Researchers found that Vikings had windows

 Vikings had home windows — generally simplest associated with medieval church buildings and castles — meaning Norsemen dignitaries sat in rooms lit up with the aid of apertures with glass, Danish researchers said Thursday. The glass panes may be dated from long earlier than the churches and castles of the middle a while with which glazed home windows are associated, they stated.

“this is yet another shift faraway from the image of unsophisticated barbaric Vikings swinging their swords around,” stated Mads Dengsø Jessen, a senior researcher with the national Museum in Copenhagen.

during the last 25 years, archeologists have determined glass fragments in six excavations in southern Sweden, Denmark and northern Germany.

In Copenhagen, 61 fragments of glass panes have been analyzed and researchers concluded that the pieces of glass can be dated from long before the church buildings and castles of the center a while and that Vikings had windows with glass panes among 800 and 1100. The Viking Age is considered to be from 793 to 1066.

“We most effective related early window glass with the middle ages, consequently assuming that the glass could not originate from the Viking Age,” the countrywide Museum said in a assertion. The glass fragments “may be dated to the Vikings Age and maximum likely should had been in use in that term as nicely,” said Torben Sode, a conservator with the museum who first related the dots.

The museum stated glass home windows had been for the top echelons of society and religious use, as changed into the case inside the relaxation of Europe. Dengsø Jessen stated there can also had been glass windows in the Vikings’ big hall homes. They had been now not massive, transparent windows as we understand them today, but possibly smaller home windows, likely composed of flat pane glass in unique sun shades of inexperienced and brown. The idea changed into now not with a purpose to look out, however to create a colourful influx of mild into the building.

The museum stated “it is maximum probable that the Vikings received (the glass) through exchange.” The Norsemen referred to as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest and buying and selling for the duration of Europe. they also reached North the us.

“In reality, we're speaking approximately a cultivated Viking elite with royal strength that equaled that, as an example, of Charlemagne, king of the Franks. this is some thing that is frequently overlooked inside the simplistic Hollywood photos of Vikings,” Dengsø Jessen said.