A Day in the Life of a Viking Warrior - Weapons, Warfare, and Daily Life in the Viking Age

Late October, 873. Orm has been told his ship is leaving today. The Great Heathen Army has been camped at Repton, on the River Trent, for several weeks. Orm is twenty-two, a Dane from a farm near Ribe that will one day belong to his brother. He is one of thirty men in a ship’s crew. Orm is fictional, but the world he lives in is not. From the frost on the tent cloth before dawn to the following morning, A Day in the Life of a Viking Warrior follows one man through an ordinary day in an extraordinary army. Along the way, it explores what life was really like for the men who fought, rowed and camped in Viking Age England. Inside, you’ll What thousands of men ate, where they slept and how they kept warm through an English winter The weapons they carried, what they cost and how they were used How a longship was crewed, sailed up a river and brought ashore What happened during a raid, and how the spoils were divided afterwards The oaths and obligations that held a crew together, and what happened when one of its men died The gods the Vikings believed in, and the objects they took to the grave Much of Viking history has to be pieced together from scattered evidence. Graves, coins, chronicles and later sagas each tell part of the story, but they don’t always agree. This book separates what we know from what we can reasonably infer, and from what has been invented to bring the day to life. The excavations at Repton, its mass burial and the cremation cemetery at Heath Wood provide the historical setting for Orm’s story. For anyone interested in Viking warfare and daily life beyond the usual tales of raids and conquest, this is a closer look at the people who lived it.