IF YOU had ancestors in the UK, Ireland, or the far north-eastern tip of the Americas over a millennium ago, you're probably a pirate.
That's because you may well be a distant relative of the Scandinavian colonisers known in Old Norse as víkingr, meaning 'pirate', and which morphed into 'Viking', now synonymous with fierce-looking men in horned helmets.
The Irish-based TV series Vikings ran for six seasons between 2013 and 2020 and a spin-off, Vikings: Valhalla, has since been created (photo: FilmAffinity)
In reality, though, horns on helmets would have been impractical for combat, and were probably only used in ceremonies, whilst the 'everyday' headgear would have more likely been the spangelhelm, or several flattened bits of iron gripped together.
And women were 'Vikings', in the 'pirate' and the tribesperson senses of the description: They were very much more emancipated in the ninth century than they would have been 1,000 years later, able to choose to divorce or leave their husbands, live independently, own property in their own names, manage family farms and finances in the men's absence, and a few of them knew how to handle swords.
'Danish England' was in place for around 200 years, much of Scotland and especially the islands, along with Iceland, was under Norwegian rule, the western Baltic States and a large chunk of west Russia was ruled by the Swedes, Scandinavian Kingdoms were in place in strategic parts of Ireland for about two-and-a-half centuries, and historians are divided as to whether the Americas were actually 'discovered' by Leif Eriksson at around the start of the 11th century – certainly Greenland, now part of modern-day Denmark and therefore Europe, but in geological or tectonic-plate terms part of the American continent, was largely in Viking hands.
Mediterranean Vikings?
Vikings are rarely associated with the Mediterranean. Brief, relatively unsuccessful strongholds appeared across Normandy and the banks of the river Seine, and whole communities of Vikings were in service as mercenaries in Constantinople – now İstanbul, in Turkey – forming the Byzantine Emperor's Varangian Guard.
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