100 Facts Vikings – Bitesized Facts & Awesome Images to Support KS2 Learning

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In 2006, a Coca-Cola employee offered to sell Coca-Cola secrets to Pepsi. Pepsi responded by notifying Coca-Cola. The Vikings witnessed the violent subduing of the Saxons by Charlemagne, in the thirty-year Saxon Wars of 772–804. The Saxon defeat resulted in their forced christening and the absorption of Old Saxony into the Carolingian Empire. Fear of the Franks led the Vikings to further expand Danevirke, [92] and the defence constructions remained in use throughout the Viking Age and even up until 1864. [93] Later writings on the Vikings and the Viking Age can also be important for understanding them and their culture, although they need to be treated cautiously. After the consolidation of the church and the assimilation of Scandinavia and its colonies into mainstream medieval Christian culture in the 11th and 12th centuries, native written sources began to appear in Latin and Old Norse. In the Viking colony of Iceland, extraordinary vernacular literature blossomed in the 12th through 14th centuries, and many traditions connected with the Viking Age were written down for the first time in the Icelandic sagas. A literal interpretation of these medieval prose narratives about the Vikings and the Scandinavian past is doubtful, but many specific elements remain worthy of consideration, such as the great quantity of skaldic poetry attributed to court poets of the 10th and 11th centuries, the exposed family trees, the self-images, and the ethical values that are contained in these literary writings. Valkyrie were the choosers of the slain on the battlefield and then hand maidens to those that made it to Valhalla. Even though the Vikings didn’t stay in Britain, they left a strong mark on society – we’ve even kept some of the same names of towns. They had a large settlement around York and the Midlands, and you can see some of the artefacts from Viking settlements today. Top 10 facts

In 878, King Alfred the Great defeated the Vikings in battle and had them sign a treaty saying they had to keep to their own land in England – this section of land was called Danelaw.

The most important primary sources on the Vikings are contemporary texts from Scandinavia and regions where the Vikings were active. [127] Writing in Latin letters was introduced to Scandinavia with Christianity, so there are few native documentary sources from Scandinavia before the late 11th and early 12th centuries. [128] The Scandinavians did write inscriptions in runes, but these were usually very short and formulaic. Most contemporary documentary sources consist of texts written in Christian and Islamic communities outside Scandinavia, often by authors who had been negatively affected by Viking activity. The motives driving the Viking expansion are a topic of much debate. The concept that Vikings may have originally started sailing and raiding due to a need to seek out women from foreign lands was expressed in the 11th century by historian Dudo of Saint-Quentin in his semi-imaginary History of The Normans. [96] [97] [98] As observed by Adam of Bremen, rich and powerful Viking men tended to have many wives and concubines; [99] and these polygynous relationships may have led to a shortage of women available to the Viking male. Consequently, the average Viking man may have felt compelled to seek wealth and power to have the means to acquire suitable women. [100] Several centuries after Dudo's observations, scholars revived this idea, and over time it became a cliché among scholars of the Viking Age. [101] Viking men would often buy or capture women and make them into their wives or concubines; [102] [103] such polygynous marriages increase male-male competition in society because they create a pool of unmarried men who are willing to engage in risky status-elevating and sex-seeking behaviors. [104] [105] The Annals of Ulster states that in 821 the Vikings plundered an Irish village and "carried off a great number of women into captivity". [106] The form occurs as a personal name on some Swedish runestones. The stone of Tóki víking (Sm 10) was raised in memory of a local man named Tóki who got the name Tóki víking (Toki the Viking), presumably because of his activities as a Viking. [37] The Gårdstånga Stone (DR 330) uses the phrase " Þeʀ drængaʀ waʀu wiða unesiʀ i wikingu" ( These valiant men were widely renowned on viking raids), [38] referring to the stone's dedicatees as Vikings. The Västra Strö 1 Runestone has an inscription in memory of a Björn, who was killed when " on a viking raid". [39] [40] In Sweden there is a locality known since the Middle Ages as Vikingstad. The Bro Stone (U 617) was raised in memory of Assur who is said to have protected the land from Vikings ( Saʀ vaʀ vikinga vorðr með Gæiti). [41] [42] There is little indication of any negative connotation in the term before the end of the Viking Age.

The nursery rhyme ‘London Bridge is falling down’ could be linked to a Viking named Olaf the Stout who fixed cables from longships to the bridge and pulled it into the Thames. Viking society was divided into the three socio-economic classes: thralls, karls and jarls. This is described vividly in the Eddic poem of Rígsþula, which also explains that it was the god Ríg—father of mankind also known as Heimdallr—who created the three classes. Archaeology has confirmed this social structure. [177] Most clothes that the Vikings had were made from wool, but they also had some clothes made from linen. They used dyes made from plants and minerals to make red, green, brown, yellow and blue, so their clothes were very colourful.One theory suggests that the word's origin is from the Old English wicing and the Old Frisian wizing that are almost 300 years older, and probably derive from wic, related to the Latin vicus "village, habitation". [21] Another less popular theory is that víking came from the feminine vík, meaning "creek, inlet, small bay". [22] It is difficult to reconstruct any consistent conception of the Viking trading and bartering culture and it varied between countries and settlements. One fragment of evidence suggests that a big, strong male slave was worth about twenty four cows though whilst a female was worth about eight. Bifrost was a rainbow bridge which connected Asgard to Midgard (Earth) and can still been seen on rainy days when sunshine follows!

The Old Norse feminine víking (as in the phrase fara í víking) may originally have been a long-distance sea journey characterised by the shifting of rowers, and a víkingr (masculine gender) would originally have been a participant on such a sea journey. In that case, the idea behind it seems to be that the tired rower moves aside on the thwart when he is relieved by the rested rower. This implies that the word Viking was not originally connected to Scandinavian seafarers, but assumed this meaning when the Scandinavians began to dominate the seas. [26] Even the word vikingr did not necessarily possess negative overtones, nor was it always associated with violence, and only in the post-Viking age would negative overtones be attached to the word. [30] Medieval usage Jomsborg was a semi-legendary Viking stronghold at the southern coast of the Baltic Sea (medieval Wendland, modern Pomerania), that existed between the 960s and 1043. Its inhabitants were known as Jomsvikings. Jomsborg's exact location, or its existence, has not yet been established, though it is often maintained that Jomsborg was somewhere on the islands of the Oder estuary. [119] End of the Viking Age If you cut down a saguaro cactus in Arizona, you can be charged with a class-4 felony and penalized with jail time. Clean freaks though they were, the Vikings had no qualms about harnessing the power of one human waste product. They would collect a fungus called touchwood from tree bark and boil it for several days in urine before pounding it into something akin to felt. The sodium nitrate found in urine would allow the material to smolder rather than burn, so Vikings could take fire with them on the go. 4. Vikings buried their dead in boats. After the age of 20, an unmarried woman, referred to as maer and mey, reached legal majority and had the right to decide her place of residence and was regarded as her own person before the law. [183] An exception to her independence was the right to choose a husband, as marriages were normally arranged by the family. [185] The groom would pay a bride-price ( mundr) to the bride's family, and the bride brought assets into the marriage, as a dowry. [184]

Odin was the God of wisdom and war, Thor was the God of thunder and protector of mankind and Frey was the god of fertility. Slavic and Viking tribes were "closely linked, fighting one another, intermixing and trading". [80] [81] [82] In the Middle Ages, goods were transferred from Slavic areas to Scandinavia, and Denmark could be considered "a melting pot of Slavic and Scandinavian elements". [80] Leszek Gardeła, of the Department of Scandinavian Languages and Literatures at the University of Bonn, posits that the presence of Slavs in Scandinavia is "more significant than previously thought", [80] while Mats Roslund states that "the Slavs and their interaction with Scandinavia have not been adequately investigated". [83] The word is a verb: Or at least, it was! The term ‘viking’ is believed to have originally referred to the act of raiding. Only over time did its usage change to refer to the Norsemen doing the raiding.