Blog
Viking Pastimes – What Were They?
Dec
The Vikings have been capturing the imagination of Western cultures for a few hundred years. TV shows, movies, books, and even slot games at an online casino have taken the mythology of these seafaring Scandinavian people and romanticized them in quite a significant way.
Not much in the way of literary sources about the real Vikings can be found, however. They were prolific around the seas between the late 8th and 11th centuries, raiding and trading their way around parts of Europe and even reaching as far as the Middle East and Newfoundland. They were not literate people in the way that their contemporaries were in other countries; they didn’t write much in the Old Norse language that they spoke, but they did use runes to describe themselves, their lives, and their culture.
Who Were the Vikings?
Expert sailors and navigators, the Vikings were a people who came from what we know as Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. They had a profound impact on Medieval culture in Europe, settling in new lands and taking back part of the culture of other lands, too.
What we do know about the Vikings started with the writings and other literary sources from the cultures that came into contact with them. The descriptions of these pirates who fought and then settled throughout much of Europe are partly responsible for the ‘noble savage’ depiction of these people that emerged in the late 18th century and was widely propagated during the 19th century.
With unreliable written sources and a lack of literature created by the Vikings themselves, how are we to find out what they were really like as a people? We have been lucky enough to have found a rich and varied archaeological record of both rural and urban Viking settlements, giving clues to their day-to-day lives, what crafts they made and other things that they produced, the kind of diet that they had, and even what they did in their spare time. This has proved that there was much more to being a Viking than sailing longboats to raid Europe.
What Did Vikings Do in Their Spare Time?
Viking society was one that made use of slaves or thralls as they were called. Thralls made up around a quarter of the population and would be used for everything from everyday chores to building. Karls were essentially peasants who would own farms and land and be responsible for providing food (using their own thralls in many cases). The nobility was the jarls, the wealthy aristocracy who had large estates and spent their time on things like politics, hunting, and sports.
Favorite Viking Sports
Some of the most popular sports that the Vikings would enjoy are linked to skills and talents that would make them better fighters. These included weapons training, spear or stone throwing, and wrestling. Developing combat skills was also part of leisure activities like stone lifting and running and jumping, and it wasn’t uncommon for fist fighting to be a mainstay of celebrations and festivals.
The Vikings were also keen swimmers – probably not too surprising for a seafaring people. Vikings had diving competitions, long distance swimming races, and even played games where two people would try to ‘dunk’ each other under the water.
With the cold climate of Scandinavia, winter sports like skiing and ice skating were also popular, and records suggest that the game knattliek was played with sticks and a ball on ice – similar to modern ice hockey.
Gambling
Vikings enjoyed some betting, and one of the favorite things to bet on was horse fighting. Similar to dog or cock fighting, two stallions would be pitted against each other and made to fight to the death, sometimes even using a mare in heat to send them into a frenzy.
Wagers would be placed on the outcome, with the owners of these fighting stallions often breeding specifically to create winners. Barbaric as the practice was, it remained popular, despite almost always descending into a brawl afterwards as money was lost and the outcome was questioned.
Less cruel, and probably more popular in the lower echelons of Viking society were dice games. Bets would be placed on the outcome of a throw, whether that be making a specific total or just the highest roll. Viking dice were rectangular, so different from our cube shaped dice, but they seem to have been used in the same way.
Board Games
Boards made of ornately carved wood have been discovered, and although we don’t know all the rules or how it was played, a strategy game using carved pieces on a checkered board called hnefatafl was a popular choice. It appears to be a battle game, where a small number of pieces has to protect the King while the larger opposing force has to get to the king.
This is similar to other war strategy games, and some think that it was a precursor to the game of chess that we all know today.