Viking Club

The Viking Club was a club for philologists and historians specializing in Germanic and Scandinavian studies. It was founded by E.V. Gordon and J.R.R. Tolkien when the two were professors at Leeds University in the 1920s. At meetings of the club students and faculty would gather to read Old Icelandic sagas and drink together in an informal setting. Members of the club also invented original songs and poems in Old English, Gothic, Old Norse and other extinct Germanic languages. A collection of these works was privately published as Songs for the Philologists.