Search Results: Norse saga

The Old Norse word saga means 'story', 'tale' or 'history' and normally refers specifically to the epic prose narratives written mainly in Iceland between the 12th- and 15th centuries CE, covering the country's history as well as Scandinavia's...

The Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) transformed every aspect of the cultures the Norse came in contact with. The Vikings usually struck without warning and, in the early years, left with their plunder and slaves to be sold as quickly as they...

Norse mythology refers to the Scandinavian mythological framework that was upheld during and around the time of the Viking Age (c. 790- c. 1100 CE). Complete with a creation myth that has the first gods slaying a giant and turning his body...

The best-known vision of the Norse afterlife is that of Valhalla, the hall of the heroes where warriors chosen by the Valkyries feast with the god Odin, tell stories from their lives, and fight each other in preparation for the final battle...

The Vikings were originally diverse Scandinavian seafarers from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (though other nationalities were later involved) whose raids and subsequent settlements significantly impacted the cultures of Europe and were felt...

Folio 13r, showing a page from Njáls saga, from the Möðruvallabók (AM 132), an Icelandic manuscript from c. 1330-1370 CE containing the most significant surviving collection of Sagas of Icelanders. It records some sagas in full or in part...

Artist's rendition of a scene from the 13th-century CE Icelandic Laxdæla Saga (anglicised as Laxdale Saga), which is set in the Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE). Here, we see one of the saga's main characters, Guðrún, meeting a ghost: "That...

Early medieval Iceland, the Viking colony, was a democratic and egalitarian society, but the scarcity of resources and the rough environment created competition, where local chieftains resorted to different tactics to acquire wealth and money...

In 2017 CE, Uppsala University archaeologist Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson published her study of a Viking grave discovered in Birka, Sweden in the 1800's CE which she and her team had revisited. She claimed that what was formerly understood...

In Norse belief, the soul of the deceased might wind up in any one of a number of afterlife realms. There was Valhalla, the realm of Odin where the dead warriors drank, fought, and told stories, Folkvangr ('the Field of the People'), the...