{"id":3923515,"date":"2026-01-12T09:03:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T14:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/portals-to-the-dead-and-magical-artifacts-inside-a-viking-house\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T09:03:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T14:03:58","slug":"portals-to-the-dead-and-magical-artifacts-inside-a-viking-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/portals-to-the-dead-and-magical-artifacts-inside-a-viking-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Portals To The Dead And Magical Artifacts \u2014 Inside A Viking House"},"content":{"rendered":"
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YouTube Video Here: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KA0VWfJEn9U?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1<\/a><\/p>\n

While we know a great deal about the Vikings thanks to books, documentaries, and other sources of information, what do we really know about how these ancient people lived when they weren\u2019t out conquering other lands?<\/p>\n

Sadly, the answer is that we don\u2019t know much at all regarding the home life of Vikings.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s changing thanks to a groundbreaking new book from Marianne Hem Eriksen entitled Architecture, Society and Ritual in the Viking Age. Doors, Dwellings, and Domestic Space.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The interior of a Viking house (Via Jon Olav Eikenes\/Flickr<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

First of all, it should be noted that the \u201caverage\u201d Viking household was a far cry from what we think of when we think of how people live now, Eriksen writes in an article<\/a> she penned for The Conversation<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Viking household, while varied, did not conform to the idealized nuclear family of Western modernity. The largest households could be composed of a couple, concubines, subordinates, farmhands and warriors, animals, itinerant workers, guests, and a range of \u2018mine, yours, and our\u2019 children. Although they lived under one roof, everyday tasks and the architecture itself created thresholds between groups and made people different from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"A
A reconstructed Viking chieftain\u2019s longhouse (Via Wikimedia Commons<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And it wasn\u2019t just the living who inhabited a Viking house.<\/p>\n

Archaeological finds suggest that the dead also had an important place and role in the Viking home. At times, human bones were even embedded into the house. That included dead infants who were buried in hearths and postholes:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt must have been meaningful for people to place body parts of their dead under the threshold or in the postholes of the longhouse, or to inter the dead in the house when they abandoned the settlement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a clear ambiguity to dwelling with the dead. On the one hand, people sometimes kept the dead close, embedding them in the living space. Infants and ancestors may have helped protect the house, anchor it in local histories, or empower its residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they became malevolent, they could threaten the household \u2013 and so the threshold<\/a> to their world needed to be controlled.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Some Viking homes even contained what can best be called portals<\/a> between the living and the dead. The most frequent location<\/a> for such a portal was the threshold of the home.<\/p>\n

\"Excavation
Excavation of Viking village in York via Flickr<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\u201cTwo written sources tell the narrative of a woman<\/a>\u00a0being lifted over a door to see into a different realm. One is an\u00a0\u00a0eyewitness account of a ship burial\u00a0<\/a>on the Volga River, where a slave woman is lifted above a freestanding portal (much like a doorframe). This allows her to speak with the dead chieftain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other is an obscure text about a ritual<\/a> gone wrong, where the lady of the house asks to be lifted \u201cover hinges and door-beams, to see if she can save the sacrifice\u201d \u2014 perhaps to see into another realm or into the future. The door could thus\u00a0be a portal to other powers and beings <\/a>. Perhaps for this reason, freestanding portals were sometimes erected at Viking burial grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Archaeologists also found many objects that must have held some special significance to the Viking residents: Pots, knives, and iron rings.<\/p>\n

The objects were usually buried in or near doorways, suggesting that they may have been used as talismans or artifacts<\/a> imbued with magical powers that were believed to protect the house from powers on the outside.<\/p>\n

Eriksen concludes her article<\/a> with a reminder that while we do indeed have much knowledge about Vikings, there remains much we still need to learn:<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen the Vikings engaged with the wider world through raids, trade, and settlement, their understanding of the world was anchored in their everyday experience in the home from childhood onwards. The time is ripe to broaden the topics we associate with the Viking Age, and to discuss the unfamiliarity and strangeness, as well as the role of inequality, in this pivotal period of European history.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Tour a Viking turf house by watching this incredible video<\/em><\/p>\n

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Featured Image Via Joxean Koret\/Flickr<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Go to Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n

YouTube Video Here: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KA0VWfJEn9U?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1<\/p>\n

While we know a great deal about the Vikings thanks to books, documentaries, and other sources of information, what do we really know about how these ancient people lived when they weren\u2019t out conquering other lands?<\/p>\n

Sadly, the answer is that we don\u2019t know much at all regarding the home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3923515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ancient-code","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3923515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3923515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3923515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3923515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3923515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3923515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}