"The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century."
The Vikings spoke Old Norse:
"Did you know that many words we use today such as 'husband,' 'happy,' and 'egg' are of Old Norse origin? No? Well, this isn’t surprising, as in the minds of many people the Vikings were nothing but a bunch of brutal savages. But they were more sophisticated than most people tend to believe. Their rich and powerful Old Norse language provides clear proof." Source: Ancient Origins.
Note: To take one example, our word husband comes from the Old Englishhusbonda meaning "male head of a household, master of a house, householder," which in turn probably comes from the Old Norse husbondi meaning "master of the house." Source: Online Etymological Dictionary.
Old English forms the basis for modern English, but our language reflects the complex history of Europe and was also influenced by Old Norse in a lot of different ways:
"The most obvious Viking influence on modern English is the word Thursday (Þorsdagr), which you can probably guess means 'Thor’s day.'" Source: Babbel Magazine.
"'Tuesday,' 'Wednesday' and 'Friday' are sometimes also attributed to the Norse gods Tyr, Odin and Freya, respectively; but the days are actually named for the Anglo-Saxon equivalents of these gods, Tiw, Wodan and Friga. The similarity of these names points to the common ancestry of the various Germanic tribes in prehistoric northern Europe — centuries before their descendants clashed on England’s shores."
I love the sound of Old Norse. It's rich and barbaric.
Vikings (History Channel). From what I've read the actors are butchering Old Norse in these scenes, but who cares?
"Stone ships were a burial form used in the bronze- and –iron ages and during the Viking period. They were shaped like acute oval stone circles, and might frame a grave established within the sides of the ship, but they could also function as memorials for the deceased. It is not really known why rich Vikings were buried in this way, but it is believed that the stone ship symbolizes a boat which was to carry the deceased to the kingdom of the dead." Source: Fortidens Jelling.
"Such a stone circle has existed in Jelling [Denmark], a gigantic stone ship 354 metres long. The stone ship is the oldest of the memorials in Jelling from the Viking Age." Next video shows the remains of stone ship burials in Sweden.
"Stone ships were an early burial custom, characteristically Scandinavian but also found in Northern Germany and the Baltic states. The grave or cremation burial was surrounded by tightly or loosely fit slabs or stones in the outline of a ship. They are often found in grave fields, but are sometimes far from any other archaeological remains." (Wikipedia)
Closed-captions useful. Section on stone ships starts around 3:21.
Vikings were sometimes buried in actual boats. For instance, Ancient Origins reported back in 2019 that two of these unusual burials were found in Sweden:
"A boat burial or boat grave involved dead individuals of high standing being interred in a full-sized ship. They were typically buried with a great many valuable grave goods. Anton Seiler, part of the team who found the graves, stated that 'It is a small group of people who were buried in this way,' according to Newsweek. This means that ship burials are very rare and only ten have been found in the history of the country, although more have been found in neighboring Norway, the most recent being found near Oslo."
Outside of Scandinavia, Viking boat burials have been discovered in Britain as well as northern and eastern Europe.
Note: "Uppland ... is a historical province or landskap on the eastern coast of Sweden, just north of Stockholm, the capital." (Wikipedia) I'm not sure where this grave field is located exactly.
Broborg, the fort, is "a hillfort located around 10 km east of Knivsta [south-central Uppland]. It overlooks an ancient major waterway ... leading to the interior of Uppland, as well as a road. The location thus suggests that, in prehistoric times (and before too much elevation of the land), Broborg could have controlled access for trade as well as any military activities." Source: The Mystery Of The Vitrified Hillfort. (PDF)
Broborg was a vitrified fort, i.e., its stones were apparently cemented together by a kind of glass formed by subjecting stones to extreme heat. The article quoted above mentions that the vitrification process used at Broborg is being studied by modern scientists for its possible application in nuclear-waste disposal. The idea is to seal the waste inside a vitrified matrix to prevent it from escaping into the environment.
According to the description for the first video above, there is a legend about Grimsa, "a Viking queen who was burned alive in the fort," but I haven't been able to find any further information about her.
"Between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, many Neolithic societies declined throughout western Eurasia due to a combination of factors that are still largely debated. Here, we report the discovery and genome reconstruction of Yersinia pestis, the etiological agent of plague, in Neolithic farmers in Sweden, pre-dating and basal to all modern and ancient known strains of this pathogen." -- "Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline."
Note: A dolmen is a megalithic passage tomb. I haven't been able to find much of anything in English about Sprove Dolmen, but I think it's more commonly referred to as Sprovedyssen or Sprove Runddysse. According to a site called Hunebed Nieuwscafe, "the passage grave of Sprovedyssen lies very close to the famous tomb of Kong Asgers Høj on the island of Mon in Denmark. The tomb was built by the Funnel Beaker Culture [4300 - 2800 BC] during the New Stone Age and is surrounded by a circle of 35 stones (ring stones)."
Kong Asgers Hoj in Denmark.
The Kong Asgers Hoj tomb, also dating back to the Beaker Funnel Culture, "consists of a chamber (10 m long by 2 m wide) with a long passage (7.5 m long). This type of grave is found primarily in Denmark, Germany and Scandinavia, and occasionally in France and the Netherlands." (Wikipedia) The tomb was used for secondary burials during the later Corded Ware Culture period (2900 - 2350 BC).
"Valsgärde or Vallsgärde is a farm on the Fyris river, about three kilometres north of Gamla Uppsala, the ancient centre of the Swedish kings and of the pagan faith in Sweden. The present farm dates from the 16th century. The farm's notability derives from the presence of a burial site from the Swedish Vendel Age (part of the Iron age (c. 550–793) and the Viking Age); it was used for more than 300 years. The first ship burial is from the 6th century and the last graves are from the 11th century." (Wikipedia)
"The Valsgarde cemetery is known primarily for its fifteen boat-graves. Less well-known are the at least 62 cremation burials and the fifteen inhumations and chamber graves. From the very beginning of the excavations in Valsgarde, focus centered on the boat-graves. This was quite understandable, since most of them were spectacular." -- "Valsgarde - Development and change of a burial ground over 1300 years", John Ljungkvist (PDF).
Some incredible Vendel Age helmets have been discovered at Valsgarde.
"In one of the boat burials from the grave field at Valsgärde a rich nobleman is buried. The grave is from the Vendel period and about 1500 years old. The undisturbed graves show us that the people who lived in the area between 550 and 800 AD were wealthy. Valsgärde was strategically placed by the Fyris river, a major traffic artery for long-distance travel to continental Europe. The men in the graves embarked on their last journey equipped with war gear, household utensils, tools and many animals. Resting in comfort on eiderdown mattresses they departed for eternity." Source: Uppsala University (slow loading site, may be down temporarily).
"One day, when archaeologists in Sweden were surveying a forest in advance of a construction project, they made a perplexing find — the battered skulls of people who had lived about 8,000 years ago, including two that still had pointed stakes in them, a new study reports." Source: Live Science (2017).
"The Stone Age burial site held the remains of at least 11 adults and one infant. Curiously, the burial wasn't underground, but rather underwater: During the Stone Age, the skulls would have lain at the bottom of a small lake."
From the 2007 animated movie. Nothing like the poem, of course, but the carnage here is pretty entertaining.
"In medieval England, monsters were very different and sometimes quite ambiguous. Such is the case of Grendel in Beowulf. Revered as a primary example of Anglo-Saxon literature and western epic poetry, the text was originally written in Old English and dictates the story of the Scandinavian hero Beowulf and his attempts to aid the Danish king Hrothgar. One of the three reasons Beowulf is needed is to slay a strong monster that has been consistently plaguing the mead hall of Hrothgar . This monster is none other than Grendel - who, arguably, is as famous as - if not more than - Beowulf himself." Source: Ancient Origins.
"The precise nature of Grendel's being is never made fully clear. Interpretations of his character have ranged from giant to dragon to a Scandinavian berserker. He has been described as a bipedal brute with impenetrable scales and spikes in place of skin and is called a shadow walker in the text. The moniker might be indicative of Grendel's preference for darkness and shadows, or it might have a symbolic meaning explaining the creature Grendel was initially intended to be interpreted as. Regardless, the aforementioned description of the monster has long been a topic of debate among scholars."
"The blood eagle is a ritualized method of execution, detailed in late skaldic poetry. According to the two instances mentioned in the Sagas, the victim (in both cases a member of a royal family) was placed prone, the ribs severed from the spine with a sharp tool and the lungs pulled through the opening to create a pair of 'wings'. There is a continuing debate about whether the ritual was a literary invention, a mistranslation of the original texts or an authentic historical practice." Source: Wikipedia.
The Blood Eagle was a particularly nasty form of sacrificial execution, but did the Vikings actually put people to death this way? As far as I can tell, the only primary documentary evidence for the practice comes from sources such as the Orkneyinga Saga, the Heimskringla, the Tale of Ragnar's Sons, and a handful of references in other texts.
Note: The Tale of Ragnar's Sons describes (among other things) the execution of King Aella of Northumbria, a scene also depicted in Vikings.
Jarl Borg in Vikings is an entirely fictional character, I believe. Aella, on the other hand, was apparently a real king, though the sources for his life are limited and very little is known about his reign. According to some accounts, he was executed by the Vikings after they invaded Northumbria following the king's execution of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok, another figure who may or may not have actually existed. How Aella died is a matter of conjecture, though, because the sources contradict each other:
"While Norse sources claim that Ragnar's sons tortured Ælla to death with a blood eagle, Anglo-Saxon accounts maintain that he died in battle, at York, on 21 March 867." (Wikipedia)
"Well into the last century, most historians of the Vikings accepted that the blood eagle was deeply unpleasant but very real. According to the eminent medievalist J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, its possible victims were not only Ælla of Northumbria but also Halfdán, the son of Harald Finehair (or Fairhair), king of Norway, and the Irish King Maelgualai [Mael Gualae] of Munster; in some interpretations, it is supposed that even Edmund the Martyr may have suffered the same fate."
One possibility is that the Blood Eagle was a real execution method sensationalized by later writers. For instance, the Welsh scholar and translator, Gwyn Jones, argues in A History of the Vikings (1968) that this "inhuman rite" was "unhappily no fiction ... but owes its eminence in pseudo-lore almost entirely to fiction ..." (footnote pp 119-220, 1968 edition)
It's also possible that the Blood Eagle is entirely fictitious. This seems to be the current consensus, but there's a lot of disagreement. Revisionist historians have challenged the idea that the Vikings were just a mob of cruel barbarians wearing horned helmets, but their depictions of "cuddly" Vikings went too far in the other direction. One of the main problems with our picture of the Vikings is that much of what we know about them was written by their enemies.
If the Blood Eagle is a literary invention, there's a good chance that this grisly method of execution was dreamed up by Christian writers trying to demonize the pagan Vikings. According to Wikipedia, "[t]here is debate about whether the blood eagle was historically practiced, or whether it was a literary device invented by the authors who transcribed the sagas. No contemporary accounts of the ritual exist, and the scant references in the sagas are several hundred years after the Christianization of Scandinavia." Considering the Christians' history of inventing martyr stories set in the Roman Empire, I wouldn't be surprised if they concocted similar atrocity stories about the Vikings.
Video from 2010.
When I first started to research this subject, I assumed there was a high probability that the Blood Eagle was a real thing because the Vikings are thought to have conducted human sacrifices and the Blood Eagle is, in a way, just another form of ritual sacrifice. As it turns out, though, the question of whether the Vikings actually killed people for religious purposes isn't all that straightforward.
There is some archaeological evidence that the Vikings may have sacrificed humans. For instance, "[a]t Trelleborg [Sweden] a sacrificial site was found from the time before the Viking fortress was erected in 980-81. In five c. 3 metre-deep wells human and animal skeletons were found, together with jewellery and tools. Of the total of five human sacrifices, four were young children aged between 4 and 7. " Source: National Museum of Denmark.
Blood sacrifice, including human sacrifice, was an intrinsic part of pagan religions. The historical sources for Viking human sacrifice are questionable, though, because they all seem to come, once again, from Christian accounts:
According to the National Museum of Denmark, "[t]here are several horrifying accounts of human sacrifices from the Viking period. The German bishop, Thietmar of Merseburg, describes how the Vikings met every nine years at Lejre on Zealand [Denmark] in January 'and offer to their gods 99 people and just as many horses, dogs and hens or hawks, for these should serve them in the kingdom of the dead and atone for their evil deeds.'"
A similar ritual (at a different location) is also depicted in Vikings.
"The German monk Adam of Bremen wrote a similar account in 1072 about the sacrificial tradition at [Gamla Uppsala] in Sweden, where the temple was devoted to Thor, Odin and Frey. Here the Vikings also met every 9 years to ensure the goodwill of the gods. 9 males of all kinds of living creatures were sacrificed in a holy grove nearby. According to Adam of Bremen dogs, horses and humans hung from the trees. The number 9 was apparently of magical significance to the Vikings and was involved in a number of rituals." (National Museum of Denmark)
"There has been extensive debate over whether these accounts were real or simply Christian propaganda."
I wouldn't be shocked to learn that the Vikings actually executed royal prisoners using the Blood Eagle. Even if the descriptions in the sagas were written for entertainment, they may have had some basis in fact. At this point, however, it looks like this particular form of execution was a literary invention derived from the skaldic poems and embellished by later Christian writers in yet another attempt to make the pagans look like cruel and bloodthirsty savages:
"One of the features of a skaldic poem is that it’s incredibly convoluted, like a cryptic crossword puzzle. If you have a reference to what appears to be the Blood Eagle in a skaldic verse, it’s quite likely this is a poetic conceit. Roberta Frank, at Yale, argues that the Blood Eagle is just the idea of a carrion bird scratching at the back of the dead. If you create lots of corpses, you are a very good warrior. That’s what is being referred to. But when later writers made prose stories around these skaldic verses, they seem to have interpreted it literally. So it’s quite likely that there was no such thing as this horrible form of torture, but it grew in the telling." Source: National Geographic (2017).
"The remains of a Viking ship have been discovered on a farm near a medieval church at Edøy, on the island of Smøla, in Norway." Source: Live Science.
"The ship, which is 52 to 56 feet (16 to 17 meters) long, appears to be part of a burial mound, suggesting that it was used to bury someone important, said its discoverers, archaeologists Manuel Gabler and Dag-Øyvind Engtrø Solem, both with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU).
"They don't know if there is a skeleton or multiple skeletons inside the boat."