🧼 The truth about viking hygiene (and it’s surprising)

Viking graves have yielded a remarkable number of grooming objects: combs made of bone or wood, tweezers, ear picks, nail cleaners and small bowls.

These accessories appear more frequently in burials than some weapons, showing that grooming, hair care and personal hygiene were part of everyday life, not just the privilege of an elite.

Archaeologists have even found combs stored in protective cases in men’s graves, proving that these objects were valued enough to be carefully preserved.

Vikings washed their face and hair every morning using bowls of water, often ritually offered by a member of the household.

Saturday was the “bath day” (laugardagr in Old Norse), when people took a proper weekly bath and also washed the family’s clothes.

They used steam baths similar to saunas, followed by tubs of hot water, and a soap made from animal fat and potash. This powerful mixture removed grease effectively and could even lighten hair and beards.

Being clean, well-groomed and well dressed was as much about seduction as it was about displaying social status.

Christian chroniclers even complained that these “overly well-groomed pagans” were far too popular with local women, highlighting how sharply their neat appearance contrasted with that of their neighbours.

From the viking point of view, Christians were seen as careless people who failed to understand the importance of washing and taking care of themselves.

Despite these personal efforts, living conditions remained far from modern standards. Longhouses housed both people and livestock under the same roof, with hearth smoke, animal smells and poor ventilation.

Latrines were sometimes located too close to wells, cooking water was not always heated enough to sterilise it, and towns accumulated craft waste and household rubbish, creating overwhelming odours. Bodies were carefully groomed, but the surrounding environment encouraged parasites and intestinal infections.