Fun Fact 2: Facts on Viking children's names! Children were usually named after family ancestors, famous Vikings or Gods, a boy's last name usually linked them to their father
Fun Fact 3: The Vikings were extremely strong and despised weakness, if a baby or young child was ill or considered a burden on the family it would be left to perish or thrown at sea!
Fun Fact 4: Children wore clothes similar to their parents, but girls did not anything on their head unless it was very cold. Click here to learn more about Viking Clothing
Fun Fact 5: Children did not have many toys and everything was made from natural resources; wood, leather cloth and bone. Examples of toys include; swords, boats, animals, dolls, musical instruments and board games and dice games
Fun Fact 6: Viking kids did not go to school; they helped by working on the farms, in workshops and at home. Children’s tasks included; tending to animals, collecting wood and water, farming, cooking and cleaning
Fun Fact 7: Older boys were taught how to use weapons and how to sail. Older girls were taught how to spin and weave wool and taught how to make clothes
Fun Fact 8: Hnefatafl was a strategic board game played by the Vikings. Chess became popular in the later part of the Viking age, it is believed that it may have been taught by Vikings who had returned from the Far East. Chess pieces were made from wood, clay, bone, ivory or whale teeth
Fun Fact 9: Vikings loved riddles, sagas, stories and songs; in the evening the family would gather around and tell stories, entertain and sing songs. By storytelling to the kids songs, stories and sagas were passed down the generations by word of mouth
Fun Fact 10: Travelling poets and story tellers would visit towns and villages; they would enlighten adults and children with stories of heroes, events, Gods and Goddesses
Fun Fact 11: Although there were no books some children learnt how to read Runes and carve messages. The Runic alphabet is traditionally referred to as Futhark
Fun Fact 12: There was no school for children, but they still had lots of life-skills to learn! They learnt how to; light a fire, milk the cows sheep and goats, ride a horse, row a boat, tend to vegetables, spin wool, and weave
Fun Fact 13: Boys began weapon practice in their early teenage years, there is evidence of warriors as young as 16
Fun Fact 14: Viking children participated in sport; children swam, practiced archery and sometimes ice-skated with blades made of bone or wood. A game called Knattleikr was very popular; the game was played with a stick and ball
Fun Fact 15: Experts estimate that 20% of children died before they were 5 years old and another 15% did not reach the age of 20. The life expectancy of an adult was much younger than today, Vikings lived to be approximately 40 years of age |
