Norse symbols and figures, from the sources

The Library is a reference shelf, not a listicle. Each entry takes a single symbol or figure of the Norse world and answers what a roundup skips: where it actually appears, in which manuscript or on which stone, how old the earliest surviving record is, and what has been added to it since.

Every entry follows the same shape: a short definition, the primary source quoted where one survives (with its manuscript and shelfmark), the etymology, the misconceptions worth correcting, and a bibliography you can go and check. The entries cover both the staves and emblems people wear, and the gods and creatures those emblems belong to.

Two kinds of distance run through the shelf, and every entry names its own. Not everything sold as a Viking symbol is from the Viking Age: the Valknut and Thor's hammer are archaeologically attested, carved on picture stones and buried as amulets, while Vegvisir and the eight-armed form of Aegishjalmur are Icelandic magical staves written down in post-medieval grimoires, centuries after the Norse period ended. And the gods and creatures reach us mostly through Icelandic manuscripts of the 1200s, written down generations after Iceland converted, by Christians recording what they had inherited. Both distances are worth knowing. Collapsing them is how bad history spreads.

Every drawing here is our own work, free to use with credit under CC BY 4.0. See the illustrations page.