title: Tutankhamun

text: Tutankhamun was buried in a tomb that was unusually small considering his status. His death may have occurred unexpectedly, before the completion of a grander royal tomb, causing his mummy to be buried in a tomb intended for someone else. This would preserve the observance of the customary 70 days between death and burial. His tomb was robbed at least twice in antiquity, but based on the items taken (including perishable oils and perfumes) and the evidence of restoration of the tomb after the intrusions, these robberies likely took place within several months at most of the initial burial. The location of the tomb was lost because it had come to be buried by debris from subsequent tombs, and workers' houses were built over the tomb entrance.


title: Tutankhamun

text: The concession rights for excavating the Valley of the Kings was held by Theodore Davis from 1905 until 1914. In that time, he had unearthed ten tombs including the nearly intact but non-royal tomb of Queen Tiye's parents, Yuya and Thuya. As he continued working there in the later years, he uncovered nothing of major significance. Davis did find several objects in KV58 referring to Tutankhamun, which included knobs and handles bearing his name most significantly the embalming cache of the king (KV54). He believed this to be the pharaoh's lost tomb and published his findings as such with the line; "I fear the Valley of the Tombs is exhausted". In 1907, Howard Carter was invited by William Garstin and Gaston Maspero to excavate for George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon in the Valley. The Earl of Carnarvon and Carter had hoped this would lead to their gaining the concession when Davis gave it up but had to be satisfied with excavations in different parts of the Theban Necropolis for seven more years.


title: Tutankhamun

text: After a systematic search beginning in 1915, Carter discovered the actual tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in November 1922. An ancient stroke of luck allowed the tomb to survive to modern times. The tomb's entrance was buried by mounds of debris from the cutting of KV9 over 150 years after Tutankhamun's burial; ancient workmen's huts were also built on the site. This area remained unexcavated until 1922 due to its proximity to KV9, as excavations would impede tourist access to that tomb. Carter commenced excavations in early November 1922, before the height of the tourist season. The first step of the tomb's entrance staircase was uncovered on 4 November 1922. According to Carter's account the workmen discovered the step while digging beneath the remains of the huts; other accounts attribute the discovery to a boy digging outside the assigned work area.


title: Tutankhamun

text: By February 1923 the antechamber had been cleared of everything but two sentinel statues. A day and time were selected to unseal the tomb with about twenty appointed witnesses that included Lord Carnarvon, several Egyptian officials, museum representatives and the staff of the Government Press Bureau. On 17 February 1923 at just after two o'clock, the seal was broken.


title: Tutankhamun

text: There were 5,398 items found in the tomb, including a solid gold coffin, face mask, thrones, archery bows, trumpets, a lotus chalice, two Imiut fetishes, gold toe stalls, furniture, food, wine, sandals, and fresh linen underwear. Howard Carter took 10 years to catalog the items. Recent analysis suggests a dagger recovered from the tomb had an iron blade made from a meteorite; study of artifacts of the time including other artifacts from Tutankhamun's tomb could provide valuable insights into metalworking technologies around the Mediterranean at the time. Many of Tutankhamun's burial goods show signs of being adapted for his use after being originally made for earlier owners, probably Smenkhkare or Neferneferuaten or both.


title: Tutankhamun

text: On 4 November 2007, 85 years to the day after Carter's discovery, Tutankhamun's mummy was placed on display in his underground tomb at Luxor, when the linen-wrapped mummy was removed from its golden sarcophagus to a climate-controlled glass box. The case was designed to prevent the heightened rate of decomposition caused by the humidity and warmth from tourists visiting the tomb. In 2009, the tomb was closed for restoration by the Ministry of antiquities and the Getty Conservation Institute. While the closure was originally planned for five years to restore the walls affected by humidity, the Egyptian revolution of 2011 set the project back. The tomb re-opened in February 2019.


title: Tutankhamun

text: For many years, rumors of a "curse of the pharaohs" (probably fueled by newspapers seeking sales at the time of the discovery) persisted, emphasizing the early death of some of those who had entered the tomb. The most prominent was George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, who died on 5 April 1923, five months after the discovery of the first step leading down to the tomb on 4 November 1922.


title: Tutankhamun

text: The cause of Carnarvon's death was pneumonia supervening on [facial] erysipelas (a streptococcal infection of the skin and underlying soft tissue). The Earl had been in an automobile accident in 1901 making him very unhealthy and frail. His doctor recommended a warmer climate so in 1903 the Carnarvons traveled to Egypt where the Earl became interested in Egyptology. Along with the stresses of the excavation, Carnarvon was already in a weakened state when an infection led to pneumonia.


title: Tutankhamun

text: A study showed that of the 58 people who were present when the tomb and sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a dozen years; Howard Carter died of lymphoma in 1939 at the age of 64. The last survivors included Lady Evelyn Herbert, Lord Carnarvon's daughter who was among the first people to enter the tomb after its discovery in November 1922, who lived for a further 57 years and died in 1980, and American archaeologist J.O. Kinnaman who died in 1961, 39 years after the event.


title: Tutankhamun

text: Tutankhamun's fame is primarily the result of his well-preserved tomb and the global exhibitions of his associated artifacts. As Jon Manchip White writes, in his foreword to the 1977 edition of Carter's "The Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun", "The pharaoh who in life was one of the least esteemed of Egypt's Pharaohs has become in death the most renowned".


title: Tutankhamun

text: The discoveries in the tomb were prominent news in the 1920s. Tutankhamen came to be called by a modern neologism, "King Tut". Ancient Egyptian references became common in popular culture, including Tin Pan Alley songs; the most popular of the latter was "Old King Tut" by Harry Von Tilzer from 1923, which was recorded by such prominent artists of the time as Jones & Hare and Sophie Tucker. "King Tut" became the name of products, businesses, and the pet dog of U.S. President Herbert Hoover. While The Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibit was touring the United States in 1978, comedian Steve Martin wrote a novelty song "King Tut". Originally performed on "Saturday Night Live", the song was released as a single and sold over a million copies.


title: Tutankhamun

text: Tutankhamun's artifacts have traveled the world with unprecedented visitorship. The exhibitions began in 1962 when Algeria won its independence from France. With the ending of that conflict, the Louvre Museum in Paris was quickly able to arrange an exhibition of Tutankhamun's treasures through Christiane Desroches Noblecourt. The French Egyptologist was already in Egypt as part of a UNESCO appointment. The French exhibit drew 1.2 million visitors. Noblecourt had also convinced the Egyptian Minister of Culture to allow British photographer George Rainbird to re-photograph the collection in color. The new color photos as well as the Louvre exhibition began a Tutankhamun revival.


title: Tutankhamun

text: In 1965, the Tutankhamun exhibit traveled to Tokyo National Museum in Tokyo, Japan (21 August–10 October) where it garnered more visitors than the future New York exhibit in 1979. The exhibit next moved to the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art in Kyoto (15 October–28 November) with almost 1.75 million visitors, and then to the Fukuoka Prefectural Cultural Hall in Fukuoka (3 December–26 December). The attraction exceeded all other exhibitions of Tutankhamun's treasures for the next 60 years. "The Treasures of Tutankhamun" tour ran from 1972 to 1979. This exhibition was first shown in London at the British Museum from 30 March until 30 September 1972. More than 1.6 million visitors saw the exhibition. The exhibition moved on to many other countries, including the United States, Soviet Union, Japan, France, Canada, and West Germany. The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized the U.S. exhibition, which ran from 17 November 1976 through 15 April 1979. More than eight million attended.


title: Tutankhamun

text: In 2005, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, in partnership with Arts and Exhibitions International and the National Geographic Society, launched a tour of Tutankhamun treasures and other 18th Dynasty funerary objects, this time called "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs". It featured the same exhibits as "Tutankhamen: The Golden Hereafter" in a slightly different format. It was expected to draw more than three million people but exceeded that with almost four million people attending just the first four tour stops. The exhibition started in Los Angeles, then moved to Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Philadelphia and London before finally returning to Egypt in August 2008. An encore of the exhibition in the United States ran at the Dallas Museum of Art. After Dallas the exhibition moved to the de Young Museum in San Francisco, followed by the Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York City.


title: Tutankhamun

text: The exhibition visited Australia for the first time, opening at the Melbourne Museum for its only Australian stop before Egypt's treasures returned to Cairo in December 2011.


title: Tutankhamun

text: The exhibition included 80 exhibits from the reigns of Tutankhamun's immediate predecessors in the 18th Dynasty, such as Hatshepsut, whose trade policies greatly increased the wealth of that dynasty and enabled the lavish wealth of Tutankhamun's burial artifacts, as well as 50 from Tutankhamun's tomb. The exhibition did not include the gold mask that was a feature of the 1972–1979 tour, as the Egyptian government has decided that damage which occurred to previous artifacts on tours precludes this one from joining them.


title: Tutankhamun

text: In 2018, it was announced that the largest collection of Tutankhamun artifacts, amounting to forty percent of the entire collection, would be leaving Egypt again in 2019 for an international tour entitled; "King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh". The 2019–2022 tour began with an exhibit called; "Tutankhamun, Pharaoh's Treasures," which launched in Los Angeles and then traveled to Paris. The exhibit featured at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris ran from March to September 2019. The exhibit featured one hundred and fifty gold coins, along with various pieces of jewelry, sculpture and carvings, as well as the renowned gold mask of Tutankhamun. Promotion of the exhibit filled the streets of Paris with posters of the event. The exhibit moved to London in November 2019 and was scheduled to travel to Boston and Sydney when the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the tour. On 28 August 2020 the artifacts that made up the temporary exhibition returned to the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and other institutions. The treasures will be permanently housed in the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, expected to open in November 2022.


title: Sam Raimi

text: Samuel M. Raimi ( ; born October 23, 1959) is an American filmmaker. He is best known for directing the "Spider-Man" trilogy (2002–2007) and the "Evil Dead" franchise (1981–present). He also directed the 1990 superhero film "Darkman", the 1995 revisionist western "The Quick and the Dead", the 1998 neo-noir crime-thriller "A Simple Plan", the 2000 supernatural thriller film "The Gift", the 2009 supernatural horror film "Drag Me to Hell", and the 2013 Disney fantasy film "Oz the Great and Powerful". His films are known for their highly-dynamic visual style, inspired by comic books and slapstick comedy.


title: Sam Raimi

text: Raimi has also produced several successful television series, including "" and its spin-off "". He founded the production company Renaissance Pictures in 1979 and Ghost House Pictures in 2002. His latest film, the Marvel Cinematic Universe film "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness," was released on May 6, 2022, becoming his highest grossing film at the box office.


title: Sam Raimi

text: Raimi was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, to a Conservative Jewish family. He is a son of merchants Celia Barbara (née Abrams) and Leonard Ronald Raimi. His ancestors were Jewish immigrants from Russia and Hungary. His younger brother Ted is an actor, and his older brother Ivan is a screenwriter and physician. His older sister, Andrea Raimi Rubin, is a court reporter. Another older brother, Sander, died at 15 in an accidental drowning; Raimi has said that the trauma knitted the remaining family closer together and "colored everything he's done for the rest of his life." Raimi also mentioned that Sander first introduced him to "Spider-Man", igniting his love for comics.


title: Sam Raimi

text: Raimi graduated from Groves High School and later went on to attend Michigan State University, where he studied English but left after three semesters to film "The Evil Dead".


title: Sam Raimi

text: Raimi became fascinated with making films when his father brought a movie camera home one day. He began to make Super 8 movies with his friend Bruce Campbell, whom he met in 1975. In college, he teamed up with his brother's roommate Robert Tapert and Campbell to shoot "Within the Woods" (1978), a 32-minute horror film which raised $375,000, as well as his debut feature film "It's Murder!". During that time, he also shot the seven-minute short film "Clockwork" (1978), starring Scott Spiegel (who had appeared in "Within the Woods") and Cheryl Guttridge. Through family, friends, and a network of investors, Raimi was able to finance production of the highly successful horror film "The Evil Dead" (1981) which became a cult hit and effectively launched Raimi's career.


title: Sam Raimi

text: He began work on his third film "Crimewave" (1985), which he co-wrote with the then unknown Coen brothers, shortly after. Intended as a live-action comic book, the film was unsuccessful, partly due to unwanted studio intervention. Raimi then returned to the horror genre with the seminal "Evil Dead II" (which added slapstick humor to the over the top horror, showcasing his love of the Three Stooges). With his brother Ivan Raimi (and crediting himself as Celia Abrams), Sam Raimi also wrote "Easy Wheels" (1989), which parodied the Outlaw biker film genre. A long-time comic book buff, he then attempted to adapt "The Shadow" into a movie, but was unable to secure the rights, so he created his own super-hero, "Darkman" (1990). The film was his first major studio picture, and was commercially successful, spawning two sequels. Through it he was still able to secure funding for "Evil Dead III", which was retitled "Army of Darkness" and turned away almost totally from horror towards fantasy and comedy elements. "Army of Darkness", the final movie in the "Evil Dead" trilogy, commercially underperformed, yet on video became a cult classic.


title: Sam Raimi

text: In the 1990s, Raimi moved into other genres, directing such films as the western "The Quick and the Dead" (starring Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman), the critically acclaimed crime thriller "A Simple Plan" (1998) (starring Bill Paxton and Billy Bob Thornton), and the romantic drama "For Love of the Game" (1999) (starring Kevin Costner).


title: Sam Raimi

text: Raimi achieved great critical and commercial success with the blockbuster "Spider-Man" (2002), which was adapted from the comic book series of the same name. The movie grossed over US$800 million worldwide, spawning two sequels: "Spider-Man 2" and "Spider-Man 3", both directed by Raimi and each grossing approximately $800 million. After the completion of the third "Spider-Man" film, he planned on producing two more sequels (although Sony Pictures planned three sequels) but could not find a satisfactory script. In 2022, reflecting on "Spider-Man 3", Raimi told "Rolling Stone": "It was a very painful experience for me. I wanted to make a Spider-Man movie to redeem myself for that. [The aborted] "Spider-Man 4" — that was really what that was about. I wanted to go out on a high note. I didn't want to just make another one that pretty much worked. I had a really high standard in my mind. And I didn’t think I could get that script to the level that I was hoping for by that start date." He, along with Marc Webb, were both brought on as creative consultants for Marvel Studios' "", directed by Jon Watts.


title: Sam Raimi

text: Raimi frequently collaborates with Joel and Ethan Coen, beginning when Joel was one of the editors of "Evil Dead". The Coens co-wrote "Crimewave" and "The Hudsucker Proxy" with Raimi in the mid-1980s (though "Hudsucker" was not produced for almost a decade). Raimi made cameo appearances in "Miller's Crossing", "The Hudsucker Proxy", and with Joel Coen in "Spies Like Us". The Coen brothers gave Raimi advice on shooting in snow for "A Simple Plan", based on their experiences with "Fargo".


title: Sam Raimi

text: He worked in front of the camera in "The Stand" as a dimwitted hitman, John Carpenter's "Body Bags" as a murdered gas station attendant, and "Indian Summer" in what is perhaps his biggest role as a bumbling assistant to Alan Arkin. The film was written by his childhood friend, writer-director Mike Binder, and shot at the camp that they both attended when they were younger. Raimi also produced the entire English-language "The Grudge" franchise, based on the original Japanese films.


title: Sam Raimi

text: According to "Entertainment Weekly", Raimi had expressed an interest in directing a film version of "The Hobbit", the prequel to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. In 2008, Guillermo del Toro was selected as the director, with Peter Jackson as the executive producer. Raimi may direct "By Any Means Necessary", the next film based on the "Jack Ryan" CIA character created by Tom Clancy for Paramount Pictures. Disney also approached him to direct "W.I.T.C.H.: The Movie", based on the popular comic.


title: Sam Raimi

text: Blizzard Entertainment announced on July 22, 2009 that Raimi would be directing a film adaptation of the "Warcraft" video game series, but at Comic-Con International 2012, it was revealed that he would not be the director.


title: Sam Raimi

text: On September 23, 2009, he became the producer for the British supernatural thriller "Refuge", which is directed by Corin Hardy and published by Mandate Pictures. He will produce the remake of the Danish thriller "The Substitute", which will be directed by Scott Derrickson under his new label Spooky Pictures. Raimi produced with his company Ghost House Pictures the British thriller flick "Burst 3D", directed by Neil Marshall.


title: Sam Raimi

text: Raimi directed "Oz the Great and Powerful", which was released on March 8, 2013 by Walt Disney Pictures and grossed $493 million worldwide. He said he would not be directing the planned sequel.


title: Sam Raimi

text: On December 11, 2006, the website SuperHero Hype reported that director Sam Raimi and Michael Uslan would co-produce a new film version of "The Shadow" for Columbia Pictures. On October 16, 2007, Raimi stated that: "I don't have any news on "The Shadow" at this time, except that the company that I have with Josh Donen, my producing partner, we've got the rights to "The Shadow". I love the character very much and we're trying to work on a story that'll do justice to the character."


title: Sam Raimi

text: Raimi, along with Bruce Campbell and Rob Tapert, produced the remake of Raimi's "The Evil Dead". First-time feature filmmaker Fede Álvarez wrote and directed, and Diablo Cody was also brought in to revise/rewrite the script. Raimi confirmed plans to write "Evil Dead 4" with his brother; it was later specified that this film would be "Army of Darkness 2". Alvarez revealed that Raimi would direct the sequel to "Army of Darkness". However, in a 2014 interview, Bruce Campbell announced that "Army of Darkness 2" is not happening, saying "It's all internet b.s. There's no reality whatsoever. These random comments slip out of either my mouth, or Sam Raimi's mouth, next thing you know, we're making a sequel."


title: Sam Raimi

text: On February 26, 2016, it was confirmed that Raimi is attached to direct the upcoming film "World War 3" for Warner Bros. The film will be based on a possible future inspired by the book "The Next 100 Years" by George Friedman.


title: Sam Raimi

text: On February 16, 2017, it was reported that Raimi will be directing a thriller about the Bermuda Triangle for Skydance Media, with the script being written by Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard.


title: Sam Raimi

text: By January 29, 2018, Raimi was set to direct the first in the movie adaptations of Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle series, "The Name of the Wind", with Rothfuss and Lin-Manuel Miranda serving as executive producers.


title: Sam Raimi

text: On February 5, 2020, it was announced that Raimi was in talks with Marvel Studios to direct "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness", and Raimi confirmed his involvement in April 2020. This marks Raimi's return to the superhero film genre after more than 15 years following "Spider-Man 3" in 2007 and his first feature film directorial effort since 2013's "Oz the Great and Powerful."


title: Sam Raimi

text: In addition to film, Raimi has worked in television, producing such series as "" and its spin-off "", both featuring his younger brother Ted Raimi and long-time friend Bruce Campbell, "American Gothic", "Cleopatra 2525", "M.A.N.T.I.S.", "", "Young Hercules", and "Jack of All Trades". In 2008, Raimi executive produced a syndicated TV series called "Legend of the Seeker", based on Terry Goodkind's best-selling "The Sword of Truth" fantasy series. He also executive produced the Starz original television series "" and "", "" and "". He directed the pilot episode of "Ash vs Evil Dead" for Starz.


title: Sam Raimi

text: Since 1993, Raimi has been married to Gillian Greene, daughter of Canadian actor Lorne Greene. They have five children; their three eldest, daughter Emma Rose and sons Lorne and Henry, appeared as extras in "Drag Me to Hell", and in "Spider-Man 3" during the movie's final battle.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: His other film credits include "Any Given Sunday" (1999), "Traffic" (2000), "The Alamo" (2004), "The Day After Tomorrow" (2004), "Flight of the Phoenix" (2004), "American Dreamz" (2006), "Battle for Terra" (2007), "" (2009), "Footloose" (2011), "Soul Surfer" (2011), "Beneath the Darkness" (2012), "Playing for Keeps" (2012), "Truth" (2015), "The Pretenders" (2018), "Midway" (2019), "The Intruder" (2019), "Blue Miracle" (2021), and "American Underdog" (2021). For his role in "Far from Heaven" (2002), he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor among other accolades. "The Guardian" named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Dennis William Quaid was born in Houston, Texas, the son of Juanita Bonnie Dale "Nita" (née Jordan), a real estate agent, and William Rudy Quaid (November 21, 1923 – February 8, 1987), an electrician. Quaid has English, Irish, Scots-Irish, and Cajun (French) ancestry. Through his father, Quaid is a first cousin, twice removed, of cowboy performer Gene Autry. He attended Paul W. Horn Elementary School in Bellaire, and Pershing Middle School in Houston. He studied Mandarin and dance at Bellaire High School in Bellaire, Texas, and later in college, at the University of Houston, under drama coach Cecil Pickett, who had previously taught at Bellaire High and whose daughter is actress Cindy Pickett. He was raised in the Baptist faith. Dennis is the younger brother of actor Randy Quaid.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Quaid dropped out of the University of Houston before graduating and moved to Hollywood to pursue an acting career. He initially had trouble finding work but began to gain notice when he appeared in "Breaking Away" (1979) and earned good reviews for his role as astronaut Gordon Cooper in "The Right Stuff" (1983).


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Known for his grin, Quaid has appeared in both comedic and dramatic roles. Quaid had starring roles in the films "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" (1981), "Jaws 3-D" (1983), "Dreamscape" (1984), "Enemy Mine" (1985), "Innerspace" (1987) and "The Big Easy" (1987). He also achieved acclaim for his portrayal of Jerry Lee Lewis in "Great Balls of Fire!" (1989). In 1989, he also appeared throughout the Bonnie Raitt music video for the song "Thing Called Love."


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Quaid's career lost steam in the early 1990s, after he fought anorexia nervosa brought on when he lost 40 pounds to play the tuberculosis-afflicted Doc Holliday in "Wyatt Earp" and recovered from a cocaine addiction. He continued to garner positive reviews in a variety of films, however. Quaid was also the guest star of a season 2 episode of "Muppets Tonight" (1997). He starred in the lead role in the 1996 adventure film "Dragonheart", the remake of "The Parent Trap" (1998), playing the part of the twins' father, and as an aging pro football quarterback in Oliver Stone's "Any Given Sunday" (1999). In 1998, he made his debut as a film director with "Everything That Rises", a television movie western in which he also starred.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Some of Quaid's film credits include "Frequency" (2000), "Dinner with Friends" (2001), "The Rookie" (2002), "Far from Heaven" (2002), "Cold Creek Manor" (2003), "Flight of the Phoenix" (2004), "The Alamo" (2004), "In Good Company" (2004), "The Day After Tomorrow" (2004), "Yours, Mine & Ours" (2005), "Vantage Point" (2008), "" (2009), and "Pandorum" (2009).


title: Dennis Quaid

text: In 2009, Quaid guest starred in an episode of "SpongeBob SquarePants", playing Mr. Krabs' grandfather, Captain Redbeard.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: He portrayed U.S. President Bill Clinton, alongside Michael Sheen as Tony Blair and Hope Davis as Hillary Clinton, in the 2010 film "The Special Relationship".


title: Dennis Quaid

text: In 2017, he starred in "A Dog's Purpose" as Ethan Montgomery, billed as "a celebration of the special connection between humans and their dogs".


title: Dennis Quaid

text: In 2018, Quaid starred in "I Can Only Imagine", where he played Arthur Millard, the father of singer and songwriter Bart Millard, and "Kin", where he plays Hal, the father of the film's two protagonists.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: In March 2018, it was confirmed by director Sean McNamara that Quaid would portray President Ronald Reagan in an upcoming biopic, titled "Reagan", this would be the second time Quaid portrayed a U.S. president. The film was slated to have a summer 2019 release, however it is still in pre-production and was scheduled to begin filming in May 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Quaid met his first wife, actress P. J. Soles, on the set of the film "Our Winning Season". They were married in 1978. The couple divorced in 1983.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: On February 14, 1991, Quaid married actress Meg Ryan. Quaid and Ryan fell in love during the shooting of their second film together, "D.O.A." Quaid and Ryan have a son, Jack Henry Quaid (born April 24, 1992). Quaid and Ryan announced their separation on June 28, 2000, saying they had been separated six weeks by then. Their divorce was finalized in July 2001.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Quaid married Texas real-estate agent Kimberly Buffington, on July 4, 2004, at his ranch in Paradise Valley, Montana. They have fraternal twins who were born via a surrogate on November 8, 2007, in Santa Monica, California.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: On November 18, 2007, hospital staff mistakenly gave Quaid's ten-day-old twins a dosage of heparin (a blood thinner) that was 1,000 times the common dosage for infants. The babies recovered, but Quaid filed a lawsuit against the drug manufacturer, Baxter Healthcare, claiming that packaging for the two doses of heparin are not different enough. In May 2008, the Quaids testified before the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asking U.S. Congress not to preempt the right to sue drug manufacturers for negligence under state law. This incident led Quaid to become a patient-safety advocate, producing a series of documentaries on preventable medical errors that aired on the Discovery Channel as well as co-authoring a medical journal article addressing the positive influence of patient stories in motivating change in healthcare. The first documentary, "", aired on the Discovery Channel in 2010, and the second documentary, "Surfing the Healthcare Tsunami: Bring Your Best Board", aired on the Discovery Channel in 2012.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Buffington filed for divorce from Quaid in March 2012. Buffington's attorney then withdrew the divorce papers on April 26, 2012. In the summer of 2012, Quaid and Buffington moved to California. In October 2012, Quaid and Buffington again decided to separate, and Buffington filed for legal separation, seeking joint legal and sole physical custody of the twins. After waiting to establish the required six months of residency in California, Quaid filed for divorce on November 30, 2012, asking for joint legal and physical custody of the children and offering to pay spousal support to Buffington. They then reconciled and the divorce was dismissed by September 2013. On June 28, 2016, the couple announced in a joint statement that they were divorcing, with Buffington asking for full physical custody and joint legal custody. The divorce was finalized on April 27, 2018.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: On October 21, 2019, Quaid confirmed his engagement to Laura Savoie. After postponing their original wedding date due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they married on June 2, 2020, in Santa Barbara.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Quaid is a Christian, writing the Christian song "On My Way to Heaven" dedicated to his mother and included in the film "I Can Only Imagine", in which he starred.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: In addition to acting, Quaid is a musician and plays with his band, the Sharks. He wrote and performed the song "Closer to You" in the film "The Big Easy" (1987). Quaid also has a pilot's license and owned a Cessna Citation. He is also a one-handicap golfer, and in 2005, he was named as the top golfer among the "Hollywood set" by "Golf Digest" magazine.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Quaid is a fan of the Houston Astros, and after the team's 2005 National League Championship-winning season, he narrated their commemorative DVD release. After the filming of "", Quaid went to Cleveland Browns Stadium to dedicate Davis's jersey.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: Quaid began podcasting during 2020. He started "The Pet Show with Dennis Quaid and Jimmy Jellinek". Its first episode premiered on July 10, 2020. During that podcast, he learned of a cat in Lynchburg, Virginia also named Dennis Quaid. He adopted the cat and flew it out to California to live at his recording studio.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: There have been extensive stories about Quaid's past abuse of cocaine. In a candid 2002 interview with Larry King on his talk show, after King asked about his motives for using drugs, Quaid responded,


title: Dennis Quaid

text: "Well, you got to put it in context. Back in the late 1960s, early 1970s. That was back during the time where, you know, drugs were going to expand our minds and everybody was experimenting and everything. We were really getting high, we didn't know it. And cocaine at that time was considered harmless. You know. I remember magazine articles in "People Magazine" of doctors saying it is not addicting. It is just—alcohol is worse. So I think we all fell into that. But that's not the way it was."


title: Dennis Quaid

text: When asked if he believed he had ever been addicted to the drugs, he responded, "It was a gradual thing. But it got to the point where I couldn't have any fun unless I had it. Which is a bad place to be." Later in the interview he said, "But I saw myself being dead in about five years if I didn't stop."


title: Dennis Quaid

text: In a 2018 interview with "The New York Post", Quaid stated he was a registered independent and has voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates, saying that he did not consider himself an adherent to any particular ideology; though he did opine that Ronald Reagan was his favorite U.S. president of his lifetime. In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Quaid stated that President Donald Trump was handling the pandemic well, calling him "involved". He subsequently recorded an interview with infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci as part of an advertising campaign by the Department of Health and Human Services to "defeat despair" surrounding COVID-19. Quaid later denied the ad was political in nature.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: "Viewpoint with Dennis Quaid" is a series of short films focused on public-interest topics that is hosted by Dennis Quaid. Since 2012 it has been airing through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other outlets.


title: Dennis Quaid

text: For his role in "Far from Heaven" (2002) he won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male. He received nominations for Best Supporting Actor from the Golden Globe Awards, the Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Quaid was also honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater, the University of Houston, in April 2012.


title: Vikings

text: Vikings is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and settled throughout parts of Europe. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean, North Africa, Volga Bulgaria, the Middle East, and North America. In some of the countries they raided and settled in, this period is popularly known as the Viking Age, and the term "Viking" also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Scandinavian homelands as a collective whole. The Vikings had a profound impact on the early medieval history of Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Estonia, and Kievan Rus'.


title: Vikings

text: Expert sailors and navigators aboard their characteristic longships, Vikings established Norse settlements and governments in the British Isles, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, and the Baltic coast, as well as along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes across modern-day Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, where they were also known as Varangians. The Normans, Norse-Gaels, Rus' people, Faroese and Icelanders emerged from these Norse colonies. At one point, a group of Rus Vikings went so far south that, after briefly being bodyguards for the Byzantine emperor, attacked the Byzantine city of Constantinople. Vikings also voyaged to Iran and Arabia. They were the first Europeans to reach North America, briefly settling in Newfoundland (Vinland). While spreading Norse culture to foreign lands, they simultaneously brought home slaves, concubines and foreign cultural influences to Scandinavia, influencing the genetic and historical development of both. During the Viking Age, the Norse homelands were gradually consolidated from smaller kingdoms into three larger kingdoms: Denmark, Norway and Sweden.


title: Vikings

text: The Vikings spoke Old Norse and made inscriptions in runes. For most of the period they followed the Old Norse religion, but later became Christians. The Vikings had their own laws, art and architecture. Most Vikings were also farmers, fishermen, craftsmen and traders. Popular conceptions of the Vikings often strongly differ from the complex, advanced civilisation of the Norsemen that emerges from archaeology and historical sources. A romanticised picture of Vikings as noble savages began to emerge in the 18th century; this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival. Perceived views of the Vikings as violent, piratical heathens or as intrepid adventurers owe much to conflicting varieties of the modern Viking myth that had taken shape by the early 20th century. Current popular representations of the Vikings are typically based on cultural clichés and stereotypes, complicating modern appreciation of the Viking legacy. These representations are rarely accurate—for example, there is no evidence that they wore horned helmets, a costume element that first appeared in Wagnerian opera.


title: Vikings

text: The etymology of "Viking" is uncertain. In the Middle Ages it came to mean Scandinavian pirate or raider. The Anglo-Saxons regarded the word "wicing" as synonymous with pirate and in several Old English sources "wicing" is translated into the Latin "pirata". It was not seen as a reference to nationality, with other terms such as "Norþmenn" (Northmen) and "Dene" (Danes) being used for that. In Asser's "Life of Alfred" the Danes are referred to as "pagani" (pagans), but this is usually translated as 'Vikings', in modern English, which some regard as a mistake. The earliest reference to "wicing" in English sources is from the "Épinal-Erfurt glossary" which dates to around 700, whereas the first known attack by Viking raiders in England at Lindisfarne was in 793. The origin of "wicing" is disputed, with some believing that it is a loan-word from Old Norse.


title: Vikings

text: The form occurs as a personal name on some Swedish runestones. The stone of Tóki víking (Sm 10) was raised in memory of a local man named Tóki who got the name Tóki víking (Toki the Viking), presumably because of his activities as a Viking. The Gårdstånga Stone (DR 330) uses the phrase ""Þeʀ drængaʀ waʀu wiða unesiʀ i wikingu"" ("These valiant men were widely renowned on viking raids"), referring to the stone's dedicatees as Vikings. The Västra Strö 1 Runestone has an inscription in memory of a Björn, who was killed when ""on a viking raid"". In Sweden there is a locality known since the Middle Ages as "Vikingstad". The Bro Stone (U 617) was raised in memory of Assur who is said to have protected the land from Vikings ("Saʀ vaʀ vikinga vorðr með Gæiti"). There is little indication of any negative connotation in the term before the end of the Viking Age.


title: Vikings

text: Other theories suggest that its origin is from the Old English "wicing" and Old Frisian "wizing" that are almost 300 years older, and probably derive from "wic", related to the Latin "vicus" "village, habitation". Another less popular theory is that "víking" from the feminine "vík", meaning "creek, inlet, small bay".


title: Vikings

text: It has been suggested that the word "viking" may be derived from the name of the historical Norwegian district of Víkin, meaning "a person from "Víkin"", but people from the Viken area were called "víkverir", ('Vík dwellers'), not "Viking", in Old Norse manuscripts. The explanation could explain only the masculine ("víkingr") and not the feminine ("víking"); the masculine is more easily derived from the feminine than the other way around.


title: Vikings

text: Another etymology that gained support in the early twenty-first century derives "Viking" from the same root as Old Norse "vika", f. 'sea mile', originally 'the distance between two shifts of rowers', from the root *weik or *wîk, as in the Proto-Germanic verb *wîkan, 'to recede'. This is found in the Proto-Nordic verb *wikan, 'to turn', similar to Old Icelandic "víkja" ("ýkva", "víkva") 'to move, to turn', with well-attested nautical usages. Linguistically, this theory is better attested, and the term most likely predates the use of the sail by the Germanic peoples of northwestern Europe, because the Old Frisian spelling "Witsing" or "Wīsing" shows that the word was pronounced with a palatal k and thus in all probability existed in North-Western Germanic before that palatalisation happened in the 5th century or before (in the western branch).


title: Vikings

text: The Old Norse feminine "víking" (as in the phrase "fara í víking") may originally have been a long-distance sea journey characterised by the shifting of rowers, and a "víkingr" (the masculine) would originally have been a participant on such a sea journey. In that case, the idea behind it seems to be that the tired rower moves aside for the rested rower on the thwart when he relieves him. This implies that the word Viking was not originally connected to Scandinavian seafarers, but assumed this meaning when the Scandinavians began to dominate the seas. Even the word "vikingr" did not necessarily possess negative overtones or were always associated with violence, and only in the post-Viking age would negative overtones be attached to the word.


title: Vikings

text: In eastern Europe, of which parts were ruled by a Norse elite, "víkingr" came to be perceived as a positive concept meaning "hero" in the Russian borrowed form ().


title: Vikings

text: In Old English, the word "wicing" appears first in the Anglo-Saxon poem, "Widsith", probably from the 9th century. In Old English, and in the history of the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen written by Adam of Bremen in about 1070, the term generally referred to Scandinavian pirates or raiders. As in the Old Norse usages, the term is not employed as a name for any people or culture in general. The word does not occur in any preserved Middle English texts. One theory made by the Icelander Örnolfur Kristjansson is that the key to the origins of the word is ""wicinga cynn"" in Widsith, referring to the people or the race living in Jórvík (York, in the ninth century under control by Norsemen), "Jór-Wicings" (though this is not the origin of "Jórvík").


title: Vikings

text: The word "Viking" was introduced into Modern English during the 18th-century Viking revival, at which point it acquired romanticised heroic overtones of "barbarian warrior" or noble savage. During the 20th century, the meaning of the term was expanded to refer not only to seaborne raiders from Scandinavia and other places settled by them (like Iceland and the Faroe Islands), but also any member of the culture that produced the raiders during the period from the late 8th to the mid-11th centuries, or more loosely from about 700 to as late as about 1100. As an adjective, the word is used to refer to ideas, phenomena, or artefacts connected with those people and their cultural life, producing expressions like "Viking age", "Viking culture", "Viking art", "Viking religion", "Viking ship" and so on.


title: Vikings

text: The Vikings were known as "Ascomanni" ("ashmen") by the Germans for the ash wood of their boats, "Dubgail and Finngail" ( "dark and fair foreigners") by the Irish, "Lochlannaich" ("people from the land of lakes") by the Gaels, "Dene" ("Dane") by the Anglo-Saxons and "Northmonn" by the Frisians.


title: Vikings

text: The scholarly consensus is that the Rus' people originated in what is currently coastal eastern Sweden around the eighth century and that their name has the same origin as Roslagen in Sweden (with the older name being "Roden"). According to the prevalent theory, the name "Rus", like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden ("*Ruotsi"), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" ("rods-") as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of eastern Europe, and that it could be linked to the Swedish coastal area of Roslagen ("Rus-law") or "Roden", as it was known in earlier times. The name "Rus" would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: "Ruotsi" and "Rootsi".


title: Vikings

text: The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them Varangians (, , from "vàr-" "confidence, vow of fealty", related to Old English "wær" "agreement, treaty, promise", Old High German "wara" "faithfulness"). Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors were known as the Varangian Guard. The Rus' initially appeared in Serkland in the 9th century, travelling as merchants along the Volga trade route, selling furs, honey, and slaves, as well as luxury goods such as amber, Frankish swords, and walrus ivory. These goods were mostly exchanged for Arabian silver coins, called dirhams. Hoards of 9th century Baghdad-minted silver coins have been found in Sweden, particularly in Gotland.


title: Vikings

text: During and after the Viking raid on Seville in 844 CE the Muslim chroniclers of al-Andalus referred to the Vikings as Magians (Arabic: al-"Majus" مجوس), conflating them with Zoroastrians from Persia. When Ahmad ibn Fadlan encountered Vikings on the Volga, he referred to them as "Rus".


title: Vikings

text: The Franks normally called them Northmen or Danes, while for the English they were generally known as Danes or heathen and the Irish knew them as pagans or gentiles.


title: Vikings

text: Anglo-Scandinavian is an academic term referring to the people, and archaeological and historical periods during the 8th to 13th centuries, in which there was migration to—and occupation of—the British Isles by Scandinavian peoples generally known in English as Vikings. It is used in distinction from Anglo-Saxon. Similar terms exist for other areas, such as Hiberno-Norse for Ireland and Scotland.


title: Vikings

text: The Viking Age in Scandinavian history is taken to have been the period from the earliest recorded raids by Norsemen in 793 until the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Vikings used the Norwegian Sea and Baltic Sea for sea routes to the south.


title: Vikings

text: The Normans were descendants of those Vikings who had been given feudal overlordship of areas in northern France, namely the Duchy of Normandy, in the 10th century. In that respect, descendants of the Vikings continued to have an influence in northern Europe. Likewise, King Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, had Danish ancestors. Two Vikings even ascended to the throne of England, with Sweyn Forkbeard claiming the English throne in 1013 until 1014 and his son Cnut the Great being king of England between 1016 and 1035.


title: Vikings

text: Geographically, the Viking Age covered Scandinavian lands (modern Denmark, Norway and Sweden), as well as territories under North Germanic dominance, mainly the Danelaw, including Scandinavian York, the administrative centre of the remains of the Kingdom of Northumbria, parts of Mercia, and East Anglia. Viking navigators opened the road to new lands to the north, west and east, resulting in the foundation of independent settlements in the Shetland, Orkney, and Faroe Islands; Iceland; Greenland; and L'Anse aux Meadows, a short-lived settlement in Newfoundland, circa 1000. The Greenland settlement was established around 980, during the Medieval Warm Period, and its demise by the mid-15th century may have been partly due to climate change. The Viking Rurik dynasty took control of territories in Slavic and Finnic-dominated areas of eastern Europe; they annexed Kiev in 882 to serve as the capital of the Kievan Rus'.


title: Vikings

text: As early as 839, when Swedish emissaries are first known to have visited Byzantium, Scandinavians served as mercenaries in the service of the Byzantine Empire. In the late 10th century, a new unit of the imperial bodyguard formed. Traditionally containing large numbers of Scandinavians, it was known as the Varangian Guard. The word "Varangian" may have originated in Old Norse, but in Slavic and Greek it could refer either to Scandinavians or Franks. In these years, Swedish men left to enlist in the Byzantine Varangian Guard in such numbers that a medieval Swedish law, the "Västgötalagen", from Västergötland declared no-one could inherit while staying in "Greece"—the then Scandinavian term for the Byzantine Empire—to stop the emigration, especially as two other European courts simultaneously also recruited Scandinavians: Kievan Rus' c. 980–1060 and London 1018–1066 (the Þingalið).


title: Vikings

text: There is archaeological evidence that Vikings reached Baghdad, the centre of the Islamic Empire. The Norse regularly plied the Volga with their trade goods: furs, tusks, seal fat for boat sealant, and slaves. Important trading ports during the period include Birka, Hedeby, Kaupang, Jorvik, Staraya Ladoga, Novgorod, and Kiev.


title: Vikings

text: Scandinavian Norsemen explored Europe by its seas and rivers for trade, raids, colonisation, and conquest. In this period, voyaging from their homelands in Denmark, Norway and Sweden the Norsemen settled in the present-day Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norse Greenland, Newfoundland, the Netherlands, Germany, Normandy, Italy, Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Estonia, Ukraine, Russia and Turkey, as well as initiating the consolidation that resulted in the formation of the present day Scandinavian countries.


title: Vikings

text: In the Viking Age, the present day nations of Norway, Sweden and Denmark did not exist, but were largely homogeneous and similar in culture and language, although somewhat distinct geographically. The names of Scandinavian kings are reliably known for only the later part of the Viking Age. After the end of the Viking Age the separate kingdoms gradually acquired distinct identities as nations, which went hand-in-hand with their Christianisation. Thus the end of the Viking Age for the Scandinavians also marks the start of their relatively brief Middle Ages.


title: Vikings

text: Slavic and Viking tribes were "closely linked, fighting one another, intermixing and trading". In the Middle Ages, ware was transferred from Slavic areas to Scandinavia, and Denmark could be considered "a melting pot of Slavic and Scandinavian elements". It is argued that the presence of Slavs in Scandinavia is "more significant than previously thought" although "the Slavs and their interaction with Scandinavia have not been adequately investigated".


title: Vikings

text: A 10th-century grave of a warrior-woman in Denmark was long thought to belong to a Viking. However, new analyses suggest that the woman may have been a Slav from present-day Poland. The first king of the Swedes, Eric, was married to Gunhild, of the Polish House of Piast. Likewise, his son, Olof, fell in love with Edla, a Slavic woman, and took her as his "" (concubine). They had a son and a daughter: Emund the Old, King of Sweden, and Astrid, Queen of Norway. Cnut the Great, King of Denmark, England and Norway, was the son of a daughter of Mieszko I of Poland, possibly the former Polish queen of Sweden, wife of Eric. Richeza of Poland, Queen of Sweden, married Magnus the Strong, and they had several children, including Canute V, King of Denmark. Catherine Jagiellon, of the House of Jagiellon, was married to John III, King of Sweden. She was the mother of Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland, King of Sweden, and Grand Duke of Finland. Ragnvald Ulfsson, son of Jarl Ulf Tostesson and the Wendic Princess Ingeborg, had a Slavic name ("Rogvolod", from ).


title: Vikings

text: Colonisation of Iceland by Norwegian Vikings began in the ninth century. The first source mentioning Iceland and Greenland is a papal letter of 1053. Twenty years later, they appear in the "Gesta" of Adam of Bremen. It was not until after 1130, when the islands had become Christianized, that accounts of the history of the islands were written from the point of view of the inhabitants in sagas and chronicles. The Vikings explored the northern islands and coasts of the North Atlantic, ventured south to North Africa, east to Kievan Rus (now – Ukraine, Belarus), Constantinople, and the Middle East.


title: Vikings

text: They raided and pillaged, traded, acted as mercenaries and settled colonies over a wide area. Early Vikings probably returned home after their raids. Later in their history, they began to settle in other lands. Vikings under Leif Erikson, heir to Erik the Red, reached North America and set up short-lived settlements in present-day L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. This expansion occurred during the Medieval Warm Period.


title: Vikings

text: Viking expansion into continental Europe was limited. Their realm was bordered by powerful tribes to the south. Early on, it was the Saxons who occupied Old Saxony, located in what is now Northern Germany. The Saxons were a fierce and powerful people and were often in conflict with the Vikings. To counter the Saxon aggression and solidify their own presence, the Danes constructed the huge defence fortification of Danevirke in and around Hedeby.


title: Vikings

text: The Vikings witnessed the violent subduing of the Saxons by Charlemagne, in the thirty-year Saxon Wars of 772–804. The Saxon defeat resulted in their forced christening and the absorption of Old Saxony into the Carolingian Empire. Fear of the Franks led the Vikings to further expand Danevirke, and the defence constructions remained in use throughout the Viking Age and even up until 1864.


title: Vikings

text: The south coast of the Baltic Sea was ruled by the Obotrites, a federation of Slavic tribes loyal to the Carolingians and later the Frankish empire. The Vikings—led by King Gudfred—destroyed the Obotrite city of Reric on the southern Baltic coast in 808 AD and transferred the merchants and traders to Hedeby. This secured Viking supremacy in the Baltic Sea, which continued throughout the Viking Age.


title: Vikings

text: Because of the expansion of the Vikings across Europe, a comparison of DNA and archeology undertaken by scientists at the University of Cambridge and University of Copenhagen suggested that the term "Viking" may have evolved to become "a job description, not a matter of heredity," at least in some Viking bands.


title: Vikings

text: Researchers have suggested that Vikings may have originally started sailing and raiding due to a need to seek out women from foreign lands. The concept was expressed in the 11th century by historian Dudo of Saint-Quentin in his semi imaginary "History of The Normans". Rich and powerful Viking men tended to have many wives and concubines; these polygynous relationships may have led to a shortage of eligible women for the average Viking male. Due to this, the average Viking man could have been forced to perform riskier actions to gain wealth and power to be able to find suitable women. Viking men would often buy or capture women and make them into their wives or concubines. Polygynous marriage increases male-male competition in society because it creates a pool of unmarried men who are willing to engage in risky status-elevating and sex seeking behaviors. The Annals of Ulster states that in 821 the Vikings plundered an Irish village and "carried off a great number of women into captivity".


title: Vikings

text: One common theory posits that Charlemagne "used force and terror to Christianise all pagans", leading to baptism, conversion or execution, and as a result, Vikings and other pagans resisted and wanted revenge. Professor Rudolf Simek states that "it is not a coincidence if the early Viking activity occurred during the reign of Charlemagne". The ascendance of Christianity in Scandinavia led to serious conflict, dividing Norway for almost a century. However, this time period did not commence until the 10th century, Norway was never subject to aggression by Charlemagne and the period of strife was due to successive Norwegian kings embracing Christianity after encountering it overseas.


title: Vikings

text: Another explanation is that the Vikings exploited a moment of weakness in the surrounding regions. Contrary to Simek's assertion, Viking raids occurred sporadically long before the reign of Charlemagne; but exploded in frequency and size after his death, when his empire fragmented into multiple much weaker entities. England suffered from internal divisions and was relatively easy prey given the proximity of many towns to the sea or to navigable rivers. Lack of organised naval opposition throughout western Europe allowed Viking ships to travel freely, raiding or trading as opportunity permitted. The decline in the profitability of old trade routes could also have played a role. Trade between western Europe and the rest of Eurasia suffered a severe blow when the Western Roman Empire fell in the 5th century. The expansion of Islam in the 7th century had also affected trade with western Europe.


title: Vikings

text: Raids in Europe, including raids and settlements from Scandinavia, were not unprecedented and had occurred long before the Vikings arrived. The Jutes invaded the British Isles three centuries earlier, pouring out from Jutland during the Age of Migrations, before the Danes settled there. The Saxons and the Angles did the same, embarking from mainland Europe. The Viking raids were, however, the first to be documented in writing by eyewitnesses, and they were much larger in scale and frequency than in previous times.


title: Vikings

text: Vikings themselves were expanding; although their motives are unclear, historians believe that scarce resources or a lack of mating opportunities were a factor.


title: Vikings

text: The "Highway of Slaves" was a term for a route that the Vikings found to have a direct pathway from Scandinavia to Constantinople and Baghdad while traveling on the Baltic Sea. With the advancements of their ships during the ninth century, the Vikings were able to sail to Kievan Rus and some northern parts of Europe.


title: Vikings

text: Jomsborg was a semi-legendary Viking stronghold at the southern coast of the Baltic Sea (medieval Wendland, modern Pomerania), that existed between the 960s and 1043. Its inhabitants were known as Jomsvikings. Jomsborg's exact location, or its existence, has not yet been established, though it is often maintained that Jomsborg was somewhere on the islands of the Oder estuary.


title: Vikings

text: While the Vikings were active beyond their Scandinavian homelands, Scandinavia was itself experiencing new influences and undergoing a variety of cultural changes.


title: Vikings

text: By the late 11th century, royal dynasties were legitimised by the Catholic Church (which had had little influence in Scandinavia 300 years earlier) which were asserting their power with increasing authority and ambition, with the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden taking shape. Towns appeared that functioned as secular and ecclesiastical administrative centres and market sites, and monetary economies began to emerge based on English and German models. By this time the influx of Islamic silver from the East had been absent for more than a century, and the flow of English silver had come to an end in the mid-11th century.


title: Vikings

text: Christianity had taken root in Denmark and Norway with the establishment of dioceses in the 11th century, and the new religion was beginning to organise and assert itself more effectively in Sweden. Foreign churchmen and native elites were energetic in furthering the interests of Christianity, which was now no longer operating only on a missionary footing, and old ideologies and lifestyles were transforming. By 1103, the first archbishopric was founded in Scandinavia, at Lund, Scania, then part of Denmark.


title: Vikings

text: The assimilation of the nascent Scandinavian kingdoms into the cultural mainstream of European Christendom altered the aspirations of Scandinavian rulers and of Scandinavians able to travel overseas, and changed their relations with their neighbours.


title: Vikings

text: One of the primary sources of profit for the Vikings had been slave-taking from other European peoples. The medieval Church held that Christians should not own fellow Christians as slaves, so chattel slavery diminished as a practice throughout northern Europe. This took much of the economic incentive out of raiding, though sporadic slaving activity continued into the 11th century. Scandinavian predation in Christian lands around the North and Irish Seas diminished markedly.


title: Vikings

text: The kings of Norway continued to assert power in parts of northern Britain and Ireland, and raids continued into the 12th century, but the military ambitions of Scandinavian rulers were now directed toward new paths. In 1107, Sigurd I of Norway sailed for the eastern Mediterranean with Norwegian crusaders to fight for the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem; the kings of Denmark and Sweden participated actively in the Baltic Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries.


title: Vikings

text: A variety of sources illuminate the culture, activities, and beliefs of the Vikings. Although they were generally a non-literate culture that produced no literary legacy, they had an alphabet and described themselves and their world on runestones. Most contemporary literary and written sources on the Vikings come from other cultures that were in contact with them. Since the mid-20th century, archaeological findings have built a more complete and balanced picture of the lives of the Vikings. The archaeological record is particularly rich and varied, providing knowledge of their rural and urban settlement, crafts and production, ships and military equipment, trading networks, as well as their pagan and Christian religious artefacts and practices.


title: Vikings

text: The most important primary sources on the Vikings are contemporary texts from Scandinavia and regions where the Vikings were active. Writing in Latin letters was introduced to Scandinavia with Christianity, so there are few native documentary sources from Scandinavia before the late 11th and early 12th centuries. The Scandinavians did write inscriptions in runes, but these are usually very short and formulaic. Most contemporary documentary sources consist of texts written in Christian and Islamic communities outside Scandinavia, often by authors who had been negatively affected by Viking activity.


title: Vikings

text: Later writings on the Vikings and the Viking Age can also be important for understanding them and their culture, although they need to be treated cautiously. After the consolidation of the church and the assimilation of Scandinavia and its colonies into the mainstream of medieval Christian culture in the 11th and 12th centuries, native written sources begin to appear in Latin and Old Norse. In the Viking colony of Iceland, an extraordinary vernacular literature blossomed in the 12th through 14th centuries, and many traditions connected with the Viking Age were written down for the first time in the Icelandic sagas. A literal interpretation of these medieval prose narratives about the Vikings and the Scandinavian past is doubtful, but many specific elements remain worthy of consideration, such as the great quantity of skaldic poetry attributed to court poets of the 10th and 11th centuries, the exposed family trees, the self images, the ethical values, that are contained in these literary writings.


title: Vikings

text: Indirectly, the Vikings have also left a window open onto their language, culture and activities, through many Old Norse place names and words found in their former sphere of influence. Some of these place names and words are still in direct use today, almost unchanged, and shed light on where they settled and what specific places meant to them. Examples include place names like Egilsay (from "Eigils ey" meaning Eigil's Island), Ormskirk (from "Ormr kirkja" meaning Orms Church or Church of the Worm), Meols (from "merl" meaning Sand Dunes), Snaefell (Snow Fell), Ravenscar (Ravens Rock), Vinland (Land of Wine or Land of Winberry), Kaupanger (Market Harbour), Tórshavn (Thor's Harbour), and the religious centre of Odense, meaning a place where Odin was worshipped. Viking influence is also evident in concepts like the present-day parliamentary body of the Tynwald on the Isle of Man.


title: Vikings

text: Common words in everyday English language, such as leg, skin, dirt, sky, egg, kid, anger, window, husband, knife, bag, gift, glove, guest, wing, birth, law, gate, scab, skirt, root, skull, reindeer, happy, wrong, ugly, low, weak, loose, want, give, take, get, smile, guess, seem, hit, kick, scare, crawl, call, lift, both, they, them, and their, stem from the Old Norse of the Vikings and give an opportunity to understand their interactions with the people and cultures of the British Isles. In the Northern Isles of Shetland and Orkney, Old Norse completely replaced the local languages and over time evolved into the now extinct Norn language. Some modern words and names only emerge and contribute to our understanding after a more intense research of linguistic sources from medieval or later records, such as York (Horse Bay), Swansea (Sveinn's Isle) or some of the place names in Normandy like Tocqueville (Toki's farm).


title: Vikings

text: Linguistic and etymological studies continue to provide a vital source of information on the Viking culture, their social structure and history and how they interacted with the people and cultures they met, traded, attacked or lived with in overseas settlements. A lot of Old Norse connections are evident in the modern-day languages of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Faroese and Icelandic. Old Norse did not exert any great influence on the Slavic languages in the Viking settlements of eastern Europe. It has been speculated that the reason for this was the great differences between the two languages, combined with the Rus' Vikings more peaceful businesses in these areas and the fact that they were outnumbered. The Norse named some of the rapids on the Dnieper, but this can hardly be seen from the modern names.


title: Vikings

text: The Norse of the Viking Age could read and write and used a non-standardised alphabet, called "runor", built upon sound values. While there are few remains of runic writing on paper from the Viking era, thousands of stones with runic inscriptions have been found where Vikings lived. They are usually in memory of the dead, though not necessarily placed at graves. The use of "runor" survived into the 15th century, used in parallel with the Latin alphabet.


title: Vikings

text: The runestones are unevenly distributed in Scandinavia: Denmark has 250 runestones, Norway has 50 while Iceland has none. Sweden has as many as between 1,700 and 2,500 depending on definition. The Swedish district of Uppland has the highest concentration with as many as 1,196 inscriptions in stone, whereas Södermanland is second with 391.


title: Vikings

text: The majority of runic inscriptions from the Viking period are found in Sweden. Many runestones in Scandinavia record the names of participants in Viking expeditions, such as the Kjula runestone that tells of extensive warfare in western Europe and the Turinge Runestone, which tells of a war band in eastern Europe.


title: Vikings

text: Other runestones mention men who died on Viking expeditions. Among them include the England runestones (Swedish: "Englandsstenarna") which is a group of about 30 runestones in Sweden which refer to Viking Age voyages to England. They constitute one of the largest groups of runestones that mention voyages to other countries, and they are comparable in number only to the approximately 30 Greece Runestones and the 26 Ingvar Runestones, the latter referring to a Viking expedition to the Middle East. They were engraved in Old Norse with the Younger Futhark.


title: Vikings

text: The Jelling stones date from between 960 and 985. The older, smaller stone was raised by King Gorm the Old, the last pagan king of Denmark, as a memorial honouring Queen Thyre. The larger stone was raised by his son, Harald Bluetooth, to celebrate the conquest of Denmark and Norway and the conversion of the Danes to Christianity. It has three sides: one with an animal image, one with an image of the crucified Jesus Christ, and a third bearing the following inscription:


title: Vikings

text: Runestones attest to voyages to locations such as Bath, Greece (how the Vikings referred to the Byzantium territories generally), Khwaresm, Jerusalem, Italy (as Langobardland), Serkland (i.e. the Muslim world), England (including London), and various places in eastern Europe. Viking Age inscriptions have also been discovered on the Manx runestones on the Isle of Man.


title: Vikings

text: The last known people to use the Runic alphabet were an isolated group of people known as the Elfdalians, that lived in the locality of Älvdalen in the Swedish province of Dalarna. They spoke the language of Elfdalian, the language unique to Älvdalen. The Elfdalian language differentiates itself from the other Scandinavian languages as it evolved much closer to Old Norse. The people of Älvdalen stopped using runes as late as the 1920s. Usage of runes therefore survived longer in Älvdalen than anywhere else in the world. The last known record of the Elfdalian Runes is from 1929; they are a variant of the Dalecarlian runes, runic inscriptions that were also found in Dalarna.


title: Vikings

text: Traditionally regarded as a Swedish dialect, but by several criteria closer related to West Scandinavian dialects, Elfdalian is a separate language by the standard of mutual intelligibility. Although there is no mutual intelligibility, due to schools and public administration in Älvdalen being conducted in Swedish, native speakers are bilingual and speak Swedish at a native level. Residents in the area who speak only Swedish as their sole native language, neither speaking nor understanding Elfdalian, are also common. Älvdalen can be said to have had its own alphabet during the 17th and 18th century. Today there are about 2,000-3000 native speakers of Elfdalian.


title: Vikings

text: There are numerous burial sites associated with Vikings throughout Europe and their sphere of influence—in Scandinavia, the British Isles, Ireland, Greenland, Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Germany, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Russia, etc. The burial practices of the Vikings were quite varied, from dug graves in the ground, to tumuli, sometimes including so-called ship burials.


title: Vikings

text: According to written sources, most of the funerals took place at sea. The funerals involved either burial or cremation, depending on local customs. In the area that is now Sweden, cremations were predominant; in Denmark burial was more common; and in Norway both were common. Viking barrows are one of the primary source of evidence for circumstances in the Viking Age. The items buried with the dead give some indication as to what was considered important to possess in the afterlife. It is unknown what mortuary services were given to dead children by the Vikings. Some of the most important burial sites for understanding the Vikings include:


title: Vikings

text: There have been several archaeological finds of Viking ships of all sizes, providing knowledge of the craftsmanship that went into building them. There were many types of Viking ships, built for various uses; the best-known type is probably the longship. Longships were intended for warfare and exploration, designed for speed and agility, and were equipped with oars to complement the sail, making navigation possible independently of the wind. The longship had a long, narrow hull and shallow draught to facilitate landings and troop deployments in shallow water. Longships were used extensively by the Leidang, the Scandinavian defence fleets. The longship allowed the Norse to "go Viking", which might explain why this type of ship has become almost synonymous with the concept of Vikings.


title: Vikings

text: The Vikings built many unique types of watercraft, often used for more peaceful tasks. The "knarr" was a dedicated merchant vessel designed to carry cargo in bulk. It had a broader hull, deeper draught, and a small number of oars (used primarily to manoeuvre in harbours and similar situations). One Viking innovation was the 'beitass', a spar mounted to the sail that allowed their ships to sail effectively against the wind. It was common for seafaring Viking ships to tow or carry a smaller boat to transfer crews and cargo from the ship to shore.


title: Vikings

text: Ships were an integral part of the Viking culture. They facilitated everyday transportation across seas and waterways, exploration of new lands, raids, conquests, and trade with neighbouring cultures. They also held a major religious importance. People with high status were sometimes buried in a ship along with animal sacrifices, weapons, provisions and other items, as evidenced by the buried vessels at Gokstad and Oseberg in Norway and the excavated ship burial at Ladby in Denmark. Ship burials were also practised by Vikings overseas, as evidenced by the excavations of the Salme ships on the Estonian island of Saaremaa.


title: Vikings

text: Well-preserved remains of five Viking ships were excavated from Roskilde Fjord in the late 1960s, representing both the longship and the "knarr". The ships were scuttled there in the 11th century to block a navigation channel and thus protect Roskilde, then the Danish capital, from seaborne assault. The remains of these ships are on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.


title: Vikings

text: In 2019, archaeologists uncovered two Viking boat graves in Gamla Uppsala. They also discovered that one of the boats still holds the remains of a man, a dog, and a horse, along with other items. This has shed light on death rituals of Viking communities in the region.


title: Vikings

text: Viking society was divided into the three socio-economic classes: Thralls, Karls and Jarls. This is described vividly in the Eddic poem of Rígsþula, which also explains that it was the god Ríg—father of mankind also known as Heimdallr—who created the three classes. Archaeology has confirmed this social structure.


title: Vikings

text: Thralls were the lowest ranking class and were slaves. Slaves comprised as much as a quarter of the population. Slavery was of vital importance to Viking society, for everyday chores and large scale construction and also to trade and the economy. Thralls were servants and workers in the farms and larger households of the Karls and Jarls, and they were used for constructing fortifications, ramps, canals, mounds, roads and similar hard work projects. According to the Rigsthula, Thralls were despised and looked down upon. New thralls were supplied by either the sons and daughters of thralls or captured abroad. The Vikings often deliberately captured many people on their raids in Europe, to enslave them as thralls. The thralls were then brought back home to Scandinavia by boat, used on location or in newer settlements to build needed structures, or sold, often to the Arabs in exchange for silver. Other names for thrall were 'træl' and 'ty'.


title: Vikings

text: Karls were free peasants. They owned farms, land and cattle and engaged in daily chores like ploughing the fields, milking the cattle, building houses and wagons, but used thralls to make ends meet. Other names for Karls were 'bonde' or simply free men. Similar classes were churls and huskarls.


title: Vikings

text: The Jarls were the aristocracy of the Viking society. They were wealthy and owned large estates with huge longhouses, horses and many thralls. The thralls did most of the daily chores, while the Jarls did administration, politics, hunting, sports, visited other Jarls or went abroad on expeditions. When a Jarl died and was buried, his household thralls were sometimes sacrificially killed and buried next to him, as many excavations have revealed.


title: Vikings

text: In daily life, there were many intermediate positions in the overall social structure and it is believed that there must have been some social mobility. These details are unclear, but titles and positions like "hauldr", "thegn", "landmand", show mobility between the Karls and the Jarls.


title: Vikings

text: Other social structures included the communities of "félag" in both the civil and the military spheres, to which its members (called "félagi") were obliged. A félag could be centred around certain trades, a common ownership of a sea vessel or a military obligation under a specific leader. Members of the latter were referred to as "drenge", one of the words for warrior. There were also official communities within towns and villages, the overall defence, religion, the legal system and the Things.


title: Vikings

text: Like elsewhere in medieval Europe, most women in Viking society were subordinate to their husbands and fathers and had little political power. However, the written sources portray free Viking women as having independence and rights. Viking women generally appear to have had more freedom than women elsewhere, as illustrated in the Icelandic Grágás and the Norwegian Frostating laws and Gulating laws.


title: Vikings

text: Most free Viking women were housewives, and the woman's standing in society was linked to that of her husband. Marriage gave a woman a degree of economic security and social standing encapsulated in the title "húsfreyja" (lady of the house). Norse laws assert the housewife's authority over the 'indoor household'. She had the important roles of managing the farm's resources, conducting business, as well as child-rearing, although some of this would be shared with her husband.


title: Vikings

text: After the age of 20, an unmarried woman, referred to as "maer" and "mey", reached legal majority and had the right to decide her place of residence and was regarded as her own person before the law. An exception to her independence was the right to choose a husband, as marriages were normally arranged by the family. The groom would pay a bride-price ("mundr") to the bride's family, and the bride brought assets into the marriage, as a dowry. A married woman could divorce her husband and remarry.


title: Vikings

text: Concubinage was also part of Viking society, whereby a woman could live with a man and have children with him without marrying; such a woman was called a "frilla". Usually she would be the mistress of a wealthy and powerful man who also had a wife. The wife had authority over the mistresses if they lived in her household. Through her relationship to a man of higher social standing, a concubine and her family could advance socially; although her position was less secure than that of a wife. There was little distinction made between children born inside or outside marriage: both had the right to inherit property from their parents, and there were no "legitimate" or "illegitimate" children. However, children born in wedlock had more inheritance rights than those born out of wedlock.


title: Vikings

text: A woman had the right to inherit part of her husband's property upon his death, and widows enjoyed the same independent status as unmarried women. The paternal aunt, paternal niece and paternal granddaughter, referred to as "odalkvinna", all had the right to inherit property from a deceased man. A woman with no husband, sons or male relatives could inherit not only property but also the position as head of the family when her father or brother died. Such a woman was referred to as "Baugrygr", and she exercised all the rights afforded to the head of a family clan, until she married, by which her rights were transferred to her new husband.


title: Vikings

text: Women had religious authority and were active as priestesses ("gydja") and oracles ("sejdkvinna"). They were active within art as poets ("skalder") and rune masters, and as merchants and medicine women. There may also have been female entrepreneurs, who worked in textile production. Women may also have been active within military office: the tales about shieldmaidens are unconfirmed, but some archaeological finds such as the Birka female Viking warrior may indicate that at least some women in military authority existed.


title: Vikings

text: These liberties of the Viking women gradually disappeared after the introduction of Christianity, and from the late 13th-century, they are no longer mentioned.


title: Vikings

text: Examinations of Viking Age burials suggests that women lived longer, and nearly all well past the age of 35, as compared to earlier times. Female graves from before the Viking Age in Scandinavia hold a proportionally large number of remains from women aged 20 to 35, presumably due to complications of childbirth.


title: Vikings

text: Examinations of skeletal remains also allow us to reconstruct the relative health and nutritional status of boys and girls in the past, using anthropometric techniques. Burials from Scandinavia and other European countries suggests that, in comparison with other societies at the time, female equality was remarkably high in rural Scandinavia. Females in the rural periphery of Nordic countries during the Viking period and the later Middle Ages had relatively high status, resulting in substantial nutritional and health resources being allocated to girls, enabling them to grow stronger and healthier.


title: Vikings

text: Scandinavian Vikings were similar in appearance to modern Scandinavians; "their skin was fair and the hair color varied between blond, dark and reddish". Genetic studies suggest that people were mostly blond in what is now eastern Sweden, while red hair was mostly found in western Scandinavia. Most Viking men had shoulder-length hair and beards, and slaves (thralls) were usually the only men with short hair. The length varied according to personal preference and occupation. Men involved in warfare, for example, may have had slightly shorter hair and beards for practical reasons. Men in some regions bleached their hair a golden saffron color. Females also had long hair, with girls often wearing it loose or braided and married women often wearing it in a bun. The average height is estimated to have been for men and for women.


title: Vikings

text: The three classes were easily recognisable by their appearance. Men and women of the Jarls were well groomed with neat hairstyles and expressed their wealth and status by wearing expensive clothes (often silk) and well crafted jewellery like brooches, belt buckles, necklaces and arm rings. Almost all of the jewellery was crafted in specific designs unique to the Norse (see Viking art). Finger rings were seldom used and earrings were not used at all, as they were seen as a Slavic phenomenon. Most Karls expressed similar tastes and hygiene, but in a more relaxed and inexpensive way.


title: Vikings

text: Archaeological finds from Scandinavia and Viking settlements in the British Isles support the idea of the well groomed and hygienic Viking. Burial with grave goods was a common practice in the Scandinavian world, through the Viking Age and well past the Christianization of the Norse peoples. Within these burial sites and homesteads, combs, often made from antler, are a common find. The manufacturing of such antler combs was common, as at the Viking settlement at Dublin hundreds of examples of combs from the tenth-century have survived, suggesting that grooming was a common practice. The manufacturing of such combs was also widespread throughout the Viking world, as examples of similar combs have been found at Viking settlements in Ireland, England, and Scotland. The combs share a common visual appearance as well, with the extant examples often decorated with linear, interlacing, and geometric motifs, or other forms of ornamentation depending on the comb's period and type, but stylistically similar to Viking Age art. The practice of grooming was a concern for all levels of Viking age society, as grooming products, combs, have been found in common graves as well as aristocratic ones.


title: Vikings

text: The sagas tell about the diet and cuisine of the Vikings, but first hand evidence, like cesspits, kitchen middens and garbage dumps have proved to be of great value and importance. Undigested remains of plants from cesspits at Coppergate in York have provided much information in this respect. Overall, archaeo-botanical investigations have been undertaken increasingly in recent decades, as a collaboration between archaeologists and palaeoethno-botanists. This new approach sheds light on the agricultural and horticultural practices of the Vikings and their cuisine.


title: Vikings

text: The combined information from various sources suggests a diverse cuisine and ingredients. Meat products of all kinds, such as cured, smoked and whey-preserved meat, sausages, and boiled or fried fresh meat cuts, were prepared and consumed. There were plenty of seafood, bread, porridges, dairy products, vegetables, fruits, berries and nuts. Alcoholic drinks like beer, mead, bjórr (a strong fruit wine) and, for the rich, imported wine, were served.


title: Vikings

text: Certain livestock were typical and unique to the Vikings, including the Icelandic horse, Icelandic cattle, a plethora of sheep breeds, the Danish hen and the Danish goose. The Vikings in York mostly ate beef, mutton, and pork with small amounts of horse meat. Most of the beef and horse leg bones were found split lengthways, to extract the marrow. The mutton and swine were cut into leg and shoulder joints and chops. The frequent remains of pig skull and foot bones found on house floors indicate that brawn and trotters were also popular. Hens were kept for both their meat and eggs, and the bones of game birds such as black grouse, golden plover, wild ducks, and geese have also been found.


title: Vikings

text: Seafood was important, in some places even more so than meat. Whales and walrus were hunted for food in Norway and the northwestern parts of the North Atlantic region, and seals were hunted nearly everywhere. Oysters, mussels and shrimp were eaten in large quantities and cod and salmon were popular fish. In the southern regions, herring was also important.


title: Vikings

text: Milk and buttermilk were popular, both as cooking ingredients and drinks, but were not always available, even at farms. Milk came from cows, goats and sheep, with priorities varying from location to location, and fermented milk products like skyr or surmjölk were produced as well as butter and cheese.


title: Vikings

text: Food was often salted and enhanced with spices, some of which were imported like black pepper, while others were cultivated in herb gardens or harvested in the wild. Home grown spices included caraway, mustard and horseradish as evidenced from the Oseberg ship burial or dill, coriander, and wild celery, as found in cesspits at Coppergate in York. Thyme, juniper berry, sweet gale, yarrow, rue and peppercress were also used and cultivated in herb gardens.


title: Vikings

text: Vikings collected and ate fruits, berries and nuts. Apple (wild crab apples), plums and cherries were part of the diet, as were rose hips and raspberry, wild strawberry, blackberry, elderberry, rowan, hawthorn and various wild berries, specific to the locations. Hazelnuts were an important part of the diet in general and large amounts of walnut shells have been found in cities like Hedeby. The shells were used for dyeing, and it is assumed that the nuts were consumed.


title: Vikings

text: The invention and introduction of the mouldboard plough revolutionised agriculture in Scandinavia in the early Viking Age and made it possible to farm even poor soils. In Ribe, grains of rye, barley, oat and wheat dated to the 8th century have been found and examined, and are believed to have been cultivated locally. Grains and flour were used for making porridges, some cooked with milk, some cooked with fruit and sweetened with honey, and also various forms of bread. Remains of bread from primarily Birka in Sweden were made of barley and wheat. It is unclear if the Norse leavened their breads, but their ovens and baking utensils suggest that they did. Flax was a very important crop for the Vikings: it was used for oil extraction, food consumption and most importantly the production of linen. More than 40% of all known textile recoveries from the Viking Age can be traced as linen. This suggests a much higher actual percentage, as linen is poorly preserved compared to wool for example.


title: Vikings

text: The quality of food for common people was not always particularly high. The research at Coppergate shows that the Vikings in York made bread from whole meal flour—probably both wheat and rye—but with the seeds of cornfield weeds included. Corncockle (Agrostemma), would have made the bread dark-coloured, but the seeds are poisonous, and people who ate the bread might have become ill. Seeds of carrots, parsnip, and brassicas were also discovered, but they were poor specimens and tend to come from white carrots and bitter tasting cabbages. The rotary querns often used in the Viking Age left tiny stone fragments (often from basalt rock) in the flour, which when eaten wore down the teeth. The effects of this can be seen on skeletal remains of that period.


title: Vikings

text: Sports were widely practised and encouraged by the Vikings. Sports that involved weapons training and developing combat skills were popular. This included spear and stone throwing, building and testing physical strength through wrestling (see glima), fist fighting, and stone lifting. In areas with mountains, mountain climbing was practised as a sport. Agility and balance were built and tested by running and jumping for sport, and there is mention of a sport that involved jumping from oar to oar on the outside of a ship's railing as it was being rowed. Swimming was a popular sport and Snorri Sturluson describes three types: diving, long-distance swimming, and a contest in which two swimmers try to dunk one another. Children often participated in some of the sport disciplines and women have also been mentioned as swimmers, although it is unclear if they took part in competition. King Olaf Tryggvason was hailed as a master of both mountain climbing and oar-jumping, and was said to have excelled in the art of knife juggling as well.


title: Vikings

text: Skiing and ice skating were the primary winter sports of the Vikings, although skiing was also used as everyday means of transport in winter and in the colder regions of the north.


title: Vikings

text: Horse fighting was practised for sport, although the rules are unclear. It appears to have involved two stallions pitted against each other, within smell and sight of fenced-off mares. Whatever the rules were, the fights often resulted in the death of one of the stallions.


title: Vikings

text: Icelandic sources refer to the sport of "knattleik". A ball game akin to hockey, knattleik involved a bat and a small hard ball and was usually played on a smooth field of ice. The rules are unclear, but it was popular with both adults and children, even though it often led to injuries. Knattleik appears to have been played only in Iceland, where it attracted many spectators, as did horse fighting.


title: Vikings

text: Hunting, as a sport, was limited to Denmark, where it was not regarded as an important occupation. Birds, deer, hares and foxes were hunted with bow and spear, and later with crossbows. The techniques were stalking, snare and traps and "par force" hunting with dog packs.


title: Vikings

text: Both archaeological finds and written sources testify to the fact that the Vikings set aside time for social and festive gatherings.


title: Vikings

text: Board games and dice games were played as a popular pastime at all levels of society. Preserved gaming pieces and boards show game boards made of easily available materials like wood, with game pieces manufactured from stone, wood or bone, while other finds include elaborately carved boards and game pieces of glass, amber, antler or walrus tusk, together with materials of foreign origin, such as ivory. The Vikings played several types of "tafl" games; "hnefatafl", "nitavl" (nine men's morris) and the less common "kvatrutafl". Chess also appeared at the end of the Viking Age. Hnefatafl is a war game, in which the object is to capture the king piece—a large hostile army threatens and the king's men have to protect the king. It was played on a board with squares using black and white pieces, with moves made according to dice rolls. The Ockelbo Runestone shows two men engaged in Hnefatafl, and the sagas suggest that money or valuables could have been involved in some dice games.


title: Vikings

text: On festive occasions storytelling, skaldic poetry, music and alcoholic drinks, like beer and mead, contributed to the atmosphere. Music was considered an art form and music proficiency as fitting for a cultivated man. The Vikings are known to have played instruments including harps, fiddles, lyres and lutes.


title: Vikings

text: Elements of a Scandinavian identity and practices were maintained in settler societies, but they could be quite distinct as the groups assimilated into the neighboring societies. Assimilation to the Frankish culture in Normandy for example was rapid. Links to a Viking identity remained longer in the remote islands of Iceland and the Faroes.


title: Vikings

text: Knowledge about the arms and armour of the Viking age is based on archaeological finds, pictorial representation, and to some extent on the accounts in the Norse sagas and Norse laws recorded in the 13th century. According to custom, all free Norse men were required to own weapons and were permitted to carry them at all times. These arms indicated a Viking's social status: a wealthy Viking had a complete ensemble of a helmet, shield, mail shirt, and sword. However, swords were rarely used in battle, probably not sturdy enough for combat and most likely only used as symbolic or decorative items.


title: Vikings

text: A typical "bóndi" (freeman) was more likely to fight with a spear and shield, and most also carried a seax as a utility knife and side-arm. Bows were used in the opening stages of land battles and at sea, but they tended to be considered less "honourable" than melee weapons. Vikings were relatively unusual for the time in their use of axes as a main battle weapon. The Húscarls, the elite guard of King Cnut (and later of King Harold II) were armed with two-handed axes that could split shields or metal helmets with ease.


title: Vikings

text: The warfare and violence of the Vikings were often motivated and fuelled by their beliefs in Norse religion, focusing on Thor and Odin, the gods of war and death. In combat, it is believed that the Vikings sometimes engaged in a disordered style of frenetic, furious fighting known as "berserkergang", leading them to be termed "berserkers". Such tactics may have been deployed intentionally by shock troops, and the berserk-state may have been induced through ingestion of materials with psychoactive properties, such as the Hyoscyamus niger, hallucinogenic mushroom "Amanita muscaria", or large amounts of alcohol.


title: Vikings

text: The Vikings established and engaged in extensive trading networks throughout the known world and had a profound influence on the economic development of Europe and Scandinavia.


title: Vikings

text: Except for the major trading centres of Ribe, Hedeby and the like, the Viking world was unfamiliar with the use of coinage and was based on so called bullion economy, that is, the weight of precious metals. Silver was the most common metal in the economy, although gold was also used to some extent. Silver circulated in the form of bars, or ingots, as well as in the form of jewellery and ornaments. A large number of silver hoards from the Viking Age have been uncovered, both in Scandinavia and the lands they settled. Traders carried small scales, enabling them to measure weight very accurately, so it was possible to have a very precise system of trade and exchange, even without a regular coinage.


title: Vikings

text: Organized trade covered everything from ordinary items in bulk to exotic luxury products. The Viking ship designs, like that of the "knarr", were an important factor in their success as merchants. Imported goods from other cultures included:


title: Vikings

text: To counter these valuable imports, the Vikings exported a large variety of goods. These goods included:


title: Vikings

text: Other exports included weapons, walrus ivory, wax, salt and cod. As one of the more exotic exports, hunting birds were sometimes provided from Norway to the European aristocracy, from the 10th century.


title: Vikings

text: Many of these goods were also traded within the Viking world itself, as well as goods such as soapstone and whetstone. Soapstone was traded with the Norse on Iceland and in Jutland, who used it for pottery. Whetstones were traded and used for sharpening weapons, tools and knives. There are indications from Ribe and surrounding areas, that the extensive medieval trade with oxen and cattle from Jutland (see Ox Road), reach as far back as c. 720 AD. This trade satisfied the Vikings' need for leather and meat to some extent, and perhaps hides for parchment production on the European mainland. Wool was also very important as a domestic product for the Vikings, to produce warm clothing for the cold Scandinavian and Nordic climate, and for sails. Sails for Viking ships required large amounts of wool, as evidenced by experimental archaeology. There are archaeological signs of organised textile productions in Scandinavia, reaching as far back as the early Iron Ages. Artisans and craftsmen in the larger towns were supplied with antlers from organised hunting with large-scale reindeer traps in the far north. They were used as raw material for making everyday utensils like combs.


title: Vikings

text: In England the Viking Age began dramatically on 8 June 793 when Norsemen destroyed the abbey on the island of Lindisfarne. The devastation of Northumbria's Holy Island shocked and alerted the royal courts of Europe to the Viking presence. "Never before has such an atrocity been seen," declared the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York. Medieval Christians in Europe were totally unprepared for the Viking incursions and could find no explanation for their arrival and the accompanying suffering they experienced at their hands save the "Wrath of God". More than any other single event, the attack on Lindisfarne demonised perception of the Vikings for the next twelve centuries. Not until the 1890s did scholars outside Scandinavia begin to seriously reassess the achievements of the Vikings, recognizing their artistry, technological skills, and seamanship.