In the Viking Era, how tall were the vikings compared to the rest of the europeans?

by MrDanGrigore

Viking are always portrayed as tall and muscular people, did they really looked like that?

y_sengaku

Steckel summarizes different research of skeletons across medieval Europe based on previous research, as shown in this table (Steckel 2004: 215).

It might be not so simple to compare among the different samples, since the average height of the sample generally tend to get smaller (perhaps due to the socially different social composition of the skeleton samples) as the sample size becomes larger.

I suppose there was not so noticeable height difference between the Scandinavians and other Europeans in the table, but you might have a different impression.

Reference:

  • Steckel, Richard H. "New Light on the "Dark Ages": The Remarkably Tall Stature of Northern European Men during the Medieval Era." Social Science History 28, no. 2 (2004): 211-29. Accessed August 03, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40267840.