The Vikings were skilled sailors and warriors. They were the first to reach the shores of America and made a great contribution to art. But popular culture has greatly distorted the idea of them, creating a lot of misconceptions.
Without horns and skulls
The historical Vikings were very different from the image that developed about them, thanks to the influence of popular culture. For example, there is no historical evidence that the Vikings ever wore horned helmets. This performance developed due to the fact that horned helmets were part of the stage costumes of the actors in the 1876 production of Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelungen. Then this "exterior" penetrated into the cinema and comics.
The image of a Viking drinking from a skull is also widespread. An episode of Ole Worm's book Reuner seu Danica literatura antiquissima, written in 1636, paved the way for the appearance of this undoubtedly striking image. There the author writes that the Vikings drank from "bent skulls". In a later translation into Latin, "curved skulls" became mere skulls. No archaeological evidence of this use of human skulls by the Vikings has yet been found.
In popular culture, the image of a Viking was "sculpted" in such a pattern to create a wild, uncouth and ever-dirty warrior with almost a club instead of a weapon.
In fact, the Vikings were very clean people for their time. During excavations, a significant part of the finds are combs, tweezers and razors of the Vikings, and in medieval England the Vikings were considered "clean" due to the tradition of weekly washing on Saturdays, while the British themselves were not so scrupulous about hygiene.
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Faithful husbands
Another myth about the Vikings was recently refuted by scientists. The harsh Scandinavian sailors were not riotous dorks. In a study published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, it is said that the Vikings went on long journeys with their wives.
The maternal DNA of medieval Scandinavians is the same as that of modern inhabitants of the North Atlantic islands.
This was established by Norwegian biologists led by Erika Hagelberg from the University of Oslo. They removed mitochondrial DNA from the tubular bones of 45 Viking skeletons (dating from 796-1066) and compared this material to mitochondrial DNA from 5191 modern Europeans as well as 68 medieval Icelanders. On the maternal side, the Vikings turned out to be close relatives of the modern North Atlantic peoples. This speaks volumes about the fact that the Vikings went on their colonial campaigns with families.
Skillful artists
Continuing to debunk the notion of the Vikings as uncouth semi-savage swordsmen, it must be said about the high achievements of the Vikings in art. Numerous finds eloquently indicate that the Vikings were among the most skillful artists of medieval Europe. They reached great heights in the art of woodcarving and metal stamping by the beginning of the 9th century. The graceful animalistic and fantastic ornaments of the Broa, Borre, Yellinge and Mammen styles are not inferior in their perfection and whimsy to the oriental ornaments of the Arabic script and Celtic patterns.
Today we can already say unequivocally that the original skill of the Vikings put them on a par with the best artists of the Middle Ages.
A number of patterns are still impossible to decipher and copy.
Of course, one must also say about the highest skill of the Viking shipbuilders, who built the best ships of their time (Drakkars and Knorrs), which allowed the Scandinavian sailors to become the real masters of the seas.
Berserkers without drugs
One of the most attractive images associated with Vikings is the Berserker Viking. There are still a lot of myths and misconceptions about this elite of the Viking squads, one of which is the belief that these warriors went into battle after drinking an intoxicating fly agaric drink.
The first to speak about the intoxication of the berserkers was Snorri's Islian skald, he assured that the berserkers drink the troll's drink. However, there is not a single mention of this in the berserker sagas.
Then, at the end of the 18th century, the researcher S. Edman started talking about the drugging of berserkers with psychotropic drugs. At the same time, he, without any reason, connected the Viking religion with East Siberian shamanism. This is how the myth was born. Scientists, such as, for example, Rakeborn-Hiennerud, even though they admit that some of the berserkers really fought in a state of intoxication, indicate that this is not confirmed by any facts. Berserkers were part of the personal protection of the kings. I would like to ask: would you keep a dozen addicts with axes and swords with you?
We owe the idea of berserkers that we have today to a medievalist historian, one of the theorists of Nazism, a member of the NSDAP and an employee of Annenerbe Otto Höfler. He developed the idea that the berserkers are the warriors of Odin himself, a certain male caste of chosen warriors who, for their fearlessness, end up straight after death to Valhalla, where they form an alliance and enjoy life. Meanwhile, according to mythological ideas, the warriors in Valhalla do not form any alliances. During the day they indulge in "military fun", that is, they fight and kill each other, and at night they indulge in fun. Such an "eternal battle".
However, the image of a berserker created by Hoeffler and his ideas about the state-forming function of male unions became a "pass" for the scientist both in the NDSAP and in Annenerbe. This was the new mythology of Nazism, in which racially correct berserkers were considered true "dogs of war", not tied to life, recklessly following Odin. Such heroization was beneficial to the new German government, it fit well into the framework of propaganda.
Discoverers of America
The discoverer of America was, of course, not Columbus and not even Leif Erickson, who called one of the parts of the New World Vinland. The first European to see the coast of the New Continent was a Scandinavian merchant named Bjarni Herjulfsson.
Today the theory that the Vikings were the first Europeans on the American continent has been proven. This is evidenced by a recent discovery, the results of which were published in the journal Geoarcheology.
At the entrance of an archaeological site in the south of Baffin Island, archaeologists have discovered a small stone vessel. Its age is estimated at about 1000 years. Research by scientists has shown that the vessel is made using technologies typical of Northern Europe thousands of years ago.
The indigenous peoples of North America did not possess such technologies, but they were owned by the Vikings who visited the territory of Canada in order to obtain furs and walrus bones. According to archaeologists, this find was the earliest evidence of high-temperature processing of non-ferrous metals north of Mesoamerica. And this technology came to America from the Vikings.