Being from Sweden i have Viking blood in my Veins, it is sometimes confusing to decide wether to be proud or ashamed of this fact, considering that vikings might not be known for being the most heart warm people that ever lived. Either way one thing is sure, i am fascinated and intrigued by the history of vikings and i want to share with you 5 amazing facts you probably didnt know about vikings:
(1) Wide Influence In East
Vikings traveled far from shores of Sweden and some traveled quite far east. In current east europe these vikings were called Rus, which is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row". The Rus were the ones that gave their name to the biggest country in the world- guess which - thats right; Russia! It is also belived that the Tsars in Russia came from a bloodline of vikings.
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(2) Can You Speak Viking?
Vikings have had a great influence on the english language, much more so then anyone originally thought.
The Viking settlers spoke old norse and many words today can be tracked directly backed to old norse. Here are some
examples:
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Anger
angr (“=trouble, affliction”); root ang (=”strait, straitened, troubled”); related to anga, plural öngur (=”straits, anguish”)
Egg
egg = egg
Husband
husbondi (=”master of the house”)
Mistake
mistaka (=”miscarry”)
Want
vanta (=”to lack”
The examples go on and on. The fact is that the easiest languages for Native english speaking people to learn as a second language is Norweigan followed by Swedish, this further proves the fact that the languages are very similar.
(3) Not All Vikings Were Blond
Viking men that were not naturally blond bleeched their hair to blond color. Blond hair was considered the beauty ideal at the time. To bleech the hair they used a very strong soap that contained a hight leveled of lye, this substance could effectively bleach the hair. Some people even used this method to bleach their beard.
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(4) A Proper Burial
In the Norse Religion Boats played a big role and it was believed that when people were buried in their ship they could
be transported safely to a glorious after life. These Ship graves were usually reserved for the more prominent people and leaders, and you can see these graveyards still today as they used stones to outline the shape of the ship.
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(5) Where are the horns?
The fact is that Vikings didn’t wear any horned helmets, this is a common misconception. The only viking helmets that have been excevated had no hors indeed, the misconception might be due to the descriptions of northern europeans by the chronicles written by Greek and Romans, where there is reference to Germanic and Borse priest, which did wear the horned helmets for sacrifcial purposes. These priest lived long before the vikings time however and have thus no relation to the vikings at all.
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Hope you like this post, i am myself of the opinion that one can never learn too much, and thus making posts like this is something i find very interesting because i also learn as i research! Hope you found out some facts about vikings that you didnt know and please let me know if there are some interesting facts which you would like to add? Have a great day!
