If you follow my blog to any extent, by now you’re arguably well aware of the fact that I have a tremendous interest in Vikings and the Viking era in history. If you’re new here, welcome, and brace yourself for future Viking content following this post – I can guarantee there will be more at some point.
I was chatting with my mom the other day about Vikings. I can’t recall exactly how the topic came up, but soon enough, I not-so-shockingly found myself spewing word vomit to my mom about all things Viking. She is a phenomenal sport and always listens to me when I get on a tear, and I realized in my discussion with her that she, and probably a lot of other people, have a lot of misconceptions about Vikings that I would be more than happy to clarify.
The first common misconception about Vikings is the thought that they wore helmets adorned with horns. They did not.
Another common misconception about them is that they were monsters when it came to battle. Viking warriors are often associated with brutality and borderline unbelievable stamina and skill in battle, and a lot of people associate these characteristics with the notion that Vikings were nasty, violent and evil folks. They really weren’t, though; while I am absolutely not condoning their raping and pillaging upon innocent people, the main reason they were so valiant in battle was because they truly did not fear death. If anything, they welcomed it and the prospect of gaining entry to Valhalla, meaning when it came to battle, they fought with zero fear, allowing them to perform to an extent the Christians, or Saxons, never could.
This next one isn’t so much a misconcption, but it does play into the idea of Vikings being bloody nuts on the battle field, no pun intended. Vikings used psychedelic mushrooms quite heavily in a variety of ways, for example, to see visions and communicate with the Gods; they also used mushrooms before going into battle occasionally, meaning their performance was heightened that much more.
Photo by shahin khalaji on Unsplash
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