The Viking Society for Northern Research

The Viking Society for Northern Research, founded in London in 1892 as the Orkney, Shetland and Northern Society or the Viking Club, is a group dedicated to the study and promotion of the ancient culture of Scandinavia whose journal, Saga-Book, publication of editions, translations, and scholarly studies, and since 1964 the Dorothea Coke Memorial Lectures, have been influential in the field of Old Norse and Scandinavian-British Studies.

Initially, the club was founded as a social and literary society for those from Orkney and Shetland. After some debate, this was broadened to include all those interested in the Norsemen and the history of the North, and an inaugural session of the reconstituted Viking Club or Orkney, Shetland and Northern Society was held at the King's Weigh House Rooms on 12 January 1894. It was mocked in the Pall Mall Gazette under the headline "Vikings Drink Tea", whereupon a member retorted in a letter that "The fiercest warriors, even savages, drink tea and coffee nowadays".Punch made fun of the Nordic titles of its officers with a satirical "Saga of the Shield-Maiden":

There'll be many a black, black eye, mother, in the club to-morrow night,

For the Things-bothman and the Law-bothman have together arranged to fight;
While the stakes will be held by the Skatt-taker, and the Jarl will join the fray,
And we Shield-maidens will shriek and whoop in Old Norse, as best we may!

The society did at that time call its officers "jarl, jarla-man, Viking-jarl, umboths-jarl and the rest," and its by-laws are still called the Law-Book. Initially they had used names specifically related to the Isles: "Udaller, Udal-Book and Udal-Right for Member, List of Members and Membership respectively [and also] Huss-Thing, Schynd-Bill, Great Foud and Stem-Rod". Both publications also made fun of the "weaking" pronunciation of viking and of the ambitious statement of intent in the prospectus: "It behoves every one who is directly or indirectly connected with or interested in the North to give the Viking Club such support as will enable it to take its proper place among the foremost societies in Europe". In the words of Punch:

If we scratch up a scanty Skanian skill with skald and skal and ski,
In the foremost place of societies soon in Europe we'll be!

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