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Viking Leisure List of Categories
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What did the Vikings do during the winter or in the evenings?
Long winter nights were passed with story telling about adventures of the past or of Viking Gods. Much work took place inside also, with spinning, weaving, sewing, making tools, and so on. Carving was a major pastime. Almost every ordinary household item such as cups, spoons, chairs and even doors were carved during the long winter months. The Vikings made almost everything they used.
In the evenings they listened to their folks telling about their forefathers and their own experiences when exploring other lands with their ships, or travels to other tribes. The favorite stories were about fights between Gods and Giants. You may have heard about the Viking God named Thor. He was very strong and had a hammer that never failed him as a weapon to crash down on the heads of the giants, causing thunder in the skies, the Vikings believed. To this day we call the fifth day of the week for Thursday (old Thors-day) after him.
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What did the Vikings eat?
As for food, different areas of Scandinavia had different foods. Pork, chicken, beef and mutton were common meats. Grains such as oats, wheat and barley were also used frequently. But most common of them all was gruel or porridge. As you got closer to the coasts, fish became more common. Also the variety of veggies varied with location. It was not uncommon for any given area to have carrots, turnips and similar root vegetables. Spices were very important to those during the Viking Age, and since they had very little variation with food using different spices helped. Many spices in the Viking Age were imported from places like the Middle East and Asia, so they were very expensive. A website that has a good list of the types of foods the Vikings ate is: http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikfood.html
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What did Viking children do for fun?
The Vikings, especially kids, played a game similar to Chess, called Hnefatafl, and a throwing game called “king”, like bola. And just as I hope you and your friends do, they invented their own games to play around outside. . Younger kids would play with a wooden "wolf" which was covered with a "lambskin". As kids grew up, they would practice with their weapons and develop their skills with them. Some toys have also been found from the Viking age. One was a toy boat and another was a toy horse. Dolls have also been found, and balls as well. Sadly, there isn't much information on what Vikings did for fun. But, just imagine what you like to do and they probably did it too, except that they didn't have electricity. So no T.V.!!!
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