Viking Age Quotes

I went to Iceland in 1861 and went over nearly every bit of the ground made famous by the adventures of Grettir.

What is interesting to me about Vikings is that they were failed farmers.

I can find my way from 500 A.D. through to 1066 pretty well as an amateur historian.

For us Icelanders, the Sagas are like the Bible, only much better.

So much Western storytelling comes from Scandinavia. I've read that in the past, storytellers would travel to Iceland and exchange stories. It's kind of the birthplace of great storytelling.

Because the Vikings never documented anything - they couldn't read or write - the history is always gonna be a little up in the air.

Almost certainly, my ancestors had travelled by sea from Sweden to England in search of prosperity, and the evidence suggests they left Sweden around the ninth or 10th centuries.

While there are few records of Viking women participating in battle, they certainly held positions of high status in society as human sorceresses known as 'volvas.'

The original settlers in Iceland were the nobles of Norway who left their native land to avoid the tyranny of Harold Fairhair, who tried to crush their power so as to make himself a despotic king in the land.

I've always been interested in the Vikings - that's, like, part of my own history.

I read a lot of Icelandic sagas when I was young. I've always been interested in the Viking culture.

I've always been fascinated by the Norsemen, their lives, history and cosmology. The more we study them the more interesting they become... breaking their own stereotypes. We usually think of them as barbarians, but there were aspects to their society that shows a tremendous level of civilization, sophistication and social advance.

No one was safe in the Viking age. You could die from any cause at any time. It's a brutal time and a brutal environment.

I think Vikings have always been popular, haven't they? I remember being a kid and being in second grade reading a book about this Viking warrior.

I visited the archeological site at the northern tip of Newfoundland. There is no question about it. It has been definitely determined that the Vikings were there for about 10 years - specifically, Leif Erikson and his extended family.

The Vikings colonized Britain, and a lot of our modern day towns are named after Viking names that settled these big towns.

If you're in America or Europe, walk for three blocks, and you'll pass about 14 Vikings. Their reach was immense.

There are so many good stories about the Vikings.

I think 'Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned' might be a perfect book.