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As an amateur historian on the early medeival period (aka the dark age) I can tell you that despite your humility, this video is very well researched particularly as far as a piece made for the general public, i.e. a layman, is concerned. Well done 👏
Thrall is is pronounced like all. Karl is pronounced just like the name Carl. Jarl is pronounced with a Y not a J. So it's Yarl. And is pronounced like Karl for the rest of it. Edit: loved the video
While it is easy to agree on the hair style, the beard style can be highly disputed. The guys from medival reenactment do show indeed that beards are impractical with a full helmet and breast plates coming up the neck - but most Vikings did not wear one of those at the time. So aside from the cheek pieces of the helmet they did certainly have the option to wear a longer beard from the chin. Many sagas identify their hero by a special beard color, so they certainly colored or dyed the beard which implies some length. Same goes for braiding where there are inspirations from middle east upper class and we do have some depictions showing Viking warriors that could be interpreted as having a braided beard. Some commentators point out that in the Saga of Burnt Njal the hero is mocked for having no beard. So we can hypothesize that it was fasnionalbe to have a beard of medium lenght or a bit longer.
I think you missed a major aspect affecting their style and that of the pirates of the Caribbean - the goal of getting an enemy to surrender because of your presence. Battle is costly. It is much better if you can be an overwhelming, terrifying, intimidating presence that makes your target surrender or bribe you to leave them unharmed. Anyone raiding or engaging in piracy is using smart strategy if they are winning without a shot fired and avoiding casualties.
Well considering what the Vikings *actually* wore into battle, it's not a "major aspect". No horns, no pelts, no weird leather contraptions, no Native American style makeup. Just chainmail hauberks and helmets on top of normal clothes. Colorful tunics with nice tablet-woven hems. Forget the bastardized image that's been propagated by Hollywood and neo-pagans over the past decades, none of them care about historical accuracy, the truth is yes, more plain in some ways, but more interesting in others once you get into it. Not to say you wouldn't be scared if you were a monk and you saw Viking ships speeding in your direction, but I doubt you'd be less scared if they were Franks instead.
@@lukurd5923 I Agree, and building on your point: If I'm an average famer living miles away from the next homestead and I see a group of guys running down the hill screaming with axes and shields that's probably all I'm going to be focused on.
@𝕾𝖗𝖎𝖏𝖎𝖙 𝕾𝖚𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖆𝖙𝖍 Source: Any historian. Go on, tell me about the victories of the Norsemen. I'll be impressed if it's more than a paragraph. The simple fact is that the Norse didn't stand a chance against an organised resistance. They conquered a bit of England, when England was divided in seven kingdoms, but were eventually driven out. They conquered some lands out east, along the great rivers of Russia, but swiftly assimilated. What did they conquer? There's nothing today that suggest that the Norse left any lasting impression on the areas they "conquered". A bit of vocabulary, perhaps, but nothing on the scale of Roman or British conquests.
You should totally do an episode on kilts, i wear one on occasion and i can say it take a lot of confidence but defiantly gets compliments that don't seem condescending. It's become one of my favorite things to wear.
As for the blonde dye, I do very much believe it was fashionable. We know that blonde dye was known at the time, not only attested in Roman sources, and we have atleast one grave from the Viking age with surving hair that was bleached. This finding has changed the scientific view as the earlier results of ancient DNA shows that the natural hair color of most of the Germanic tribes including the Scandinavians was brown - possibly a natural blond was around in the same amount that we see it in modern Germans along the Rhine. Roman and Greek sources however do often say that Suebian and Goths were blond - with the only constraint that the word meant probably a light reddish tone and not white/yellow as it is usually interpreted today. Looking at depictions of rulers in the later centuries we see that they are often represented with blond and curly hair. So we can very much guess that the highest ranks of society used that hair style to differentiate themselves from lower classes. This would also explain why Scandivian DNA makeup has shifted towards blond over the centuries as it was very much preferred for both men and women. It is very plausible that both freemen and women would bleached their hair regularly - to the extent that we see it with modern German women. Most people in the Western world will think of them as having mostly blond hair but the Genetic makeup does not provide for that. In the same style we can assume that Viking men represented themselves with a blond style when trading with other people.
And many here in Scandinavia today also believe it was used as a way to kill lice and other pest which makes sens, after all as he said in the video we "Vikings" where hard on cleanliness so i do believe in this theory.
I just saw the video @AbbyCox about powdering the hair like in the 17. century ("I tried a 300-year-old hair care routine for a year"). Fact 1: the hair looks much lighter than the natural brown. Even today this colour would count as blonde in middle america AFAIK. Fact 2: you need to comb this hair alteast every day. This matches with the number of combs found in viking graves. Fact 3: although the powder itself does not help against lice, they added ingredients that did help. - Although I dont believe that the viking age people used powder&pomade for their hair, I can very much believe that ancient bleaching methods may have been more similar to that than the modern peroxide based bleaching methods.
Hey Antonio, while I typically agree with every one of your videos and their contents, I did find some discrepancy about this one. In the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda (Viking stories), there is mention of the long hair being worn by the Jarls and there is reference to the Norse gods… I study anthropology and humanities and have had to read a lot (maybe too much) of Viking and Norse history and mythos. Hair was a symbol of wealth, status, nobility and power. Thor, for instance, had “long flowing hair”and while most villagers and warriors didn’t have the luxury or time, the Jarls did and had the time to maintain their hair. There was also the fact that long hair was not only a means of protection to the head (not so much sword blows but cuts and scrapes from the vegetation and even some wildlife) but also had significance to their religion and cultural identity. What you also should have included was the fact that Vikings were seafarers, as you mentioned, living most of their lives near to some source of water for food and transportation but the vast majority of Norse people were farmers and the hair also helped wick sweat from their face, eyes and neck. Otherwise, bravo and good research done for just one video.
Talking history here, you mention slave trading with the Vikings. We get the word “Slave” from “Slav” as in a Slavic person. They were historically the most common people to be traded at the time. Love the video!
I'm Icelandic and I can confirm that the Vikings series is such an insult to our heritage, and this video is such an honorable effort to depict the Hollywood senseless crap, thank you sir.
It's not supposed to be accurate it's entertainment I'm not trying to bash you or anything but as a fellow Scandinavian i agree it isn't that great to show our father's as savages
I've done a lot of study into Celtic heritage and clothing, this episode definitely helped me understand where their "fashion" comes from. ( celts were very close to Norse as both were Germanic)
Hey Antonio, I know there's general rules for how men should dress as they age. Could we get a video on better fragrances to lean toward for men in their 30s and 40s? Sometimes I feel like fragrances that I try are meant for college kids. Which I am unfortunately not 😅 I'm not quite old enough to fall back on Old Spice just yet, but Paco Rabane's One Million feels like I'm having a midlife crisis. I need something in the middle
Mostly because of Norse occupation and settlements in Ireland. If any Irish were called "Vikings" in any sources, then it most likely referred to them being bandits. At least in the Icelandic sagas, plenty of people (who weren't Norse) were called "Vikings", and that just referred to them being raiders and/or bandits.
@@damien5748 Yes, plundered, raided, and for a a while, settled. As an Icelander, I very probably have some ancestor who was plucked from Ireland and taken to Iceland as a slave. I think there's some genetic studies supporting that. Something about most Icelandic men have a Y-chromosome linked mostly with Norway, but most Icelandic women have a mitochondrial DNA linked mostly with Ireland, but I can't link any. Just something I vaguely remember reading in a newspaper 15+ years ago.
I read that animal fat wasn't used for styling of hair but for hair health. It was supposed to help hair grow faster, strengthen the hair, and make it look healthy looking. I think egg yolk is supposed to do the same thing. I can see the long hair with half bun being done because it not only takes the hair out of your face, it also allows the hair to protect your neck from the sun.
I'm just getting to know my Norwegian Viking roots and it's been cool the entire time. I really love the whole natural aesthetic, they were very similar to the Native peoples of many countries, worshipping the Earth and the life that surrounds us. My favorite form of Viking art is their work with wood and blacksmithing. I recently purchased a hand forged Mjolnir amulet from Norway and I love how a portion of the maker's energy is bound within, I felt a literal jolt run though me when I first put it on.
As a kid I dyed my brunette hair full blonde, all I did was wash it in lemon juice with no special chemistry preparations needed. Noted that's an acid while lye is a base, but they can often have a similar effect on degrading materials. Presuming lye will work to dye your hair, it is also very accessible as lye is used in making soap and it is produced by washing corpses or charcoal.
Now I think about it, my hair went Simpson's yellow rather than blonde because because you have to bleach your hair first if you are brunette... Which would tend toward white colour stripping. So yeah, lye would totally give you platinum blonde hair.
based on the information presented here it is more than likely that the men braided and locked their hair for seasons of conquest or to communicate conquest aesthetically. therefore, the casual dismissal of vikings with braided here is mute. Also, the comb is an instrument of locking white-people hair by a method calling "back-combing". So combs being found support the notion that they wore locked hair or, at worse, is not a cause for dismissing locks as a style.
Where so many native American Tribes braided long hair I don't see why the Norse would be any different. It's a good way to style and manage long hair.
@@jaysterling26 All do respect I've never heard that the Britons had a distinctive Celtic culture that being said what it is to be Celtic is pretty broad
Celts is a collective term. It did very much include the "English" although I use that term extremely loosely as England literally means Agloland but the Britons for example are classed as celtic. DNA English people are Anglo-Scandinavian but that's due to the high number of germanic and norse. Before that the Celts did very much populate Britain, including England.
Would love love to see a video on Slavic hairstyles, like the Polish czupryna or the one Svietoslav and Cossacks were sporting. The Polish and Cossack style was very Persian/Ottoman inspired.
When you talked about shaving parts of the head but not others, as well as about long and short hair as class signals, you reminded me of the crazy hair politics of China, and legal and religious mandates about hair in general: Shaving parts of the head but not others was supposedly a Mongol style which encouraged the Ming to legally mandate long, totally uncut, hair (which was a Confucian tradition justified by Confucius stating that harming the hair or other parts of the body was disrespectful to ones parents, who created and owned ones body). When the Manchu Qing started conquering China, they and their new anti-Ming pro-Qing Chinese loyalists made it mandatory not only for men to where a braid called a "queue" to show loyalty to the Qing emperor (a long tradition of nomadic tribes of northeast Asia), but also for them to shave the front of their head in the Manchu style, disobeying Ming law. Thus, during the Ming-Qing transition, the way a man wore his hair NECESSARILY involved breaking one or the other empire's laws. This was a great sign of allegiance (although many tried to show allegiance to the Qing emperor with a queue, while still not shaving their head to follow Confucianism), which is why this hairstyle you see all over ca. 19th Century depictions of Chinese people, was not just some racist stereotype, but the actual way pretty much all men from China wore their hair because it was officially considered treason punishable by death to NOT wear this hair style (unless you were a Buddhist monk with a shaved head or a Daoist monk with long-hair in a top-knot) until the 1911 revolution.
@@RealMenRealStyle fantastic...and maybe even a video on the ninja...and not the hollywood 'ninja " but rather the real ninja from the Iga and Koga provences of what is now moden day Mie prefecture
Thx enjoyed that ... classes; they had the three main ones you mention here although five can be observed i.e. thrall, karl, herse/hersir (warrior class), jarl and Kung/Konung i.e. king/royalty)
Quick pronunciation on "jarl" - it gets imported into English as "earl" (both the name and the title). So treat the J as a vowel instead of a consonant. Also, it sounds similar to the other classes. So, jarl, karl, and thrall.
Slight misinformation Antonio. I've visited and plan to Emigrate to Norway. There I learned it's a norse custom to have a small braid in your hair for every personal battle one. Physical or emotional. This is shown in both men and women and is still alive in a part of the local culture where I was staying.
As a teen 18 - 19 I had the undercut hair style, shaved at the sides, long ontop (it very much resembled the style shown by the actor @19:00 without the braids), I mostly slung it in a ponytail squarely at the back of the head, when I started to ride motorbikes, the ponytail was replaced with a loose bun nearer to the top of the head, just due to that style being more comfortable while wearing a helmet, I often wondered if Vikings done the same to keep the hair in the helmet in a way that was comfortable.
I am SOO GLAD that you mentioned the cossacks/kozaks (originally written with small c/k, Its not an ethnic group). That is in fact where the Vikings show creators took inspiration. No Viking ever kept an all around undercut, zero, 0 evidence for that
The biggest thing I caught that you got wrong was leather helmets, for which there is basically no evidence. A very minor thing for a channel that doesn't specialize in medieval history, or arms and armor. One thing about the prevalence of linen garments in the archeological record, this may be an example of survival bias, where rather than being more common they were simply recycled in ways that made them more likely to survive than wool. In addition to it's warmth and weather resistance benefits, for the majority of history wool was much cheaper than linen and this was most likely true in early medieval Scandinavia as well.
@@Antzus81 I meant more that linen was more likely to be soaked in pine tar and used as caulking on a ship and end up preserved that way. And yes, helmets were made of iron.
The typical NetFlex presentation of the Vikings is ridiculous. They were not only stylish and clean, they did NOT look like an urban coffee barista with a man-bun and tons of tattoos. Additionally, they were not in the habit of having their women fighting for or pilliaging with them. Their women were mothers with children. The Viking family was exceptionally important.
Agree..their horned helmets were for cerimonial use only amd not fir combat...they would have been expensive to make or buy so would have only been within the means of Viking nobility rather than the average Viking and as such not even the nobility would have used them as combat headwear.
So, this is an add on. We should specify that although most Vikings were connected to Scandinavia(by location), there were very prevalent viking tribes in the Baltic countries, the islands north of Scotland and later on(of course) Iceland and Greenland
When the sagas talk about "Vikings" in the Baltics, that's more likely just calling the individuals involved "bandits". "Viking" wasn't an ethnonym back then, it was a "trade". Calling all the Norse "Vikings" is a bit like a historian 1000 years from now calling all Americans "Marines".
The "bathing twice a year" thing is BS. The only thing they didn't have back then is modern detergent soaps. They wrote whole books on the topic of bathing. They might not have bathed as regularly, but they did as often as possible. Remember, you had to heat all the water you needed, which meant that even for one day's bath, you'd need to chop down a lot of wood and fetch a heavy amount of water. The average person would've rather used that effort for cooking. When you live in a state of energy poverty, you prioritize certain more essential activities.
@@RealMenRealStyle if you are into military history i can HIGHLY reccomend the yputube chanel "Mark Felton productions"..he could teach the tv sration known as tthe history chanel a thing or 2.
the romans here in europa were the bath king, they made bath houses for everyone, even for slaves. they could bath as much as they want,and since england was part of the roman empire, u can still find surviving bath houses today, while the middle ages kinda changed the bathing thing sadly
Bro 5:05 is not a painting depicting the vikings at all. That painting by Mihály Munkácsy depicts the Hungarian leader Árpád before conquering the Carpathian Basin. Yes they were originally from the north, but 1, from Siberia and 2, they migrated out of those territories around 500 BC so pretty far from the vikings. They were nomadic and barbaric to some extent but had settled down before the travels of Ahmad ibn Fadlan
The stuff about colors what spot on except purple which was the most expensive color in history so i doubt you could see nordic farmers in purple tunics
If you really want to get some accurate, honest information about the Norse, their apparnace, and everything else, I can recommend a UA-cam channel called "The Welsh Viking." It's a personal favorite, run by a British Ph.D student specializing in the old Norse, and he covers, here and there, a lot of the same ground. In fact, getting his filmed reaction to this video could be a real scream.
No, I'll just wait till his horns catch MY axe, transferring the full force of my blow to his helmet rather than glancing off like armor is supposed to do.
where are your references? im finding bog body research articles showing vikings did in fact braid their hair? Gill-Robinson, Heather (2005). The Iron Age Bog Bodies of the Archäologische Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf. p. 63. Even the suebi had their knot for their hair?
16:12 from where is that paiting is from? Looks 100% Thorin from The Hobbit. Currently I'm planning to have 20:43 hairstyle. I'm glad it's historically accurate at least minimally. 😂
@RealMenRealStyle Really Enjoyed your "Why Are The ______ So Stylish" series👌😁They amalgamate History and how one can apply those masculine stylish philosophies to our current times💪🙂 Being Southeast Asian and a Martial Artist, I hope you can feature either Samurai or Native Americans (either Apache or Commanche) Thank You Sir and more blessings to your channel🙏🙂
OK, several things here. Bethesda does get this right, it's jarl pronounced yarl. Also there have been multiple instances of men and women with tattoos from prior to and right into the Viking period. Next, it's highly likely that many of them kept their hair long as there is a tale of one cleverly using it to get out of being beheaded. It is also worth noting that Norman knights in service to, Justinian I believe, a Byzantine Emporer would peirce an ear. It may be that they viewed it in a similar way to Jewish customs but that's conjecture. Finally, anyone who knows about lye knows that it's in soap but in high concentration is definitely being used for bleaching. Highly alkaline soaps were used all over that region and later made their way into England during the Middle Ages as more Danes and Angles moved there. While it may be highly improbable and extremely impractical for them to have braided their beards and head hair this doesn't rule out the possibility of it in instances of a council or some other ceremony. A sure way to show off wealth and strength is appearance and those would be exactly the right time. I would recommend having a look at channels made by Scandinavian historians since it is their own history we're talking about here.
My mother, sisters, and half the family was silver blonde. As the bloodline diluted, there are a lot of typical blondes. I was a strawberry blonde in my youth and the boys used to accuse me of dyeing my hair, which of course I hated. 😄
Good video. The only major criticism is your pronunciation of a couple words. As a Scandinavian word, the "j" in "jarl" is pronounced as a "y" so it would be said as "yarl". Also "Ibn" is an Arabic word that roughly translates as "son of" and it's pronounced with a short "i" sound so "ib-n" not "eye-bn".
Really good 👍. You're making history more stylish 😎 And if you're going on terror by style. I'll like to recommend historical figures from my homeland 🇮🇳 As Indians our kings were very popular for their clothing. For example Porus from kingdom Paurava , Rajputs , Sikh ,Chola s ,Marathas.
You are making a really common mistake by reducing everything to "combat effectiveness". That is never a reasonable approach to discussing history. Many, many, many cultures used horned helmets. Plumed helmets wear common in very popular cultures of antiquity, like the Romans. Highly decorated armour was the mainstay of the Late Middle Ages. You had Winged helmets for the Hussars and even the Wehrmacht was infamous for spiked helmets.
I am sure most of you are aware but as an Icelander I feel it must be said. A Viking is not the name of our culture. A Viking is for a lack of a better word, a job description. You would go on a Viking or a raid but you weren't born a Viking. It's like with America. Some of you were or are Cowboys but we don't call all of you that by default 😁
Why do you think that vikings didn't have dreadlocks? It's a simple and practical way of managing long, thick, hair with minimal daily maintenance. There's plenty of evidence that the contemporary Gaelic and Celtic cultures in modern day Scotland, Ireland and Wales had men matting their long hair into dreads using clay or animal fat. Why not he Scandinavians as well?
Because we know they tended to shave their heads. Can't lock a skinhead. The women however had very, very long hair, usually down to their knees so it's possible they may have as they almost certainly did braid it
The tattoo bit is wrong. Fadlan describes the Rus as if they have paint on their bodies. That doesn't mean they are actual tattoos. The legwraps are used to protect your calves from thorns and plants while walking and also provide good support. They had linen breeches like a form of underwear just like a undertunic while wearing woolen pants over it.
"So here's all this evidence that they did have tattoos, and no evidence that they didn't have tattoos... so despite what you've heard, they probably didn't have tattoos."
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As an amateur historian on the early medeival period (aka the dark age) I can tell you that despite your humility, this video is very well researched particularly as far as a piece made for the general public, i.e. a layman, is concerned. Well done 👏
You should really make "terror by style" a series
I second this too!!!!
Fr
we would all love that but videos like this one take a lot of research to make so i think its better to not make him rush future episodes.
@@Dreamer105-6 i agree, if he ever does it a series, i would totally understand if it took a few months between the release of each episode
Italian and arabic uniforms and costumes deserve some spotlight too
Scandinavians in Roman times braided their hair. Some Viking-era Scandinavians braided their beards
Thrall is is pronounced like all.
Karl is pronounced just like the name Carl.
Jarl is pronounced with a Y not a J. So it's Yarl. And is pronounced like Karl for the rest of it.
Edit: loved the video
Is it sad that I only know about the Jarl thing because of Skyrim?
Thank you😂😂
While it is easy to agree on the hair style, the beard style can be highly disputed.
The guys from medival reenactment do show indeed that beards are impractical with a full helmet and breast plates coming up the neck - but most Vikings did not wear one of those at the time. So aside from the cheek pieces of the helmet they did certainly have the option to wear a longer beard from the chin. Many sagas identify their hero by a special beard color, so they certainly colored or dyed the beard which implies some length. Same goes for braiding where there are inspirations from middle east upper class and we do have some depictions showing Viking warriors that could be interpreted as having a braided beard. Some commentators point out that in the Saga of Burnt Njal the hero is mocked for having no beard. So we can hypothesize that it was fasnionalbe to have a beard of medium lenght or a bit longer.
True, but even a helmet that only covers the top of the head still has a chin strap that can get tangled in beard hair. Which hurts.
I think you missed a major aspect affecting their style and that of the pirates of the Caribbean - the goal of getting an enemy to surrender because of your presence. Battle is costly. It is much better if you can be an overwhelming, terrifying, intimidating presence that makes your target surrender or bribe you to leave them unharmed. Anyone raiding or engaging in piracy is using smart strategy if they are winning without a shot fired and avoiding casualties.
They were also very good at attacking poorly defended areas. They did poorly when they met some good organised resistance.
Well considering what the Vikings *actually* wore into battle, it's not a "major aspect". No horns, no pelts, no weird leather contraptions, no Native American style makeup. Just chainmail hauberks and helmets on top of normal clothes. Colorful tunics with nice tablet-woven hems. Forget the bastardized image that's been propagated by Hollywood and neo-pagans over the past decades, none of them care about historical accuracy, the truth is yes, more plain in some ways, but more interesting in others once you get into it.
Not to say you wouldn't be scared if you were a monk and you saw Viking ships speeding in your direction, but I doubt you'd be less scared if they were Franks instead.
@@lukurd5923 I Agree, and building on your point: If I'm an average famer living miles away from the next homestead and I see a group of guys running down the hill screaming with axes and shields that's probably all I'm going to be focused on.
@@paulking8491 Exactly
@𝕾𝖗𝖎𝖏𝖎𝖙 𝕾𝖚𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖆𝖙𝖍 Source: Any historian. Go on, tell me about the victories of the Norsemen. I'll be impressed if it's more than a paragraph.
The simple fact is that the Norse didn't stand a chance against an organised resistance.
They conquered a bit of England, when England was divided in seven kingdoms, but were eventually driven out.
They conquered some lands out east, along the great rivers of Russia, but swiftly assimilated.
What did they conquer? There's nothing today that suggest that the Norse left any lasting impression on the areas they "conquered". A bit of vocabulary, perhaps, but nothing on the scale of Roman or British conquests.
Can't go to Valhalla without impeccable drip.
Great comment
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
You should totally do an episode on kilts, i wear one on occasion and i can say it take a lot of confidence but defiantly gets compliments that don't seem condescending. It's become one of my favorite things to wear.
As for the blonde dye, I do very much believe it was fashionable.
We know that blonde dye was known at the time, not only attested in Roman sources, and we have atleast one grave from the Viking age with surving hair that was bleached. This finding has changed the scientific view as the earlier results of ancient DNA shows that the natural hair color of most of the Germanic tribes including the Scandinavians was brown - possibly a natural blond was around in the same amount that we see it in modern Germans along the Rhine. Roman and Greek sources however do often say that Suebian and Goths were blond - with the only constraint that the word meant probably a light reddish tone and not white/yellow as it is usually interpreted today. Looking at depictions of rulers in the later centuries we see that they are often represented with blond and curly hair. So we can very much guess that the highest ranks of society used that hair style to differentiate themselves from lower classes. This would also explain why Scandivian DNA makeup has shifted towards blond over the centuries as it was very much preferred for both men and women. It is very plausible that both freemen and women would bleached their hair regularly - to the extent that we see it with modern German women. Most people in the Western world will think of them as having mostly blond hair but the Genetic makeup does not provide for that. In the same style we can assume that Viking men represented themselves with a blond style when trading with other people.
And many here in Scandinavia today also believe it was used as a way to kill lice and other pest which makes sens, after all as he said in the video we "Vikings" where hard on cleanliness so i do believe in this theory.
I just saw the video @AbbyCox about powdering the hair like in the 17. century ("I tried a 300-year-old hair care routine for a year"). Fact 1: the hair looks much lighter than the natural brown. Even today this colour would count as blonde in middle america AFAIK. Fact 2: you need to comb this hair alteast every day. This matches with the number of combs found in viking graves. Fact 3: although the powder itself does not help against lice, they added ingredients that did help.
- Although I dont believe that the viking age people used powder&pomade for their hair, I can very much believe that ancient bleaching methods may have been more similar to that than the modern peroxide based bleaching methods.
Yes, I do like the mix of history and style.
Hey Antonio, while I typically agree with every one of your videos and their contents, I did find some discrepancy about this one. In the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda (Viking stories), there is mention of the long hair being worn by the Jarls and there is reference to the Norse gods… I study anthropology and humanities and have had to read a lot (maybe too much) of Viking and Norse history and mythos. Hair was a symbol of wealth, status, nobility and power. Thor, for instance, had “long flowing hair”and while most villagers and warriors didn’t have the luxury or time, the Jarls did and had the time to maintain their hair. There was also the fact that long hair was not only a means of protection to the head (not so much sword blows but cuts and scrapes from the vegetation and even some wildlife) but also had significance to their religion and cultural identity. What you also should have included was the fact that Vikings were seafarers, as you mentioned, living most of their lives near to some source of water for food and transportation but the vast majority of Norse people were farmers and the hair also helped wick sweat from their face, eyes and neck. Otherwise, bravo and good research done for just one video.
Talking history here, you mention slave trading with the Vikings. We get the word “Slave” from “Slav” as in a Slavic person. They were historically the most common people to be traded at the time.
Love the video!
It could also be from the Latin-derived word for slave.
Yeah! And Germanic comes from germs, right?
I'm Icelandic and I can confirm that the Vikings series is such an insult to our heritage, and this video is such an honorable effort to depict the Hollywood senseless crap, thank you sir.
Finally, a person to confirm both Hollywood and this factual video.
Insult? I love that show...especially Floki.
@@stevenhoskins7850 exactly, Loki .. everything about him is the opposite of actual history
It's not supposed to be accurate it's entertainment I'm not trying to bash you or anything but as a fellow Scandinavian i agree it isn't that great to show our father's as savages
I've done a lot of study into Celtic heritage and clothing, this episode definitely helped me understand where their "fashion" comes from. ( celts were very close to Norse as both were Germanic)
Hey Antonio, I know there's general rules for how men should dress as they age. Could we get a video on better fragrances to lean toward for men in their 30s and 40s? Sometimes I feel like fragrances that I try are meant for college kids. Which I am unfortunately not 😅
I'm not quite old enough to fall back on Old Spice just yet, but Paco Rabane's One Million feels like I'm having a midlife crisis. I need something in the middle
Thanks for giving Ireland a shout out...there is a LOT of historical evidence linking Ireland with the vikings.👍
Mostly because of Norse occupation and settlements in Ireland. If any Irish were called "Vikings" in any sources, then it most likely referred to them being bandits. At least in the Icelandic sagas, plenty of people (who weren't Norse) were called "Vikings", and that just referred to them being raiders and/or bandits.
@@thossi09 very true but Ireland was plundered by the vikings.
@@damien5748 Yes, plundered, raided, and for a a while, settled.
As an Icelander, I very probably have some ancestor who was plucked from Ireland and taken to Iceland as a slave. I think there's some genetic studies supporting that.
Something about most Icelandic men have a Y-chromosome linked mostly with Norway, but most Icelandic women have a mitochondrial DNA linked mostly with Ireland, but I can't link any.
Just something I vaguely remember reading in a newspaper 15+ years ago.
@@thossi09 its very plausable and i would not be surprised if that was true...and yep im Irish...Dublin born and bred.
Around 4:50, Some of those so called "viking symbols and tattoos" were NEVER actual Viking symbols. Rather, modern reinterpretations or guessing.
Its always enlightening to watch your videos, thank you for your hard work.
Thank you Antonio! Very well done and it is obvious that you put a ton of work into research and the video. Very interesting!
I read that animal fat wasn't used for styling of hair but for hair health. It was supposed to help hair grow faster, strengthen the hair, and make it look healthy looking. I think egg yolk is supposed to do the same thing.
I can see the long hair with half bun being done because it not only takes the hair out of your face, it also allows the hair to protect your neck from the sun.
Or you could wear a hat xd
Not so uncommon back than
I'm just getting to know my Norwegian Viking roots and it's been cool the entire time. I really love the whole natural aesthetic, they were very similar to the Native peoples of many countries, worshipping the Earth and the life that surrounds us. My favorite form of Viking art is their work with wood and blacksmithing. I recently purchased a hand forged Mjolnir amulet from Norway and I love how a portion of the maker's energy is bound within, I felt a literal jolt run though me when I first put it on.
As a kid I dyed my brunette hair full blonde, all I did was wash it in lemon juice with no special chemistry preparations needed. Noted that's an acid while lye is a base, but they can often have a similar effect on degrading materials. Presuming lye will work to dye your hair, it is also very accessible as lye is used in making soap and it is produced by washing corpses or charcoal.
Now I think about it, my hair went Simpson's yellow rather than blonde because because you have to bleach your hair first if you are brunette... Which would tend toward white colour stripping. So yeah, lye would totally give you platinum blonde hair.
Background music hits🔥🔥
thanks to my awesome editor, Raul for picking that music.
We need more videos like these
based on the information presented here it is more than likely that the men braided and locked their hair for seasons of conquest or to communicate conquest aesthetically. therefore, the casual dismissal of vikings with braided here is mute. Also, the comb is an instrument of locking white-people hair by a method calling "back-combing". So combs being found support the notion that they wore locked hair or, at worse, is not a cause for dismissing locks as a style.
Good job on this watched a ton of historical videos and still learning something here,and from a fashion channel who knew 3 thumbs up.
Where so many native American Tribes braided long hair I don't see why the Norse would be any different. It's a good way to style and manage long hair.
love your videos, I was in Midland for about 15 years, I'm subscribed now. thanks for being here
Would love to see more of these historically themed videos. Especially to see you tackle the Anglo-Saxons and ancient Celts.
Everyone niw knows that the Celts didn't reach the British Isles ( a Welsh nationalist academic invention), right?
@@jaysterling26 All do respect I've never heard that the Britons had a distinctive Celtic culture that being said what it is to be Celtic is pretty broad
Celts is a collective term. It did very much include the "English" although I use that term extremely loosely as England literally means Agloland but the Britons for example are classed as celtic. DNA English people are Anglo-Scandinavian but that's due to the high number of germanic and norse. Before that the Celts did very much populate Britain, including England.
Would love love to see a video on Slavic hairstyles, like the Polish czupryna or the one Svietoslav and Cossacks were sporting. The Polish and Cossack style was very Persian/Ottoman inspired.
When you talked about shaving parts of the head but not others, as well as about long and short hair as class signals, you reminded me of the crazy hair politics of China, and legal and religious mandates about hair in general: Shaving parts of the head but not others was supposedly a Mongol style which encouraged the Ming to legally mandate long, totally uncut, hair (which was a Confucian tradition justified by Confucius stating that harming the hair or other parts of the body was disrespectful to ones parents, who created and owned ones body). When the Manchu Qing started conquering China, they and their new anti-Ming pro-Qing Chinese loyalists made it mandatory not only for men to where a braid called a "queue" to show loyalty to the Qing emperor (a long tradition of nomadic tribes of northeast Asia), but also for them to shave the front of their head in the Manchu style, disobeying Ming law. Thus, during the Ming-Qing transition, the way a man wore his hair NECESSARILY involved breaking one or the other empire's laws. This was a great sign of allegiance (although many tried to show allegiance to the Qing emperor with a queue, while still not shaving their head to follow Confucianism), which is why this hairstyle you see all over ca. 19th Century depictions of Chinese people, was not just some racist stereotype, but the actual way pretty much all men from China wore their hair because it was officially considered treason punishable by death to NOT wear this hair style (unless you were a Buddhist monk with a shaved head or a Daoist monk with long-hair in a top-knot) until the 1911 revolution.
Please Please Please do India Style and their suits and other culture style.
Hi Antonia,intresting video...would love to see a video from you on the Samurai mindset
Awesome! We have this on our list.
@@RealMenRealStyle fantastic...and maybe even a video on the ninja...and not the hollywood 'ninja " but rather the real ninja from the Iga and Koga provences of what is now moden day Mie prefecture
Thx enjoyed that ... classes; they had the three main ones you mention here although five can be observed i.e. thrall, karl, herse/hersir (warrior class), jarl and Kung/Konung i.e. king/royalty)
You should consider making the opening music your permanent theme from now on.
You should do a colab with the Metatron about this subject.
"Undermine the virtue of married women" 😂, great video as always!
You've probably been told elsewhere, but "jarl" is pronounced like "Yarl". But you've done well.
Quick pronunciation on "jarl" - it gets imported into English as "earl" (both the name and the title). So treat the J as a vowel instead of a consonant. Also, it sounds similar to the other classes. So, jarl, karl, and thrall.
Slight misinformation Antonio. I've visited and plan to Emigrate to Norway. There I learned it's a norse custom to have a small braid in your hair for every personal battle one. Physical or emotional. This is shown in both men and women and is still alive in a part of the local culture where I was staying.
Finally someone who talks about how there were 'fashionista vikings' who experimented.
As a teen 18 - 19 I had the undercut hair style, shaved at the sides, long ontop (it very much resembled the style shown by the actor @19:00 without the braids), I mostly slung it in a ponytail squarely at the back of the head, when I started to ride motorbikes, the ponytail was replaced with a loose bun nearer to the top of the head, just due to that style being more comfortable while wearing a helmet, I often wondered if Vikings done the same to keep the hair in the helmet in a way that was comfortable.
I am SOO GLAD that you mentioned the cossacks/kozaks (originally written with small c/k, Its not an ethnic group). That is in fact where the Vikings show creators took inspiration. No Viking ever kept an all around undercut, zero, 0 evidence for that
The biggest thing I caught that you got wrong was leather helmets, for which there is basically no evidence. A very minor thing for a channel that doesn't specialize in medieval history, or arms and armor. One thing about the prevalence of linen garments in the archeological record, this may be an example of survival bias, where rather than being more common they were simply recycled in ways that made them more likely to survive than wool. In addition to it's warmth and weather resistance benefits, for the majority of history wool was much cheaper than linen and this was most likely true in early medieval Scandinavia as well.
Interesting point, wool decomposes quickly. But, is linen any slower?
The helmets - what were they made of then? Iron I suppose?
@@Antzus81 I meant more that linen was more likely to be soaked in pine tar and used as caulking on a ship and end up preserved that way. And yes, helmets were made of iron.
@@Devin_Stromgren Aaah fascinating. Some of this preserved linen then falsely presumed to be clothing
@@Antzus81 No, it WAS clothing before it was wore out and recycled for other purposes. HOW linen was recycled increases it's chances of survival.
The typical NetFlex presentation of the Vikings is ridiculous. They were not only stylish and clean, they did NOT look like an urban coffee barista with a man-bun and tons of tattoos. Additionally, they were not in the habit of having their women fighting for or pilliaging with them. Their women were mothers with children. The Viking family was exceptionally important.
Agree..their horned helmets were for cerimonial use only amd not fir combat...they would have been expensive to make or buy so would have only been within the means of Viking nobility rather than the average Viking and as such not even the nobility would have used them as combat headwear.
I was waiting for these my entire life
Awesome!
Now I know where Gene Roddenberry got the idea for the term 'Drill Thralls' on one of his episodes from the 1960s original series of Star Trek.
It was nicely added - Slava Ukraini. Thanks for mentioning it. Героям слава!
So, this is an add on. We should specify that although most Vikings were connected to Scandinavia(by location), there were very prevalent viking tribes in the Baltic countries, the islands north of Scotland and later on(of course) Iceland and Greenland
When the sagas talk about "Vikings" in the Baltics, that's more likely just calling the individuals involved "bandits". "Viking" wasn't an ethnonym back then, it was a "trade". Calling all the Norse "Vikings" is a bit like a historian 1000 years from now calling all Americans "Marines".
@@thossi09 which is really funny to me 😂
Imagine future people calling the Americans Marines, like, some bakers were Marines 😂
Really enjoyed the content. subscribed
The "bathing twice a year" thing is BS. The only thing they didn't have back then is modern detergent soaps. They wrote whole books on the topic of bathing. They might not have bathed as regularly, but they did as often as possible. Remember, you had to heat all the water you needed, which meant that even for one day's bath, you'd need to chop down a lot of wood and fetch a heavy amount of water. The average person would've rather used that effort for cooking. When you live in a state of energy poverty, you prioritize certain more essential activities.
Give yourself a wipe down with a wet towel?
You are very right about most things. All free men carried their own blade.
Fantastic history lesson.👍👍👍👍
Thank you Damien. I appreciate you!
@@RealMenRealStyle youre very welcome sir
@@RealMenRealStyle if you are into military history i can HIGHLY reccomend the yputube chanel "Mark Felton productions"..he could teach the tv sration known as tthe history chanel a thing or 2.
Look into the Roman historian Tacitus and his discriptions of the Gaul and Germanics who were close to the norse at the time.
the romans here in europa were the bath king, they made bath houses for everyone, even for slaves. they could bath as much as they want,and since england was part of the roman empire, u can still find surviving bath houses today, while the middle ages kinda changed the bathing thing sadly
What about samurai? They very stylish and decorative in both armour and in kimono.
I myself had Travis Flammel envy for most of the viking series and times when I romanticize the past.
Bro 5:05 is not a painting depicting the vikings at all. That painting by Mihály Munkácsy depicts the Hungarian leader Árpád before conquering the Carpathian Basin. Yes they were originally from the north, but 1, from Siberia and 2, they migrated out of those territories around 500 BC so pretty far from the vikings. They were nomadic and barbaric to some extent but had settled down before the travels of Ahmad ibn Fadlan
amazing video and very accurate with the facts well done
The stuff about colors what spot on except purple which was the most expensive color in history so i doubt you could see nordic farmers in purple tunics
If you really want to get some accurate, honest information about the Norse, their apparnace, and everything else, I can recommend a UA-cam channel called "The Welsh Viking." It's a personal favorite, run by a British Ph.D student specializing in the old Norse, and he covers, here and there, a lot of the same ground. In fact, getting his filmed reaction to this video could be a real scream.
Are you gonna be the one to tell the big guy with the ax that his horned helmet looks silly? ; )
🤣🤣🤣
No, I'll just wait till his horns catch MY axe, transferring the full force of my blow to his helmet rather than glancing off like armor is supposed to do.
@@Devin_Stromgren 🙄uh-huh. very convincing there bjorn.🥱
😅🤣💀
FYI, Jarl is pronounced with a soft J. Sounds like "yarl"
where are your references? im finding bog body research articles showing vikings did in fact braid their hair? Gill-Robinson, Heather (2005). The Iron Age Bog Bodies of the Archäologische Landesmuseum Schloss Gottorf. p. 63. Even the suebi had their knot for their hair?
Look at the changes in Viking style from the 1958 kirk Douglas movie vikings to today's Viking movies.
Nordic aesthetic of conquest
16:12 from where is that paiting is from? Looks 100% Thorin from The Hobbit. Currently I'm planning to have 20:43 hairstyle. I'm glad it's historically accurate at least minimally. 😂
@RealMenRealStyle Really Enjoyed your "Why Are The ______ So Stylish" series👌😁They amalgamate History and how one can apply those masculine stylish philosophies to our current times💪🙂
Being Southeast Asian and a Martial Artist, I hope you can feature either Samurai or Native Americans (either Apache or Commanche)
Thank You Sir and more blessings to your channel🙏🙂
hey question, Ive seen shaved heads (with beards in movies) but shaved head is awesome in a fight. did some keep bald for battle?
As a history and smart dressing fan this video is right there up my alley. I also live in Finland so the Scandinavian culture is familiar to me.
In here dressing is all about staying dry and warm and making it look good.
OK, several things here. Bethesda does get this right, it's jarl pronounced yarl. Also there have been multiple instances of men and women with tattoos from prior to and right into the Viking period. Next, it's highly likely that many of them kept their hair long as there is a tale of one cleverly using it to get out of being beheaded. It is also worth noting that Norman knights in service to, Justinian I believe, a Byzantine Emporer would peirce an ear. It may be that they viewed it in a similar way to Jewish customs but that's conjecture. Finally, anyone who knows about lye knows that it's in soap but in high concentration is definitely being used for bleaching. Highly alkaline soaps were used all over that region and later made their way into England during the Middle Ages as more Danes and Angles moved there. While it may be highly improbable and extremely impractical for them to have braided their beards and head hair this doesn't rule out the possibility of it in instances of a council or some other ceremony. A sure way to show off wealth and strength is appearance and those would be exactly the right time. I would recommend having a look at channels made by Scandinavian historians since it is their own history we're talking about here.
If one uses a rock and string, one can fasten two layers of clothing together.
My mother, sisters, and half the family was silver blonde. As the bloodline diluted, there are a lot of typical blondes. I was a strawberry blonde in my youth and the boys used to accuse me of dyeing my hair, which of course I hated. 😄
Good video. The only major criticism is your pronunciation of a couple words. As a Scandinavian word, the "j" in "jarl" is pronounced as a "y" so it would be said as "yarl". Also "Ibn" is an Arabic word that roughly translates as "son of" and it's pronounced with a short "i" sound so "ib-n" not "eye-bn".
❤️From 🇧🇩🇧🇩, hope you are well. 😃
We want wardrobe review
As I sit here with a modern Norse undercut lol
Also it doesn't have to be historically accurate to enjoy it.
I always thought the Jamaican dreads on a freaking Viking was ridiculous
Can we have a video on Spartans?
@Soul of a robot with capes
Really good 👍. You're making history more stylish 😎
And if you're going on terror by style. I'll like to recommend historical figures from my homeland 🇮🇳
As Indians our kings were very popular for their clothing. For example Porus from kingdom Paurava , Rajputs , Sikh ,Chola s ,Marathas.
Why don’t you do an video on Persian’s (Iranians), they were very stylish and most clothing comes from Iran.
Why can I find nothing on Sfinald
19:18 It was common, check out "Suebian knot".
You are making a really common mistake by reducing everything to "combat effectiveness". That is never a reasonable approach to discussing history. Many, many, many cultures used horned helmets. Plumed helmets wear common in very popular cultures of antiquity, like the Romans. Highly decorated armour was the mainstay of the Late Middle Ages. You had Winged helmets for the Hussars and even the Wehrmacht was infamous for spiked helmets.
JARLS is pronounced YARALS (Teutonic language J is a Y sound in English)
I am sure most of you are aware but as an Icelander I feel it must be said.
A Viking is not the name of our culture. A Viking is for a lack of a better word, a job description.
You would go on a Viking or a raid but you weren't born a Viking.
It's like with America. Some of you were or are Cowboys but we don't call all of you that by default 😁
Why do you think that vikings didn't have dreadlocks? It's a simple and practical way of managing long, thick, hair with minimal daily maintenance. There's plenty of evidence that the contemporary Gaelic and Celtic cultures in modern day Scotland, Ireland and Wales had men matting their long hair into dreads using clay or animal fat. Why not he Scandinavians as well?
Because we know they tended to shave their heads. Can't lock a skinhead. The women however had very, very long hair, usually down to their knees so it's possible they may have as they almost certainly did braid it
The tattoo bit is wrong. Fadlan describes the Rus as if they have paint on their bodies. That doesn't mean they are actual tattoos.
The legwraps are used to protect your calves from thorns and plants while walking and also provide good support.
They had linen breeches like a form of underwear just like a undertunic while wearing woolen pants over it.
Did you say "Svenold"? I still cant find anything on him
I FOUND IT BUT ITS ABOUT HIS BEARD NOT HIS HAIR!!!
You mean why did a TV show make them so stylish……
My Middle name is Carl... Swedish decent... wonder if there's a connection.
14:53 AMONGUS
That was a really new and interesting info, thank you for your work, and for mentioning my dear motherland, Ukraine =)
A very good video but the word "Jarl" is pronounced "Yarl"
Where they?
🤔
"So here's all this evidence that they did have tattoos, and no evidence that they didn't have tattoos... so despite what you've heard, they probably didn't have tattoos."
They actually did wear rings. They used them as money and would break pieces off in exchange for other things.
I've been thinking about only bathing once a week my self.I could save atleast 2 1/2 hours a week🤔
Yeah but how can you avoid not being oily and hair very kinky?
@@alaskanwhiskey just joking