Read Vikings Online

Authors: Neil Oliver

Vikings (51 page)

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Jelling burial mounds and church, southern Denmark (Lars Madsen / Alamy)

Jelling rune stone (Werner Forman / Corbis)

Baptism of Harald Bluetooth by Poppo, Tamdrup Church, Jutland, Denmark (DEA / A. Dagli Orti / AKG Images)

Reconstructed Viking longhouse, Trelleborg Fortress, Denmark (Look Die Bildagentur der Fotografen GmbH / Alamy)

The Cuerdale silver hoard (The Art Gallery Collection / Alamy)

Cnut the Great (British Library / AKG Images)

Die Reichskrone (Imagno / AKG Images)

A warrior’s grave goods: the sword, axe head and bronze pin recovered from the first intact Viking boat burial found on mainland Britain, on the Ardnamurchan peninsula in the north-west of Scotland, in 2011.

Up Helly Aa. Shetlanders dressed as Vikings aboard a replica long ship. At the climax of the festival, held every January, they use their flaming torches to set their vessel on fire.

Vedbæk Mesolithic cemetery in Denmark. A woman and infant buried together around 6,000 years ago – she with a necklace of deer teeth, and the baby with a flint blade at its waist, laid upon a swan’s wing.

A Bronze Age celebrity: Egtved Girl was buried near the modern village of Egtved, in the south-east of Denmark, during the second millennium
BC
. Acidic soil conditions preserved not just the teenager’s clothing, jewellery and grave goods, but also her well-kept blonde hair, nails, teeth, some skin and even fragments of her brain tissue.

One of Egtved Girl’s bronze bracelets.

Bronze Age rock carvings of long ships, complete with their crews, at Tanumshede in Sweden.

The Brudevælte Lurs: musical instruments, which make a sound much like modern trumpets, found during peat-cutting in northern Sjælland, Denmark, in 1797.

The voyage of the lord of Kivik. These petroglyphs on the walls of the empty burial chamber of the Bronze Age Bredaror burial cairn in Sweden show long ships, with robed and hooded figures, some playing lurs. There are also spoked wheels and a man riding a chariot. Since such vehicles were otherwise unknown in Scandinavia at the time, these images suggest long-distance contacts.

Tollund Man. The peaceful expression on the perfectly preserved face of the most famous of the Danish Iron Age ‘bog-bodies’ belies his grisly fate. The cord around his neck revealed he had been a victim of human sacrifice.

A carved Pictish stone in Aberlemno churchyard, in Angus, Scotland. One of several found in and around the village, this one is known as Aberlemno II and is thought to depict the Battle of Dunnichen (also known as Nechtansmere or Dun Nechtain) between Picts and Angles in
AD
685.

This headpiece from an eighth-century Irish bishop’s crozier depicts a man in the mouth of a beast – perhaps Jonah in the belly of the whale and therefore a symbol of rebirth. It was found during excavations at Helgö in Sweden.

Reliquary bust of Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor.

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