Viking Aesthetic

10 hours ago

Post 01-2025 Aesthetic Explorations

The Viking Aesthetic mainly focuses on the art that Vikings bore on their boats, weapons, and general possessions like furniture, buildings, and graves. There is a main theme of organic forms, being inspired by nature and animals as well as their own runic languages.

Vikings being those from Scandinavia from the late 8^th to 11^th centuries who raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of mostly Northern Europe were mainly responsible for this aesthetic. Being from this part of the world at this specific time, influences can be drawn from Celtic, Germanic, and Romanesque art to develop this style. Due to the fact that the Vikings would apply this art to their everyday belongings, they usually utilized durable materials such as metal, stone, bone, ivory, as well as textiles.

This aesthetic can be broken into 6 different styles: Oseberg, Borre, Jellinge, Mammen, Ringerike, and Urnes.

Oseberg (780-850 AD) taking its name from a ship, a longship that was highly decorated and discovered near a farm in Norway, is the initial style that is considered to be Viking art. The ship itself, along with many wooden objects inside, were highly decorated in an animal interlace style featuring “Gripping Beasts” and “Ribbon-Animals.”

Borre (840-970 AD) named after harness mounts recovered in the village of Borre, Norway, expands upon the Oseberg style and emphasizes geometric interlace patterns and zoomorphic motifs in a more circular fashion. This style is characteristically composed of tight, closed forms of these patterns.

To contrast, the Jellinge style (900 – 1000 AD) which bridges the Borre and later Mammen styles, is characterized by ribbon and band-shaped animal motifs and was often more open compared to the Borre style.

The Mammen style (late 10^th century), derived from a silver axe head, is very similar to the Jellinge and Borre Styles but has more of an emphasis on a centerpiece as opposed to a pattern throughout.

Silver axe head from Mammen, Denmark (4)

The Ringerike style (early 11^th century ) is well depicted in a reddish sandstone and is a larger representation of the same kind of work but is differentiated from the Mammen style due to its axial symmetry which deemphasizes the focus.

Lastly, the Urnes style (11^th to 12 century ) is characterized by similar skinny and stylized animals interwoven into patterns. The animal heads are usually depicted as having slender eyes and the appendages are usually upwardly curled towards the noses and the necks.

Additionally, this aesthetic includes some usage of runes, the alphabet the Vikings commonly used. They would use runes to emphasize the importance of something, carving them into stones to commemorate ancestors and mark graves, and were sometimes used for protection from the supernatural.