Vikings
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6correct to beat the crowd
Discover how much you know about the legendary Vikings with our engaging free 177-question trivia quiz with answers. From their daring expeditions across the seas to their rich Norse mythology and culture, this quiz covers essential Viking history. Put your knowledge to the test and learn fascinating facts about these remarkable Norse warriors!
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Q 01To win back his stolen hammer, Thor went to the giant Thrym's hall disguised as what?
A bride
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.
Q 02Iceland spar crystals, proposed as Viking navigation aids on overcast days, are nicknamed what?
Sunstones
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.
Q 03Which Norse explorer is thought to have been the first European to set foot on continental America, about 500 years before Columbus?
Leif Erikson
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.
Q 04The raid on what monastery in 793 CE is often considered the beginning of the Viking Age?
Lindisfarne
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.
Q 05Which Danish king won the throne of England in 1016 through conquest?
Cnut the Great
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.
Q 06Which group formed the aristocracy at the top of Viking society's three-tier class system?
Jarls
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.
Q 07Which weapon was the most common among the Scandinavian peasant class in the Viking Age?
Spear
Spear: like the axe it was a weapon the broader population could afford, while the costly sword marked the elite.
Q 08Old Norse 'rannsaka', the source of the English verb 'ransack', was a term for doing what?
Searching a house
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.
Q 09In 845, a Viking fleet sailed up which river to plunder a great Frankish city until its king paid them to leave?
Seine
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.
Q 10Which 1066 clash, where Harald Hardrada was killed, is often cited as the end of the Viking Age in England?
Stamford Bridge
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.
Q 11A medieval Swedish law barred inheritance while in 'Greece' to stem emigration to which Byzantine unit?
The Varangian Guard
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.
Q 12What hull feature let Viking longships row far up rivers and land directly on beaches?
Shallow draft
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.
Q 13Old Norse 'húsbóndi', the likely source of English 'husband', meant what?
Master of a house
Q 21What is the overlapping-plank method used to build Viking longships called?
Clinker-built
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.
Q 22Which day of the week did the Norse call laugardagr, meaning 'bath day' or 'washing day'?
Saturday
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.
Q 23What name did the Norse give to Constantinople?
Miklagarðr
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.
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.
Q 14Which English weekday takes its name from the hammer-wielding Germanic god?
Thursday
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.
Q 15By his own account in the saga, why did Erik the Red call his icy new land 'Greenland'?
To attract settlers
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.
Q 16What was the main aim of the Great Heathen Army that landed in England in 865?
To conquer the four kingdoms
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.
Q 17Which part of his body did Odin famously sacrifice to drink from Mímir's well and gain immense wisdom?
An eye
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.
Q 18What is the name of Thor's hammer in Norse mythology?
Mjölnir
Mjölnir, Thor's hammer, was forged by the dwarves Brokkr and Eitri; Loki's meddling during the forging left its handle famously short.
Q 19In Norse mythology, what is Odin's hall called, where warriors killed in battle feast until Ragnarök?
Valhalla
Valhalla has 540 doors, and its warriors spend every day fighting and killing one another, then rise again to ride home and feast together.
Q 20According to one Norse account, who first sighted an unknown coast west of Greenland after being blown off course?
Bjarni Herjólfsson
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.
Q 24Besides his hammer, the thunder god's equipment includes iron gloves called Járngreipr and which belt?
Megingjörð
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.
Q 25Erik the Red left Norway as a boy after his father Thorvald was banished for what?
Manslaughter
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.
Q 26The runic alphabet is known as the futhark; where does that name come from?
Its first six letters
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.
Q 27What name, meaning 'Forest Land', did the Norse give the timber-rich coast west of Greenland?
Markland
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.
Q 28Odin's name stems from a root for being possessed or inspired, and is usually glossed as what?
Lord of frenzy
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.
Q 29By 1103 the first archbishopric in Scandinavia had been founded in which town, then part of Denmark?
Lund
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.
Q 30The first permanent Norse settlement in Iceland is traditionally attributed to which settler?
Ingólfur Arnarson
The Book of Settlements (Landnámabók) says Ingólfur Arnarson made his homestead at Reykjavík in 874, giving the future capital its name.