The Ultimate Barefoot Shoe: Viking Style

Perhaps the ultimate barefoot style shoe...full leather, wrap around design, zero drop, toggle fastening, and over a thousand years old. 

This is a time when the North Sea Empire was a thing, and when the King of England was called Svein Forkbeard. It sounds like something out of  a Tolkien book but this is part of North European Heritage, of British Heritage, in fact.

A recent trip I took to the Jorvik Viking Centre in York was inspirational. The city of York, called Jorvik in Old Norse, was under Scandinavian control for over a hundred  years between the 800 and 900 years AD; and

The shoe stall at the Jorvik Centre, York.

the Viking influence could be felt in the United Kingdom, in East Anglia, Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire;  as well as the Isle of Man and Scotland.
 
According to  wikipedia "A study into the Scandinavian ancestry of British peoples found that there is evidence of particular concentrations in the Isle of Man, Shetland, Orkney, the Western Isles, Skye and the western Highlands in Scotland; and the Wirral, West Lancashire, Cumbria, Yorkshire and East Anglia in England"

It made me think that the whole barefoot / minimalist running trend, isn't solely related to, say, a native indian barefoot running tribe in Mexico, but is a heritage from our ancestors, world-wide. In Northern Europe, this may be in our Anglo-Scandinavian forebears.  These days, with Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings being in the popular consciousness, so called fantasy, in fact these ideas of high adventure lie in the past of our ancestors. And I am sure they were all barefoot runners...maybe...