Everyone thinks they know who the Vikings were. Like many aspects of the middle ages popular in modern life, there is much that is inaccurate about this picture of the Vikings. This course explores how Vikings lived—what sorts of things they did for a living, how they amused and entertained themselves, and what they thought—and moves on to consider their rituals of death and their notions of the afterlife. It will be based both on reading a variety of texts produced by and about the Vikings, as well as looking at various objects they produced that have survived.