What Vikings really looked like

Thanks to Hex Magazine for finding this:
"There’s no shortage of myths about the appearance of our notorious Viking ancestors....
We have picked out five myths from the resulting debate and asked researchers to help us confirm or bust these myths." Read the full article Science Nordic.

Viking Ethnicities: A Historiographic Overview

Courtesy of Medievalists.net:
"The ‘Viking Age’ is well established in popular perception as a period of dramatic change in European history. The range of viking activities from North America to the Middle East has excited the interest of many commentators. Vikings are variously regarded as blood thirsty barbarians or civilised entrepreneurs; founders of nations or anarchic enemies. But how cohesive was the identity of the ‘Vikings’ and how did they see themselves? In recent years the answer to this question has been evaluated from a range of perspectives. Established paradigms (often situated within a nationalist framework of thought) have come under greater scrutiny and new ideas have entered the debate. This paper will review some trends in the historiography of viking ethnicities and cultural identities in the period 800–1000 AD. This overview also highlights the value of comparative analysis of human migrations to the field of Viking Studies." The full article by Clare Downham of the University of Liverpool, originally published in History Compass, Volume 10, Issue 1, may be read in PDF format at the Wiley Online Library.