Ymir’s Corpse Interviews is a Scandinavian Aggression initiative in which Rowdy Geirsson picks the metaphorical cloud-matter of authors, artists, and other creators whose works are based on or inspired by the old lore of the Northlands. This time around we have Laia San José Beltrán. Laia is a historian based in Spain and the creator of the popular The Valkyrie’s Vigil website and associated social media accounts. She is also the author of the book, La Huella Vikinga, and served as the historical consultant for the extensive collection of retold Norse myths and sagas, Colección Mitos Nórdicos, for the Spanish publisher, RBA. She has also made numerous appearances in Spanish media including the program, El Condensador de Fluzo on Spanish television channel La 2, as well as on radio stations such as Cadena SER and Radio Galega.
RG: Välkommen, Laia! I’m really glad to have a chance to do this interview with you. I’ve been aware of The Valkyrie’s Vigil and La Huella Vikinga for quite sometime now, and I suspect other non-Spanish speakers have been as well. That’s of course in addition to all the Spanish speakers who know what you’re up to. So, I’m excited to get a chance to learn more about your work and interest in all things viking.
LB: Hej hej, Rowdy! It’s a pleasure to be here—I think it’s my first interview in English!
RG: Well, I’m honored have the first one with you then! And we’ll definitely get into the book and media appearances and everything of course, but to start out, can you tell us a little more about how you first got interested in vikings? What drew you into this world?
LB: I studied history at the University of Barcelona and in those years I really liked heavy metal (well, I still do, hehe) and I think that at that time power metal and viking metal were at their peak. I liked reading the lyrics to the songs and looking up what they were about. I was also, and still am, a big fan of fantasy literature, so I could say that in my youth I was surrounded by things that, directly or indirectly, talked about the vikings.
As I was also a history student, I could read about the “real” vikings and study them. I mean the historical ones, and I soon began to realize that the vikings in popular culture were not the same as the historical vikings. So, over the years, I have been surprised and very interested in how we represent them in all these types of products and, above all, why we do so.
In fact, The Valkyrie’s Vigil project began in 2013, when the Vikings television series premiered, and I started my blog of the same name to analyze each episode historically and explain the things we could see in them. It turned out that people in Spain loved it.
RG: That’s a pretty cool approach. I had no idea it started out in conjunction with the television series! But I know the show has lots of…inaccuracies with its presentation of the historical side of things. At the same time, it is a form of entertainment and draws on legendary sagas in addition to history. What were your general thoughts of the show? How much did you enjoy it?
LB: To be honest, it’s a series that I’ve really enjoyed, especially the first few seasons. I think it blends the stories from the sagas and medieval Norse literature (such as Ragnar Lodbrok, Lagertha, Aslaug) with the history of the Old Norse world (such as the first raids, the emerging social hierarchy, how it shows that they were mainly a society of farmers, and their contacts with Christianity) very well.
Obviously, it takes quite a few historical liberties, such as the clothing and hairstyles, but you can tell that a lot of research has gone into it. Furthermore, as I always try to explain to my audience, films, series, and historical novels are just that: works of fiction, which can spark our interest in a subject, such as the vikings, but should not be used to learn history.
RG: Good point. So the show served as an inspiration to the initial incarnation of your site…how did you end up deciding on the name of The Valkyrie’s Vigil for it?
LB: Valkyries are among my favorite characters from Norse mythology. But they are highly idealized characters in the collective imagination, you know, because we imagine them with that wonderful 19th century, Wagnerian aesthetic: beautiful, sensual women, with their shiny, visual armor, their ethereal touch, their winged helmets…it’s an aesthetic that has crossed borders, and almost all cultural products of recent decades represent them in this way in some form. But in reality, they are much more mysterious, much more shady characters, linked to death, destiny, and the macabre. The skaldic poem, Darraðarljóð, shows them to us in this more primitive way, and it’s something that fascinates me. In fact, I dedicate an entire chapter of my book (“The Ride of the Valkyries” in honor of Wagner’s opera) to them, where I analyze not only their figures, but also those of other female figures from Norse mythology with connections to life, death, and destiny, such as the norns or dísir.
As for the name, when I started my blog back in 2013, I needed to add a profile picture and a name, and I decided to use the painting by the British Pre-Raphaelite painter, Edward Robert Hughes, which I’m sure many people are familiar with. On the one hand, because I love all 19th and early 20th century painting—I love the way they represented the Norse world, even if it is not historically accurate—but also because I love this vision of a valkyrie far removed from the purely martial, riding through the skies, in an active attitude. In this painting, the valkyrie has a passive, almost ethereal attitude, waiting for her destiny (or perhaps after it). And I simply love it. Over the years, it has become almost my name and a personal brand.
What I do on my social media and in this project is “divulgación histórica,” which is something that is very difficult for me to explain outside of Spain because there is no translation for it. Literally translated, it means “historical dissemination,” and you could say that it is what is known in the English-speaking world as “public history” or “popular history.”
What I do, as a historian, is take my academic research—I am an independent researcher—and turn it into something intelligible to the general public according to the moment, the context, the type of audience, or the format. It is a kind of a bridge between academia and society so that the most rigorous and up-to-date knowledge reaches everyone in different ways. Over the years, I have worked for museums, publishers, television, radio, podcasts, magazines, and universities.
RG: That’s quite a range! And what you say about “historical dissemination” makes a ton of sense. I know you share a lot of great information that includes photos of relevant locations and artifacts, and obviously you’re disseminating predominately to a Spanish-speaking audience (though I’m sure there are others like me who see what you’re doing despite the Spanish language inability). But this all touches on something I’ve been wondering about: how popular are vikings in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries (if you have a sense of them because I realize they are an ocean away)? This is of course me just being unfamiliar and admittedly a bit ignorant with these places. Everything having to do with vikings has really spiked in popularity in recent years in both the US and UK, and they have a certain popularity in Scandinavia, too, though that’s a bit different as they’ve always been a little more present in the mainstream eyes there, at least in comparison to the US. So I am wondering what the situation is like in Spain and beyond?
LB: Today, vikings are immensely popular in Spain. I would say that they have become increasingly popular since the History Channel series, Vikings, and its spin-offs and other series such as The Last Kingdom were released. Everything related to vikings in popular culture in Spain is massively popular: make-up, tattoos, hairstyles (you know, impossible braids and shaved necks). And I think the same thing is happening in Latin America, where I have a lot of followers and a large community.
But historically speaking, the vikings—old Norse society, to be more precise if we want—are still relatively unknown. This is because most of the information that the Spanish and Latin American populations have received about the vikings has come through popular culture. For example, vikings are not so foreign to us in Spain or the Iberian Peninsula historically. In fact, between the 9th and 10th centuries, there were several waves of viking raids and visits, both in the north of the peninsula in the Christian kingdoms and further south in Al-Andalus.
The viking attacks led to the fortification of coastal cities, prompted an organized military response, and put considerable pressure on the Iberian kingdoms. However, as the historical and, especially, archaeological legacy has been “limited,” there is not much academic interest in the subject. For example, it is very rare for this to be studied in schools (neither the vikings in general nor the vikings on the peninsula in particular), so people tend to have a more fantastical than realistic image of the vikings. Although I believe that work such as mine is helping people to learn more and more about the subject.
RG: I’d say so. And it’s an interesting point that the archaeological legacy in Spain is “limited” as you say. Is there a national or regional heritage organization in Spain that looks after any of these sites where the vikings were, or produces informational signs for them, or anything like that? Or is that a dumb question because the specific locations of the sites either aren’t known or are places that have developed significantly since then (such as cities)?
LG: No question is silly! Unfortunately, archaeological heritage is so scarce and little known (there are no sites as such, or at least none have been found yet, only clues) that they cannot be visited, nor do we have any objects in museums because none have been found. However, last year in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, which is a place where the vikings passed through several times, a large exhibition was held with pieces from museums in Stockholm, Gotland, Denmark, and Norway. It was a great success; I was able to work on it and it was a great experience.
RG: That’s awesome. I bet there were some great items featured tin the exhibition. And speaking of your work, let’s jump into your book, which is called La Huella Vikinga, which as I understand it translates as The Viking Footprint (I have to thank the demonic yet almighty tech gods here for their online translation services!). So….please tell us what the book is about!
LB: Yes, a literal translation would be The Viking Footprint/Mark/Imprint…I think it sounds better in Spanish than in English. If it is ever translated, we should perhaps look for a more appropriate or suitable title haha.
The title refers to the mark left by the vikings—both real and those in popular culture—on our society and our imagination. But it wasn’t just a matter of pointing out or explaining “this thing that appears in this film or television series is right or wrong” or “it wasn’t like that, it was different,” but also analyzing why that happened. Why do we see vikings in a certain way, why do we represent them in a certain way…not just horned helmets; today we have viking hairstyles, make-up, and even tattoos as a result of the History Channel’s Vikings series, for example.
It’s not a full linear history about vikings, nor a thematic one, because there is plenty of wonderful books on the subject, such as those by Neil Price, Cat Jarman or Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, for example. Instead, I wanted to explore why we have such an incorrect (and sometimes really ridiculous image) about the vikings and Old Norse history.
What happened from the 18th and 19th centuries onwards when, so to speak, they were rediscovered in Europe and North America and transformed so dramatically in terms of what “vikings” meant. How the vikings ended up being associated with scientific racism in Europe and the United States. How and why they were used by German nationalism and Nazism, and why they continue to be the muse of white supremacist groups and far-right organizations today. I wanted to analyze these appropriations, this distortion of history for the benefit of certain ideologies. To do this, in the first chapters I explain where the word “viking” comes from: who these people really were and what this historical period was like and how it evolved up to the 18th and 19th centuries, which is the basis and origin of the distorted view of the vikings that we have today. I also analyze the reasons for this evolution and invention.
The book also explores the impact of the Old Norse literature in modern fantasy (The Lord of the Rings or A Song of Ice and Fire), why—wrongly of course—a lot of people linked vikings with toxic masculinity or exacerbated violence. Or why people get bothered when we introduce female vikings, characters of other ethnicities or sexual orientations in new cultural products like movies, tv shows, or video games. And why that makes no sense. So the book also deals with gender issues, such as the existence of viking warrior women through the latest archaeological findings and published studies and also address aspects of viking sexuality and identity (always from a historical and archaeological perspective).
The book also delves into the world of appearances, with the latest trends in tattoos, hairstyles, viking make-up, and why the vikings in tv series look more like the Sons of Anarchy, but aboard a longship rather than a motorbike. Or why it bothers us that Thor is “fat” in a video game. To explain all this, I use all kinds of references from popular culture that allow me to connect these ideas, from films, television series, literary works, romantic painting, video games, heavy metal, and even Second World War panzer divisions with Nordic names. Approaching these modern subjects and these day-to-day matters, I explain certain aspects of the viking world and, most importantly, what has happened since the 19th century to create this new modern concept of viking we have today.
RG: It sounds like a fascinating read, and like it also offers both a unique and comprehensive perspective on the subject in a single volume. I suspect the fact that your book really gets to the heart of what is “viking” and connects that to the myths and sagas and other cultural phenomena distinguishes it from titles in English such as Echoes of Valhalla by Jón Karl Helgason or From Asgard to Valhalla by Heather O’Donoghue that, while addressing the legacy of myths and sagas, avoid or only very briefly and loosely skirt around the whole vast concept of “viking.” So in bringing all these things together in a single book as you are doing with La Huella Vikinga, I imagine there are some great take-away lessons to be learned for the reader. To that end, is there anything in particular that you hope readers of La Huella Vikinga come away with after having finished the book?
LB: Absolutely. I read those two books while researching for my book, and I have to say that they are fantastic and were really helpful. But as you say, I think they only cover part of what I wanted to address and explore in depth. I wanted to create a work that was as comprehensive as possible, something that didn’t exist in either Spanish or English, and I think that’s what we’ve achieved. Of course, it has local references, such as some inside jokes for Spanish millennials, but it is a book intended for everyone and, with a good translation, it could be published anywhere and be perfectly understandable. Hopefully, an English publisher will take it on in the near future.
What I hope readers will take away with them when they finish reading the book, and I truly believe this is the case, is not only what is true and what is not true about the cultural vikings we see around us every day, but also where it all comes from. As a historian, I am not only interested in telling the story—the facts, the battles, the great figures—but also in explaining what purpose it serves and how we use it on many levels. Using viking history and what has been done with it since the 18th century, we can learn a valuable lesson about how history can be distorted and molded to suit different purposes, not always laudable and sometimes even dangerous. History, in the end, has a social purpose. And I believe that if someone reads the book and takes away with them not only more knowledge about the vikings—the real ones and those in popular culture—but also how history works, then the book has fulfilled its mission.
RG: So what has its reception been like in Spain? Is it available in other countries too, such as those in South America?
LB: The reception in Spain has been simply fantastic and has enabled me to attend a lot of book signings and events that are still ongoing. In Latin America, it can be obtained through platforms such as Buscalibre, which ship worldwide, but it has also been published this summer in Colombia, making it easier to get hold of. And hopefully, it will be translated and published in more places soon.
RG: I really hope it finds its way to English! Though I’d settle for Swedish, too, but that’s obviously a much smaller audience. So, I know you were also involved in the large Norse mythology retelling project called Colección Mitos Nórdicos. What is that exactly? Can you tell us more about that?
LB: That was one of the most beautiful projects I have ever worked on. The publisher wanted to take different stories from Norse mythology and literature (such as the tales that appear in the Eddas or the stories of some sagas, especially the legendary ones) and turn them into short novels.
Obviously, this involved a great deal of invention in the retelling, so I was hired as a historical advisor. I was in charge of proposing the themes for the books, which were small internal collections such as “Thor,” “Odin,” “Loki,” “Ragnar Lodbrok,” “Hervör,” etc. and advising the writers on everything they needed, as well as advising and helping the illustrators by providing them with information and documentation. The level of historical realism was then decided based on many factors, but the documentation work was very serious.
In addition—and this is what I like most about the collection—each of the books had a short historical essay at the end, written and documented by me on the subject of the book. For example, if a book was about weddings, the essay explained what we know about that subject in the ancient Nordic world. And so on with all of them. There were seventy!
RG: Wow, that’s quite a lot! Were they illustrated in the interiors also, or do you mean mainly the covers for each? And did you have a favorite one in the whole set? That might be a tough question I realize as there are quite a few to choose from.
LB: The books were illustrated inside, from Thor capturing the Midgard Serpent to a scene inside a longhouse. I provided the illustrators with all the information they needed (what the houses were like, what the villages were like, the weapons…) and then they created the illustration. There are some historical inaccuracies, of course, but I can say that they did a great job. And I think my favorite part of the collection was the books that novelized the story of the Hervör saga. Hervör is one of my favorite literary characters.
RG: Who can ever forget that scene when she wakes up her dead dad to demand he give her a cursed sword? It’s great stuff. But to change topics a little, you mentioned earlier that you’ve been on Spanish tv and radio. So what’s that been like? What sorts of things have you discussed on these shows and are there any segments or episodes that you are extra fond of?
LB: I love talking about vikings anywhere and everywhere. In more academic settings, I tend to talk about topics more related to the ancient Nordic world from a historical and archaeological perspective, especially women’s history or history and gender archaeology (which is one of my specialties). In more popular settings, so to speak, I am usually called upon to talk about more popular topics such as viking myths, who the vikings really were, vikings in popular culture…but as I have become quite well known in the media, I am very proud to have appeared on television, radio, and other non-academic platforms to discuss more profound or lesser-known topics, such as viking women, sexuality and identity in the ancient Nordic world, and the misuse of vikings by supremacist groups.
And it’s funny, because when you talk about the more mainstream aspects of the viking world—weapons, war, great male figures—there’s usually no problem or criticism. But when you delve into other topics, the response can be very harsh and even virulent. When you talk about gender issues, when you try to dismantle the whole concept of toxic masculinity associated with vikings, when you explain that thanks to genetic analysis we know that the viking world was diverse, and that kind of thing, there is a section of the population that is very reluctant to embrace historical reality, and the response can be very aggressive on social media. For example, in Spanish, words have gender, so if I say “los vikingos” (the vikings), I am referring to vikings in their masculine form, which is also the neutral form, but it often leads to problems. So, when I speak or write, if I am referring to the entire population, I usually prefer to say “los vikingos y las vikingas” (the vikings and the viking women). For some people, this is terrible, an immeasurable offense and an inexhaustible source of criticism on social media. At this point, it doesn’t keep me up at night, but personally, I find it very interesting to analyze. Maybe I should consider going on a PhD on it in the future, hahaha.
For example, there is a very famous podcast in Spain called Gente Muerta (Dead People), in which a historian and a comedian chat about a historical figure in an entertaining but always rigorous way. I went to talk about Harald Hardrada, and we ended up talking about him for over an hour. The final part of the program consists of mentioning a secondary character related to the topic, and as we were talking about a great warrior, I mentioned Freydís Eiríksdóttir as an example in the literature of viking women who somehow took up arms, and I briefly explained the whole issue of the Bj 581 grave in Birka, which turned out to be a woman’s (I dedicate the chapter, “I am no man,” in my book to her because it’s a subject I love). That section lasted no more than five minutes compared to the hour we had been talking about Harald. Well, that clip generated more than 72 hours of harassment on social media. I never thought that could happen.
RG: That chapter title is a great reference to Lord of the Rings, which is also fitting in its own way. But geez and yeah. Social media has a tendency to really bring the trolls out, and the subject of vikings or Norse-anything can really serve as a lightning rod to whip them up into a vile, trollish fury. I haven’t had many bad experiences myself, but lately I have been getting more of the “vikings didn’t have horns on their helmets!!!” type of comments in relation to my site’s emblem that I like the call Tre Hjälmar, which is basically just a joke or parody. I don’t expect everyone to get it since it relies on a certain familiarity with Sweden specifically, but I’m always a little surprised when someone is actually bothered by it enough to pester me. But I digress and you are someone who is familiar with Sweden, as well as the other Scandinavian countries and have traveled quite extensively around them. What would you say have been some of your favorite places to visit? Is there any single place that really stood out and made an especially noteworthy impression to you for any reason?
LB: I traveled to Scandinavia for the first time in 2017 (I visited Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo on my honeymoon) and since then I have returned to one country or another, in addition to Iceland, almost every year. Some years more than once to compensate. I just love being in the Nordic countries (although I have yet to visit Finland, which I hope to remedy soon). I’ve never really felt like a tourist there, but rather a little bit at home. Not only do I like their history, I also really like the way the people are, the culture. I think they are places where I could live happily. When I travel, I love going to museums, of course, but I also like going to supermarkets, looking for restaurants serving local food, walking around areas that are not very touristy, and even participating in cultural events. This December, I will be traveling to Stockholm for the third time, and I am really looking forward to experiencing a Saint Lucia concert in one of the churches. Last year, for example, we saw Lucia by kayak in Copenhagen. Quite an experience, if you ask me.
I couldn’t name just one place that has impressed me, because there have been so many. I have been studying the vikings professionally since 2013, so being in some of the places I have read so much about is simply magical. For example, when I set foot on the Birka site in Sweden, there was so much history beneath my feet. Or when I stood in front of the Oseberg ship, imagining its two powerful women inside, and then we went to visit the burial mound or cemetery at Borre. Or the exhibition on the völur at the National Museum in Copenhagen, who are among my favorite figures. Seeing their objects up close…I almost cried! Well, I did.
In the future, I would love to take small groups of people to these places to show them the Nordic world through my eyes, with all its history, archaeology, and culture.
RG: That would be cool, kind of like a guided tour experience for people specifically interested in this subject. Do you have any other project or projects in the works that you’d like to talk a little about?
LB: Yes! I’m working on my next two books, which will be published in 2026. We’re going to talk a lot about women in 2026, but I can’t say much more than that yet, hehehe. And like every year, I’m ready for whatever comes my way: conferences, courses, talks, television, radio…I’d love to have my own podcast. We’ll see what the future holds; the norns will tell.
RG: That is the truth! I’ll be very curious to hear more what these new books are about when the time comes. And it sounds like there is plenty to keep you busy till then, in a good way of course. But before we go, one last question just for fun: if you could meet any “viking” figure (historical or fictional) and follow them around for a while (literally in their footsteps as they are making them), who would you choose and why?
LB: Wow, what an interesting question! I would love to follow Auðr djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir (also called Unnr in djúpúðga depending on the source we consult), one of the most powerful women to appear in Old Norse literature (Laxdæla saga, Njáls saga, Eyrbyggja saga, Eiríks saga rauða, and Grettis saga) but who we also know, thanks to Landnámabók, was a real woman: one of the first colonizers of Iceland. A woman who was widowed and whose son died while she was away from home, and who, with great political skill, managed to marry her granddaughters into politically and economically advantageous marriages, charter a ship and arrive in Iceland to claim a piece of land and rule it skillfully until her death. I find its story one of the most interesting in Nordic literature. What’s more, Laxdæla saga is probably my favorite; I love the powerful female characters that appear in it.
RG: That’s a fascinating choice! And some great points about her, too. She certainly lived—or I suppose we should say we are told that she lived by the saga authors—quite a remarkable life. Anyway, it’s been a pleasure, Laia, thank you for taking the time to let me ask you all these questions!
LB: Thank you very much! It has been a pleasure for me, and it is really nice to be able to talk about my work and have it known outside of Spain. Hopefully, one day I will be able to do projects abroad as well! Thanks, Rowdy!
Dear Web Prowler, since you’re here, please check out Laia San José Beltrán‘s work and give her a follow on social media via the links below:
Laia San José Beltrán at Penguin Books (Spain)
The Valkyrie’s Vigil on Instagram
The Valkyrie’s Vigil on Twitter/X
The Valkyrie’s Vigil on Bluesky
Unless otherwise noted, the images associated with this interview are all courtesy and copyright of Laia San José Beltrán
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