Events!

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NEW!

A new video interview with Hurstwic presented by The Bard's Archive.

Hurstwic presented a lecture Turf Houses in Flames: the use of fire as a weapon at the Torfarfurinn turf house symposium, detailing Hurstwic's burning longhouse experiments. A video of the lecture is here.

A technical report on Hurstwic's burning longhouse experiments was prepared by students of the WPI Fire Protection Engineering department who were part of the Hurstwic team on the project. The report may be downloaded here.

New video from Business Insider: How Real Is It. Hurstwic's Dr. William R. Short rates Viking combat in recent movies and TV shows.

Hurstwic's recent lecture: Life, Death, and Afterlife: Religion in the Viking Age is now available on YouTube.

There are new additions to Hurstwic's Recent Media Appearances page related to our recent Fire Festival, with more to come.

Now available: a new book detailing Hurstwic's research on Viking combat. Men of Terror, A Comprehensive Analysis of Viking Combat (Westholme 2021) is a richly illustrated interdisciplinary study of the heart of Viking society: weapons and combat and is based on more than two decades of research at Hurstwic. The book takes its title from a runestone raised 1000 years ago in Denmark in memory of a man named Fraði, who is called the "first among Vikings" and a "terror of men." The authors present a holistic picture of Fraði's society from what has previously been only disparate and intriguing parts. Order it now from your favorite book seller.

Viking-age History, Culture, and Society

Learn more about Viking-age topics using on-line articles and other documents created by Hurstwic. Whether you are a scholar, a student, or just have a casual curiosity about Vikings, we think you'll find something of interest here.

The Saga of Hurstwic

Read our story about Hurstwic came to be: the Saga of Hurstwic.

Hurstwic Research

Hurstwic has developed a unique, science-based approach to researching Viking-related topics, which will be the subject of a future web article and is outlined in a lecture now on-line that we gave at the National Museum of Iceland. In our research, we have encountered many traps and pitfalls in the field of Viking research.
An example is our research into Viking-age iron smelting, a project that culminated in an iron-making festival at Eiríksstaður in Iceland, and a special exhibit on Viking-age iron-making featuring our research at the National Museum of Iceland that ran through 2024.

Hurstwic Media On-line

Video and audio of Hurstwic interviews, lectures, and presentations, both from various media appearances, and also from Hurstwic’s Heathen Study Group Lecture Series (now, sadly, at an end).

We are Hurstwic! Read the story of our journey to this point: our pitfalls and wrong turns and backtracks to reach this point in time, and the document More About Us that showcases our recent accomplishments.