‘Bigger than football’: Norway fans’ Viking row makes waves at World Cup

The fans have done it, in their thousands, in the stadiums. The players have done it on the pitch. Pretty much anyone who was there did it in New York’s Times Square. Norwegian MPs did it in parliament.

Prince Sverre Magnus, third in line to the Norwegian throne, rowed in an Oslo subway carriage. Care home residents in their 90s rowed in rural Norway and Norwegian Royal Air Force pilots rowed in their F-35 fighter jets.

Forget the Icelandic thunderclap that took over the 2016 European championships. The Viking row, the synchronised rowing chant that accompanies the Norwegian football team’s appearances, is the viral phenomenon of the 2026 World Cup.

When their team advanced to the last 16 this week, its best World Cup run since 1998, the hordes of jubilant supporters rowing en masse in Oslo and Bergen produced so much sound that seismologists recorded an earthquake.

“This is bigger than football,” Norway’s star striker Erling Haaland posted alongside a clip of the squad rowing after their win over Côte d’Ivoire. He told reporters: “Seeing thousands rowing with you, you feel the energy. It gives you goosebumps.”

The captain, Martin Ødegaard, who led the squad row with a drum grabbed from the stands, said seeing a whole section of the stadium rowing “makes you realise you aren’t just 11 guys on the pitch – you’re a whole crew. It’s an unbelievable feeling.”

The action, which generally starts with the blowing of a Viking horn, involves sitting down as if in a longboat and – to an accelerating drumbeat – drawing an imaginary oar though water while chanting “Ro” (Norwegian for “row”).

Unlike most football chants, whose precise origins are often impossible to determine, Norway’s Viking row was consciously devised, carefully rehearsed and massively promoted online.

Ole Frøystad, a primary school teacher now proudly known on social media as mr.row.row, came up with the idea after remembering the rhythmic “RO-SEN-BORG” chant that rings round the stadium of the Norwegian football club Rosenborg BK.

“Ro”, he thought, sounded just like “row”. From there, it was simple. “I’m like, that’s exactly what the Vikings did. They rowed into battle,” Frøystad – who is staying in the US for however long Norway remain in the competition – told ESPN.

“They took in their sails, they put out their oars and they rode into shore … it was just like a lightbulb. With the movement and the way we move the body, it’s going to be like a wave at the stadium. It’s going to be amazing.”

Frøystad, who had been looking for a chant that was “short, easy, had culture in it and would have a massive impact”, took the plan to Torstein Hamran, a leading member of the Norwegian supporters’ club Oljeberget, who loved it too.

Hamran and other supporters tried it out in a stadium in March but realised it needed more work. In the run-up Norway’s last friendly before the World Cup, against Sweden, they posted videos on social media showing how to do it.

Frøystad posted a video from that game to his Instagram account, where it has since garnered more than 38m views and almost 3m likes. “That’s when I realised this is going to be insane,” he told ESPN.

Norway’s football team began adopting Viking imagery in 2023 when the players began sporting shirts with their names in runic script. For the 2026 World Cup, their official team photo shows them in leather and furs, holding shields and swords.

Not everyone is impressed, with some noting that the Vikings’ reputation is primarily for looting, pillaging and general brutality. Janne Stigen Drangsholt, an Aftenposten columnist, criticised an unhealthy “masculinity aesthetic” and “toxic, rather laddish vibe”.

Another commentator, Hans Petter Sjøli, told NRK it was all “a little too loud and Disney-like for us Norwegians”.

Others have expressed concern about the use of Norse imagery, noting that in Scandinavia Norse symbolism is now associated with far-right, nationalist and neo-Nazi groups.

Norway’s neighbours have complained that they were Vikings too. “We just sigh when we see it,” the Sweden defender Gustaf Lagerbielke said. “But maybe we’re sighing more at the TV crews that zoom in on it every time. But whatever floats your boat.”

Swedish historians have highlighted a glaring historical inaccuracy: it was eastern Vikings, mainly from modern-day Sweden, who were famous for river and coastal rowing, while western Vikings, from Norway, were the great transatlantic sailors.

So the Norwegians are celebrating their football team’s performances by imitating Swedish Vikings, Stockholm pundits argue. Be that as it may, the chant has won over many Norwegians, who have posted countless videos of themselves rowing.

While Norwegian tourism bosses hail attention that money cannot buy, the MP Mímir Kristjánsson dismissed the criticism as “absurd”, insisting “Nazis don’t own Thor, Odin or Valhalla” and that “Norway must bring its own culture” to the World Cup.

The speaker of Norway’s parliament, Masud Gharahkhani, who organised the mass parliamentary row, said it was “for love and to show our support for the team, which we are really proud of … we’re a country of 5.6 million people. This is huge.”