Skål: What It Means and How to Say It

Skål, spelled skol in English, is the Scandinavian toast for "cheers." It comes from the Old Norse word skál, meaning a bowl or drinking cup, not from the skulls of dead enemies. That grisly story grew out of a 1636 mistranslation. Say it "skawl," meet your companions' eyes, and drink.

We should confess our bias up front: every article on this site ends with "Skål!", so we are more or less contractually obligated to get this one right. Below is what the word actually means, where the skull legend came from and why it is wrong, why Minnesota Vikings fans shout it at football games, and how people really toasted in the Viking Age according to the sagas.

What Does Skål Actually Mean?

Skål is the standard toast in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, and skál fills the same role in Icelandic and Faroese. In practice it works exactly like "cheers": you say it as the glasses go up, and everyone drinks. But the word itself never meant "cheers." In all of these languages, skål is also the ordinary, everyday word for a bowl.

That double meaning is the whole etymology. Old Norse skál named a bowl or shallow drinking vessel, and calling it out before drinking amounted to "raise the bowl." Standard dictionaries trace the toast this way, and they credit the same Norse word for the English "scale" you weigh things on, which started life as the word for a weighing pan.

The word traveled early, too. The form "skoal" shows up as a drinking salute in Scots and English writing around 1600, centuries before anyone made a Viking movie. It is a small, sturdy survivor of the Norse language, and if words like this interest you, our guide to what language the Vikings spoke is full of them.

Did Vikings Really Drink from the Skulls of Their Enemies?

No. This is one of the most persistent Viking myths, and unusually, we can date its birth almost to the year. No excavated Viking Age site in Scandinavia has produced a drinking cup made from a human skull, and no saga describes warriors drinking from one. Norsemen drank from horns, wooden cups, imported glass beakers, and, fittingly, bowls.

The legend began as a translation error. The Old Norse poem Krákumál, a death song placed in the mouth of the legendary hero Ragnar Lothbrok, contains the phrase "ór bjúgviðum hausa," literally "from the curved trees of skulls." That is a kenning, the standard Norse poetic riddle: the "curved trees" that grow from a skull are horns. The dying hero is saying that in Odin's hall the brave will soon drink from drinking horns.

Then, in 1636, the Danish antiquarian Ole Worm published a Latin rendering of the poem that flattened the kenning into drinking "from the skulls of those they had slain." Later writers copied him without checking the Norse. Thomas Percy's 1763 English translation carried the image into English literature, and the skull-sipping Viking has been staggering through books and films ever since.

So when you raise a horn and call out skål, you are quoting a homely word for "bowl," not reviving a trophy ritual. If you want the mead-hall experience without the mistranslation, our Viking drinking horns are modeled on the real thing: polished cattle horn, exactly what the kenning meant.

How Do You Pronounce Skål?

In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, skål sounds close to "skawl," with the vowel of English "law" or "call." One syllable, soft l, no hard edges. The English spellings skol and skoal are both attempts to capture that sound, and either will be understood at any Scandinavian table.

Icelandic goes its own way. The accented á in skál is pronounced "ow," so the Icelandic toast comes out closer to "scowl." Say "scowl" in Reykjavík and "skawl" in Copenhagen and you will pass in both cities.

As for spelling: in Scandinavia it is always skål, with the little ring over the a (or skál in Iceland). In English text, skol has become the common casual form, largely thanks to American football. Which brings us to Minnesota.

Why Do Minnesota Vikings Fans Chant Skol?

The Minnesota Vikings adopted the word almost from the franchise's beginning. The team fight song, "Skol, Vikings," goes back to the club's early days in the 1960s, and for half a century that song was more or less the whole tradition.

The Skol Chant is far newer. At Euro 2016, Iceland's national soccer team and its traveling fans performed a slow, synchronized overhead clap punctuated by a booming shout, starting slow and accelerating to a roar. The "Viking thunderclap" went viral worldwide. When the Vikings opened U.S. Bank Stadium in September 2016, the team introduced its own version: fans raise their arms, clap in unison to a drumbeat and the blast of the Gjallarhorn, and shout "Skol!" A Scandinavian toast reached the NFL by way of an Icelandic soccer celebration, which is about as fitting a voyage as a Norse word could ask for.

How Did Vikings Actually Toast?

Norse feasts had structure. The sagas and eddic poems describe ceremonial rounds of drinking, in Old Norse sometimes called sumbl, in which the horn or cup passed through the hall and each round carried meaning. Lokasenna, one of the poems of the Poetic Edda, is staged entirely at such a feast in the hall of the sea giant Ægir, which tells you how central hall-drinking was to the Norse imagination.

Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla gives the clearest picture. In Hákonar saga góða, Snorri writes that at sacrificial feasts a cup was blessed and drunk to Odin for victory and the king's power, then cups to Njörðr and Freyr for good harvests and peace, then often the bragafull, a ceremonial chieftain's cup, and finally minni, memorial toasts to dead kinsmen. Ynglinga saga adds that at funeral feasts an heir swore solemn vows over the bragafull before stepping into his inheritance. Feasting like this was diplomacy, religion, and entertainment in one evening, and it sat near the center of daily life in the Viking Age.

Two honest caveats. Snorri wrote in the 1220s, roughly two centuries after the pagan feasts he describes, so his details are part reconstruction. And no saga records anyone barking "skál!" as a one-word toast the way we do now; the word was there, meaning bowl, but the modern fixed salute grew out of this toasting culture rather than being quoted from it. As for what filled the horn, that is a story of its own: see our post on what the Vikings brewed and drank.

How Do You Use Skål Today?

Modern Scandinavian toasting is easy to learn, and in Sweden it is pleasantly formal. The full Swedish version: raise your glass, look each companion in the eye, say "skål," drink, then make brief eye contact again before setting the glass down. In Denmark and Norway the eye contact is warm custom rather than strict rule, and at a casual table a raised glass and the word are plenty.

You will hear that the eye contact began so drinkers could watch for treachery, or that clinking cups proved a drink was not poisoned. Those stories are fun, and they are folklore: no medieval source describes either custom. Enjoy them as table talk, not history.

And there is no required reply. When someone says skål to you, you say skål back, and you drink. At festive dinners the toast often comes wrapped in short drinking songs between rounds, proof that the sumbl instinct never really died.

Skål: Frequently Asked Questions

What does skol mean?

Skol is the English spelling of skål, the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish toast equivalent to "cheers." The word comes from Old Norse skál, meaning a bowl or drinking vessel, and it still means "bowl" in the modern Scandinavian languages. Minnesota Vikings fans have also adopted it as the team's rallying cry.

Is it skol or skål?

Skål, with the ring over the a, is the correct spelling in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish; Icelandic writes skál. Skol and skoal are English adaptations of the sound. Use skål when writing about Scandinavia, and skol when you mean the Minnesota Vikings chant. All of them are pronounced roughly "skawl."

Did Vikings really drink from skulls?

No. The idea comes from Ole Worm's 1636 Latin translation of the poem Krákumál, which turned a kenning for drinking horns, literally "the curved trees of skulls," into "the skulls of the slain." Archaeology agrees with the poetry: Viking sites yield drinking horns, wooden cups, and glass, never skull cups.

How do you pronounce skål?

In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, say "skawl," rhyming with "call"; the å sounds like the vowel in English "law." In Icelandic, skál sounds closer to "scowl," because the accented á makes an "ow" sound. It is one short, punchy syllable everywhere, which is part of why it works so well as a toast.

What do you say after skål?

Nothing formal is required. The usual reply is simply "skål" in return, followed by a drink. Swedish etiquette adds eye contact with your companions before and after you sip. There is no traditional second phrase, though at holiday tables the toast is often followed by a short drinking song.

Skål began as the word for the bowl in your hands, picked up a lurid skull legend from one bad Latin translation, and ended up echoing through an NFL stadium by way of an Icelandic soccer chant. Not bad for four letters. Use it the old way: raise your cup, catch a friend's eye, and mean it.

Skål!