Vikingology Podcast The Art and Science of the Viking Age

We are so happy and excited to welcome Professor Clare Downham back to the show. If you didn’t catch our first episode with her, you should. We had a great chat about lots of Viking, historical, and philosophical stuff.
But this time we decided to do something a little different and engage in a bit of storytelling. Since Clare is one of the world’s leading experts on Vikings in Ireland, we asked her to tell us about one of the most important battles in Irish history, The Battle of Clontarf in 1014 — a battle much beloved and remembered by many in Ireland to this day.
With the Irish side being led by national hero King Brian Boru, this battle has everything: Vikings, politics, greed, magical raven banners, scorned ex-wives, religion, beheading, ambition, martyrdom, good vs. evil, and female spirits weaving the grisly fate of it all. It’s the stuff that legends are made of.
The battle appears in several sources that we discuss in the episode, but arguably the most famous is Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib ("The War of the Irish with the Foreigners").
We hope you enjoy this one. Though it’s difficult to tease fact from fiction at times, there’s one thing we know for sure — someone needs to make this movie, stat!
On another note…..
If you are in the Aberdeen, Scotland area or would like to travel there, be sure to check out the Scottish Society for Northern Studies’ big conference from 26-28 June. Clare will be presenting on Thursday, and there are other interesting talks, as well as a side trip to a museum and distillery. Of course. It’s Scotland! Please do check it out and support their work.
Also, remember to check out Clare’s books if you are interested in medieval Irish history. You won’t be disappointed.
* Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ívarr to A.D. 1014
* Medieval Ireland
Vikingology Podcast is a reader-supported publication. Thank you for reading and watching. If you would like to further support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.




Get full access to Vikingology Podcast at vikingology.substack.com/subscribe

For much of the English-speaking world, the “Viking Age” ostensibly got its start with the infamous raid on Lindisfarne in A.D. 793. But did you know by that time there was already a half century of Viking activity in the East in what is now the Baltic States and all the way south to Ukraine?
And did you also know that they may even have laid the foundation for what is now Russia?
In this episode we wanted to learn a bit more about those eastern Vikings — known there as the Rus, and an elite subset of them known as Varangians who served as “special forces” soldiers in Constantinople — so, we turned to Icelandic scholar and professor of medieval history Sverrir Jakobsson.
Sverrir has researched and written extensively on the medieval and Viking Age history of Iceland, but he has particular interest in the Rus and Varangians who are the subject of his book The Varangians: In God’s Holy Fire.
We learned from him who they were, how we know that from surviving sources such as the Annals of St. Bertin, and how they compared to Vikings in the West. Turns out they started out as the ultimate “others” seen as terrifying forces of nature and, for some at least, ended up becoming honored members of elite society.
A case in point: Sverrir writes about King Harald III of Norway — nicknamed hardrada, or “hard ruler” — who embodies this progression from Viking to mercenary to royalty. His article “Araltes: The Evolution of a Varangian Stereotype” is well worth the read, as is his book, for anyone interested in the fascinating history of the Scandinavians who helped to shape the East and who are so often overlooked.
Vikingology Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.




Get full access to Vikingology Podcast at vikingology.substack.com/subscribe

Move over Christopher Columbus. Leif Eriksson got there first.
To celebrate our 30th episode we’ve pulled out all the stops! We are finally getting to talk about the Norse in North America during the Viking Age. If you’re into Vikings, you probably know they made contact almost 500 years before any other Europeans, touching down and creating a small settlement in what is now L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. So far, it’s the only Norse settlement that’s ever been found on the continent. And thanks to new science we know it was built in the year 1021 C.E., smack in the Viking Age.
To tell the story, our special guest is Loretta Decker. She works for Parks Canada which has responsibility for maintaining and interpreting the UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was a smallish way station for the Norse at the edge of their world, which Loretta says for them may as well have been “a base camp on the moon.”
But her connection runs deeper than that. It was Loretta’s grandfather George who owned the land on which the Vikings settled, so her childhood was steeped in Nordic archaeology. We couldn’t ask for a better person to give us a front seat at the table (or under the table as she recalls!) of this story.
But before archaeology, hard science, and Loretta could tell the story of this place, the Icelandic sagas were our guides. In particular, The Saga of Erik the Red and The Saga of the Greenlanders (collectively known as the Vinland sagas) have for centuries told of Norse exploits in a land that was new to them, replete with strange landscapes, a one-legged being, and Native Americans whom the Norse called skrælings. It’s the fantastical stuff that saga legends are made of.
But at L’Anse aux Meadows at least some of those legends were true.
Thanks Loretta! We know you’re getting ready for your busy summer season, so we appreciate you taking the time. It was a true delight!
Vikingology Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.




Get full access to Vikingology Podcast at vikingology.substack.com/subscribe

This time on the podcast C. J. and Terri muse about what a TED talk on Vikings might look like. We get philosophical — as we often do — about how people engage with the Viking Age past and history in general, and we try to thread the needle between our tendency to overly romanticize Vikings with our need to acknowledge that some pre-modern ways of life could actually be antidotes to the stresses of our modern existence. Heady stuff.
But just when you think we might be overthinking things, we also laugh a lot and somehow end up talking about the concept of “Viking washing,” a new Disney Viking-themed park, and Otto von Bismarck. Go figure.
Take a listen and enjoy the ride! And as always, if you like what we do let us know and…..
Thank you for reading Vikingology Podcast. This post is public so feel free to share it with any and all you think might like it.




Get full access to Vikingology Podcast at vikingology.substack.com/subscribe

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
For an exciting change of pace we sat down with Ian Stuart Sharpe, the creative mind behind the multifaceted Vikingverse, an alternate world where Viking history plays out, shall we say, a bit differently than in your uni textbook.
From comics and novels to tutorials for learning “modern” Old Norse and RPGs, Ian’s Nordic story world brings the Viking Age to life in ways even the Norns could never have fated.
The entire enterprise is based on the “what if?” proposition, or what we historians call Counterfactual History. At any given moment each of us is faced with decisions in life and multiple paths we can take. How do we choose which one? What if we can go back in time and take an alternate path? Can we rewrite history and learn from it? These are the questions that Ian applies to the Vikings.
The Viking Age was a time of big change, including leaving behind the Old Ways in favor of becoming Christian. But what if that had never happened? What if Odin and Thor still ruled the day, and the world was still populated with spirits like the alfar and dvergar? This is the world Ian invites us to explore. And if you venture in, you just might find it’s a path worth taking.
Click here to buy any of Ian’s products or access his free content.
Vikingology Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.




Get full access to Vikingology Podcast at vikingology.substack.com/subscribe

If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll remember our fascinating chat last year with Mathias Nordvig. He’s an expert in Norse mythology, folklore, and the Nordic Story World.
Some people may think that those myths are just cool, fanciful stories about the exploits of gods like Odin and Thor or creatures like dwarfs and giants meant simply to entertain and pass the time on those long Scandinavian winter’s nights. But in this new episode, we dove deep into Mathias’ research about why that wasn’t the case for Viking Age people and why it shouldn’t be for us moderns either.
Our conversation stemmed from his new translations of Danish and Norwegian, Icelandic and Swedish rune poems and also arguably the most widely read and studied poem from the Viking Age, Völuspá: The Vision of the Witch, which contains some deeply embedded themes about survival in a harsh yet magical Northern world.
It also recounts some pretty dark stuff about the Nordic world’s view of the cataclysmic end times event known as Ragnarök. Why did they believe in such a thing? Was it really THE END, or did something come after? Was there a way to forestall it?
The poem’s themes of social discord, the breaking of bonds in families, climate change, environmental disaster, and nervous anticipation of an unknown and yet inevitable future seem eerily similar to where we are in the world today. Are we headed for our own Ragnarök? Can the way they viewed it tell us something about how to cope in a turbulent modern world? Yeah, we went there.
This episode will make you think about the connection between us and the Viking Age in ways you’ve probably never thought of before. As Mathias warns, we forget our past and traditions at our peril.
In checking out Mathias’ new translations, you’ll also be supporting small, independent publishing and the artists who helped him bring these works to life. At Vikingology we have no affiliate relationship and do not profit from any sales. We just believe interesting people doing cool important things should be supported :)
Vikingology Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.




Get full access to Vikingology Podcast at vikingology.substack.com/subscribe