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Viking sagas describe the ritual execution of blood eagle, in which victims were kept alive while their backs were sliced open so that their ribs, lungs, and intestines could be pulled out into the shape of bloody wings. PinterestA blood eagle execution. The Vikings didn’t come into towns walking on moonbeams and rainbows. If their sagas are to be believed, the Vikings cruelly tortured their enemies in the name of their god Odin as they conquered territory. If the suggestion of a blood eagle was even uttered, one left town and never looked back. Viking sagas define blood eagle as...

Archaeologists using radar scans have detected a Viking ship buried beneath a cemetery in Norway. The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) said that the archaeologists discovered the anomaly using radar scans of an area in Østfold County. The ship seems to be about 66 feet (20 meters) long and buried about 1.6 feet (50 centimeters) beneath the ground, they said in a statement.

No words... Just give it a listen.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSfA0i6Typw        

The remains of a powerful viking — long thought to be a man — was in fact a real-life Xena Warrior Princess, a study released Friday reveals. The lady war boss was buried in the mid-10th century along with deadly weapons and two horses, leading archaeologists and historians to assume she was a man, according to the findings, published in in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Wrong. “It’s actually a woman, somewhere over the age of 30 and fairly tall, too, measuring around [5’6″] tall ,” archaeologist Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson of Uppsala University, who conducted the study, told The Local.

The Sea Stallion right before arrival to the Orkney Islands Pastime and cosy atmosphere. Sea Stallion taken from the support vessel 'Cable One' by the Viking ship And the further on, 4 hours of rowing in between the Orkney - Sea Stallion.

The world’s largest viking ship has arrived in North America after crossing the North Atlantic Ocean on a journey from its homeport in Haugesund, Norway. The Viking ship, named Draken Harald Hårfagre, set sail from Norway with its approximately 32 crew members in late April and made stops in Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, Canada, before making its way through the Saint Lawrence Seaway to Toronto for the Tall Ships Challenge Great Lakes 2016 festival this weekend. Future stops for the Viking ship include Chicago, Green Bay and Duluth, before heading to U.S. east coast with stops in New York City...

The old Stav system. An old martial art system using staff with the stances of the younger futhark runes.

A "Cats in Space" themed LED lightsaber battle is scheduled to take over St. James Park in San Jose on Saturday. Toronto event producers Newmindspace, who threw a bubble-blowing party in San Francisco's Dolores Park in 2015, have been throwing lightsaber battles internationally for years, including one last December in San Francisco's Justin Herman Plaza. Newmindspace's battles used to have a Star Wars theme until Lucasfilm came calling; post-settlement with the Bay Area company and they're now called "space battles" and can't technically refer to the fighting weapon as a lightsaber. For $10 participants will be reserved lighted stick, with...

A hiker travelling the ancient route between western and eastern Norway found a 1,200-year-old Viking sword after sitting down to rest after a short fishing trip. The sword, found at Haukeli in central southern Norway will be sent for conservation at the The University Museum of Bergen. Jostein Aksdal, an archeologist with Hordaland County said that the sword was in such good condition that if it was given a new grip and a polish, it could be used today. "The sword was found in very good condition. It is very special to get into a sword that is merely lacking...

Boeslunde is in Zealand, the large island that sits between mainland Denmark and the tip of Sweden. It’s a hotbed for archaeology in Denmark since it has served as a connective hub for thousands of years—netting recent finds as diverse as 1,000-year-old viking jewelry to actual fortresses in the past year. Boeslunde, where the spirals were discovered, is “a special sacred place in the Bronze Age where prehistoric people performed their rituals and offered gold to the higher powers,” according to the Danish National Museum’s curator, Flemming Kaul. The constant discovery of new gold around the area has spurred more...

Subject: The Kensington Runestone; verified as proof of Scandinavians inMinnesota in 1362 <http://www.ripsawnews.com/2001.08.15/cover.jpg> Verified at LastThe Strange and Terrible Storyof the Kensington RunestoneBy Jim Richardson andAllen Richardson The comfortable scientific and scholarly worlds of history, archeology,runology and Scandinavian linguistics have all been rocked by recentdevelopments surrounding a single stone in west centralMinnesota. The Kensington Runestone, thought for over 100 years to be a hoax, nowstands verified as a genuine artifact commemorating the deaths of 10medireview Scandinavians in Minnesota in the year 1362. A recent piece of linguistic scholarship by Dr. Richard Nielsen has hit thescene, which seems to demonstrate conclusively...

THEIR reputation for raping and pillaging may not have set them out as the ideal role-models for an environmentally-friendly way of life. But it seems that lessons could perhaps be learnt from the Vikings after the intriguing discovery in Yorkshire of what is believed to be a metal recycling centre dating back to the 11th century. Historians and metal detector enthusiasts have made the find which is being heralded as evidence of how the Norse invaders recycled their fearsome array of weapons. Hundreds of pieces of metal including arrowheads, shards of swords and axe heads have been unearthed as part...

An analysis of DNA from a Viking gravesite near a 1000 year-old church in southern Greenland shows that those buried there had strong Celtic bloodlines... The analysis -- performed by Danish researchers on bones from skeletons found during excavations in south Greenland -- revealed that the settlers' Nordic blood was mixed with Celtic blood, probably originating from the British Isles. Danish archaeologists are currently conducting the first regional study of southern Greenland's original settlers, whose colonies date back to the year 985. The skeletons disinterred outside the old church also date back to just a few years after that period....

The Vikings are both famous and notorious for their liking of beer and mead and archaeologists have discussed for years whether Eric the Red (ca 950-1010) and his followers had to make do without the golden drink when they settled in Greenland around the year 1,000: The climate was mild when they landed, but was it warm enough for growing barley? Researchers from the National Museum in Copenhagen say the answer to the question is 'yes'. In a unique find, they uncovered tiny fragments of charred barley grains in a Viking midden on Greenland. The find is final proof that...

Vikings visited Canadian Arctic, research suggests Artifacts suggest Norse settlement in Nunavut BY RANDY BOSWELL, CANWEST NEWS SERVICEMAY 27, 2009 This May 26 handout photo shows a Nanook archeological site on Baffin Island. Traces of a stone-and-sod wall found at the site, if confirmed, would represent only the second location in the New World where Norse seafarers -- popularly known as Vikings -- built a dwelling. Photograph by: P. Sutherland, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Canwest News Service One of Canada's top Arctic archeologists says the remnants of a stone-and-sod wall unearthed on southern Baffin Island may be traces of a...

Greenland's early Viking settlers were subjected to rapidly changing climate. Temperatures plunged several degrees in a span of decades, according to research from Brown University. A reconstruction of 5,600 years of climate history from lakes near the Norse settlement in western Greenland also shows how climate affected the Dorset and Saqqaq cultures. Results appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The end of the Norse settlements on Greenland likely will remain shrouded in mystery. While there is scant written evidence of the colony’s demise in the 14th and early 15th centuries, archaeological remains can...

A native woman kidnapped by the Vikings may have been the first American to arrive in Europe around 1,000 years ago, according to a startling new study. The discovery of a gene found in just 80 Icelanders links them with early Americans who may have been brought back to Iceland by Viking raiders. The discovery means that the female slave was in Europe five centuries before Christopher Columbus first paraded American Indians through the streets in Spain after his epic voyage of discovery in 1492...

600-Year-Old American Indian Historical Account Has Old Norse WordsBy Larry Stroud, Guard Associate EditorPublished on Thursday March 15, 2007 Vikings and Algonquins. The first American multi-culturalists? BIG BAY, Mich. — Two experts on ancient America may have solved not only the mysterious disappearance of Norse from the Western Settlement of Greenland in the 1300s, but also are deciphering Delaware (Lenape) Indian history, which they’re finding is written in the Old Norse language. The history tells how some of the Delaware’s ancestors migrated west to America across a frozen sea and intermarried with the Delaware and other Algonquin Indians. Myron Paine,...

For the past 50 years—since the discovery of a thousand-year-old Viking way station in Newfoundland—archaeologists and amateur historians have combed North America's east coast searching for traces of Viking visitors. It has been a long, fruitless quest, littered with bizarre claims and embarrassing failures. But at a conference in Canada earlier this month, archaeologist Patricia Sutherland announced new evidence that points strongly to the discovery of the second Viking outpost ever discovered in the Americas.

Did the Vikings Stay... Vatican Files May Offer Clues. / How did the Swedes end up in Minnesota?