Flat Earth Vikings?

Did the Vikings Believe the Earth is FLAT?
Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen | 11 Oct. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=708pMwN4dmg

1:15 Eratosthenes. Not Erastothenes.

1:43 It implies that Hellenistic Greeks at that point* ...

2:37 You pretty much describe how Phoenicians figured out and transmitted eventually to Aristotle that the Earth was round. I think it was them that Aristotle credited for the observation.

Except, in the case of Vikings, you speak of "they would have" ... are they reported to have made that conclusion?

Huns lived on the Puszta of Hungary, wide prairies of grass with no trees. Similar observations as on sea are perfectly possible. Are they reported to have come to conclude that Earth was round?

A thing may be very easily accessible, and still "pass under the radar" so to speak.

How many Heliocentrics these days are completely unaware that all astronomic observations, with a few exceptions from SOHO, Moon, Mars, formerly also Voyager are made from Earth and are therefore Geocentric as observations? It passes below the radar.

3:18 "Most people couldn't read"

Depends on period, but the rise in literacy, where even peasants who cannot read get aware of the value of written documents, where all boys in towns are at least offered schooling is from c. 1200 or so, so after the Viking Age.

For the Viking Age, that point stands.

3:41 As to the ascertaining of latitude, you could have a point, at least for Eirik Rauthi and Leif Eiriksson. Much of the rest was pretty "close to coast" ... North Sea is nearly inland, and Mediterranean is inland.

But the problem is, they could have used a technique without knowing why it worked. Sea farers have used magnets for compasses since Marco Polo. This doesn't mean they had studied Maxwell and knew electro-magnetism inside out.

4:05 "they were probably aware of the knowledge for the South of Europe"

Does this mean they believed it? Between 795 and c. 1000 quite a lot of them knew of Christianity and didn't believe it.

5:18 When it comes to me, you can tell him,** I'm already subscribed ...

8:32 The video is nearly finished.

Now, one thing you left out of the calculation is, has Norse Paganism a Flat Earth view?

We can be pretty sure, though it's not all that explicit, that Greek Paganism in Homer's time had, and in Roman times, after Eratosthenes, no longer had a flat earth view.

Norse Paganism has an image of three platforms in a giant tree, the narrowest being Asgard with Valhall and Trudheim and a few more nice places, the middle one in size and position is earth, and the lowest and nethermost is divided into Hel below Earth (where Earth blocks sunlight from it) and Utgarth around it, because it's even broader than Earth. That's very obviously a Flat Earth view.

However, this doesn't totally decide whether the Old Norse Flat Earth view was actually still accepted in the Viking age, or whether it was to the Vikings like Homer was to the Romans.

I would not say Voluspa is a poem dating in an original form to BC times. Or if the view comes from Snorre. I would say, this view was still prevalent among Pagans of the Viking age. I'd have loved to hear you make a case for the opposite.

Actually, looking up, this is not so clearcut in Voluspa or Snorre as I thought.

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* His words: "it implies that people at that point"
** Bjørn has problems with a nisse, a gnome or goblin, about subscribers, he says ... basically every second video, or perhaps even every single one by now ...