Vikings: What Does Their Hair Tell Us?

Gone Medieval

History Hit

History

4.6 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

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Summary

If you've watched a film or TV show about vikings recently, you may well have noticed a distinctive hairstyle featuring an undercut and a ponytail. But is this actually a realistic depiction? And, do we really know much about viking hair at all?

Luckily, we certainly know a lot about viking grooming, not least because Norsemen were said to be popular with Anglo-Saxon women thanks to their (relative) cleanliness! What we know about viking hair, hygiene and grooming can actually tell us a lot about the Viking age as a whole. Alas in this episode, Cat sits down with Dr Steve Ashby, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York, to find out more about this hairy subject.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Have you ever wondered why one of Ruan Cathedral's towers is called the Tower of Butter, or what
0:06.2	animals have faced trials in courts for, or even how the black country got its name?
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0:23.3	It's available to buy now from your favourite bookshop or by visiting historyhit.com forward slash
0:30.0	book.
0:35.1	Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. My name is Dr. Cat Jamon.
0:39.6	Now, if you've watched a film or a TV show about Vikings in recent years,
0:44.4	you may well have noticed the quite distinctive hairstyle, but is that actually a realistic depiction?
0:51.8	And do we really know much about it at all? We certainly know quite a lot about the Vikings
0:57.6	attitudes to appearance and personal grooming. And in fact, what we know about this can tell us
1:03.5	about not just things like social relationships, but also something quite different, like
1:08.5	international trade, even contacts across the North Sea and how the Viking Age started.
1:14.2	And I'm going to get to all of that in this episode because I'm very excited to have us my
1:19.0	guest today, somebody who specialises in all of this. I've got Dr. Steve Ashby here today.
1:24.0	Steve is a senior lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York.
1:29.2	So welcome to Gone Medieval, Steve.
1:31.4	You're a problem less than me again.
1:33.0	So, okay, we need to talk about this with hair. And we do just need to start with this sort of
1:39.5	stereotype that I think a lot of people now in 2022, if they imagine a Viking in their mind,
1:46.8	they may well have this image that we get from our TV screens of if it's a woman,
1:51.5	she might have elaborate plots in long hair. A man might have a sort of undercutter shaved
	...

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