Harald Hardrada - The last viking king of the North

[neloon]

As Bruce Scott says - 2 different Harolds (beat me to it).

I was recently in Denmark and visited the Jelling Rune Stones. Great museum, it's adjacent to the burial mounds of Gorm the Old and Harold Bluetooth.

I don't think the viking on the bridge in the original post is meant to be Hardrada - instead it depicts a famous moment in the battle of Stirling Bridge where an exceptional tall, lone, viking held the bridge for some time, until one of the saxons was able to float under the bridge and attack him from below.

He prob. isn't wearing a kilt - as we know it - but I understand that the word comes from Old Norse meaning to pleat or gather.

No Vikings at Stirling Bridge - a few centuries too late! How about Stamford Bridge
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba...tamford_Bridge

Alan

[Tomo]

No Vikings at Stirling Bridge - a few centuries too late! How about Stamford Bridge
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba...tamford_Bridge

Alan

Indeed - had to recheck that - can't believe I typed Stirling instead of Stamford - my mind must have been elsewhere.

Thanks.

[John_Carrick]

At school there was much mirth about winning at Stamford Bridge (the home ground of Chelsea Football Club)

[Troglodyte]

Contemporary accounts exist of them men causing something of a sensation when they returned to their Nordic homes after a period in Scotland's Western Isles during the 12th/13th centuries. They had adopted the dress of the Isles, and some say this was the kilt, but tht is open to debate and interpretation.

[Allan Thomson]

Intriguing that you say returned to their homes? Their homes in the 12th & 13th centuries were very much in the Islands, the Norse Gaelic Dynasties of the Kingdom of Mann & the Isles (The Sudries) were well established and from their linage springs many of the Western Highland clans such as the Campbells and McDonald's. It wouldn't have been the kilt, more likely the Leine perhaps with a plaid but the 1st reference to Hebridian mercenaries "belting their mantles about them" is from the 1500's...