Folkmoot Three: The Myth of The Vikings

Join us for the third Folk Union Folkmoot as we look at The Myth of the Vikings.

Vikings as we think we know them (fur cloak, runes, longships on a grey sea - and, of course, horned helmets) aren’t straightforwardly historic. Theirs is a story that’s been told and retold over again for centuries. From medieval chronicles to Victorian romantics, to Netflix and heavy metal album covers, every era has found the Viking it needed.

We’ll be joined by Natalie Hopwood and others (to be announced soon) to ask how much of our understanding of the past is fact, and how much is just a projection. Does it matter that so much of what we think we know about the Vikings is filtered through myth, nationalism and revival culture? Every folk revival builds myths and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Myth connects people, but it’s also, by definition, an edited version of what’s real.

Of course, this isn’t just about Vikings. They’re examples of a pattern of how something real becomes part of folklore. How folklore becomes part of our identity. And how those identities feed back into the present folk movement. When we think of the Vikings, are we recovering something authentically real, or are we just repeating a 19th century fantasy about northernness?

This is an online event taking place on Microsoft Teams at 7pm GMT on 23rd of March 2026. I hope you can come along.