This Viking Hygiene Hack Made Medieval Europe Look Primitive | How Vikings Stayed Cleaner

Picture Viking warrior. You imagine filthy blood-soaked barbarian who has not bathed in months. Completely wrong. Vikings were among cleanest people in early medieval Europe. Bathed every single week. Combed hair every single day. Made soap from fireplace ash and cooking grease. English chronicler John of Wallingford wrote Danes combed hair every day, bathed every Saturday, changed garments often. He was furious. Because Anglo-Saxon women could not resist them.

Medieval monk wrote official complaint because Vikings too well groomed seducing English women. Vikings made lye from hardwood ash. Poured water through ash. What dripped out had pH thirteen to fourteen. Mixed with animal fat. Saponification reaction created soap and glycerol. Same chemistry modern factories use today.

This fought parasites that killed. Head lice. Body lice carrying typhus. Fleas spreading plague. Saturday literally means bath day in Scandinavian languages. Laugardagur. Bath day. Vikings were not dirty savages. They were chemists who discovered reaction Europe would not understand for eight hundred years.Subscribe.

Comment which fact shocked you most.