920s.

Which US chipmaker's engineer Jim Kardach proposed the name Bluetooth in 1997 after reading about a Viking king?

Intel's Jim Kardach offered Bluetooth as a stopgap code name, after the king who united the Danes; the planned replacements, PAN and RadioWire, fell through before launch, so the placeholder stuck.

Which East Anglian king, killed by the Great Heathen Army in 869, became a saint?

Edmund was, by tradition, shot with arrows and beheaded by the Danes; within a generation the Viking rulers of East Anglia were striking pennies in honour of 'St Edmund the king'.

Which Shetland fire festival, held in Lerwick each January, ends with the burning of a replica Viking longship?

Up Helly Aa is younger than it looks: Lerwick's torchlit march replaced rowdy tar-barrel burning in the 1870s, and the first galley went up in flames only in 1889.

Which island group, long under Norse rule, was pledged to Scotland in 1468 as security for a royal dowry?

Orkney was pawned by King Christian I to cover the dowry of his daughter Margaret, who married James III; the money was never paid, so the islands stayed Scottish.

In 844 a Viking fleet sailed up the Guadalquivir to seize which city of Muslim Spain?

Seville fell to the raiders for some weeks before the emir's army drove them out; Abd al-Rahman II then gave the city walls and a naval arsenal, and later Viking raids were beaten off.

Which King of England was the Viking Rollo's great-great-great-grandson?

William the Conqueror was Duke of Normandy five generations after Rollo; the 'Northmen' gave the duchy its name, took up Frankish speech and ways, and in 1066 took the English crown.

Which of these everyday English words was borrowed from Old Norse, the language of the Vikings?

Sky comes from Old Norse ský, which meant 'cloud'; Norse settlers in England also gave English egg, knife, window and even the pronoun they.

The magic ship Skíðblaðnir, big enough to carry all the gods, can be folded up and carried in what?

A pouch, or pocket, is all it needs once folded like a cloth; dwarves built the ship as one of the treasures made to atone for the shearing of Sif's golden hair.

Which two wolves accompany Odin, alongside the ravens Huginn and Muninn?

Geri and Freki, 'the ravenous' and 'the greedy', are Odin's wolves, whom Grímnismál says he feeds at his own table; Vili and Vé are his brothers.

Which animals pull the chariot of the Norse thunder god?

Goats named Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr pull it; their master can cook and eat them at night and raise them whole by morning, though one limps since a farmer's son cracked its bone for the marrow.

Which goddess holds a bowl over her bound husband to catch the venom dripping from a serpent?

Sigyn sits beside her husband where he lies bound beneath the serpent; each time she turns away to empty the bowl, the venom falls on him and his writhing shakes the earth.

Urnes, built around 1130 with Viking-style animal carvings, is thought the oldest of Scandinavia's churches of what type?

Stave churches rest on upright timber posts; Urnes reuses carved panels from an 11th-century church on the same spot, and their coiling beasts gave the last Viking art style its name.

Which Frankish monk, later called the 'Apostle of the North', carried Christianity to Scandinavia's trading towns from the 820s?

Ansgar's nickname flatters his results: Vikings sacked his see at Hamburg in 845, and the North was only patchily Christian until Denmark's conversion a century after his death.

What did the Norse call the indigenous peoples they encountered in Vinland?

Skrælings traded furs for strips of red cloth, the Norse accounts say, until a bull broke loose from the camp and its bellowing scared them off; they came back to fight.

Hedeby, a great Viking trading town added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2018, lies in which modern country?

Germany has held the site since Denmark lost Schleswig in 1864; the town itself died much earlier, burned by Harald Hardrada around 1050 and sacked by Slavs in 1066.

Which Australian actor played Ragnar Lothbrok in the TV series Vikings?

Travis Fimmel came to the role by an odd route: he first found fame as a model, on billboards for Calvin Klein underwear.

The lavish Oseberg ship burial of 834 held the remains of two what?

Women, one aged about 80 and one in her fifties, lay in a bed aboard the ship with a carved cart, ornate sleighs and sacrificed horses; the mound had been broken into long before, and no precious metal was left.

Besides twelve horses and six dogs, which exotic bird's bones were laid around the man buried in the Gokstad ship?

A peacock's bones lay among the grave goods of the Gokstad ship; the man buried there around 900 was of powerful build, roughly six feet tall and aged forty to fifty.

Which day of the week did the Vikings call laugardagr, Old Norse for 'washing day'?

Saturday still carries that name across the Nordic languages, as laugardagur or laurdag, and unlike the English word it honours no Roman god.

Which everyday English word comes from the Vikings' vindauga, at first an unglazed hole in a roof?

Window joins vindr, wind, and auga, eye. It pushed out the Old English eagþyrl, literally 'eye-hole'.

Mead, served at Viking feasts alongside beer, is made by fermenting which ingredient with water?

Honey supplies most of mead's fermentable sugar, and in Norse myth one magical batch, the Mead of Poetry, turned whoever drank it into a poet or scholar.

Which pagan winter festival of the Vikings and other Germanic peoples was later merged with Christmas?

Yule centred on feasting, ceremonial drinking and the swearing of oaths, and its name still means Christmas in several northern European languages.

The Old Norse name of which capital city, on the site of a Viking settler's farm, means 'smoke bay'?

Reykjavík joins reykr, smoke, and vík, bay. The 'smoke' is said to have been steam rising from the area's hot springs.

Which form of home, often ornamented, is commonly seen as the defining building of the Viking Age?

The longhouse was usually built of wood, which Scandinavia had in abundance, and the great feasting halls of chieftains developed from the same design.

What name was given to the poets attached to the courts of Scandinavian kings during the Viking Age?

Skalds dealt in mockery as well as praise: the word is probably related to the English 'scold', a nod to the taunts in their verses.

English place names such as Derby and Kirkby end in '-by', a word left by Viking settlers meaning what?

Village is the meaning: Derby was Djúra-bý, 'village of the deer'. Names in -by and -thorp still mark Norse settlement in the North of England and the East Midlands.

Among the Vikings, what was a holmgang, which anyone offended could demand whatever their rank?

A formal duel settled the quarrel, and its name, literally 'holm-going', may recall fights staged on a small island. A challenged man who failed to turn up lost the case.

Which fish, wind-dried on wooden racks as stockfish, was a leading export from the Viking Age onward?

Cod dried this way needs no salt and keeps for several years, and a medieval tale set in 875 already has a chieftain shipping stockfish to Britain.

Viking ships were steered by a rudder hung over one side of the hull, the origin of which nautical term?

Starboard is the 'steer-board' side, from Old Norse styrbord. With the rudder hung on the right, a vessel docked with its left side to the quay.

The Oseberg ship, a Viking vessel dug from a burial mound in 1904–05, was built almost entirely of which wood?

Oak was the favoured timber of Viking shipwrights, and a modern reconstruction proved the Oseberg ship could really sail and was not just a burial chamber on land.

A Gokstad ship replica named Viking crossed the Atlantic in 1893 to appear at a world's fair in which city?

Chicago was hosting the World's Columbian Exposition, and Captain Magnus Andersen's crew reached it by way of New York, the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes.

In which island group does the Up Helly Aa fire festival end with the burning of an imitation Viking galley?

Shetland holds its biggest procession in Lerwick each January, when up to a thousand costumed 'guizers' carry torches through the streets before the galley burns.

In Old Norse belief, what on a Viking ship could frighten the landvættir, the guardian spirits of a country?

Carved figureheads had to come off before a crew sighted land, under an early Icelandic law, so that their gaping heads would not scare the spirits away.

What did Viking shipbuilders pack between the overlapping planks of a hull to make it waterproof?

Tarred wool and animal hair sealed the seams, and pine tar went on almost everything else aboard as well, preserving the timber, the rigging, the sails and even the fishing nets.

Why are the Skuldelev ships, raised from Roskilde Fjord, thought to have been scuttled by 11th-century Vikings?

To block a sea channel against attack: the hulls lay across the most important of the winding natural channels of the fjord, an early use of blockships.

Which star did Viking navigators call leidarstjarna, the 'lode star', and rely on for steering at night?

Polaris was only useful early and late in the sailing season, because the long daylight of a northern summer hid it from view.

Viking longships had no fixed benches, so what are the oarsmen thought to have used as seats?

Their sea chests held each man's belongings and would otherwise only have taken up space, so the crew brought them aboard whenever the ship was manned.

In Norse legend, how did the English king Ælla put the Viking hero Ragnar Lodbrok to death?

In a pit of snakes, the tale goes, and Ragnar's sons answered by leading the army that seized York in 866 and killing Ælla in revenge.

In Norse tradition, the Viking leader Olaf destroyed a bridge in 1014 to split the Danish forces holding which city?

London Bridge joined the walled city to Southwark, both in Danish hands. Its fall is one of several collapses loosely linked to the nursery rhyme about the bridge.

Which descendant of the Viking leader Rollo ruled Normandy from 1035 and took the English crown in 1066?

William the Conqueror owed his duchy to that forebear, a Viking chief who was ceded the county of Rouen in 911.

Viking raids on which Scottish island abbey, including a massacre of 68 monks in 806, drove its community to Kells?

Iona was struck four times in thirty years. The Book of Kells is believed to be the work of its monks, made in the years leading up to 800.

Which Irish port, the oldest city in the Republic, grew from the base Vikings set up in 914 on returning to Ireland?

Waterford still calls its old core the Viking quarter, home since 2010 to the visitor centre of the city's famous crystal works.

In which English county did Vikings from three ships kill a royal reeve in 789, their first known victim in England?

Dorset saw the killing when the reeve, Beaduheard, rode out to order the strangers to the king's town, not knowing who they were.

Which Italian town is supposed to have been sacked by the Viking leader Hastein, who mistook it for Rome?

Luni fell to a trick, the story goes: Hastein got inside the walls by pretending to be a dying Christian convert.

Which king, the last Dane to rule England, collapsed and died while drinking at a wedding in 1042?

Harthacnut 'died as he stood at his drink', one chronicle says, falling with a sudden convulsion at a wedding in Lambeth. Edward the Confessor then took the English throne.

Which ruler, known as the Lady of the Mercians, sent the army that captured Derby from the Vikings in 917?

Æthelflæd ruled Mercia alone after her husband died in 911, and Derby was the first of the Danelaw's great boroughs to fall to the English.

Which battle formation, called skjaldborg by the Vikings, had warriors stand shoulder to shoulder facing the enemy?

The shield wall, literally a 'shield fort' to the Norse, had each man overlap his shield with his neighbour's to make one solid battle line.

Which English king crushed Harald Hardrada's Viking invasion in September 1066, then died at Hastings weeks later?

Harold Godwinson reigned for less than a year: king from 6 January 1066, he beat the invaders near York, marched his army back south and fell in battle on 14 October.

The 1014 Battle of Clontarf, where Brian Boru's army faced a Viking alliance, fell on which Christian holy day?

Good Friday 1014 saw fighting from sunrise to sunset that ended in a rout of the Viking side, though Brian Boru himself was killed.

Ambushed at sea off Svolder, what did King Olaf Tryggvason do with the ships of his small fleet?

Olaf tied them side to side to make one fighting line, with his own great flagship in the centre and its bows jutting out beyond the rest.

Which 878 battle in Wiltshire halted the Viking advance into Wessex and ended with the Danish leader's baptism?

Edington turned the war: the beaten Danes were besieged until they surrendered, and their army then withdrew to East Anglia under the peace terms.

Which exiled English earl joined Harald Hardrada's 1066 invasion and died beside him, fighting his own brother?

Tostig had been driven into exile by that same brother, by then England's king, and looked to a foreign invader for a way back.

At which battle of 1030 was the Viking king Olaf II killed, a death that led to his being declared a saint?

Stiklestad is among the most famous battles ever fought in his homeland, and the Roman Catholic Church formally declared Olaf a saint in 1164.

Which name is inlaid on the blades of about 170 swords of the Viking Age found mainly in Northern Europe?

Ulfberht is a Frankish personal name, which may point to where the blades were made, and the swords began a long medieval tradition of inscribed blades.

Which battle just south of York on 20 September 1066 was the last victory of the Viking king Harald Hardrada?

Fulford saw the invaders beat the two northern English earls, yet within a week the winning army had itself been destroyed and its leader killed.

A 2017 DNA study showed that Bj 581 at Birka, long seen as a model Viking warrior grave, held whom?

A woman lay in the grave, buried in the 10th century with two horses and an arsenal of weapons. Whether she actually fought as a warrior is disputed.

A prized find from Viking York, dug up in 1972 under a future Lloyds Bank branch, is a fossilised piece of what?

Human faeces it is: at 20 centimetres long it may be the largest fossilised example ever found, and one expert called it as irreplaceable as the Crown Jewels.

Norsemen of the Viking Age may have cut the runic inscriptions found on the marble parapets of which landmark?

Hagia Sophia's upper gallery has at least two of them, one so worn that only part of a single Norse name can be read.

The Gjermundbu find of 1943 gave archaeologists one of only two reconstructable Viking Age examples of which item?

The helmet, a round iron cap built from four plates, came from a grave that stands alone: no other Viking Age burial in Scandinavia has yielded one, or chain mail.

A small statuette of which figure, made in North India, was dug up at Helgö, a trading town older than Viking Birka?

The Buddha dates from the sixth century and turned up on the same island as a crozier from Ireland and a christening scoop from Egypt.

A Norse coin of King Olaf Kyrre was reported found in 1957 at a Native American site in which US state?

Maine's penny was the only Norse object at the site, a hub of native trade, so if genuine it probably travelled south from hand to hand rather than with Norse sailors.

Which explorer, with his archaeologist wife Anne Stine, found the only confirmed Viking site in North America in 1960?

Helge Ingstad was a lawyer who sold his practice to live as a trapper in Canada's far north, decades before he went looking for the Norse in America.

Norse visitors who broke into Maeshowe, a Neolithic tomb, left over thirty runic carvings in which island group?

Orkney's great tomb was entered in the twelfth century, and the carvings left inside read like casual graffiti rather than solemn memorials.

The Salme ships, buried with 41 Scandinavian warriors decades before the Viking Age, were found in which country?

Estonia's island of Saaremaa gave up the first hull in 2008 during building work, along with the dead men's dogs, hunting hawks and weapons.

A mass burial of at least 264 people is linked to the Viking army that wintered in 873–874 at which Derbyshire site?

Repton's bones and artefacts, backed by radiocarbon dating, point to the late ninth century, matching the chronicle entry for the army's stay.

Which bird, embroidered on war banners flown by Viking chieftains, was said to hang motionless when defeat loomed?

The raven seemed to fly ahead when the banner fluttered in the breeze, and one such flag was said to bring victory to its owner but death to whoever bore it.

Which comic-strip Viking, created by cartoonist Dik Browne in 1973, raids with a hapless crewman called Lucky Eddie?

Hägar the Horrible took his name from 'Hagar the Terrible', the nickname Dik Browne's sons gave their father, tweaked so the words would alliterate.

The longest Viking warship ever found, about 37 metres, turned up in the 1990s during building work to extend what?

A ship museum, of all places: digging a new shipyard for the Roskilde museum exposed a group of wrecks, among them this giant, dated to about 1025.