Minnesota Vikings: the Skol chant, drinking horns and the Viking World Order

It starts with a single drum beat. Then ten thousand arms go up, clap once, and a drawn-out „Skol!" rolls around the stadium. When the Minnesota Vikings travel, you hear them before you see them.

Of all the NFL teams that come to Europe for an International Game, few bring support this unified and this visible. Purple and gold, horned helmets, drinking horns — and a ritual nobody invented in a marketing meeting, because it was imported from Scandinavia.

Where the Skol chant comes from

Skål simply means „cheers" in the Nordic languages. The Vikings turned it into a rallying call: one drum beat, a synchronised clap above the head from the whole crowd, then the shout. The idea was borrowed from Icelandic football supporters, whose „Huh" clap travelled the world at the 2016 European Championship.

The result is one of the few rituals in American sport that works without instruction and that visitors can join immediately. If you are sitting at a Vikings game in London, you will be clapping along by the second time.

The support travels — including from Scandinavia

Minnesota is the northernmost outpost of the NFL, and the state was historically settled by Scandinavian immigrants. The team therefore has something no other franchise does: a genuine fanbase in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

At European games that produces an unusual mix. Part of the crowd flies in from the American Midwest, another takes a budget flight from Oslo or Copenhagen. Both meet outside the ground — and turn whole streets purple.

The Viking World Order

Look out on matchday for a flag carrying the letters VWO. Behind it stands the Viking World Order, a supporters' group grown over years and known for its tailgate parties — those car-park and front-garden gatherings that belong to an American matchday as much as the game does.

At European games that does not translate one to one; there are no American-scale stadium car parks here. So the whole thing moves into pubs and onto squares. Find the VWO and you have found your afternoon.

Practical: the team pub in London

For the London games each team nominates an official team pub where its supporters gather beforehand. At past Vikings appearances that was the Greenwood Victoria on Victoria Street, close to the station of the same name.

Do not rely on that for a future game, though: which pub is nominated is decided afresh each year and announced only shortly beforehand. Ask us about it if you book with us — we hear about it.

Where the European games are played

The European NFL games are staged in large football stadiums, and the Vikings have so far appeared mainly in London. The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is purpose-equipped for it: the grass pitch retracts and an artificial surface for American football sits underneath — the only stadium in Europe built for the NFL without being an NFL stadium.

Alongside it the league uses Wembley Stadium, and in Germany the Allianz Arena and the Deutsche Bank Park. Every current fixture is on our overview of the NFL International Series.

Vikings tickets with a hotel

At European NFL games the ticket alone is rarely the problem — the combination is: a ticket and a room in a city that is full that particular weekend. We put both together: ticket, hotel and, if you want them, flights and transfers. And you sit together, which the official sale cannot promise.

If you are coming from Scandinavia, London for a Vikings game is close to the ideal away trip: direct flights from Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm several times a day, and a crowd that will already be speaking your language outside the pub.

Tell us which game you are interested in and how many of you are travelling — we will come back with a proposal. A full overview is on our page for the NFL International Games.

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A note for first-timers: the drinking horn is not a costume accessory, it gets used. You will not be allowed to take it into the stadium, though.