The Wolf's Lair

Apart from the wealth of factual medieval literary accounts of Viking depredations across the face of Northern Europe, the Icelandic Sagas feature numerous accounts of barbaric raiding by Norse pirates during the Viking Age. What many readers of such tales are not aware of is that there was an actual term that related to these raids. The strandhögg was not merely a haphazard and disorderly storming of a seaside village, it was often the calculated and deceptive practice of gaining the confidence of the local villagers, only to return later to systematically pillage those whose trust had just been earned. From this, so say the writers of the northern tales, was how a Viking “won great honor”!