Reflections on Our Fascination with Vikings and
What It Tells Us about How We Engage with the Past
I have always been fascinated with the more distant past. The present or even recent past has never interested me much – just too familiar somehow. But late medieval western Europe holds a certain appeal, probably because it’s my history as an American of European descent; I feel it in my soul somehow. That time also has a unique, foreign quality to it that I can’t quite get my head around. As the saying goes, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there,”1 and that intrigues me. And so it was that I embarked on a new project to teach a class on the Viking Age during the spring 2015 term at Portland Community College. Part of my interest stemmed from a trip to Norway, and having documented Scandinavian ancestry in both my parents’ families. Also, as a historian who specializes in medieval and early modern Europe, the Vikings are not entirely unfamiliar to me, but in the college survey courses I usually teach they barely get a glance before time constraints require me to move on to the next topic. Finally, however, it was the interest in the Vikings expressed time and time again by my students that became a compelling tipping point for me. The curiosity and mystique were just too hard to resist, and the class quickly filled with 28 students.
By Terri L. Barnes