Being to Clean and Nice Smelling in the Viking Age Could get you Killed.

The Viking reputation for being well-groomed comes from Christian accounts condemning such behavior as vain posturing which seduced Christians into emulating pagan ways and so angering God. After the Viking sack of the monastery of Lindisfarne in 793, the scholar Alcuin (d. c. 804) wrote a number of letters to English kings denouncing those Christians who had begun dressing and caring for themselves as the pagan Vikings did since this had obviously incurred God’s wrath. The Viking raids in Britain, he claimed, were a punishment from God for the people’s sin of self-care apparent in their emulation of the Vikings:

Consider the dress, the way of wearing the hair, the luxurious habits of the princes and people. Look at your trimming of the beard and hair, in which you have wished to resemble the pagans. Are you not menaced by terror of them whose fashion you wished to follow? (Somerville & McDonald, 187)

Christian writings routinely demonize the Vikings but periodically let slip the Christian resentment for the better-groomed – and sweeter-smelling – Scandinavian invaders. Scholar Magnus Magnusson cites the 13th-century English chronicler John of Wallingford’s famous passage in which he justifies the massacre of the Danes in 1002:

The Danes made themselves too acceptable to English women by their elegant manners and their care of their person. They combed their hair every day, bathed every Saturday, and even changed their garments often. They set off their persons by many such frivolous devices. In this manner, they laid siege to the virtue of the married women and persuaded the daughters, even of the nobles, to be their concubines. (135)

The English resentment of the newcomers certainly was not solely due to the Vikings’ better grooming and hygienic habits, but these added to the tensions in Britain since, as Magnusson observes, the Viking custom of "taking baths and changing their underwear gave them an unfair advantage over their Anglo-Saxon rivals for the affections of the local maidens" (135). Viking hygiene was only one aspect of their attraction, however, as they also paid careful attention to their clothing and accessories.

From World History Encyclopedia