Did the Vikings Wear Makeup?

Where it concerns what we know about Viking Age Scandinavian personal styles and decorations, we can only speak with a relative amount of certainty to those things which have come up in the archeological record.

“Dear C.J., When I was little, my family stayed at a warrior reenactment camp, and one of the sections of the camp was a family who went ‘a-Viking. The woman was talking to me about her makeup. At the time, there was only discovered a brief mention that a woman or women had on what we today would call makeup. As a historian, she had to infer the rest to do this role-playing/reenactment. It would be cool to read about makeup and decorative flourishes worn and revered by people of that time.” - Rachel from Facebook.

Dear Rachel,

Where it concerns what we know about Viking Age Scandinavian personal styles and decorations, we can only speak with a relative amount of certainty to those things which have come up in the archeological record. Hard, durable items made of metal—such as brooches, necklaces, hairpins, and other personal items—survive the test of time far better than soft, organic materials. Makeup falls under the latter category. To complicate matters, the Vikings did not have an a…