A milestone episode with Jackson Crawford

About this episode

The episode features a conversation with Old Norse scholar Dr. Jackson Crawford about the linguistic origins of the word 'viking' and its implications.

It’s our 60th episode! And what better way to spend our Diamond Jubilee than a long-awaited chat with Old Norse scholar Dr. Jackson Crawford? Many of you will be familiar with him through his immensely popular YouTube channel , where you can experience the intersection of cowboy cool and the vikings. He has produced hundreds of videos about Old Norse, history, and the literature of the Viking Age, much of it set in a wild west backdrop. He has also done saga and poem translations, including The Poetic Edda , The Saga of the Volsungs , and Hávamál , and is currently working on a translation of The Prose Edda . We chatted with him about a lot of things, as we tend to do, but we started with the word ‘viking’ and its linguistic origins in the Old Norse words viking and víkingr . Did actual vikings use that word to describe themselves? Did it mean the same to them as it does to us? Was it seen as a good thing to be a viking? Was it a full-time profession, or were they just seasonal violence workers? Watch or listen for the answers to all of that and more! Takk fyrir Jackson for spending some time with us. It was well worth the wait! Vikingology is reader-supported. To support what we…

People in this episode

Host: Vikingology Podcast

Guest: Jackson Crawford

Topics covered

• Old Norse
• Vikings
• linguistic origins
• history
• literature
• translations

Keywords

• viking
• Old Norse
• Jackson Crawford
• translations
• Viking Age
• linguistics
• history

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Poetic Edda, The Saga of the Volsungs, Hávamál, The Prose Edda

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• The Art of Viking Death · January 17, 2026 · 1h 7m