Many skeletons have been found with the instruments of their death still wedged in their bones. There is certainly evidence of the violent means Vikings used to suppress people, particularly in Britain. Alcuin of York wrote to Bishop Higbald, declaring: “Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race.The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets.”

Populated by literate scribes, these were the worst places to attack if you wanted a good record in Christian historical documents. The Vikings earned a place in history due to their protracted raids on often vulnerable monastic sites. There were occasions when Scandinavian rulers combined their forces for greater military might, but the term ‘Viking’ is like describing all ‘Northern Europeans’ as the same. The more northern regions, particularly the mountainous areas of Norway, were difficult to farm because of hostile weather, while southern parts, in the plains of Denmark, were more fertile. Individuals or groups would go ‘a-Viking’, which would mean they would leave their native lands during the warmer summer months, travelling in longboats to regions where they could trade and raid. The word ‘Viking’ later becomes synonymous with ‘ naval raids/naval expeditions’ and begins to function more as a verb. The Viken was the primary mercantile region of Norway, so it is possible that this apparently homogenous group of people got their name from the extensive trading they undertook out of their busy ports. The term ‘Viking’ comes from Old Icelandic ‘Viking-r, a creek-dweller’. Listen: Acclaimed screenwriter and producer Michael Hirst talks about his work on Vikings and the secrets of making great history drama: Myth 2: They were a defined group – ‘the Vikings’ Ivar the Boneless, Ragnvald of Ed and 6 more Vikings you should know about.Numerous cartoonists, filmmakers and artists have continued this fantasy right up to the present day. Costume designer Carl Emil Doepler (1824–1905) created horned helmets in the 1870s for the Viking characters, and so the myth was born.

The modern idea of Vikings in horned helmets originated in the 19th century, but it was Richard Wagner’s The Ring Cycle that seared it into the modern imagination.

Nordic warriors helmets