From ‘How to Train your Dragon’ to the history lessons you get from shows like ‘The Vampire Diaries,’ Vikings have been the subject for the mainstream fantasy genre for quite a while. The entire exotic and regal feel that one can portray through a Viking society is something that isn’t appreciated barely enough. If we turn the pages of our history books, the Viking ceremonies like weddings, commemorations, and such, have a very intimidatingly grand feel to them and a huge part of this is the accessories that go along with the ceremonies; from the hunting spears to their classic Viking wedding rings, the beauty of the era reflects very well through its accessories.

If we simply consider their weddings, Vikings have mostly been associated with Norse mythology where ‘to hold a wedding’ is termed as drekka brullaup which would literally translate to ‘to drink a wedding’ which says a lot about the procedure. The day for a marriage was generally a Friday, which was an auspicious day for Frigga, the Norse goddess of marriage. The weddings lasted a week, and oddly enough Viking women never spent too much time on their gowns, rather all the effort went into perfecting their hair. The complicated part was never the wedding for Vikings, it was always the engagement process. The bride and groom’s families would engage into strong negotiations regarding the bride’s dowry and the groom’s contribution to the household, these negotiations would have to include a local leader acting as brokers before the lovers could slip a wedding ring onto each-others fingers.

Recently a Norwegian couple held a Viking wedding, which was the first one to be recorded in the last thousand years, they had everything, from live ancestral music left behind and collected over the ages, the offerings to god which are believed to grant you blessings for your life, a man willing to be their Gothi (which is the Viking equivalent to a priest) and of course, era styled Viking wedding rings. The couple seemed over the moon about how their wedding went and the support they got from their family and friends. The wedding which was held in a huge field looked as beautiful back then as it does now in the pictures that commemorate the memories. The newlyweds also strongly encouraged people to actually look into a culture like that of a Vikings before shying away from it based on the sigma that surrounds it, as it really looks like something you must envy.