Episode 22

Happy ThanksViking!

This week, Anna and Amber have a Thing*: it’s an episode all about the Viking Age! Sail with us through an exploration of life during the Viking Age. We talk about the ships they sailed, the food they ate, and the helmets they DIDN'T wear. Plus, some very experimental archaeology, and Amber learns how the salami is made...and nothing will ever be the same.

*Thing: An Old Norse word for an assembly of people convened for decision-making. Pronounced “ting.”

To learn more, check out:

How Vikings navigated the world (ScienceNordic)

Did Vikings really wear horned helmets? (History.com)

Viking food (National Museum of Denmark)

Fondén, R. , Leporanta, K. and Svensson, U. (2007). Nordic/Scandinavian Fermented Milk Products. In Fermented Milks, A. Tamime (Ed.). doi:10.1002/9780470995501.ch7

Holck, Per (August 2006). "The Oseberg Ship Burial, Norway: New Thoughts On the Skeletons From the Grave Mound". European Journal of Archaeology. 9 (2–3): 185–210

Daily Life in the Viking Age (Norse Mythology for Smart People)

Something rotten in Scandinavia : The world's earliest evidence of fermentation (Journal of Archaeological Science)

World’s Earliest Evidence Of Food Fermentation Discovered In Southern Sweden (Message to Eagle)

*Remember “thing” from our Mythconceptions episode?

Next Episode All Episodes Previous Episode

About the Podcast

Show artwork for The Dirt Podcast
The Dirt Podcast
Archaeology, Anthropology, and our shared human past.

Listen for free

About your host

Profile picture for The Dirt Podcast

The Dirt Podcast

As science communicators in anthropology and archaeology, we hosts of The Dirt acknowledge that we hold a position of considerable privilege and opportunity, and commit ourselves to continuous learning, unlearning and reflection. We recognize that our disciplines, as well as our own lives, are rooted in and propped up by settler colonialism, white supremacy, and dispossession.

We now reside on the stolen ancestral territory of the Shawnee and Haudenosaunee and on the lands of the Muscogee and Cherokee Nations, but over its lifetime, The Dirt has also been produced on the unceded traditional territory of the Piscataway Conoy and Cedarville Band of Piscataway Indians, as well as that of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Patwin and Miwok peoples and all those dispossessed by Cession 296. We offer our show as a platform for Indigenous scholarship, history, and cultural expression, through citation and conversation, and we welcome the opportunity to host and compensate Indigenous scholars of archaeology and anthropology as interview guests.

Likewise, we encourage all listeners who reside in settler-colonial states to learn about on whose land they reside, their place in the ongoing process of colonization, and how to contribute materially to reparations and Indigenous sovereignty.