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Home Boundless meetings Family and hierarchy Divine craftwork Midgard 28: Meaningful drinking 29: Til – a Viking Age estate 30: Town-like trading centres emerged 31: Skiing Finns – the northern people 32: Ceramics from all around the world 33: Runes in everyday life 34: Surviving the winter 35: Dirty creatures or vain Norse people? 36: No moderation when dressing up 37: Only fragments and threads remain 38: House and home under lock and key 39: A wooden spoon for the soup 40: The longhouse – symbol of ownership 41: Dark – but warm and colourful 42: Demand for timber emptied the landscape 43: Food for the poor and the rich 44: Music for work, everyday life and feasts 45: Sacrifices – Viking home insurance Belief and traditions The living and the dead Waterways Trading and raiding Town-like centres Christian monuments
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Midgard

The farmstead was the foundation of identity

The farmstead was important for those who lived from agriculture. Belonging to a farmstead which had been owned by the same extended family for generations was in many ways the basis of an individual’s identity. And it lent legitimacy to the position of the family in society.

The importance of the farmstead is shown clearly in the mythology, with Midgard, where the humans lived, surrounding the home of the gods, Asgard. In the Prose Edda it is also told that Midgard borders on Utgard, the dangerous, wild, outlying land where giants and other forces of chaos live.

Translated into daily life Midgard would be the equivalent of the farmstead and the cultivated fields, while Utgard signified untamed nature, the forests and mountains. But this view of the world was written down several hundred years after the Viking Age. Research from later eras questions the role of the hostile Utgard as the antithesis to the settled and secure Midgard. Utgard is a younger concept, with a shorter history than Midgard.

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Meaningful drinking  >
28
Til – a Viking Age estate  >
29
Town-like trading centres emerged  >
30
Skiing Finns – the northern people  >
31
Ceramics from all around the world  >
32
Runes in everyday life  >
33
Surviving the winter  >
34
Dirty creatures or vain Norse people?  >
35
No moderation when dressing up  >
36
Only fragments and threads remain  >
37
House and home under lock and key  >
38
A wooden spoon for the soup  >
39
The longhouse – symbol of ownership  >
40
Dark – but warm and colourful  >
41
Demand for timber emptied the landscape  >
42
Food for the poor and the rich  >
43
Music for work, everyday life and feasts  >
44
Sacrifices – Viking home insurance  >
45