Viking Mug – Dragon-Prow Longship with Your Name in Elder Futhark Runes

The Vikings crossed the North Atlantic and travelled Europe's rivers in longships: clinker-built wooden vessels with a shallow draft that could cross open sea and run up onto a beach. Surviving ships such as the 9th-century Gokstad and Oseberg ships, both found in Norway, show how the finest were built. The Old Norse word dreki means dragon, and warships with a carved dragon head on the prow were known as drekar. Medieval Icelandic sources even describe a law that required the carved head to be taken down before approaching land, so as not to frighten the spirits of the land. In modern interpretation the longship stands for voyage, courage and the journey into the unknown. The runes beside it are the Elder Futhark, the oldest runic alphabet, used from roughly the 2nd to the 8th century. A name in runes is a transliteration rather than a translation: each rune stands for a sound, so your name is written as it sounds, in the old letters.