Norse News

A jeweller cutting a rune into a silver band held in a wooden ring clamp at a workbench

Rune Wedding Rings: What to Actually Engrave, a...

A rune wedding ring can carry a real Old Norse word or an attested inscription formula. What it cannot honestly do is spell two modern English names, because the runic...

Rune Wedding Rings: What to Actually Engrave, a...

A rune wedding ring can carry a real Old Norse word or an attested inscription formula. What it cannot honestly do is spell two modern English names, because the runic...

Carved Elder Futhark rune stones laid out on dark oak for a reading

How to Read Runes: Casting, Spreads and Meaning

Draw them blind, lay them out in order, and read each rune in the position it falls in. What the medieval rune poems actually record, which ten runes cannot be...

How to Read Runes: Casting, Spreads and Meaning

Draw them blind, lay them out in order, and read each rune in the position it falls in. What the medieval rune poems actually record, which ten runes cannot be...

A Norse woman in a woollen apron dress with oval tortoise brooches, standing at the door of a turf longhouse above a misty fjord

Viking Names: A Complete Guide to Real Old Nors...

A Viking name had two parts that mattered: a given name and a byname. It did not have a surname. The given name was almost always a compound of two...

Viking Names: A Complete Guide to Real Old Nors...

A Viking name had two parts that mattered: a given name and a byname. It did not have a surname. The given name was almost always a compound of two...

Three generations of a Norse family outside a turf roofed longhouse in an Icelandic valley, an elder seated with his son and grandson

Viking Clan Names: What the Norse Actually Had ...

There were no Viking clans and there were no Viking clan names. The Scottish clan, with its name, chief and territory, is a different institution from a different culture. What...

Viking Clan Names: What the Norse Actually Had ...

There were no Viking clans and there were no Viking clan names. The Scottish clan, with its name, chief and territory, is a different institution from a different culture. What...

The interior of a Viking Age chieftain's hall at night, a long hearth fire burning between carved oak posts and sheepskin covered benches

Norse Names That Mean Warrior, Battle and Victory

Old Norse had no single word for warrior, and no single name meaning it. What it had instead was a set of elements, battle, victory, spear, wolf, bear, army, that...

Norse Names That Mean Warrior, Battle and Victory

Old Norse had no single word for warrior, and no single name meaning it. What it had instead was a set of elements, battle, victory, spear, wolf, bear, army, that...

A bearded Norse man in an undyed wool tunic on a rocky shore at dawn, an iron axe resting against the rock beside him

Viking Male Names: Attested Norse Men's Names a...

Viking men's names were compounds, and the parts mean something. Þórsteinn is Þórr plus steinn, the god's stone. Ásbjörn is áss plus björn, god-bear. Sigurðr is victory plus guardian. Once...

Viking Male Names: Attested Norse Men's Names a...

Viking men's names were compounds, and the parts mean something. Þórsteinn is Þórr plus steinn, the god's stone. Ásbjörn is áss plus björn, god-bear. Sigurðr is victory plus guardian. Once...