What did some Vikings actually look like? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

We have very few contemporary images of people out a-viking during the Viking Age. Perhaps the most famous is the Inchmarnock Stone. This is a small piece of slate, something like a handheld chalkboard, found at the site of a monastery in southwest Scotland on a tiny little island at the north end of the Irish Sea—so right on the sea lanes that viking raiders began traveling just before 800. These slates are pretty common at early medieval monasteries and were used to teach new monks—some as young as seven—how to write and perhaps to draw. But the stone in question is an extracurricular sketch, a doodle that looks like one person dragging another toward a very viking-ish ship.

That's all we know for certain. The monastery seems to have been abandoned or destroyed in the first decades of the Viking Age, so our only real clues are that the ship looks similar to what we know of Viking-Age ships and it was probably drawn in the early 800s by someone—maybe a child—who had the opportunity to see vikings firsthand.

People who study these things for a living think the central figure is a viking, with wild hair, maybe some sort of chainmail shirt (or hardened leather?), and tight-fitting pants that might also be wrapped fabric. There are also similar figures at the top right, but these have been broken. The central figure seems to be dragging a smaller person behind him, with something going on at his waist and hands. Some have interpreted this as a chain and reliquary box, which were the fancy bejeweled cases used to preserve holy relics; perhaps the viking is making a captured monk carry his plunder to the ship. I think this is the most likely case. Alternatively, some have seen it as a chain and lock, indicating that this individual is a prisoner probably bound for slavery. As a final possibility, the chain and lock/reliquary might be two separate things, and the "chain" might actually be a cincture or girdle, the rope-like belt that indicated a person was a monk. If you click on the very first link, there's a handy video at the bottom that helps visualize what this all might have looked like.

Archaeology also provides rich testimony, although graves are tricky to interpret. We rarely bury soldiers today in their combat gear, and people who do get buried with weapons rarely died as soldiers in battle. We need to be similarly cautious about making one-for-one assumptions that Viking-Age burials represent snapshots of who people were in life. Nonetheless, we do find lots of things that would likely have been associated with raiding, especially shields and weapons, while things like armor and (perhaps most frustratingly) helmets might have been rarely if ever buried.

There's a lot of living history folks out there—some better than others—who have posted all sorts of interpretations, so you don't necessarily need to dive into the archaeological literature itself. In general, if someone seems to know it all, then they probably don't understand the evidence, but if they admit that there's ambiguity and gaps in our knowledge, then you can at least trust they're being transparent. For a good example of how we work though the nuts and bolts of interpretation, I think this is an excellent discussion of how we can take the fragmentary evidence of a single grave and reconstruct an entire dress from it (photo at bottom). It takes a lot of work! For a bit more variety, the Swedish group Andrimners Hemtagare put together some beautiful photos showing what a few elite burials might have looked like. (I'm also a big fan of their cremation photos!)

Finally, you might consider literature. There's lots of rich descriptions in Old Norse sagas and poetry, but keep in mind that much of this was written hundreds of years after the Viking Age and it's hard to tell what, if anything, accurately reflects what the Viking Age looked like. More contemporary descriptions are in Latin and Old English, although few describe vikings in detail. One of your best bets is the Latin poem Bella Parisiacae Urbis, which documents the viking siege of Paris in 885. A full translation of the section is here, although you'll need to request it through your library. (You'll likely have immediate access if you can search for it through a school library, but even many public libraries can help you get free access.) Old English poetry is easier to find, albeit often in clunky old translations. Here too you need to respect this as literature, which means that authors and audiences didn't necessarily value photo realism in their phrasing. Two well-known examples are The Battle of Brunanburh and The Battle of Maldon (we're missing the beginning of this one, which is why it starts mid-sentence).