Vikings Quotes

“...Orm always afterwards used to say that, after good luck, strength, and skill at arms, nothing was so useful to a man who found himself among foreigners as the ability to learn a language.”
― Frans G. Bengtsson, The Long Ships

“A sword age, a wind age, a wolf age. No longer is there mercy among men.”
― Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda: Norse Mythology

“The Vikings thought they were big shots because they had boats. You know how obnoxious people get when they own a boat. They always want to go on the boat. "We're taking the boat out this weekend. It's supposed to be beautiful. Why don't you come? You never come. You're always working. You know how many people wish they would get invited to come on the boat? And you turn it down.”
― Colin Quinn, The Coloring Book: A Comedian Solves Race Relations in America

“Welcome to warrior paradise, where you can listen to Frank Sinatra in Norwegian FOREVER!”
― Rick Riordan, The Sword of Summer

“Even in terms of fiction, nothing in their lives became them like the leaving of it. King Fjolnir rose in the night to make water, fell into a vat of mead and drowned instead; Sveigdir ran after a dwarf when drunk and vanished into a boulder; Vanlandi was trampled to death by a nightmare; Domaldi was sacrificed for good seasons; Dag was struck on the head with a pitchfork when seeking revenge for his sparrow; and so on down to the fifth century.”
― Gwyn Jones

“I don't know where the idea of Vikings having horns on their helmets came from, but it's a brilliant one. In every possible way, other than the literal truth, they totally had horns on their helmets. Horned helmets was absolutely their vibe and I feel we all have a right to that deeper artistic truth. They had limited technology and manufacturing helmets was pretty tricky for them, I imagine, so putting horns on them wouldn't have been workable, and wouldn't ave increased the functionality of the helmets, but I swear they'd have given it a go if they'd thought of it.”
― David Mitchell, Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens

“Thousands of year ago, a Viking warrior was laid to rest in a grave adorned with a sword, an axe, a spear, armor piercing arrows, a battle knife, two shields, and two horses, all suggestive of a professional, high-ranking commander. When the grave was discovered in the late nineteenth century, experts agreed this must be the burial site of an esteemed MALE warrior. It wasn't until the 1970s that some scientists looked more closely at the remains and asked: Could these small, gracile bones be the remains of a woman?
The greater scientific community balked; the very idea of a female warrior was too ridiculous to entertain. And yet, fifty years later, a DNA analysis of the Viking skeleton by Stockholm Unversity osteologist Anna Kjellstrom conclusively proved it accurate. It only took so long, and required so much, because the bones told a different story than the medical institions and experts of the 1800s did. The skeleton was clearly female - but the men saw what they wished to see, what they'd been taught to see.”
― Elizabeth Comen, All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today – A Memorial Sloan Kettering MD's History of Healthcare and Agency

“Did you ever hear tell,'
said Jimmy Farrell,
'of the skulls they have
in the city of Dublin?

White skulls and black skulls
and yellow skulls, and some
with full teeth, and some
haven't only but one,'

and compounded history
in the pan of 'an old Dane,
maybe, was drowned
in the Flood.'

My words lick around
cobbled quays, go hunting
lightly as pampooties
over the skull-capped ground.

-Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces”
― Seamus Heaney, North

“By the time the Franks could respond by sending troops, the Danes had already left (to add to the disappointment, the emperor's pet elephant suddenly died at the same time----one of those useless bits of historical information that tell us that the past was real.)”
― Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

“If one wants a symbol of Atlantic man, as opposed to Mediterranean man, a symbol to set against the Greek temple, it is the Viking ship. The Greek temple is solid, static, crystalline; the Viking ship is light, mobile, and voyaging, floating like a water lily.”
― Kenneth M. Clark, Civilisation

“The sun sank slowly, illuminating beautiful reds and yellows, with purple just before the stars appeared twinkling against a navy-black background. Only when clouds rolled in and most slept, did Mairi cry.”
― Radiance Hoagland, Hunted

“A queen is not made by a crown but by the fire in her soul. The Lioness of Bharat is a tribute to the fearless spirit that shapes legends.”
― Suresh Rao Design Studio

“the modern world’s cultural wallpaper. Of course, a good deal of what we think we know is just plain wrong, starting with those horned helmets, completely impractical in any kind of close combat. But more important than what’s wrong is what’s missing. There’s a question that has to be asked. How did the Vikings get away with it for so long? Or, putting it another way, what gave them their edge? An edge they maintained for almost three centuries, during which they
became the scourge of Europe, from Ireland to Ukraine, from Hamburg to Gibraltar, and beyond in both directions.
[from Laughing Shall I Die by Tom Shippey]”
― Tom Shippey

“The fact is that in the Vikings’ own language, Old Norse, víkingr just
meant pirate, marauder. It wasn’t an ethnic label, it was a job description. And what this means for us is that if you come across headlines – as these days you very often do – which say something like ‘Vikings! Not just raiders and looters any more!’ then the headlines are wrong. If people weren’t raiding and looting (and land-grabbing, and collecting protection money), then they had stopped being Vikings. They were just Scandinavians. But while most Vikings were Scandinavians, most Scandinavians definitely weren’t Vikings, not even part-time. The two groups should not be confused, not even with the aim of making ‘the history of the Vikings’ look nicer.”
― Tom Shippey

“The haunting bellow of the sentry horns sounded across the Greenland Fjords as the night mists settled between the jagged, rocky, half-frozen shores. Ifar the Shepherd hurried from his flock. Beyond the coast skirted by his grazing land he could see the shadowy shape of the incoming knarr as it pushed through the deepening fog. Slowly the masts emerged above it. Ifar turned toward the hilltop. There stood the magnificent earthen Mead Hall of King Lief, son of Eirik the Red. Though the karls who worked the lands already came running from the fishing houses and the farms and the lumber sites, Ifar could not pass up the opportunity. He gathered his horn from hip and blew with all his might.”
― Max Davine, Spirits of the Ice Forest

“Then my sentence remains death and I will take it.’ Freydis said. ‘As a skjoldmoy, with a battle-axe in my hand. But I will make Valhalla a place on earth before it happens. I will make Vinland the gates to all of the Nordic Empire and they will be open for all eternity to those persecuted by these one-God heathens, wherever they may be.”
― Max Davine, Spirits of the Ice Forest

“The Pale Ones are demons,’ Wobee said. ‘Does your fire crackle with the tears of Mammasumit’s family? Does it sing to you the screams of his women as they were set upon and taken as slaves? Come more Pale Ones. Come enough that they cover the ocean. If the Great River runs red, it will be with their blood and mine.”
― Max Davine, Spirits of the Ice Forest

“She was their savior, after all. He just wondered if she knew that she had already saved him.”
― Sarah Beth

“The Vikings were quartering the world; they set out from a base, and with unbelievable courage and ingenuity, they reached as far as Persia by the Volga and the Caspian Sea. Then they returned home with all their loot in these open ships, including coins from Samarkand and even a Chinese Buddha. The sheer technical skill of their journeys was a new achievement, and their spirit did contribute something very important to the Western world, because in the end, it was the spirit of Columbus.”
― Kenneth M. Clark, Civilisation

“The Viking mind is far away from us today, but occasionally just about tangible.”
― Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

“If men's lives had any meaning in this world, they had to provide it for themselves by achieving something for which they would be remembered.”
― John Haywood, Northmen: The Viking Saga, 793-1241 AD

“You want to be a Dane, but you don’t have the courage.”
― Bernard Cornwell, The Burning Land

“He stared at me and, though the fate he pronounced was golden, there was a malevolence in his dead eyes. ‘You will be king,’ he said, and the last word sounded like poison on his tongue.”
― Bernard Cornwell, Sword Song

“Survival wasn’t always about dignity. Sometimes, it meant fighting fire with fire, even if the flames left you singed.”
― N. von Wolf, From Valhalla

“Chains chosen are still chains. But another voice stirred beneath it. Quieter – more dangerous. Chains chosen might be loosened. Bent. Re-forged.”
― N. von Wolf, From Valhalla

“She had been shaped to be silent, sharpened to please, polished into something beautiful enough to bind. But the hands that broke her had also forged her – each chain a lesson, each collar a scar turned sigil.”
― N. von Wolf, From Valhalla

“Magnus with his silken hunger and devouring eyes. Erik with his brutal tenderness, his mouth full of vows and vengeance. She was theirs now, as they were hers – claimed not with rings, but with teeth and fury.”
― N. von Wolf, From Valhalla

“These great Nordic incursions were to result in the marginalization of the once semi-autonomous Pictish, English and North British Princedoms that had preceded the arrival of the Norsemen on British soil. And, as they disappeared beneath the onslaught of the Viking Hosts, the ancient bardic traditions, which had once been succoured by these previously distinct ethnic groups, gradually became intertwined with one another as a result of widespread migration, inter-marriage and cross fertilization; the ultimate legacy of which was the perpetuation of the fragmentary remains of the ancient traditions which were to come to adorn the ballads that the Laird of Abbotsford himself collected, amongst the eighteenth century descendants of these ancient peoples.”
― Rupert Ferguson, The Lay of the Last Minstrel: Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrel Tradition

“Thus, this period in the country's history forgot these warriors who fought in its ranks, although the imprints they left on history would be traced much later and help others understand the true nature of its protagonists.”
― Leónidas Lewin

“See, the violent cursed host came rushing through the open buildings, threatening cruel perils to the blessed men; and after slaying with mad savagery the rest of the associates, they approached the holy father, to compel him to give up the precious metals wherein lie the holy bones of St. Columba; but the monks had lifted the shrine from its pediments. and had placed it in the earth, in a hollowed barrow, under a thick layer of turf, because they knew then of the wicked destruction to come.”
― Walafrid Strabo