The Search for American Vikings:
Untangling Myth from Reality
Martyn Whittock,
Independent Researcher and Author
Date: 15th of October 2025
Time: 20:00
Venue: Zoom
A vivid and illuminating new history—separate fact from fiction, myth from legend—exploring the early Vikings settlements in North America.
For a thousand years, Norse sagas (written in 13th-century Iceland) claimed that Vikings migrated from Greenland to reach a land to the West called ‘Vinland.’ It was, and is, a claim that stimulates the imagination and controversy, for it insists that Vikings influenced lands very far from Scandinavia. In this talk – based on my book American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America – I explore the evidence for this in the literary sources and archaeology (most notably on Newfoundland); claims regarding runestones ‘discovered’ in the USA; and the way this idea of ‘Vinland Vikings’ has fed into the cultural DNA of North America and especially the USA. In recent times that has led to their co-option by the US far-right as seen in the ‘Unite the Right’ rally at Charlottesville (2017) and on January 6th at the US Capitol. This talk will explore both the evidence for Norse settlement in North America and why it became (and remains) so important in the ‘deep story’ of contested US identities.
About the speaker:
Martyn Whittock has been a consultant for the BBC, English Heritage and the National Trust in the UK, and he has written for several historical journals. In addition, as a commentator and columnist, he writes for several print and online news platforms and has been interviewed on TV and radio news programmes exploring the impact of history on current events in the UK, USA, Russia, Ukraine, and globally. His other Viking-related books include Norse Myths and Legends (2017), The Vikings: From Odin to Christ (2018) and his most recent publication Vikings in the East – From Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin. The Origins of a Contested Legacy in Russia and Ukraine (2025). Regarding the USA, he is also co-author of Trump and the Puritans (2020).
This walk will be preceded by the AGM at 7:35.
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