Swedish Names: Top 100 Names Popular in Sweden
The list of top 100 popular Swedish names includes names that have been the most widespread during the last 100 years in Sweden. Some of them were popular once and then enjoyed less spreading. Others...
View ArticleUlfberht Viking Sword from Novgorod
Viking swords are sometimes called Carolingian swords or Carolingian type swords. It is believed that they developed from Vendel type swords, which, in their turn, emerged under the influence of...
View ArticleWhat Do Vikings Awake in Us?
The 4th season of The History Channel’s Vikings started a few days ago. The TV series grew so popular that this year it will have twice as many episodes as in the previous seasons, with additional ten...
View ArticleYounger Futhark Runes: Were They Convenient?
What did it feel like for Vikings to have the Younger Futhark as an alphabet in the Viking Age? Imagine you have your standard English alphabet. Then you have a reform based on the fact that the...
View ArticleCan I Write in Old Norse With Runes?
People tend to believe that there is nothing more easy and natural than to write in Old Norse with runes. In reality it’s quite the opposite. The language that we know as Old Norse is the language of...
View ArticleEveryone’s Someone at Home
About two years ago I received a request to write with runes a quote in Old Norse. This happens time and again since people find difficulty in substituting letters of the standard Old Norse orthography...
View ArticleRunic Inscription on the Staraya Ladoga Stick
Recently I blogged about the Younger Futhark runes as a writing system, emphasizing insufficiency of only 16 runic symbols for 21 consonants and 38 vowels of the Old Norse language between the 9th and...
View ArticleNorse Runes Do Not Convey Whole Words
For years, I have been receiving questions like ‘What is the rune for Joy?’ or ‘What is the rune for Happiness?’. The point is, Norse runes aren’t ideograms. Normally, they do not stand for abstract...
View ArticleSolar Eclipse in Norse Mythology
In Norse mythology Sun is a goddess named Sól. She rides a chariot created by gods to illuminate the nine worlds from the burning embers that come out of Muspelheim, the world of fire. Two horses named...
View ArticleHow to Find out If You Have Viking Ancestry
Can we know if our ancestors were Vikings? The short answer is yes, we can. DNA testing may trace Viking background in our genetic makeup. However, Nordic ancestry cannot be proven or disproven in all...
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