The modern term ‘Viking Age’ implies either an era associated with people called ‘vikings’, or one in which people engaged in an activity called ‘viking’, just as they practised chivalry in the Age of Chivalry, or enjoyed jazz in the Jazz Age. But it is not as easy to define ‘viking’ as either jazz or chivalry. This chapter is an attempt to discover what was involved in ‘viking’ activity, or rather activities, as indicated in the significant vocabulary of both the runic and the skaldic corpus.

Vikings

The English word ‘Viking’ or ‘viking’ should not be confused with the ON word(s) from which it was ultimately borrowed, not least because the modern word is much commoner than its Viking Age predecessors and has developed a life of its own (Fell 1987). ON has two words, the masculine víkingr referring to a person, and the abstract feminine noun víking referring to an activity. These words have been much studied in their various manifestations. Most such studies (e.g. Askeberg 1942, 114–83; Hellberg 1980; Hødnebø 1987), range widely across languages and centuries, and are often concerned with etymology and the semantic development of the term. Fell (1986; 1987) considers, respectively, Old and Modern English cognates. Here, I am concerned only with establishing in detail the uses and nuances of the words in a limited range of sources and during a limited period of the Viking Age, as outlined in chapter 1.

víkingr

The noun víkingr (m., pl. víkingar), referring to a person, occurs in both runic and skaldic sources. An immediately interesting aspect of the runic evidence is that it provides examples of Víkingr used as a personal name. This onomastic usage is attested in up to nineteen inscriptions. Although these examples represent a small part of the runic onomastic pool, their chronological and geographical range is wide. There are fifteen rune stone inscriptions in which a commissioner, the commemorated, a relative of the commemorated, or a runecarver, is called Víkingr, representing fourteen individuals in all (see fig. 2.1). In three further inscriptions, the name in question is fragmentary or uncertain, but is also likely to have been Víkingr (Sö 13, Sö 269, U 813). Finally, there is one inscription where a sequence which can be interpreted as víkingr appears in an unclear context (Sm 10, see fig. 2.2).