Do You Love Vikings?

[Armoury99]

Hmmm, sounds like the start of a song: "Do you love Vikings, like I love vikings....?"

Anyway, so I was over on the Kobold Quarterly site and saw that they have a new patronage project up and running that looks like it suits my love of beards, axes, and crushing the jewelled thrones of the earth beneath my sandalled feet: Frozen Empires: Glories of the North.

Now I'm grooving to the viking vibe pretty heavily, but most of my refernce books seem to have gone to Valhalla while I wasn't looking! Chomping at the bit for more materials, I've checked out the Prose Edda, The Longships, and translations of the classic myths; I've watched The 13th Warrior, The Vikings, Pathfinder, and Outlander, and I've dug out my old AD&D Vikings sourcebook.

Anyone have any ideas on what else is out there to slake my norse thirst on? Particularly in a Pathfindery D&Ding it up kind of viking way?

Cheers in advance

[Matthew]

Well, Hurstwic is definitely worth a look.

[AtopTheMountain]

By Pathfinder, do you mean the game system, or that reference you listed? If you mean the system, then the PF Barbarian would work pretty well, with maybe a short dip in Fighter or Rogue.

EDIT: Oh, you meant more references. Never mind, then.

[Zaq]

Any reason you have the Prose Edda and not the Poetic Edda?

[Lord Vukodlak]

Do You Love Vikings?

I'm from Minnesota of course I do

[Umael]

GURPS Viking is a good reference source, even if you aren't going to use the GURPS system.

I also have "Proverbs from the North: Words of Wisdom from the Vikings", translated from the Icelandic by Joanne Asala. It is a very little known book that is wonderful for getting both a handle on the way Vikings (at least, the wise ones) think as well as giving insight into their culture. It also includes a list of resources and recommended reading in the back. It's only 63 pages long, and most of it is large font and some illustrations.

Interestingly, there was another book I purchased when I was in Norway that I have since found is missing. I was nine at the time, and the book was called Time Traveler's Guide to Vikings (I still have the Time Traveler's Guide to Knights & Castles - unless I am mistaken and it was my brother who purchased the Viking one). Pity. It had a lot of simple details and was very easy to read, yet still engaging enough now that I'm an adult. It discussed things like the fact that Viking helmets do NOT have horns on them (although I learned later on that isn't wholly true, as horns and wings are part of the helmets used in wedding ceremonies), what a real Viking axe looks like, and so on.

One more tidbit - when I was creating a world for a D&D campaign (which, sadly, died a premature death), I modeled various races on particular cultures. The halflings, of all people, were the Vikings.

(And yes, it worked. In a weird, twisted way, it worked.)

[Ormur]

If you want some original sources you could check out the Icelandic Sagas. Egils saga is probably one of the best for your purposes since the protagonist is a warrior poet with anger management issues that travels around Northern Europe to kill and insult people. Njáls saga is also among the more famous but deals mostly with infighting in the Icelandic Commonwealth with a visit to Norway.
Hávamál is a collection of advices and maxims about proper conduct for "Vikings". It could give you a sense of their values. It's a part of the Poetic Edda.

The Prose Edda is a very good account of the mythology. For something a bit easier to digest I really enjoyed the Danish Valhalla comic books about the Old Norse Gods but they might not be available in English. But the illustration have pretty much defined how I picture Norse mythology so it might still help you.