The Vikings

[Gavin Nugent]

I'm not sure if these have been shared before, please remove if they have.

http://www.museum.ie/Archaeology/Exhibitions/Current-Exhibitions/Clontarf-1014/10-Unmissable-Objects-from-Clontarf-1014
A brief intro to the objects.

http://www.museum.ie/Archaeology/Exhibitions/Current-Exhibitions/Clontarf-1014/Viking-Ireland-Videos
A wonderful series of videos...it is worth watching all of these as they may not start out discussing weapons, but there is some very good weapons content within those videos.

Gavin

[fernando]

Very good material, Gavin.
Thanks for sharing.

[Jens Nordlunde]

They did travel very far, not only to Ireland and England, they also travelled down the Russian rivers. They came to Constantinoble, to Rome and many other places. Mostly they did this to trade, but in some places they were violent as well.
In graves in Denmark they have found strange things, like drinking glasses, glass pearls and other things from the south.
Due to DNA analysis they have also found out that some, even before the time of theVikings, came from places very far - travelling thousands of kilometers - and at that time - without planed and trains.
Somewhere I have some pictures of excavated Viking swords, and I will try to find them.
The most impressive Viking sword I have seen was at a friend. It had a rather short blade but quite broad with only one fuller, the quillons were long and downwards bend, but the hilt was like on one a two hand sword, to this came that the pommel was round and quite heavy. IT was a very impressive weapon, but as I have lost contact to him I cant show any pictures.

[Timo Nieminen]

They did travel very far, not only to Ireland and England, they also travelled down the Russian rivers. They came to Constantinoble, to Rome and many other places. Mostly they did this to trade, but in some places they were violent as well.
In graves in Denmark they have found strange things, like drinking glasses, glass pearls and other things from the south.

As far west as North America, with a long-term colony in Greenland. Don't know far east they travelled, but they raided in the Caspian Sea. IIRC, more silver dirhams (a Middle Eastern coin) have been found in Viking hoards than elsewhere. These give information about trade routes to the east:
https://www.academia.edu/1722281/Islamic_Coin_Hoards_and_the_Trade_Routes_How_Dirha m_Reached_the_North

[kronckew]

people were a lot more mobile way back than we give them credit for. some say jesus (yeshua) travelled in his youth with his uncle to cornwall on a tin trading mission. the cool movie 'the thirteenth warrior' premise of a middle eastern scholar/warrior meeting up with vikings and travelling to their homelands is not far fetched. the vikings made lots of cash & loot working for a while as varangian imperial guards in contantinople before retiring home, plenty of scope to liberate middle eastern and persian coinage from people laying around on battle fields who didn't need them anymore.

[Norman McCormick]

Hi,
You may find this article of interest.
Regards,
Norman.

http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199906/among.the.norse.tribes-the.remarkable.account.of.ibn.fadlan.htm

[Timo Nieminen]

Ibn Fadlan's description of the funeral is the only detailed contemporary description of a Viking ship-burning funeral.

A good translation, and also of other accounts of travel to such northern areas, is:
http://www.amazon.com/Ibn-Fadlan-Land-Darkness-Travellers/dp/0140455078/
http://www.bookdepository.com/Ibn-Fadlan-and-the-Land-of-Darkness-Caroline-C-Stone-Ibn-Fadlan-Paul-Lunde/9780140455076

[kronckew]

cool info. Ahmad ibn Fadlan was the arab scholar/warrior character in the '13th warrior' movie.

[Forja Fontenla]

cool info. Ahmad ibn Fadlan was the arab scholar/warrior character in the '13th warrior' movie.
Good movie... and bad-looking swords :p

[kronckew]

their armour was fantastic, as in fantasy, not as in accurate. looked like whatever they had in the prop room. the wurm people had fantasy weapons too.

ahmad 'converted' a 'heavy' viking sword into a saif with a few minutes at the forge and a bit of grinding. heck i have a hand forged and finished - made to period spec - viking sword, weighs about the same as my shamshir. i suspect in reality he might have wanted to modify the grip more than the blade. arab swords of the period were likely straight double edged anyway.

reminds me of the old movie 'prince valiant' with his huge aluminum singing sword, prince v. had a great accent too! and his lady love would have taught madonna a thing or two about breast augmentation and display. :D

one must suspend belief and reality a bit for most hollywood films, or you'd go crazy. like an 1803 british cavalry bad guy's sabre in the american revolution film with mel gibson. drove me nuts for a while, but i gave up. especially when they portray yorktown at the end of the al pacino revolution movie, it looks more like new zealand topography than the real thing that i drove thru every day for 3 months to get to the coast guard base for classes.

[RobT]

Hi All,
The movie (and the book) was originally written by Michael Crichton and titled Eaters of the Dead. It is actually a retelling of Beowulf's fatal encounter with the dragon.
Sincerely,
RobT