The sagas agree that Jomsborg was the base of a fearsome Viking army, but one saga in particular \u2013 the Saga of the Jomsvikings<\/em> (J\u00f3msv\u00edkinga saga<\/em>) \u2013 depicts it as a highly selective warrior band which subscribed to a more stringent set of rules than other groups.<\/p>\n The Jomsvikings of saga tradition were an elite band of mercenary warriors who fought for the king of Wendland, and later, for Danish kings. The sources agree that the Jomsvikings were on the losing side in the battle of Hj\u00f6rungav\u00e1gr, a naval battle which was fought when the Danes tried to invade Western Norway.<\/p>\n According to the Saga of the Jomsvikings<\/em>, when not fighting and plundering abroad, the Jomsvikings stayed in their stronghold. Presumably they mostly spent their time with their fellow warriors, given that women were not allowed in the fortress.<\/p>\n The Jomsvikings had a reputation for their rigour and exclusivity, and many applicants were rejected from their company.<\/p>\n Members of the Jomsvikings had to be between 18 and 50 years of age, courageous and scrupulously loyal to their fellow warriors. They were to avoid gossip and keep each other company \u2013 Jomsvikings were prohibited from bringing women into the fortress, nor could they be away for more than three nights without permission from their leader.<\/p>\n All spoils of war were to be divided equally between the group, and they had to promise to avenge each other as if they were brothers.<\/p>\n Compared to other saga descriptions of Viking armies, this group seems more disciplined than most, and their fearlessness in the face of death evokes legendary heroes from heroic epic.<\/p>\n The Saga of the Jomsvikings<\/em>, written in the first half of the 13th century, is \u2013 as its name suggests \u2013 the source that gives us most information about the Jomsvikings.<\/p>\n However, the saga is considered hyperbolic and obviously influenced by legend and fantasy. For example, it describes the harbour in Jomsborg as having a berth for 300 ships, a fleet larger by far than even the royal fleets described elsewhere in the sagas.<\/p>\n Even more fantastically, at the end of the saga one of the Jomsvikings, B\u00fai, is said to have turned into a dragon. Earlier in the saga, B\u00fai is characterised as an ostentatious man fixated on wealth, and his transformation evokes the dragon F\u00e1fnir of Norse legend \u2013 a greedy man who jealously hoarded his gold, which rendered him monstrous.<\/p>\n Although the Saga of the Jomsvikings<\/em> might contain a kernel of truth, modern historians have understandably shied away from trusting it much. Instead, they have turned to more sober accounts, including the collection of kings\u2019 sagas known as Heimskringla<\/em>.<\/p>\n This text relates that, cAD 986, King Harald Bluetooth\u2019s son Svein Forkbeard<\/a> enlisted the Jomsvikings when he successfully rebelled against his father\u2019s rule. A Danish army led by the Jomsvikings subsequently plundered in Norway on behalf of Svein in order to oust his father\u2019s former ally and de facto ruler of Norway, Hakon Jarl, but the Norwegians were ultimately victorious.<\/p>\n In the Viking Age, trading posts and seasonal markets sometimes grew into proto-urban settlements, and archaeological digs have revealed several emporia (small market towns) along the southern Baltic coast. Since the sagas do not give Jomsborg\u2019s specific location, any one of these could theoretically be it, but the island Wolin is considered by far the most likely place.<\/p>\n In his Deeds of the Bishops of Hamburg<\/em> (dating to the 1070s), the German cleric Adam of Bremen described a prosperous trading town at the Oder estuary named Iumne, and this place name is believed to be the same one as Old Norse J\u00f3m. Modern-day Wolin is located at the mouth of the river Oder on the coast of what is now western Poland, close to the border to Germany.<\/p>\n Moreover, most of the Norse settlements seem to have been similar to Norse emporia elsewhere, where the townspeople included women and children. But excavated sources suggest that Wolin had a small, Norse elite consisting mostly of men living amongst an otherwise Slavic population, and it stands out for that reason. And although the evidence is not strong, most of these men seem to have been warriors.<\/p>\n A third reason is that, unlike the other settlements along the coast, Wolin was fortified with a wall, which is much more consistent with the literary representation of the Jomsvikings\u2019 military stronghold than unfortified market towns made up of families, merchants and craftspeople.<\/p>\n By piecing together this evidence, scholars have made a good case for connecting Wolin with the Norse Jomsborg. On the other hand, in the Saga of the Jomsvikings<\/em>, Jomsborg is more of an imagined than a real place, and some historians have even dismissed the Jomsvikings\u2019 existence as the stuff of legends.<\/p>\n In the Saga of the Jomsvikings<\/em>, a Viking named P\u00e1lnat\u00f3ki gets on the wrong side of the Danish king Harald Bluetooth. Escaping the wrath of the king, he makes his way to Wendland, where the Wendish king offers him a piece of land in exchange for protecting his kingdom against other invaders.<\/p>\n P\u00e1lnat\u00f3ki goes on to establish the Viking colony Jomsborg, and this becomes the headquarters of his followers, the Jomsvikings.<\/p>\n Other, more reliable, sagas attribute the foundation of Jomsborg to King Harald Bluetooth, but they don\u2019t give any explicit reason or backstory for it. It is likely that establishing a military outpost on the Baltic coast helped the king gain a foothold in the region as he sought to capitalise on trade in the Baltic and the Rus\u2019 (Russia and Ukraine).<\/p>\n The Norwegians thwarted the Jomsvikings\u2019 invasion cAD 986, and according to Heimskringla<\/em>, in 1043, King Magnus, the son of King Olaf Haraldsson, sacked and burned Jomsborg, conquering some of its inhabitants, while others fled.<\/p>\n Excavations in Wolin have so far not given any firm answers as to whether this could be true, but as the Viking Age drew to a close, kingdoms became stronger, independent warrior bands found it more difficult to operate, and Heimskringla<\/em>\u2019s version of events cannot be excluded.<\/p>\n It is very likely that there were one or more Viking warrior bands in the late Viking Age, perhaps based in Wolin, then called Jom by the Norse.<\/p>\n Whether they called themselves the Jomsvikings, and subscribed to the ideals and rules outlined in the Saga of the Jomsvikings<\/em> is another matter, but there is no reason to exclude it completely either. Something must have given rise to the legendary-flavoured stories about the Jomsvikings.<\/p>\n The Jomsvikings appear in the second season of Netflix\u2019s Vikings: Valhalla<\/em><\/a>, which follows the real-life historical figures of Harald Sigurdsson (later Harald Hardrada<\/a>) and the explorer Leif Eriksson<\/a>, and his semi-mythical sister Freydis Eiriksdottir<\/a> as they navigate the end of the Viking Age.<\/p>\n The Jomsvikings of the show are still a military order, based in the hidden fortress of Jomsborg somewhere in Pomerania, but they are not mercenaries \u2013 instead they are portrayed as being dedicated to protecting the \u2018old ways\u2019 and worship of the Norse Gods in the face of Christianity\u2019s spread.<\/p>\n They fulfil this mission in Vikings: Valhalla<\/em> by rescuing Norse smallfolk from being slaughtered for their pagan beliefs, but their actions are quickly shown to have ulterior motives.<\/p>\nWhat did the Jomsvikings do?<\/h2>\n
What makes the Jomsvikings different from other Vikings?<\/h2>\n
What do the sagas say about the Jomsvikings?<\/h2>\n
Where was Jomsborg?<\/h2>\n
Who founded the Jomsvikings?<\/h2>\n
What happened to the Jomsvikings?<\/h2>\n
Did the Jomsvikings really exist?<\/h2>\n
The Jomsvikings in Vikings: Valhalla<\/em><\/h2>\n
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