What Did Vikings Drink Out Of? Horns, Wooden Cups and Glass

In daily life Vikings drank mostly from turned wooden cups and bowls. At feasts and ceremonies they drank from cattle horns, passed from hand to hand for toasts to the gods and the dead. The wealthy also owned imported glass beakers. Ale was the everyday drink; mead and imported wine were for special occasions.

The drinking horn is the vessel everyone remembers. It is the one the Viking Age put on its picture stones and silver pendants, and the one that fills the later poems and sagas. But a horn has no flat base, it cannot be put down half full, and it was a vessel for the feast rather than for every meal. To see how people in Scandinavia actually drank between about 800 and 1100, you have to look at the horn alongside the humbler cup, the rare glass and what went into all of them.

Drinking horns: the feast vessel

A drinking horn is the horn sheath of a cow or an ox, cleaned, thinned and polished. Very few Viking-Age horns survive whole, because horn rots in the ground. What survives are the metal parts: rims around the mouth and caps or terminals on the tip. The Swedish History Museum holds a drinking horn from grave Bj 523 at Birka, horn with silver fittings, 21.5 cm long. From Norwegian graves come some 24 sets of horn fittings made in Britain or Ireland, most of them from ninth-century women's graves, as Aina Heen-Pettersen has shown; the horns themselves are usually gone and only the copper-alloy mounts and tips remain.

The custom is older than the Vikings. The Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, from the early 600s, held a pair of great horns, probably from the aurochs, the extinct wild ox, each holding about two litres. The two golden horns of Gallehus in Denmark were made around AD 400; they were found in 1639 and 1734, and stolen and melted down in 1802. By the Viking Age the horn was already the proper vessel for a solemn drink.

Horns at the feast: toasts to the gods and the dead

The clearest description of how horns were used comes from Snorri Sturluson's saga of Hákon the Good, written around 1230 about events of the 900s. Describing the sacrificial feasts that Earl Sigurd held in Trøndelag, Snorri says the cups were carried across the fire: first Odin's cup, drunk for victory and power for the king, then the cups of Njord and Freyr, for a good year and peace. After that many drank the bragafull, whose name may mean Bragi's cup or the chieftain's cup, and people also drank to kinsmen who had been laid in mounds; those toasts were called minni, "memory". At an autumn feast at Hlaðir a few chapters later, Earl Sigurd dedicated the first cup to Odin and "drank from the horn" to the king, who, being a Christian, made the sign of the cross over it.

Horns appear in Viking-Age art too. On the Tjängvide picture stone from Gotland, now in the Swedish History Museum, a rider on an eight-legged horse, usually read as Odin on Sleipnir or a dead man arriving in Valhalla, is met by a woman holding out a drinking horn. Small silver figures of women offering horns, like the pendant from Klinta on Öland, are traditionally called valkyries, though the museum points out that they could just as well show a noblewoman serving drink at a ceremony.

The poems put horns in the hands of the gods as well. In Grímnismál Odin names the valkyries he wants to "bear the horn" to him, and says they serve ale to the fallen warriors in Valhalla. In Snorri's Edda Thor is set to empty a horn at the hall of Útgarða-Loki and fails, because, as he learns afterwards, its other end lay in the sea; the water he drank away is what is now called the ebb tide. And Snorri gives the name Gjallarhorn, Heimdall's horn, to the horn from which the wise Mímir drinks at his well.

Wooden cups and bowls: what most people drank from

For an ordinary meal, the vessel was wood. Turned wooden cups and bowls were cheap, light and easy to replace, and they were made in huge numbers. At 16–22 Coppergate in Viking York, excavators found part of a lathe, roughed-out blanks, discarded vessels, turning waste and an iron turning tool, the remains of a workshop making wooden bowls and cups. The street name itself probably means "street of the cup-turners". Most wooden vessels have rotted away, which is why the horns, with their metal fittings, loom larger in museums than they did at the table.

Glass: the luxury import

Glass drinking vessels were rare and expensive. At Birka, glass beakers or their fragments came from about forty graves, more than half of them funnel beakers that taper to a tiny foot and stand badly, so they were probably emptied before being set down. The Swedish History Museum describes them as imports, probably from the Frankish realm or England. Scandinavian craftsmen mostly reworked imported glass into beads, as at Ribe, though the trading town of Hedeby may also have made some drinking vessels of its own.

Pottery and soapstone

Pottery was mostly cooking ware, apart from rare imported jugs from the Rhineland for serving wine. Soapstone, which Norse craftsmen carved in great quantities in Norway, went into cooking pots, bowls, lamps and moulds rather than drinking cups.

What was in the cup?

Ale was the everyday drink, brewed from barley malt and drunk by everyone. Mead, made from honey, appears far more often in poetry than in practical texts, and since honey was costly, it was probably a drink for special occasions. Wine had to be imported, mainly from the Rhineland, and reached trading towns like Hedeby in barrels for those who could afford it. The poems give it to the chief god: in Grímnismál, Odin "lives on wine alone". There is more on brewing in our article on Viking beer.

Did the Vikings drink from skulls?

No. The story comes from a poem and a mistranslation. In Krákumál, a twelfth-century death song put in the mouth of Ragnar Lodbrok, the dying hero says that soon they will drink beer "from the curved trees of skulls": a kenning, a poetic riddle, for horns, the curved growths of an animal's skull. In 1636 the Danish scholar Ole Worm printed the poem in his book Runir, with a Latin translation based on the work of the Icelandic priest Magnús Ólafsson, and a note that the heroes hoped to drink in Odin's hall from the skulls of those they had killed (1651 printing). English writers repeated it, and the image of the skull cup stuck.

Drinking from a horn today

A horn is still the most Norse thing you can drink from. Our Viking drinking horns are made from real horn, most of them lined inside with food-grade lacquer; keep them to cold drinks and wash them by hand. If you want a vessel that stands on the table between toasts, the ox horn mugs and horn cups are cut from the same material and sit flat, and the beer mugs have a handle.

What Did Vikings Drink Out Of? FAQ

What did Vikings drink out of?

Mostly turned wooden cups and bowls in everyday life, and cattle horns at feasts and ceremonies. Wealthy households also had imported glass beakers. Pottery and soapstone were used mainly for cooking, not drinking.

Did Vikings really drink from horns?

Yes. Horns appear on Viking-Age picture stones such as Tjängvide, on silver figures of women offering drink, and in the sagas and poems, and their metal rims and tips are found in graves. They were the vessel for feasts and toasts rather than for every meal.

Did Vikings drink from human skulls?

No. The idea comes from a Latin translation of the poem Krákumál, printed by Ole Worm in 1636, which turned a poetic phrase for drinking horns, "curved trees of skulls", into the skulls of slain enemies.

What did Vikings drink?

Ale, brewed from barley, was the everyday drink. Mead, made from costly honey, was a drink for special occasions, and imported wine was a luxury for the wealthy.

What is a minni toast?

A minni, "memory", was a toast drunk at a feast in honour of dead kinsmen. Snorri's saga of Hákon the Good describes it after the toasts to Odin, Njord and Freyr.

Why did Vikings drink from horns instead of cups?

They used both. Cups were for daily drinking; the horn was the vessel for ceremony. A horn cannot be set down until it is empty, which suits toasts, oaths and drinks passed from hand to hand.