How Much of a Viking's Year Was Actually Raiding?

How much of a Viking's year was actually spent raiding? Close your eyes and picture one. Spend one year of Viking daily life: it's around the year 900, you live on a farm on the coast of Norway, and you have five jobs. Only one of them involves a boat. Daily life in the Viking Age for an ordinary Norse farmer: the longhouse, two meals a day, barley, rye and oats, why wool mattered so much (one longship sail could take the wool of around 700 sheep), Viking women and their rights, the Thing, Iceland's Althing and the lawspeaker, outlawry, what "viking" really meant, whether Vikings wore horned helmets (the Gjermundbu helmet and Wagner's opera), raids and thralls, surviving a Scandinavian winter, the board game hnefatafl, and the myth of the dirty Viking. ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 What was daily life actually like for the Vikings? 0:47 What did Vikings do every day? (Job 1: farmer) 2:10 What did Viking women do? (Job 2: wool) 3:34 Did Vikings have laws? (Job 3: lawmaker) 4:55 Did Vikings really wear horned helmets? (Job 4: raider) 6:41 How did Vikings survive the winter? (Job 5: winter) 8:08 Would you have gone viking? (Your Viking year, added up) 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES Everything in this video is based on the research below. History is messy: where historians disagree, we say so. ▸ The longhouse — National Museum of Denmark, "Viking homes" https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowl... ▸ Two meals a day, grain, and food for winter — History Hit https://www.historyhit.com/what-did-t... · National Museum of Denmark, "Viking food" https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowl... ▸ Viking women, al-Tartushi in Hedeby, and the keys — National Museum of Denmark https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowl... ▸ A 100 m² wool sail ≈ 700 sheep (Amy Lightfoot's estimate) — Hakai Magazine https://www.hakaimagazine.com/feature... ▸ The Althing at Thingvellir, around 930 — Encyclopaedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/topic/Althing ▸ The lawspeaker, no police, and outlawry in Iceland — David Friedman, Journal of Legal Studies (1979) http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academi... ▸ "Viking" was something you went and did — Prof. Judith Jesch, University of Nottingham https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/blog/whatd... ▸ Most people never went raiding — Dominic Sandbrook, Imagining History https://www.imagininghistory.co.uk/po... ▸ Gjermundbu (1943), the opera horns, combs and razors in graves — National Geographic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/hi... ▸ Horned helmets and Wagner's costume designer — History.com https://www.history.com/articles/did-... ▸ Gjermundbu, Scandinavia's only Viking Age helmet — Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo https://khm.uio.no/english/news/the-v... ▸ The real horned helmets, around 900 BC — Smithsonian Magazine https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-... ▸ Lindisfarne, 793: the raids on monasteries — Encyclopaedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/event/Lind... ▸ Thralls — National Museum of Denmark https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowl... ▸ Hnefatafl pieces in Viking graves — Kerry County Museum https://kerrymuseum.ie/viking-gaming-... ▸ Laugardagr ("bath day") and the Saturday-bath chronicle — Viking Ship Museum Roskilde https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/... · https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/... ✏️ Every frame of this video is drawn and animated by hand-written code. No stock footage. (•‿•) /| |\ ← you, in every century ^^ ^^ #history #vikings #animation