Everyday life during the Viking Age

During the Viking Age, most Scandinavians are farmers and engaged in agriculture and raising animals. They live on farms or in villages near a lake or the sea. The household usually consists of a man - the master, a woman - the housewife, their children, other relatives - and enslaved people, thralls. The houses are elongated. The size varies, but often they are about 20 meters long.

It is common for everyone to live in the same house, including animals: pigs, cows, sheep, and chickens. The people live in one part of the house, the animals in another. Later in the Viking Age, the animals get their own houses. Maybe there's a pithouse in the yard. They are partly buried in the ground and are used for storage, or as workshops for handicrafts, such as forging.

During the Viking age, you eat what you grow and what your animals provide. Grain is used to bake bread, cook porridge and brew beer. Sometimes peas, celery, and onions are eaten. Livestock provide meat, fat, milk, and eggs. In addition, wild boar, deer, roe deer, elk, and seals are hunted.

Fishing is important and fish is often served. They pick berries, fruit, nuts, and collect honey. They brew a strong beer - mead - out of the honey Forks don't exist. Food is eaten with a knife, spoon and fingers. People often make their own tools and objects from wood, iron, clay, and horns.

Shoes are made of leather and clothes are made of linen or wool, sometimes of silk. Silk is not found in Scandinavia. It is imported, from far away. Only the rich can afford it! Producing your own food and making what you need is called self-sufficiency.

Sometimes, they also exchange goods or services with each other, barter. No money needed. During the Viking Age, women and men have different tasks, but work together. The woman is the head of the household and sometimes the whole farm. She carries the important keys that go to the farm house and chests.

She cooks, brews beer, spins linen and wool thread, and sews clothes. During the summer and autumn, she makes sure to build up a food supply for the winter. The man is responsible for the farm. He builds houses, ships, and manufactures tools. He hunts and fishes.

And the children? Well, they probably play like children today, but they also start working on the farm at an early age. It was tough for children in the Viking Age. About half of all children die before the age of ten from illness or injury. A large part of the population are enslaved people - thralls.

Thralls can be people, captured in war, or bought. They can also be born into slavery. Children of thralls also become thralls. If you have a debt to someone, you can become a thrall for a certain period of time, until the debt is paid. The thralls are at the bottom of society.

They are considered property and have no rights. They are unfree. The owners can even kill them. On the other hand, killing someone else's thrall is forbidden. Thralls have no say in matters, but the free men, the landlords, they vote on important matters that affect everyone in the village.

It is called things and is done in special places - thing places. During the Viking age, most men stay at home on the farm, but sometimes they sail to other countries to trade, loot or fight in wars. When the man is gone, the woman is head of the farm. But it is not just men who trade and fight in the Viking Age. In many graves, for example in Birka in today's Sweden, some women receive scales as grave gifts.

Probably because they were involved in trade, using the scales to weigh silver, a means of payment. Archaeologists have also found warriors equipment in women's graves. This suggests that women could also take part in combat.