Just curious - anyone have memories of being a Viking?

Anyone remember a Viking past life?

Yes. I was a Danish Viking Shieldmaiden, but unfortunately in my memories I couldn’t pick a year, but if I had to guess, around the 8th Century AD in one of the first Danish Viking tribes. We spoke Old Norse, and believed in Old Norse religion - Valhalla, Odin and other such Norse deities. Later in the Viking age, Christianity replaced Old Norse religion.

I deduced that we lived in what is now Ribe, Denmark too, though I believe I joined my husband on a raid on what is now England too. Danish Vikings migrated to eastern England as well, around what is now - Yorkshire.

A friend of mine also remembers a life of being a Norwegian Viking as well. Vikings primarily came from southern Scandinavia (now Denmark, Sweden and Norway). There was research that stated Vikings also came from Finland as well, but I have not read much about Finnish Vikings, so I cannot vouch for whether Vikings really came from Finland. Also Iceland was believed to have been inhabited by some Vikings too.

Have you read the Norse Sagas?

Eva x

Not as such, but I was a victim of them. I can't say I was necessarily mistreated by them...they killed my village and all that and I was taken with others, but I was a smallish child. I was not of child bearing age, so I was 8 or so. Wound up on a ship helping the rope maker while we traveled. He was kind enough, for what it was. When we got to wherever we were going, I lived with an old woman who put a needle in my hand and taught me to sew, and that's what I did in that life, same as in many others.

Sounds interesting, Elle C.
How did you discover your old history? Did the memories surge spontaneously, did you use a guided meditation or did you go to a therapist?
Your words ‘ they put a needle in my hand and taught me to sew’ sound so authentic. I guess you were female in that life.

Hey fireflydancing, some of it I just knew as a kid. My Dad didn't discourage me from talking to him about it, so I had an outlet and "memories" were accepted and normal. The first life I had was not a good one, and my dad would ask about other memories....so I had memories of a ship, of an old man (who probably was middle aged, but being a kid everyone over 40 is old). Ran into rope making somewhere along the way, unlocked more. Random memories usually weave together sometimes to form some narrative. Or feelings arise for no reason learning about them, good or bad and sometimes knowledge of them is there without studying.

I have done guided meditation, so some of the threads of memories were helped with it, even those I didn't search for. It was a process of several things overall, and I'm now in my 40s, so there has been a lot of time to learn stuff.

I don't remember ever being anything but female and I have always sewed. If I had a job in a life, it was with a needle.

Wow, great father you had. You had a save place to tell your stories. That’s special!
And you always had a needle, lol, I guess in this actual life you bought an electrical sewing machine? Are you a dress maker in this life? Or something alike?

I also mostly recall female lives. I’ve seen my hands doing needlework, weaving and yarn handling. (handling freshly spun wool) (three separate lives)

I own an alteration shop now, although I can design and do custom work and sometimes do. I have electric machines, yes, but I use treadles about as much and the machine at home is a treadle. I usually prefer to work on a treadle for sewing clothes which was the first machine I bought.

I can also hand sew as fast as most hobbyists can sew on a machine, so there is that.

Elle C. said:

I can also hand sew as fast as most hobbyists can sew on a machine, so there is that.

Click to expand...

Amazing.
I guess you feel very connected with the past when you use non modern sewing skills?
Apart from that, I would recommend sewing by hand as a form of meditation for modern people.
Just this week, I saw the reconstruction of an ancient dress from 2800 years ago. Nobody had thought that people in that era wore such bright colored clothings.


Fragments of the original cloth were found in a grave and probably she had had a special status because people used to be cremated in that period of time, not burried.
So, at least people could weave and sew almost 3000 years ago.

Sewing is a means to an end for me. Let me shock you now: I don't particularly like to sew. It is my day job and all, but I like the creativity, the problem solving...but sewing is a means to an end. It is a technical skill anyone can learn, my repertoire of skills happens to include hand sewing. That's all.

In this life, my great grandmother was a pretty proficient seamstress, and she was around until I was 13. She was young, when clothing mattered, in the 19 teens. She was poor, so she learned to sew by hand. My grandmother was a tailor, as in an actual, honest to God, belonged to the Union, mens wear tailor for Nieman Marcus. She was one of the first women in the US to achieve that, and in the 1950s no less. I had other relatives who worked as seamstresses and for several generations. My dad's grandmother worked as a seamstress, made some of the nudie suits, worked as a seamstress on movies (and made Davy Crockett's fringed jacket for Disney at one point) and made patterns for Hollywood Patterns and was a designer for Catalina swimwear, back when that was cool. Sewing is as part of this life as any other.

So when I got curious, both my g-grandma and my grandma gave me an 1866 Ladies Almanac ad on sewing machines, that had the time for machine and hand sewing. Then told me to meet it. Now, it's only been like recently (I'm stupid sometimes) that I figured out this was for civil war garments...not like modern ones, but I have spent a lot of time meeting those specs.



I did a bit of living history and recreated a Viking dress from hand, bone needle and all. I think people think of life in terms of old Greek statues: all white and pristine. Life isn't really like that and people are people regardless of the year. We light bright and pretty things, and always have. Dying has gotten much easier, but life has always been in color. So I was never surprised by it, and we find a lot of color in ancient times but we're not always taught that. (And as an aside, I don't wear black but bright colors all the time, so I might be biased.)

fireflydancing said:

Amazing.
I guess you feel very connected with the past when you use non modern sewing skills?
Apart from that, I would recommend sewing by hand as a form of meditation for modern people.
Just this week, I saw the reconstruction of an ancient dress from 2800 years ago. Nobody had thought that people in that era wore such bright colored clothings.
View attachment 2747

Fragments of the original cloth were found in a grave and probably she had had a special status because people used to be cremated in that period of time, not burried.
So, at least people could weave and sew almost 3000 years ago.

Click to expand...

I really like that dress and the bright fabric. It (to my uneducated eye) could look just as much at home in a 19th-century time as one from 3,000 years ago. That says something, about how people remain much the same and even lived much the same for many thousands of years.

Though I can't help but feel some of the bright colours were perhaps related to (relative) wealth and prestige and also to trading, where raw materials including some of the dyes may have been found in particular regions.

On a slightly different topic, some years ago I was visiting an ancient site in England, a stone circle and embankment which these days is to be found in a farmer's field and is sometimes ornamented with droppings from cows which have grazed there. Careful where to put one's feet! The site dates from about 4,000 years ago, and I've been there many times, at different times of day, morning and evening, summer and winter. One day, it must have been pleasantly warm and sunny, I sat on the embankment for a while, and was reading a book. As I looked up from my book I saw - in my inner eye, inside my mind, a procession of people walk in some sort of ceremony towards the centre of the circle. At the head was a man holding a tall wooden staff, perhaps seven or eight feet long, from which fluttered a banner or flag. Behind him were people, walking in pairs side-by-side. The colours of the clothing and of the banner were shades of red, yellow and brown. Bright colours to be sure, but no green or blue. When they reached the centre, the leader stopped, his arms outstretched at each side and firmly struck his staff on the ground, with the banner fluttering overhead.

This vision faded from my sight after a few seconds and I was alone again, there was no-one there. However the colours of the clothing were probably what was to be found or manufactured locally, rather than imported via long-distance trade.

Some memories have recently come to me, of being alive in the viking era in the 900's. ce. Male and lived in what is now Norway and was a blacksmith.

Edit: oh wow. I am reading River Kings and came across the name of an area. Heimdalsjordet, in Norway, discovered and partially excavated in 2012 and 2013. That is where my Viking blacksmith lived.