These helmets, discovered in a bog in 1942, have been dated using "a plug of birch tar on one of the horns," according to Live Science.
"...'For many years in popular culture, people associated the Viksø helmets with the Vikings,'" according to one archaeologist. "'But actually, it's nonsense. The horned theme is from the Bronze Age and is traceable back to the ancient Near East.'
"The new research ... confirms that the helmets were deposited in the bog in about 900 B.C. — almost 3,000 years ago and many centuries before the Vikings or Norse dominated the region."
"Archaeologists have revealed new X-ray scans of a Viking sword found on Scotland’s Orkney Islands in 2015, reports David Walker for the Scottish Daily Express. The ninth-century weapon was one of several Viking artifacts discovered in a hidden cemetery on the northeast coast of Papa Westray." Source: Smithsonian Magazine.
"Dubbed the Mayback sword after the site where it was found, the artifact is a Pedersen Type D sword—one of the heaviest used by the Vikings, report Ellie Forbes and Jennifer Russell for the Daily Record."
"Wrapped in textiles and caked in dirt from where it was found southwest Scotland, the object didn’t look like much at first. Years of careful cleaning, however, have finally revealed a stunning rock crystal jar wrapped in gold, reports Dayla Alberge of the Guardian. In addition, researchers have discovered a Latin inscription on it that refers to a previously unknown bishop." Source: Smithsonian Magazine (Dec. 2021).
The artifact, first discovered in 2014, is one of several items comprising the Galloway Hoard, a collection of rare Viking-age objects found in Britain or Ireland, dated to around the tenth century."
This hoard has been described as "the richest collection of rare and unique Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland."
"Buried around AD900, the Galloway Hoard brings together a stunning variety of materials and treasures from Ireland, the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and as far away as Asia. The Hoard transports us back to a critical moment in history: the formation of the political entities we now know as Scotland, England and Ireland, in a time of viking raids." Source: National Museums Scotland.
"Archaeologists in Scotland have revealed the ornate hilt of a Viking sword after scanning it with X-rays. The sword is highly corroded and covered in dirt, but the new images show the weapon in a new light and reveal its striking design." Source: Live Science.
"The sword is part of a hoard of Viking treasures unearthed in 2015 at a burial site on Papa Westray, one of the Orkney Islands located north of mainland Scotland. Archaeologists found the sword laid atop human remains. The burial also contained a buckle, arrows and a shield boss — the metal, central part of a shield. The site likely dates back to the first-generation Norwegian settlers, who came to the Orkney Islands during the 10th century, according to Historic Environment Scotland."
Next video (2014) shows a Viking site on the island of Westray, which is around 2 km away from Papa Westray.
"The Vikings are remembered as fierce fighters, but even these mighty warriors were no match for climate change. Scientists recently found that ice sheet growth and sea level rise led to massive coastal flooding that inundated Norse farms and ultimately drove the Vikings out of Greenland in the 15th century." Source: Live Science.
Note: The theory here is that advancing glaciers during the so-called Little Ice Age (16th - 19th centuries AD, maybe) and "the increased gravitational attraction between the expanding ice sheet and large masses of sea ice" led to coastal flooding in the area of the Viking settlements in Greenland. Other factors such as social unrest, resource depletion and increased storm activity may have contributed as well, leading the Vikings to abandon their settlement rather than moving it farther inland. Scenarios like this aren't exactly new, however. The next video, for example, is from 2011 (closed captions helpful).
"Researchers have discovered evidence to support the idea that Vikings settled on the Azores several hundred years before the Portuguese arrived in 1427." Source: Daily Mail.
"Evidence from animal remains has led ecologist Pedro Raposeiro and his team, of the University of the Azores, to believe the Vikings were there first.
"In a paper published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month, Mr Raposeiro said of the findings: 'Our reconstructions offer unambiguous evidence for the pre-Portuguese settlement of the Azores.'"
Note: The researchers found evidence of domesticated animals (cows and sheep) dating back to around 700-850 AD as well as signs that whoever was living on the islands at the time burned trees to create grazing land. The assumption that these people were Vikings is based on a genetic analysis of mice currently living on the Azores. "'These mice were obviously accidental travelers that were dispersed by Vikings across the Atlantic, to Iceland and Greenland and also the Azores and Madeira,'" according to one of the researchers.
"Archaeologists have discovered the remains of rare artifacts from the Middle East in an Icelandic cave that the Vikings associated with Ragnarök, an end-times event in which the gods would be killed and the world engulfed in flames." Source: Live Science (April, 2021).
"The cave is located by a volcano that erupted almost 1,100 years ago. At the time of that eruption, the Vikings had recently colonized Iceland. 'The impacts of this eruption must have been unsettling, posing existential challenges for Iceland's newly arrived settlers,' a team of researchers wrote in a paper published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
"Archaeological work shows that after the lava cooled, the Vikings entered the cave and constructed a boat-shaped structure made out of rocks. Within this structure, the Vikings would have burned animal bones, including those of sheep, goat, cattle, horses and pigs, at high temperatures as a sacrifice. This may have been done in an effort to avert Ragnarok."
"Saint Olga [aka Helga] ... was a regent of Kievan Rus' for her son Svyatoslav from 945 until 960. She is known for her obliteration of the Drevlians, a tribe that had killed her husband Igor of Kiev. Even though it would be her grandson Vladimir that would convert the entire nation to Christianity, for her efforts to spread Christianity through the Rus' Olga is venerated as a saint. While her birthdate is unknown, it could be as early as AD 890 and as late as 5 June 925." Source: Wikipedia. She is thought to have died in 969 AD.
Olga, a sinister beauty if I ever saw one -- assuming that her portraits are accurate -- was probably a Varangian, i.e. a Russified Viking. She turned to Christianity after her husband was killed and is "sometimes credited as founding, with her grandson Vladimir, what has come to be known as Russian Christianity (the Moscow Patriarchate within Eastern Orthodoxy). She was the ruler of Kiev as regent for her son, and she was the grandmother of St. Vladimir, great-grandmother of Saint Boris and Saint Gleb." Source: Thought Company.
Orthodox Easter Liturgy Mass, Moscow, 2016.
I'm not sure who Saint Boris and Saint Gleb were, but it sounds like Olga whelped a whole family of saints. She was a kind, compassionate and gentle Viking matriarch who displayed her Christian qualities of mercy and forgiveness when she dealt with the Drevlians, the Eastern Slavs who killed her husband:
"Igor's widow Olga avenged her husband's death in an extremely harsh manner, killing Drevlian ambassadors and nobility, burning their capital of Iskorosten to the ground and leveling other towns." (Wikipedia)
Her treatment of the Drevlian ambassadors is particularly memorable. According to Russia Insider, "Olga pretended to accept the ambassadors with honors. She invited them to the court on the next day. They were to be carried in boats by her own warriors as a special honor. But instead, she had a ditch dug near her own palace, and when the ambassadors, filled with their own significance, were carried in on longboats, she ordered them thrown into the ditch and buried alive."
I'm no Christian, but I've always liked the Russian Orthodox church. Persecuted by the Communists, criticized by modern liberals, the church is a force for tradition during a time of widespread social collapse in the West and any religion that has saints like Olga can't be all bad.
"In April 2021, she somehow managed it again – unearthing an impressive grouping of silver coins and pieces of cut silver armbands dating to around AD 1030.
"The coins were minted in England, Dublin, modern day Germany and the Isle of Man, demonstrating some of the extent of Viking trade and influence. They include representations of Kings Sihtric Silkbeard and Cnut while the cut silver would have been used to pay for goods."