Norse Illustrations: Free to Use with Credit
The line drawings in the VikingsBrand Library are our own work. They were drawn for our Norse mythology book, one illustration per figure: the gods, the creatures, the world-tree, the staves, and all twenty-four runes of the Elder Futhark.
They are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. You may use them, adapt them and even use them commercially, as long as you credit us and link back.
What you may do
- Use them on a blog, in a video, in a presentation or in teaching material.
- Print them, put them in a zine, a handout or a book.
- Change them: recolour, crop, redraw, use a detail.
- Use them commercially, with credit.
Tattoos: go ahead, no credit needed
If you want one of these on your skin, take it. You cannot put an attribution line on a tattoo, so we waive it: no credit required, no permission needed, no fee. Show it to your artist and let them adapt it to your body.
The only thing we ask, and it is a request rather than a condition, is that if you post the tattoo online you mention where the drawing came from. That is how we find out which ones people actually want.
What we ask for everything else
One line of credit with a working link. Copy this:
Illustration by VikingsBrand, CC BY 4.0 — https://vikingsbrand.co/pages/library
If you adapted the drawing, please say so, for example "adapted from an illustration by VikingsBrand, CC BY 4.0". That is all the licence requires, and it is all we want.
What the licence does not cover
The licence covers the line drawings only. It does not cover the VikingsBrand name or logo, and it does not cover our product photographs. Using a drawing does not imply that we endorse you or your project.
Why we do this
Most Norse symbols online are traced from each other, and most of the pages that use them cannot say where the symbol comes from. We drew ours ourselves so that we could give them away, and we write each Library entry with its primary source and the manuscript it survives in, so that anyone using the picture can also check the claim behind it.
If a drawing is useful to you, take it. A link back is enough.
Where to find them
Every drawing sits on its entry in the Library, alongside the source it illustrates. Right-click to save, or ask us at contact if you need a larger file or a transparent version for print.
