We are committed to helping people learn more about Viking and Old Norse culture and Alaska’s magnificent outdoors. Outside activities in our living Viking village invite you to immerse yourself and use all of your senses to experience how they lived. You will gain a greater understanding of what it means to be connected to the land and to your own power by participating in activities of the Old Norse civilization. Come to the wilds of Alaska and find yourself in our safe, fun, inclusive, educational setting.
Our plans call for a working Viking-Age settlement: a longhouse, a longship, a blacksmith’s forge, a bakery, a pit-house, a poultry house and a marketplace. Think of it as a living museum you can camp in. Some guests will sleep in timber cabins modeled on Viking-Age buildings; others will pitch a tent at rustic campsites and stay up for storytelling around the fire.
Cultural Exhibits
Living history will be the heart of Asgard Alaska. Watch a smith draw an axe head out of glowing iron. Smell flatbread baking on a hot stone. See a longship pull out onto the lake, oars flashing. Sit with a storyteller as Odin trades an eye for wisdom, and watch weavers work a warp-weighted loom the way Norse women did a thousand years ago. Then cheer on the fighters as they square off in games of skill and strength.
Watching is good. Doing is better. We plan hands-on classes in blacksmithing, baking, axe throwing and shield work, so visitors can feel the weight of a Viking-Age tool in their own hands and understand the people who built the Norse world at its height.
Create Viking Art
Volunteer craftspeople will demonstrate woodworking and metalworking with traditional tools, and show how those techniques have changed from the Viking Age to today.
Vikings didn’t leave their everyday things plain. They carved gripping beasts and coiling serpents into ship prows, sledges and door frames, engraved silver and bronze, shaped amber into beads and amulets, and wove tapestries in bold colors (fragments of one survived in the Oseberg ship burial). The people remembered for raiding were also superb artists. At Asgard Alaska, we hope you’ll try your own hand at it.
Archery
Archery was a working skill in the Viking Age: bows and arrowheads turn up at sites across Scandinavia, and the god Ull was famed as a bowman. We plan an archery trail winding through the woods, with targets at varied distances set against Alaska’s mountains, plus a beginners’ range where instructors will have first-timers landing arrows on target.
Group Adventures
Asgard Alaskaโs unique environment offers groups the opportunity to experience the Alaska outdoors in a totally different way. School groups, scouts, and other nonprofits are welcome to join us for a day or more of fun experiences that will be remembered for a lifetime.
We also hope to host retreats: businesses looking for team-building with a Viking twist, congregations seeking fellowship, and families planning a reunion no one will forget. Between fishing, archery and axe throwing, groups will pick up a little of the Viking way and carry it home. Guests who want to go all in will be welcome to dress the part and join in.
Creating the Dream
Asgard Alaska is about doing hard, old things with our own hands: forging, baking, building, rowing. Skills like these remind us what people are capable of, and how much stronger we are together.
None of this exists yet, and it won’t without you. Donate to help us secure the land, volunteer your skills, or pick up something from Odin’s Offerings, where 100% of proceeds support our mission. Then sign up for our newsletter below and follow along as Asgard moves from dream to ground.
Explore the Norse World Now โ You don’t have to wait for the longhouse to start learning. Meet the gods and giants in our Norse Mythology Vocabulary, uncover the 150-plus names of the All-father in Odin’s Many Names, follow three centuries of raids, kings and voyages in our Viking History Timeline, and dig into myths and history on the Asgard Alaska blog.
