AUTHOR’S NOTE

Sometimes it’s not possible to know every word and every happening, for most things happen long before they’re told about.

—The Saga of Hrolf the Walker

FROM ESPN HIGHLIGHTS OF MINNESOTA Vikings running backs trampling linebackers to How to Train Your Dragon movie marathons, we can feel the influence of the Vikings in almost every aspect of our daily lives. Sometimes those influences are so blatant that they smack you upside the head like Thor smiting Loki on the poster for an upcoming summer blockbuster. Other Viking hand-me-downs, like the Tooth Fairy or the song “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” are a little less obvious. Viking culture and Norse mythology can be found front and center in everything from Led Zeppelin albums to Final Fantasy video games; from Dungeons & Dragons sessions to NASA space probes; from The Lord of the Rings to popular cruise lines; and across all manner of television, movies, video games, comics, and books. They’re everywhere you look, all portrayed at maximum volume and with varying degrees of historical accuracy. I mean, the Minnesota Vikings football team kicks off its pregame festivities by having a big bearded guy in a horned helmet charge onto the football field on a motorcycle screaming “Vikiiiiiiiiiiings!” while waving an enormous American flag.

But how many people outside Norway can even name one single Viking warrior? Who exactly were these guys, anyway?

Well, to be honest, it’s not easy writing a history book about a bunch of mostly illiterate, bloodthirsty marauders who carved their stories into rocks more than a thousand years ago and credited their victories to blessings from hammer-swinging lightning gods. It’s enough to make sane people crazy and historians even crazier.

Most of what we know about Vikings is brought to us by a cranky old thirteenth-century Icelandic lawyer/politician named Snorri Sturluson, who was pretty much the exact opposite of every Viking stereotype. Snorri was a brilliant legal mind and a devoted reader who constantly plotted and schemed to seize power in the government. He lost almost every battle he ever fought, fled the country twice, came back, and was eventually stabbed to death by three Vikings while cowering in his wine cellar. But even though this guy wasn’t swinging axes and eating meat off the bone, he’s probably the most important man in the study of Norse history because he’s one of the only Norsemen who had the good sense to write everything down. And despite writing his material some three hundred years after the height of the Viking Age, he’s also the best thing we have going for us these days as far as Viking history is concerned. Sure, some of the Christian monks who lived through the raids wrote things down, but it’s hard to write something nice or useful about a group of guys who just burned your house to the ground and tried to kill you with an axe.

Some Viking sagas (old stories about Viking adventures) were passed down through the years as songs and poems, but things tend to get lost when you’re playing a four-hundred-year-long game of telephone. Even though a lot of the sagas match up with legit sources from other parts of the world, there’s also the occasional weird story where a hero makes pants out of sharks and has a ghost bear help him fight elves and fairies. This kind of thing seems less historically accurate.

Despite these problems, it’s important to learn about these guys because they changed the entire course of human history in just a couple hundred years. Viking raiders would found Russia, become noblemen in France, sit as kings of England, and serve as bodyguards to mighty emperors. They’d build permanent settlements in France, Ireland, Iceland, and Holland and lay the foundations for cities such as Dublin, York, and Reykjavík. They’d be the first Europeans to discover North America, trade goods along the Silk Road with China, and fight alongside Christian knights during the Crusades. And they’d do it all in the most awe-inspiring way imaginable—with gigantic bloodstained axes and cool boats that were shaped like dragons.

So we read the rocks with the stories carved into them. And we try to divine the truth from their songs and poems, to break out the facts from the legends. And we enjoy the ride along the way.