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Y302: The Viking Age c.790–1066

Culture and religion: culture, poetry and its purpose, sagas, feasting

  • 2 things to know
  • Unit group 3

Overview

Recall questions on culture: art, language, writing, including runes, and naming customs, poetry and its purpose, including rune poems, eddaic poems and skaldic verse, sagas, feasting.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Process

What are runes, and how did the runic alphabet change in the Viking age?

Key term

Describe Scandinavian naming customs.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Describe the characteristic features of Viking art.

    Model answer

    It is overwhelmingly ornament applied to objects, based on stylised animals interlaced with ribbons and tendrils and developing through a sequence of styles named after find-sites, from the gripping beast of the ninth century to the elegant Urnes style of the eleventh; pictorial scenes of ships, riders and myth appear chiefly on the carved memorial stones of Gotland.

  2. 2

    How did Old Norse affect the English language?

    Model answer

    Scandinavian settlement gave English hundreds of everyday words such as sky, egg, law and husband, and unusually even the pronouns they, them and their, which shows very close contact between the two speech communities.

  3. 3

    What are runes, and how did the runic alphabet change in the Viking age?

    Model answer

    Runes are angular letters designed for cutting into wood, stone and bone; in the Viking age the older alphabet of twenty-four characters was reduced to a younger row of sixteen, and short rune poems giving a line on each rune name in turn were used to memorise the order.

  4. 4

    Describe Scandinavian naming customs.

    Model answer

    A person was known by a given name and a patronymic formed from the father's name, and descriptive nicknames were widely used to distinguish individuals.

  5. 5

    Describe skaldic verse and its purpose.

    Model answer

    It was elaborate court poetry in a demanding syllabic metre, packed with kennings and composed by named poets to praise a ruler, commemorate his battles and secure his reputation in return for reward.

  6. 6

    How does eddaic poetry differ from skaldic verse?

    Model answer

    It is anonymous, in a simpler and freer metre, and deals with the gods and legendary heroes rather than with a living patron's deeds.

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