The biggest misconception is that they wehere called vikings. The act of going overseas to plunder was called to viking. The people were known as Danes or Norse.
"we're going abroad and it is likely to be dangerous." "like a hiking but with violence? we're going... viking?" "..." "yes, Hoffnarr, we're going 'viking'."
@@cassieoz1702 its also a occupational name. Those who go Viking, are Vikings like in the poem by Egill Skalla-Grímsson Þat mælti mín móðir, at mér skyldi kaupa fley ok fagrar árar fara á brott með víkingum, standa upp í stafni, stýra dýrum knerri, halda svá til hafnar, höggva mann ok annan. (910 - 990)
I'm a semi-professional historian of this time period (and mostly the later sagas you sometimes cite). Good job with the video, it's overall quite good, but there are a few things where you end up diving into other sets of misconceptions.. I hope you don't mind me chiming in with some addenda. 1) where did you hear that there are historians who think horned helmets were used for religious purposes in the Viking Age? I've never heard that and I'm curious 2) There is one attested ship cremation in the Kievan Rus' - recorded by Ibn Fadlan in the early 10th century, his Risala tells of an elite funeral that is on land, but does have the cremation of a ship. This is almost certainly where 1954's The Vikings got it from, and I think that's the most likely origin point for the trope (because it is a great visual) 3) board games - these are also usually interpreted as a marker of a warrior elite - since board games are a leisure activity and require strategic thought, they've been (problematically) interpreted as usually being in warrior graves. However, instead of being just passing time on a ship, most saga accounts that mention board games have them passing time in the hall in between expeditions! cf. Sigurdr ormr-i-auga playing tafl when he hears of Ragnar Fuzzypants' death. 4) your account of who most Vikings were (i.e. peasants) is not terrible, but massively elides two things. 1) we don't fully understand the motivations of why people went fighting - mobile wealth is obviously important, but to what end is not clear. and 2) it understates how massively expensive it is to outfit a ship - wood good enough to build ships with was one of the most valuable commodities for the Norwegian king to give to favored Icelanders!. The people starting raids and expeditions, and the ones who profit from it most, are solidly among the warrior elite, even if a numerical majority of the raiders on board are not nearly as elite. 5) Berserkers. This is one of the two big misconceptions - Roderick Dale argues that the "trance-state" of berserksgang has actually been read backwards! it's not "they enter a trance, therefore they become ultraviolent, bite shields, rampage, etc." but rather "they bite shields, chant, etc in order to cause a flood of adrenaline that improves performance in battle". Given that warfare is extremely formation-focused, it's not sensible to have the sort of wild cards that the classical image of berserker gives. He proposes that the term should be translated as "champion" - a sort of hyper-elite warrior who often served in royal courts. The associations to odin are also a bit iffy - this comes largely (though not entirely) from Snorri Sturluson's Ynglinga saga, composed in the 1210s - where Odin is a semi-immortal Trojan refugee-turned-sorcerer and the berserkers are his armor-shunning bodyguard. His account appears to have been fairly influential on later sagas, but has little historical value. Interestingly, you mention the death of St. Olafr. Given that he was extremely aggressive in his proselytizing, it's likely that the berserks that broke formation and lost the battle were also Christians! (even though the saint's life/saga blames the loss on the berserksgang, I personally find it more likely that, like at Hastings, that part of the army, wanting the largest claim of the glory, broke ranks in order to chase after "fleeing" enemies, and so were able to be picked off easily. 6) medieval people were smelly and the Vikings were an exception - this isn't true. Lavender was used for washing all across the early medieval world, even though full baths were (and still are) rare - using a washcloth to scrub your face after some weeding is far more akin to what medieval people appear to have done on a near-daily basis! The source you paraphrase that says English women preferred Norse men is John of Wallingford, writing in the 1200s - his annals broadly have little historical value and are prone to exaggeration, so there's no reason to trust this single source on this matter. 7) (last one, promise) scholarly consensus still trends toward the skjaldmeyjar being a literary invention, not a historical reality - even the account of women fighting alongside men in 971 is interesting because it is clearly seen by the chronicler as an anomalous, weird thing! However, there is ongoing archaeological word by Leszek Gardela and others to re-interpret weapon graves for evidence of biologically female inhabitants - the results so far indicate that while weapons were sometimes buried with women, these appear to have been more symbolic than literal. This comes after Bj. 581, which I'm surprised you didn't mention, as the Birka burial is probably the strongest single piece of evidence for female warriors being a much more common reality than was thought (though of course, the potential that the inhabitant was socially male or had a male gender identity is pertinent and worth considering).
Thank you for the information. This time period is something I have found interesting for quite some time and this video seemed very off for me when I watched it. It is always funny when a video that is meant to clear up misconceptions does the opposite. I am starting to get the feeling that the people behind Mental Floss, SciShow, etc. have some trouble with the medieval period.
Thanks for the added info, it's always appreciated when a subject matter expert weights in (nicely)! For #1, but I believe our source was the National Museum of Denmark, talking about the Oseberg Tapestry: “In the Oseberg burial from Norway, which dates to the early Viking period, a tapestry was found on which horned helmets are also depicted. … It is also possible that such headgear was worn for display or for cultic purposes.” They argue that the helmets would be impractical in battle. I think our language got a little jumbled with pre-Viking horned helmets (which we had a couple sources attesting to as ritualistic/quasi-religious), but there is at least that one secondary (tertiary?) source suggesting a horned helmet outside of battle? In any case, appreciate all of your thoughts and the extra nuance you bring to the subject! Wish we could update the video w additional info!
@@Narnendil most were both! We have records of trips that had both raiding and trading on the same voyage (these ones were in Finland). However, I would partially dispute the idea that Norse people in the Baltic and Volga areas were less likely to raid - there are records of raids in the Baltic both before and after the typical periodization of the "Viking Ave" (793-1066), and Scando-Slavic elite raiding Constantinople in 860. Our records are just way more patchy than they are for western Europe, which makes identifying raids much, much harder.
Burials of wealthy vikings did sometimes include ships, however. Though they were buried along with the notable individual rather than set to sea and burned. And, sometimes, a viking's burial included a set of stones placed to mimic the outline of a ship. The story of them burning the ships at sea comes from the writings of a scholar from Istanbul who ventured north and spent some time among the Rus, where he witnessed such an event happening. Though there is some debate if the Rus were vikings or not.
Speaking of helmets with horns: *The Veksø helmets* is a pair of very beautiful bronze helmets with very elaborate, curved horns. Furthermore, they are dated to the bronze age, some 2000 years before the vikings. They were put down in a lake, probably as a sacrifice, near Veksø in Sjælland, Denmark. Bronze age petroglyphs from all over Scandinavia show men wearing horned helmets, undoubtedly for ritual purpose. The horns of the Veksø helmets are made of bronze like the helmets, and very similar to the bronze trumpets from the same era that has been found in great numbers in Scandinavia, Denmark in particular. We call the trumpets "lur" today, but we don't know the ancient name. Anyway, helmets with horn or wings is a trope for any "barbarian" warrior, including celtic.In popular culture it's all jumbled together.
- All/most 'vikings' hailed from villages deep within a fjord surrounded by spectacular mountains. - 'Vikings' wore alot of leather and fur clothing and armor. - Most 'vikings' fought using axes. - Undercut hairstyles and facial tattoos. - 'Vikings' being high af on in combat. - And last, but certainly not least: 'Viking' being a noun.
Speaking of viking names, I will never forget that one time I was playing Age of Mythology and trained a Hersir unit with the name "Prondir Refreshingbeveragebrow".
In regards to the helmets, they actually found two mostly intact viking helmets. The Gjermundbu, and Yarm finds. Several other fragmented finds also exist from that era.
On horned helmets: literally the last thing you want in a fight is 2 easily grabbed or caught handles that can jerk your head around. It's like when you have wired headphones on and they catch on a doorknob, except the doorknob wants to kill you. In movies/plays the actors will "stage fight" with swords by swinging them at eachothers weapon to give the nice "CHING" sound and make it appear like a back and forth. In real combat you are swinging straight down for the head or into the shoulder of your opponent. Your horns/antlers in the way? Whoever is swinging at you now controls your head as your strapped on helmet jerks you about. It's an incredibly unpleasant feeling and is the reason most helmets are rounded, to make the blows glance off and not strike with full power.
Helmet horns as often portrayed would surely be deeply impractical because a downward hit with a sword would channel the sword towards the head rather than glancing of it? Similar to the way boob armour would be a terrible ideas because it would channel blade strikes towards the centre of the torso and all of the vital organs.
I trust the scientists take on Viking funerals cause I’m sure it’s more complicated than his statement but it makes sense to me that there WOULDN’T be any evidence of a flaming wood raft set adrift with a corpse on it cause...well it’s a flaming wood raft set adrift with a corpse on it...
The Viking funeral comes from Russia, not Scandinavians. Those people of what is now Russia still were what we’d consider Vikings and it comes from the accounts of the Muslim scholar Ahmad ibn Fadlan.
Which boardgame... hmm, I'd have to pick something that works good as a solo game, so I'll have to go with either Mage Knight: Ultimate Edition or Gloomhaven
Hahah I appreciate that we're granting A) There's an afterlife and B) You can bring games to it. But you are still being practical enough to pick a game that can be played solo.
At point 7:20 ... Misconception by content creator. Vikings where not generally just normal people who decided to go raiding. The term Viking means to go on a sea voyage or raid yes. However it was culturally ths norm to hace some level of skill in fighting. And the raids where all conducted by men of military age who had some level of training. In addition to the times that a lord or even a king would go on a raid surrounded by his bodyguards who all had formal training and where hand selected for the job. They weren't some random farmers with pitch forks.
They weren't ferocious hunters? They nearly conquered what is now called england 😂 everyone from the french, Saxons, even Slavs paid them off to leave them alone but they kept coming back and instead stayed. If it wasn't for the defeat of the famous "Great heathen Army" Danes and Norseman would've had the U.K. by the balls.
Just want to say that part of the horned helmet part is extremely misleading. You/your sources make it sounds like its proven that they didn't exist, as if we have found thousands of helmets and not 1 had horns . . . but then your proof is that a single Viking helmet was recovered and there are no horns . . . A single helmet out of thousands of Vikings is not proof that something DIDN'T exist. I'm not saying that they did exist BTW, just that that is horrible logic. Interesting stuff still.
Vikings didn't wear horned helmets, some ceremonial head gear may have had horns, but wearing those in battle is just asking for a broken neck and/or no helmet.
QI claimed that Viking settlers on Great Britain were successful with the local ladies compared to the existing male population because they bathed so they smelled better when they went socializing.
I think we're probably referencing the same primary source, but fyi, as a (seemingly quite well-informed) commenter pointed out elsewhere on this vid, it turns out that primary source may not be the most reliable. History can be quite slippery when there are limited contemporary accounts and/or fabulists weigh in!
Tho there are archeological evidence Odin was sometimes represented with a horned helmet. Ironically, you yourself included an image of a berserker with a horned helmet.
Idk where my Daddy got his information but he said in reguards to the Viking funeral of the boat set on fire with the body in it on water was originally done bc of an illness they didn't want to spread and that they did continue to do that but only for certain Vikings (rarely done) as a way to honor them done at sunset and had some kind of gathering the night of on the shore where people would drink and tell stories about the Viking that passed away. Also, was told they sometimes did this if a Viking was killed in a foreign land and died in battle. I'm only guessing but I think it is because since they raided coastal areas that being on a beach it was more of a convenience thing than anything else. Those were based on 2 different groups of Vikings/times. But I don't have any proof to back this up so I can't say for sure it's fact. I'm just repeating what I was told based on stories passed down through the family. Sometimes family stories are true and others have some basis in truth but have changed over the years.
tl;dr "almost" everything you think you know about Vikings, from the silly hats to the battle axe, was completely fabricated. also, where's my hekn shield maiden...
I know it's hard to do full research on a vid in 1 week and it's probably not viable for your channel to do fewer videos. But still, spreading false information isn't great. I don't wanna go through the comments on every video. I would have loved to believed the shielmaiden thing and stuff, but that doesn't mean it's true😅 If it is at all possible, please do fewer and more "boring" facts if that means they're absolutely certain or at least widely believed by historians. That would be great
I thought that the term 'viking' is a verb rather than a noun; 'to viking' meant to raid and pillage and so the correct collective noun would be 'Norsemen' to refer to the raiders that came from Scandinavia and the surrounding lands. 🤔 I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure, though I'm doubting myself now!
You're correct, roughly - usage of "the Vikings" as a name for early medieval Scandinavian cultures dates to the 19th century, but it is still used in public-facing work even among academics (e.g. the book "The Age of the Vikings, Anders Winroth, 2014). There's some very faint evidence that "Danes" was a name used in the period, though Norse and Northmen are both attested later as well.
Most Strongman alive today who actually compete in Strongman events are part Viking, they've done blood tests and they almost all have Viking Blood. So yeah Vikings might not have had to fight as much because they would intimidate by sheer size.
I have to agree on that. My family has Viking ancestors and almost all of us who are apart of that bloodline are naturally more muscular and taller than most. Everyone in my family has had natural athletic abilities. Though none of us ever did any Strongman comps that I know of. We probably would have been good at it but my brother does hold a World record in Wrestling. All the guys at least did football and wrestling. I only did gymnastics ( until I became too tall and not built the right way for it), karate, and softball but I was my schools arm wrestling champ in elementary school. There was no other way we had to show strength than that at my school. It was kinda embarrassing being a girl though. I knew my son would be big like us before he was born but I didn't know or expect just how big he would turn out. He is over 6'6 now and a big guy. He took 1st at State his first year at Wrestling and was a Lineman from 1st grade through high school. I hope he is done growing because it isn't easy to find clothes for him now. I find it interesting how these traits can be passed down so many generations later.
Archaeological evidence from the period suggests that the average height was about 5'7". Not bad, but hardly bodybuilder class, and about on par with medieval people generally (one study estimated 5'8" as the average across the early middle ages)
@@Ludohistory I know people back in that time weren't as tall as people are today like how Napoleon wasn't short for his time but Napoleon complex was named after him. It just seems like every generation is a little bit taller than the last. I assume it is because of better nutrition and other factors but like I said it has always seemed like we were bigger than most other people (not fatter but some of us are) and naturally more muscular even at an early age without doing anymore exercise than others. I'm not abnormally tall myself (5'8) but like I said my son is now a little over 6'6. I know that comes from my father's side bc almost everyone on my Mother's side of the family is tiny ( 3 of my cousins are under 5ft and my Mom is 5'3 and is the tallest woman on her side in 2 generations until I came along). Reading my comment back I realize it sounds like I was bragging but I didn't mean it that way. I was just trying to give examples of how we are. I've always just assumed it was because of the genes on my Daddy's side especially after him always telling us as kids that is why we are built the way we are. He is one of those history buff guys and has books of our family records with our family crest on it going back I don't even know how far but he is proud of his heritage. I assume like most Dads are. Plus, I think he wanted us to not feel embarrassed about being built differently than the other kids.
@@TheOfficialTarynTots actually, average height decreased across the middle ages, to somewhere between 5'5" and 5'6", so this isn't universally true! And average height in the US for men is... 5'9", only barely taller than the 5'8" of the early middle ages. Definitely, though, nutrition and health over the course of a life is far better now than it was a thousand years ago, and that has contributed slightly to the slowly increasing avg height too.
The Sahara of king shield A ship drifted to land Only occupsny were A baby on on s shield. And the women this is our new ling When the ling died Adam old man's He were put back on the boat on the shelf and pushed out to sea to return to where he came from
Berzerkers, a concept that could itself be a misconception, is the proof that there were vikining "soldiers"? Jesus christ Mental Floss, research failure. Firstly a "soldier" is a person who serves professionally in an army. The concept you're reaching for is called a "warrior". Secondly there's very good historical *written* proof of viking soldiers, in the "Vangarian Guard" which was comprised of norse, primarily Swedish, mercenaries serving the Byzantine emperor. Look them up.
While people from across the region intermingled and travelled widely, Leifr Eiríksson was born in Iceland, raised in Greenland, descended from Norwegians, and visited the court of Olaf Tryggvason before going to Vínland, and Thorfinnr Karlsefni, who visited north America after Leifr, was born and raised in Iceland. Meanwhile, facing east, the farthest known expedition was to somewhere by the Caspian Sea in 1040-ish, and was as far as we know almost entirely from modern Sweden. Some of the raiders who made it to Seville and Luna in the 9th c. with Björn járnsíða and Hásteinn were probably Danish though!
It’s hard to tell where that wallpaper ends and that shirt begins. Looking good, keep up the great work!
Lol yep. We hadn't been in the studio in ~15 months, and when Justin sat down we had a bit of a "whoops" moment. But thank you!
@@MentalFloss It’s great to hear you’re getting back in the studio. Normality!
Tbh from person who has scattered thoughts: I don't think I've ever payed attention to a face for that long in a while.
It was well camo I did not even noticed.
The biggest misconception is that they wehere called vikings. The act of going overseas to plunder was called to viking. The people were known as Danes or Norse.
"we're going abroad and it is likely to be dangerous."
"like a hiking but with violence? we're going... viking?"
"..." "yes, Hoffnarr, we're going 'viking'."
Thank you. Viking was a verb. You went viking, often during summer, and left your missus to run the farm or business
I remember my Norweigan grandpa telling me this! You "went a viking".
@@cassieoz1702 its also a occupational name. Those who go Viking, are Vikings like in the poem by Egill Skalla-Grímsson
Þat mælti mín móðir,
at mér skyldi kaupa
fley ok fagrar árar
fara á brott með víkingum,
standa upp í stafni,
stýra dýrum knerri,
halda svá til hafnar,
höggva mann ok annan.
(910 - 990)
Or, later on in the west of europe, the Rus.
I'm a semi-professional historian of this time period (and mostly the later sagas you sometimes cite). Good job with the video, it's overall quite good, but there are a few things where you end up diving into other sets of misconceptions.. I hope you don't mind me chiming in with some addenda.
1) where did you hear that there are historians who think horned helmets were used for religious purposes in the Viking Age? I've never heard that and I'm curious
2) There is one attested ship cremation in the Kievan Rus' - recorded by Ibn Fadlan in the early 10th century, his Risala tells of an elite funeral that is on land, but does have the cremation of a ship. This is almost certainly where 1954's The Vikings got it from, and I think that's the most likely origin point for the trope (because it is a great visual)
3) board games - these are also usually interpreted as a marker of a warrior elite - since board games are a leisure activity and require strategic thought, they've been (problematically) interpreted as usually being in warrior graves. However, instead of being just passing time on a ship, most saga accounts that mention board games have them passing time in the hall in between expeditions! cf. Sigurdr ormr-i-auga playing tafl when he hears of Ragnar Fuzzypants' death.
4) your account of who most Vikings were (i.e. peasants) is not terrible, but massively elides two things. 1) we don't fully understand the motivations of why people went fighting - mobile wealth is obviously important, but to what end is not clear. and 2) it understates how massively expensive it is to outfit a ship - wood good enough to build ships with was one of the most valuable commodities for the Norwegian king to give to favored Icelanders!. The people starting raids and expeditions, and the ones who profit from it most, are solidly among the warrior elite, even if a numerical majority of the raiders on board are not nearly as elite.
5) Berserkers. This is one of the two big misconceptions - Roderick Dale argues that the "trance-state" of berserksgang has actually been read backwards! it's not "they enter a trance, therefore they become ultraviolent, bite shields, rampage, etc." but rather "they bite shields, chant, etc in order to cause a flood of adrenaline that improves performance in battle". Given that warfare is extremely formation-focused, it's not sensible to have the sort of wild cards that the classical image of berserker gives. He proposes that the term should be translated as "champion" - a sort of hyper-elite warrior who often served in royal courts.
The associations to odin are also a bit iffy - this comes largely (though not entirely) from Snorri Sturluson's Ynglinga saga, composed in the 1210s - where Odin is a semi-immortal Trojan refugee-turned-sorcerer and the berserkers are his armor-shunning bodyguard. His account appears to have been fairly influential on later sagas, but has little historical value. Interestingly, you mention the death of St. Olafr. Given that he was extremely aggressive in his proselytizing, it's likely that the berserks that broke formation and lost the battle were also Christians! (even though the saint's life/saga blames the loss on the berserksgang, I personally find it more likely that, like at Hastings, that part of the army, wanting the largest claim of the glory, broke ranks in order to chase after "fleeing" enemies, and so were able to be picked off easily.
6) medieval people were smelly and the Vikings were an exception - this isn't true. Lavender was used for washing all across the early medieval world, even though full baths were (and still are) rare - using a washcloth to scrub your face after some weeding is far more akin to what medieval people appear to have done on a near-daily basis! The source you paraphrase that says English women preferred Norse men is John of Wallingford, writing in the 1200s - his annals broadly have little historical value and are prone to exaggeration, so there's no reason to trust this single source on this matter.
7) (last one, promise) scholarly consensus still trends toward the skjaldmeyjar being a literary invention, not a historical reality - even the account of women fighting alongside men in 971 is interesting because it is clearly seen by the chronicler as an anomalous, weird thing! However, there is ongoing archaeological word by Leszek Gardela and others to re-interpret weapon graves for evidence of biologically female inhabitants - the results so far indicate that while weapons were sometimes buried with women, these appear to have been more symbolic than literal. This comes after Bj. 581, which I'm surprised you didn't mention, as the Birka burial is probably the strongest single piece of evidence for female warriors being a much more common reality than was thought (though of course, the potential that the inhabitant was socially male or had a male gender identity is pertinent and worth considering).
Thank you for the information. This time period is something I have found interesting for quite some time and this video seemed very off for me when I watched it. It is always funny when a video that is meant to clear up misconceptions does the opposite. I am starting to get the feeling that the people behind Mental Floss, SciShow, etc. have some trouble with the medieval period.
Thanks for the added info, it's always appreciated when a subject matter expert weights in (nicely)!
For #1, but I believe our source was the National Museum of Denmark, talking about the Oseberg Tapestry: “In the Oseberg burial from Norway, which dates to the early Viking period, a tapestry was found on which horned helmets are also depicted. … It is also possible that such headgear was worn for display or for cultic purposes.” They argue that the helmets would be impractical in battle.
I think our language got a little jumbled with pre-Viking horned helmets (which we had a couple sources attesting to as ritualistic/quasi-religious), but there is at least that one secondary (tertiary?) source suggesting a horned helmet outside of battle?
In any case, appreciate all of your thoughts and the extra nuance you bring to the subject! Wish we could update the video w additional info!
Not all Vikings were violent raiders. Some were simply traders. Especially the Vikings travelling east.
@@Narnendil most were both! We have records of trips that had both raiding and trading on the same voyage (these ones were in Finland). However, I would partially dispute the idea that Norse people in the Baltic and Volga areas were less likely to raid - there are records of raids in the Baltic both before and after the typical periodization of the "Viking Ave" (793-1066), and Scando-Slavic elite raiding Constantinople in 860. Our records are just way more patchy than they are for western Europe, which makes identifying raids much, much harder.
@@Narnendil Then they weren't 'viking' which means 'raider'. Many of the Norse were traders, but they weren't going viking.
Burials of wealthy vikings did sometimes include ships, however. Though they were buried along with the notable individual rather than set to sea and burned. And, sometimes, a viking's burial included a set of stones placed to mimic the outline of a ship. The story of them burning the ships at sea comes from the writings of a scholar from Istanbul who ventured north and spent some time among the Rus, where he witnessed such an event happening. Though there is some debate if the Rus were vikings or not.
I had forgotten this channel existed for an year or two.
Great to find it again, also subscribed :)
Bury me with Lords of Waterdeep but please make sure to include the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion, thank you!
you missed one of best/worst names: Ivar the boneless, a ruthless warlord, lived to 79 surprisingly... so it is said...
Speaking of helmets with horns: *The Veksø helmets* is a pair of very beautiful bronze helmets with very elaborate, curved horns. Furthermore, they are dated to the bronze age, some 2000 years before the vikings. They were put down in a lake, probably as a sacrifice, near Veksø in Sjælland, Denmark. Bronze age petroglyphs from all over Scandinavia show men wearing horned helmets, undoubtedly for ritual purpose. The horns of the Veksø helmets are made of bronze like the helmets, and very similar to the bronze trumpets from the same era that has been found in great numbers in Scandinavia, Denmark in particular. We call the trumpets "lur" today, but we don't know the ancient name.
Anyway, helmets with horn or wings is a trope for any "barbarian" warrior, including celtic.In popular culture it's all jumbled together.
- All/most 'vikings' hailed from villages deep within a fjord surrounded by spectacular mountains.
- 'Vikings' wore alot of leather and fur clothing and armor.
- Most 'vikings' fought using axes.
- Undercut hairstyles and facial tattoos.
- 'Vikings' being high af on in combat.
- And last, but certainly not least: 'Viking' being a noun.
Nothing wrong with using viking as a noun, but one should remember that it's an occupational description, like "carpenter".
Speaking of viking names, I will never forget that one time I was playing Age of Mythology and trained a Hersir unit with the name "Prondir Refreshingbeveragebrow".
Eystein Foul-Fart. That'd definitely have been my Viking name
In regards to the helmets, they actually found two mostly intact viking helmets. The Gjermundbu, and Yarm finds. Several other fragmented finds also exist from that era.
*Great video. Makes me wanna go rewatch the comedy series "Norsemen".*
Its so informative and cool 👍👍
"New fin land," not "New fin lind".
On horned helmets: literally the last thing you want in a fight is 2 easily grabbed or caught handles that can jerk your head around. It's like when you have wired headphones on and they catch on a doorknob, except the doorknob wants to kill you.
In movies/plays the actors will "stage fight" with swords by swinging them at eachothers weapon to give the nice "CHING" sound and make it appear like a back and forth. In real combat you are swinging straight down for the head or into the shoulder of your opponent. Your horns/antlers in the way? Whoever is swinging at you now controls your head as your strapped on helmet jerks you about. It's an incredibly unpleasant feeling and is the reason most helmets are rounded, to make the blows glance off and not strike with full power.
Aaaw Lopgirtha and Rognar Logdbroth for ever 💕💕💕
I love your videos but your audio is always so quiet! Is there a way to turn up the volume of the videos before uploading them?
Helmet horns as often portrayed would surely be deeply impractical because a downward hit with a sword would channel the sword towards the head rather than glancing of it? Similar to the way boob armour would be a terrible ideas because it would channel blade strikes towards the centre of the torso and all of the vital organs.
and it would give an opponent something to grab, which would be terrible when fighting close up
Can you please raise the volume of the videos. It is hard to hear it correctly.
Something really needs to be done with your volume. Only channel I watch where I have to turn it way up just to make it audible.
I trust the scientists take on Viking funerals cause I’m sure it’s more complicated than his statement but it makes sense to me that there WOULDN’T be any evidence of a flaming wood raft set adrift with a corpse on it cause...well it’s a flaming wood raft set adrift with a corpse on it...
“actual clubbing” LMAO
trimming finger and toe nails was routine - one claimed reason to hinder the approach or Ragnarok by delaying the construction of a ship of nails
You can bury me with all my Trivial Pursuit boxes and then try to pry 'em from my cold, dead hands.
The Viking funeral comes from Russia, not Scandinavians. Those people of what is now Russia still were what we’d consider Vikings and it comes from the accounts of the Muslim scholar Ahmad ibn Fadlan.
Which boardgame... hmm, I'd have to pick something that works good as a solo game, so I'll have to go with either Mage Knight: Ultimate Edition or Gloomhaven
Hahah I appreciate that we're granting A) There's an afterlife and B) You can bring games to it. But you are still being practical enough to pick a game that can be played solo.
Blood eagles for everyone!
Bury me with A Feast for Odin of course!
For the time being... I'd say: bury me with Terra Mystica.
An EXCELLENT choice.
The first one is there weren't giant there height was ≈5'7" -5'10"
Second: did not wears horn helmet for battle.
At point 7:20 ... Misconception by content creator. Vikings where not generally just normal people who decided to go raiding. The term Viking means to go on a sea voyage or raid yes. However it was culturally ths norm to hace some level of skill in fighting. And the raids where all conducted by men of military age who had some level of training. In addition to the times that a lord or even a king would go on a raid surrounded by his bodyguards who all had formal training and where hand selected for the job. They weren't some random farmers with pitch forks.
They weren't ferocious hunters? They nearly conquered what is now called england 😂 everyone from the french, Saxons, even Slavs paid them off to leave them alone but they kept coming back and instead stayed. If it wasn't for the defeat of the famous "Great heathen Army" Danes and Norseman would've had the U.K. by the balls.
I wonder if the horned helmets might have been partly inspired by the spiked helmet.
Just want to say that part of the horned helmet part is extremely misleading. You/your sources make it sounds like its proven that they didn't exist, as if we have found thousands of helmets and not 1 had horns . . . but then your proof is that a single Viking helmet was recovered and there are no horns . . .
A single helmet out of thousands of Vikings is not proof that something DIDN'T exist. I'm not saying that they did exist BTW, just that that is horrible logic.
Interesting stuff still.
Vikings didn't wear horned helmets, some ceremonial head gear may have had horns, but wearing those in battle is just asking for a broken neck and/or no helmet.
How to Train your Dragon is a fun viking cartoon for kids. It's all about the dragons & their riders
QI claimed that Viking settlers on Great Britain were successful with the local ladies compared to the existing male population because they bathed so they smelled better when they went socializing.
I think we're probably referencing the same primary source, but fyi, as a (seemingly quite well-informed) commenter pointed out elsewhere on this vid, it turns out that primary source may not be the most reliable. History can be quite slippery when there are limited contemporary accounts and/or fabulists weigh in!
I would be buried with Twister to play with all the hot women in the afterlife. 😆
Are you related to Tim Dodd!? I have to know!
Which board game....? Orlog anyone?
Well, I wouldn't say no to play some Othello with the Devil after I'm dead...
Tho there are archeological evidence Odin was sometimes represented with a horned helmet. Ironically, you yourself included an image of a berserker with a horned helmet.
you do know that the gods aren't real right?
Only big chiefs had the funeral at sea. Others got regular graves. You had to have importance and money to get the funeral at sea.....
Are you suggesting “going to the office” has some other meaning?
It's nice to see my state being used in size comparison with Europe lol
Idk where my Daddy got his information but he said in reguards to the Viking funeral of the boat set on fire with the body in it on water was originally done bc of an illness they didn't want to spread and that they did continue to do that but only for certain Vikings (rarely done) as a way to honor them done at sunset and had some kind of gathering the night of on the shore where people would drink and tell stories about the Viking that passed away.
Also, was told they sometimes did this if a Viking was killed in a foreign land and died in battle. I'm only guessing but I think it is because since they raided coastal areas that being on a beach it was more of a convenience thing than anything else. Those were based on 2 different groups of Vikings/times.
But I don't have any proof to back this up so I can't say for sure it's fact. I'm just repeating what I was told based on stories passed down through the family. Sometimes family stories are true and others have some basis in truth but have changed over the years.
My father's name is Kolbeinn...
I wonder if Tolkien got any inspiration from Der Ring des Nibelungen
Tolkien was a scholar of Norse Mythology. He and Wagner got inspiration from the same sources.
The names are hilarious 😂
Volume low, recommend headphones
why are vikings attacking Illinois ?
Presents a bunch of misconceptions - shows illustrations with even more misrepresentations.
Snorralaug for "they bathed" and the illustration of Ragnar meeting Áslaug while talking about Lagertha were ... Interesting choices!
Great, now the Minnesota Vikings are going to have to redesign their helmets
Not "vikings", but Norse people who went viking (yes a verb).
Most. Visually. Painful. Video.
EVER.
One Night Ultemate Werewolf.
There’s so much wrong with this video
Smacks of just more unresearched mild debunking based on "because that's what we're telling you". No offense, just not very credible.
Berserkers didn’t only follow Odin. That’s just wrong.
His wording wasnt so generalised. He implied that accounts of such a thing were common.
tl;dr
"almost" everything you think you know about Vikings, from the silly hats to the battle axe, was completely fabricated.
also, where's my hekn shield maiden...
You spent a quarter of the video runtime on just 1 item.
I know it's hard to do full research on a vid in 1 week and it's probably not viable for your channel to do fewer videos. But still, spreading false information isn't great. I don't wanna go through the comments on every video. I would have loved to believed the shielmaiden thing and stuff, but that doesn't mean it's true😅
If it is at all possible, please do fewer and more "boring" facts if that means they're absolutely certain or at least widely believed by historians. That would be great
I thought that the term 'viking' is a verb rather than a noun; 'to viking' meant to raid and pillage and so the correct collective noun would be 'Norsemen' to refer to the raiders that came from Scandinavia and the surrounding lands. 🤔 I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure, though I'm doubting myself now!
You're correct, roughly - usage of "the Vikings" as a name for early medieval Scandinavian cultures dates to the 19th century, but it is still used in public-facing work even among academics (e.g. the book "The Age of the Vikings, Anders Winroth, 2014). There's some very faint evidence that "Danes" was a name used in the period, though Norse and Northmen are both attested later as well.
Most Strongman alive today who actually compete in Strongman events are part Viking, they've done blood tests and they almost all have Viking Blood. So yeah Vikings might not have had to fight as much because they would intimidate by sheer size.
Viking was a job title, not a people. There were Vikings that were not from Scandinavia. I would say Norse instead of viking with what you are saying
I have to agree on that. My family has Viking ancestors and almost all of us who are apart of that bloodline are naturally more muscular and taller than most. Everyone in my family has had natural athletic abilities. Though none of us ever did any Strongman comps that I know of. We probably would have been good at it but my brother does hold a World record in Wrestling. All the guys at least did football and wrestling. I only did gymnastics ( until I became too tall and not built the right way for it), karate, and softball but I was my schools arm wrestling champ in elementary school. There was no other way we had to show strength than that at my school. It was kinda embarrassing being a girl though. I knew my son would be big like us before he was born but I didn't know or expect just how big he would turn out. He is over 6'6 now and a big guy. He took 1st at State his first year at Wrestling and was a Lineman from 1st grade through high school. I hope he is done growing because it isn't easy to find clothes for him now. I find it interesting how these traits can be passed down so many generations later.
Archaeological evidence from the period suggests that the average height was about 5'7". Not bad, but hardly bodybuilder class, and about on par with medieval people generally (one study estimated 5'8" as the average across the early middle ages)
@@Ludohistory I know people back in that time weren't as tall as people are today like how Napoleon wasn't short for his time but Napoleon complex was named after him. It just seems like every generation is a little bit taller than the last. I assume it is because of better nutrition and other factors but like I said it has always seemed like we were bigger than most other people (not fatter but some of us are) and naturally more muscular even at an early age without doing anymore exercise than others. I'm not abnormally tall myself (5'8) but like I said my son is now a little over 6'6. I know that comes from my father's side bc almost everyone on my Mother's side of the family is tiny ( 3 of my cousins are under 5ft and my Mom is 5'3 and is the tallest woman on her side in 2 generations until I came along).
Reading my comment back I realize it sounds like I was bragging but I didn't mean it that way. I was just trying to give examples of how we are. I've always just assumed it was because of the genes on my Daddy's side especially after him always telling us as kids that is why we are built the way we are. He is one of those history buff guys and has books of our family records with our family crest on it going back I don't even know how far but he is proud of his heritage. I assume like most Dads are. Plus, I think he wanted us to not feel embarrassed about being built differently than the other kids.
@@TheOfficialTarynTots actually, average height decreased across the middle ages, to somewhere between 5'5" and 5'6", so this isn't universally true! And average height in the US for men is... 5'9", only barely taller than the 5'8" of the early middle ages. Definitely, though, nutrition and health over the course of a life is far better now than it was a thousand years ago, and that has contributed slightly to the slowly increasing avg height too.
Dude! What up with the Flat Earth map?
Speak up, I can't hear over your shirt.
The Sahara of king shield
A ship drifted to land
Only occupsny were
A baby on on s shield.
And the women this is our new ling
When the ling died Adam old man's
He were put back on the boat on the shelf and pushed out to sea to return to where he came from
Hacked
Ou
Mouse Trap
"Friend of Children" is not a nickname you would really want in todays society if engaged in violence and plundering
Hey, it works for Gamera.
I'm pleasantly surprised he said newfoundland correctly. 👏👏👏 you have my respect good sir.
Berzerkers, a concept that could itself be a misconception, is the proof that there were vikining "soldiers"?
Jesus christ Mental Floss, research failure.
Firstly a "soldier" is a person who serves professionally in an army. The concept you're reaching for is called a "warrior".
Secondly there's very good historical *written* proof of viking soldiers, in the "Vangarian Guard" which was comprised of norse, primarily Swedish, mercenaries serving the Byzantine emperor. Look them up.
Can we please have a positive PR piece on the Nazis next, or maybe Ghengis Khan? :-/
Sending boats out and setting them on fire... is not very viking. They were very pragmatic being as supplies are hard to come by in their homeland.
As a Dane I am offended by the first animation, Danish Vikings are generally the ones who traveled far like North America.
While people from across the region intermingled and travelled widely, Leifr Eiríksson was born in Iceland, raised in Greenland, descended from Norwegians, and visited the court of Olaf Tryggvason before going to Vínland, and Thorfinnr Karlsefni, who visited north America after Leifr, was born and raised in Iceland. Meanwhile, facing east, the farthest known expedition was to somewhere by the Caspian Sea in 1040-ish, and was as far as we know almost entirely from modern Sweden. Some of the raiders who made it to Seville and Luna in the 9th c. with Björn járnsíða and Hásteinn were probably Danish though!