By: Alana, Amasa, Emma, and Leo
The coolest part of the whole day trip to Stiklestad, in our opinion, was the viking longhouse. We learned that the whole building (besides the lights and more modern additions) was crafted using the same techniques as the vikings would have in the tenth century. There was so much passion and knowledge poured into the creation of the longhouse, it’s crazy they knew so many details of it, like the design on the pillars. We learned in class and through podcasts that it is incredibly difficult to gain information on vikings because they never wrote down their history, it was all other groups of people doing so with their skewed perspective.
Longhouses during the viking era would be the home for a whole extended family so it would be a very crowded living quarters, where they would also be cooking food. When the house would originally have been lived in, to preserve heat they would have the farm animals sleep in a connected room to the beds. I (Amasa) think it was really interesting to learn about the resourcefulness people had to have back then. They also would store as much wood as they could in the house in case it was needed, and since they used fire for light & heat they had a hole in the ceiling that could be opened to let smoke out before chimneys were implemented.
After the first section, we were able to try on some of the helmets and hold large spears and swords. I (Emma) tried on a large metal helmet while holding a spear. The spears were extremely long and hard to handle, I can’t imagine actually needing to use them! One of our classmates also tried on a chain mail piece of armor. We all got to try holding the armor to see how heavy it is. Most of us could barely hold it and it looked much lighter than we expected. We also learned about plate armor and how the armor vikings used evolved when they used new weapons to fight. We thought it was very interesting how as weapons changed, so did the defensive armor.
Something really interesting that stood out to us was that the leader of the religious ceremonies was a woman priest, called a priestess. During these ceremonies, sacrifices, which could be wine, grains, or animals, were made to the four gods. These four gods were known as Freya, Odin, Thor, and Freyr. Freyr and Freya were siblings and both the gods of fertility. Odin has only one eye and is the primary leader of the gods. Lastly, Thor has his hammer and is the god of thunder. Overall, these four gods were very prominent figures in Viking and Norwegian culture through the various ceremonies and rituals performed.
