Ibn Fadlan's View on Vikings

Ahmad ibn Fadlan's Encounter With the "Vikings"
Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen | 28 Febr. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi6hEI1uJr4

3:14 Free translation. Fadlan considers Muslim Ritual Purity as equal to normal hygiene.

Probably not too uncommon among Muslims.

4:11 I have, up to an attack of gout, diagnosed on 13th XII (St. Lucy), been drinking 1 pint (50 cl) of beer, strength 6.6 to 7.2 each evening before bed.

You can imagine how this relates to avoiding nycturia.

Now, there have been Muslims who have because of this stamped me as a drunkard.

4:24 Muslims probably have a ritual law reminiscent of Leviticus 15:16.

Fadlan probably meant that Vikings skipped the "unclean until the evening" part.

5:45 Probably there is some people group that has tattoos or are supposed to have had tattoos.

Fadlan finds the Vikings remind him of that, and so he applies the stereotype. Imagine he was more familiar with Lapps than with Tatters, learned that Tatters travel around and then he assumed (and wrote as eyewitness testimony) that Tatters live in roundish tents called goahti.

That's probably how Fadlan came to imagine Vikings wore tattoos. Of course, this could be a custom simply limited to the Novgorod area and using an East Slavic word ... from what I know about that, which is not much. I just know that unlike what you told me of Vikings, I don't know for sure Rus' Slavs didn't have tattoos.

9:40 No, being true to the Islamic culture wasn't so much part of his job as part of his Pavlovian reactions.