The ’popular Viking’ is one that is not really based on historical facts, but refers to how the image and understanding of Vikings and the Viking age have grown in the popular imagination.

It is easy to interpret the popular Viking – a figure of the past (if a highly imaginative one) and associated with extreme forms of masculinity – as foremost a reactionary figure. That is, associated with ideas or groups that consider things like equality, diversity, and multiculturalism as threatening and dangerous. The Viking is often used as a symbol in regressive contexts, but in my research on Viking imagery in contemporary fantasy literature, I also found that far from being a static and conservative image of masculinity, the Viking engages in complex and varying ways with questions and anxieties regarding masculinity in the present moment.

A manly, vulnerable body

The physical body of a Viking is masculine, strong, capable, violent, and self-sufficient. It is closely associated with whiteness and normative, taken-for-granted ideas of what men or masculinity is supposed to be. At the same time, it also expresses a kind of working class masculinity; a form of masculinity that revolves around a muscular, labouring body.

Research on images and ideas of masculinity has indicated that this form of white, working-class masculinity is both naturalizing the idea of patriarchal power as originating in the male body, and exposing male vulnerability. The physically strong, working male body is a pervasive image of male strength and of a form of masculinity that in terms of systemic power is inferior and subordinate. Precisely this white, muscularly built body in the media tends to become an arena where concerns and anxieties regarding men and masculinity come to light. This masculinity then simultaneously becomes representative of ideas of male vulnerability in relation to systemic power and symbolic of male strength.

In the case of the popular Viking this is often even more pronounced: As research on Viking media shows, the Viking generally emerges not only as manly and tough, but as the manliest and toughest – the ultimate masculine power fantasy. As a figure of the distant past and associated with the idea of a wild and harsh North, the Viking barbarian comes across as a figure quite at odds with the modern world. It is perhaps no wonder, then, that the Viking sees such a popular resurgence at this very moment of widespread fear of loss of traditional male power and gender roles, where a recurring narrative in the media is one of men and masculinity being in crisis.

In my own research, looking at contemporary examples of fantasy literature, I found that it is not only maidens that find themselves carried off by the barbarian Viking. As with most Viking media, the Viking often emerges as the toughest and hardiest of all men in fantasy texts. As such, they are called upon to save or carry off not only women, but also other men. The male protagonist of Mark Lawrence’s The Red Queen’s War (2014–2016) spends a large part of the series being wounded and subsequently carried around by a strong Viking warrior, whose muscular body he enviously ogles every chance he gets. The Viking also becomes an object of queer male desire in two other fantasy trilogies: Richard K. Morgan’s A Land Fit for Heroes  (2008–2016) and Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette’s The Iskryne Saga (2007–2015). Furthermore, Joe Abercrombie’s fantasy novels Best Served Cold and The Shattered Sea portray several Viking warriors falling under the thrall of more powerful women.

In some cases, warriors are victimized by these powerful women in ways that pose important questions about male bodily autonomy and sexuality. Others sacrifice typical toxic or traditional forms of masculinity in order to become better men for their love interests.