Thread by @CCooijmans

Following the recent release of #AssassinsCreedValhalla , now is as good a time as any to dust off the paper I did for @HistoryFestival in 2017, tracing the weird and wayward history of vikings in video games. Keep your hands inside the cart at all times; this'll be a bumpy ride.

Our journey begins back in 1982 with the release of 'Viking' for the TRS-80. Glumly hailed by its manual as ‘𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘺 the best simulation ever written for the colour computer’, the game lets you tread the perilous path of 8-bit resource management on the way to Valhǫll.

Although not technically a viking game, 1983's Ice Trek for the Intellivision - in which a 'legendary Nordic hero travels toward the isolated, sinister Ice Palace' - gets included for its choice boxart. 😁👌

Now prepare to witness the unrivalled carnage that is 1984's 'Viking Raiders' (ZXS/C64):

By this point, arcades were also getting in on the viking action, as seen by 1984's 'Mister Viking'. I don't seem to remember which saga contains the Egyptian temples and bell pepper houses, though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1986 saw the release of the imaginatively titled 'The Vikings' (Amstrad CPC/C64), which lets you play the part of a viking making his way across 'Death Island' - which checks out, because I died about 300 times on my first (and only) play-through.

Conforming to wider trends in video game development, most releases featuring vikings during the late 80s/early 90s were side-scrolling platformers, often containing cartoonish protagonists and very little plot to speak of.

Probably the most-fondly remembered of these platformers is 1992's 'The Lost Vikings' (SNES/MegaDrive/PC), whose official plot synopsis I submit here without comment.

Just when vikings seemed beyond the point of being taken seriously by the video game industry, 'Vikings: Fields of Conquest' (PC, 1992) was released, allowing players to navigate early English/Irish geopolitics while fending off pesky viking opponents.

Please now direct your attention to the unfortunately titled 'Vikings: Strategy of Ultimate Conquest' (PC/Mac, 1996) and its even more unfortunate cover art. Cool voiceover work by @akaWorf though.

The Viking Age continued to be a source of inspiration for the strategy genre during the later 90s and early 2000s, with popular franchises like 'Age of Empires' and 'Total War' featuring vikings as their own playable factions.

Other genres include titles like 'Rune' (PC/Mac/PS2, 2000), which, despite drawing on elements from Norse mythology, dials the viking stereotypes up to 11 in order to 'recreate a period in history characterised by savagery', as per its publishers.

Another off-the-rails example is 2004's 'Besieger' (PC), which incorporates flying viking ships, werewolves, and more horned helmets than you can shake a stick at.

By the late 2000s, viking fatigue seems to have set in, with fewer games appearing on the topic. Those that were released, like 'Viking: Battle for Asgard' (PC/XB/PS3, 2008), often found themselves criticised for lazily imitating the Lord of the Rings-aesthetic of the day.

Interest in viking video games seems to have been rekindled by 2011's popular 'Elder Scrolls: Skyrim', prompting the release of an unprecedented volume and variety of viking-related content covering most genres and platforms, from indie to AAA, from casual games to complex RPGs.

All bets are off at this point. The closer we get to the present day, the more saturated the field gets - demonstrated by the fact that we now live in a world in which a viking-themed Donkey Kong game exists. (DK Country: Tropical Freeze, Wii/Switch, 2014-8).

A few points to reflect on this thread: the average video-game viking has thus far been a tall, blond, hypermasculine warrior with exaggerated body proportions, clad either in unpractical armour or not wearing much at all (and seemingly impervious to inclement weather).

Many sport luxuriant facial hair and horned helmets, and are in desperate need of anger management. A distinct overlap exists with games containing more ambiguous ‘barbarian’ themes (e.g. 'Golden Axe', 'Rastan Saga', 'Conan'), which tend to draw on similar sets of iconography.

Barring a few encouraging exceptions, women are mostly undervalued, underrepresented, or altogether absent from these games, perpetuating dubious notions that the viking phenomenon was a completely male-driven endeavour. 🧐

Like so many expressions of popular culture, viking video games casually borrow, combine, and reinvent elements of history. As entertainment products, we can't demand them to be completely accurate representations of a past that isn’t fully understood to begin with...

... But we can and should always continue to challenge any stubborn, exclusionary stereotypes when they are perpetuated, allowing the medium to continue introducing and welcoming audiences to the viking world and its peoples, places, cultures, and identities.

This is not an exhaustive history or analysis, and many games were left out for my sanity's sake. For a more in-depth look at vikings in popular media, do have a look at some of the excellent work done by scholars like @Berserkjablogg, @SkrivaFel, @profcarolyne, and @howardmrw.

For a broader analysis of the representation of history in video games, I'd also recommend @Woodlandstaar's insightful volume 'Digital Games as History' (2016).