The Vikings Episode

The Vikings episode explores far and wide the history of Vikings, also known as Normans and The Rus, today the namesakes for Normany, France and Russia. Most importantly, we'll point out a key falsehood about their helmets. 

Transcript

The Viking episode  

Welcome to the Viking episode of Lemmings Don’t Leap, the podcast about things you probably know, but are likely wrong about. 

I’m your host, Allan Britnell.  

The Viking Age occurred between roughly the years 800 and 1050. Yet it holds an almost mythic hold over European history and the Vikings have left their mark on many of the places these people from what we now know as Scandinavia travelled to. 

But some of the key things many of us think we know about Vikings are wrong. 

First off, the term Viking is a bit of a misnomer. In Old Norse, vikingr, spelled Viking with an R on the end, meant raider. In other words, our modern word “Viking” refers to a specific group of ancient Scandinavians. Specifically, the soldier-sailors who set off to plunder foreign land. Or, as one historian put it, Viking quote/unquote “wasn’t an ethnic label, it was a job description.” 

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll mostly refer to them as Vikings throughout this episode. 

And, while there was plenty of raping and pillaging that they were responsible for, Vikings also traded with many of the cultures they interacted with and ultimately established settlements from Sicily to Newfoundland.

The Vikings also left their mark in many of the places they raided, traded with and settled. Many modern placenames are derived from the exploits of the Scandinavian visitors. The region of France known as Normandy, for example, is a variation on another common nicknamed these people had, “Northmen” or “Normans.” 

The countries of Russia and Belarus are also named for the offspring of Vikings who settled around the Baltic and Black seas who called themselves the “Rus’.”  

We have also incorporated countless words into our modern language. To go “berserk,” for example, has its origins in two Old Norse words, “berr” and “serkr” which were combined into “berserkr.” It’s unclear if the “bare” meant the animal or “without armour,” but serkr was the word for coat. Either way, the term described the attire or lack thereof worn during the Viking’s frenzied attacks.  

In another example from Scotland and parts of northern England where the Vikings settled, they still call babies “wee bairns” from the Norse word for child. 

The Vikings also left plenty of archeological evidence, such as Norse combs, coins, and sticks and stones carved with ancient runes – the Viking’s writing language. There’s also one rather infamous piece of historic evidence known as the Lloyds Bank Coprolite. This is an 8-inch-long piece of fossilized feces that was discovered in 1972 during excavations for a branch of the British bank. That branch was located in York, originally a Viking settlement called “Jorvik” with a J. 

But the biggest “lemming” of this episode is the idea that the Vikings went into battle with horns on their helmets.  

Horned helmets are seen on everything from Halloween costumes to the uniforms of the Minnesota Vikings football team. And Canadians of a certain age will also remember TV commercials from the 1970s for a Cadbury chocolate bar called, Wunderbar.

[Audio clip from Wunderbar commercial.]

But the depiction of Vikings wearing horned helmets is a 19th-century invention. A renewed interest in Norse mythology at the time spilled over into the arts. 

For unknown reasons, painters of the day started depicting some Vikings wearing the now-famous horned helmets. Things really took of with the popularity of Richard Wagner’s four-part opera, The Ring Cycle, based on Norse legends. 

A costume designer named Carl Emil Doepler was commissioned by Wagner to create costumes for the premiere of the Ring in 1876. Using contemporary artwork as his inspiration, he created the horned helmet. Modern Vikings have worn them ever since. 

Including Elmer Fudd in the Merrie Melodies episode called “What’s Opera, Doc?” 

[Audio clip from What’s Opera, Doc?] 

It’s worth noting that a couple of horned helmets were discovered in a peat bog in Vesko, Denmark, in the 1940s, but those have been dated to around 900 B.C.E., a couple of thousands of years before the Vikings ever set sail. 

My parting punny advice: Dig a little deeper before you start citing facts. Otherwise, you’ll make people go berserk. 

Find all episodes along with transcripts and show notes at Lemmings Don’t Leap dot Buzzsprout dot com, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

Share your comments, critiques and suggestions for future episodes at LemmingsDontLeapPodcast@gmail.com.

Show Notes

Take a deep-dive into the origins and history of Vikings on their Encyclopedia Britannica page. This Wikipedia pages explores the extent of Viking expansion. And this article lists 139 “Viking” words that made their way into modern English. 

Here’s a link to Parks Canada’s page on the L’Anse aux Meadows National Historic Site in Newfoundland. 

If you want, you can read all about – and see – the Lloyds Bank Coprolite here. But maybe don’t do that before watching the full 30-second Wunderbar commercial here. The full What’s Opera, Doc? episode of Merrie Melodies is on Vimeo. 

Finally, this Scandinavian Archaeology article has a detailed breakdown on the mythical origins of the horned helmets.