Day 7: The Viking Village
- vidvry
- Jul 14, 2025
- 3 min read
June 7
What color do you associate with Ireland?
Many years ago, before the huge parades, the 'Kiss me I'm Irish' t-shirts, and the drunken partying, Saint Patrick's Day was a holy day of prayer and abstinence, in which the pubs were closed and people went to church and then straight home. But in the diaspora, the Irish emigrants wanted to gather and remember their homeland with a festive atmosphere, so they began to drink and turn the day into a party. By the 1960s the diasporic celebrations had made their way back to the homeland and officially supplanted the traditionally somber atmosphere. So the Saint Patrick's Day we're familiar with today really originated outside of Ireland.
The same is true with green. Tim told us today that in the diaspora, Irish emigrants remembered their homeland fondly as green-- so green compared to the built-up landscapes of the cities they fled to, that they embraced green in their Saint Patrick's Day celebrations and communities. Actually, the national color of Ireland is a dark blue. It's the background of the national crest, the harp.
We spent much of the day today learning about a different era in Irish history though, visiting the Ballydugan Medieval settlement in Downpatrick, a recreated Viking village. When we arrived, we were greeted by about a handful of long-haired bearded men,
a couple equally longhaired women and two blond braided children, all wearing medieval tunics, metal jewelry and assorted real animal pelts. The buildings were all made of logs and other natural materials, and they told us that they spend every weekend there, foraging for herbs, making longbows and sword handles on a metal forge, and generally living like Vikings (minus the pillaging etc).
We got dressed up in extra medieval outfits, and rotated around in groups learning about Viking history and trying our hand at various crafts and activities including ax-throwing and archery. I actually ended up getting a bullseye, and Nevan said I was the real-life Merida from the Disney-Pixar movie "Brave."
The Vikings invaded Ireland close to 350 years after Patrick brought Christianity to the island. Originating in Norway, the Vikings practiced the Old Norse religion, which taught that life was preordained, matched by the length of a string measured out when you were born. One of the volunteers told us that this accounted for their fearlessness in battle; when you believe that your life is set to end at a precise time, and that the fiercest warriors enjoy the greatest rewards in Valhalla, few enemies can really measure up.
"Viking life was a hard life," one of the volunteers told us. The average person lived only to about 45, and perhaps due to this, there was less division of labor. Women and teenagers were given the same tasks and responsibilities as adult men, even participating in raids and taking ownership of the land once the husband died. The Vikings spent all year farming and working, so they were leagues stronger than we are today, both the men and the women. Apparently archaeologists excavating the wreck of one of their ships asked modern archers to shoot an arrow from one of the longbows they discovered. The bow was so enormous and heavy that the archers could not even string the bow, let alone shoot it.
I'm always fascinated in learning about how views on gender, religion and family shift over time. It was especially interesting to consider that the average Irish woman living in a Viking settlement would have arguably enjoyed more power and status in the year 800 CE than in the same land in the year 1920. I wonder what Merida would have to say about that.
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