Norway’s Viking rowing chant has exploded at the 2026 World Cup, and Erling Haaland says the scale has already gone well beyond the stands. Norway have reached the last 16 for their best World Cup run since 1998, while the fan routine has spread into public spaces, politics and the military.
Haaland on Norway’s row
Haaland posted, “This is bigger than football,” alongside a clip of the squad rowing after Norway’s win over Côte d’Ivoire. He later told reporters, “Seeing thousands rowing with you, you feel the energy. It gives you goosebumps.”
That response matches the way the chant has taken hold. Supporters are not just singing; they sit as if in a longboat, draw an imaginary oar through water and chant “Ro” after a Viking horn blows, turning the crowd into part of the same movement.
Ole Frøystad and Oljeberget
Ole Frøystad came up with the idea after remembering the rhythmic “RO-SEN-BORG” chant at Rosenborg BK’s stadium. He told, “I’m like, that’s exactly what the Vikings did. They rowed into battle,” and added, “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 took the plan to Torstein Hamran, a leading member of the Norwegian supporters’ club Oljeberget. He said he was looking for something “short, easy, had culture in it and would have a massive impact.”
Supporters tried the chant in a stadium in March and then posted videos before Norway’s last friendly against Sweden showing how to do it. Frøystad put a clip from that game on his Instagram account and said it had drawn more than 38m views and almost 3m likes, a reach that helped push the row far beyond matchday chanting.
Oslo, Bergen and beyond
Norway’s football team began adopting Viking imagery in 2023, with players wearing shirts with their names in runic script that year. For the 2026 World Cup, the official team photo shows the squad in leather and furs, a visual that matches the chant’s theme rather than treating it as an off-the-shelf fan stunt.
Unlike most football chants whose origins are unclear, the Viking row was consciously devised, carefully rehearsed and massively promoted online. That made it easy to copy, and the copycat versions spread well outside football: supporters rowing en masse in Oslo and Bergen produced so much sound that seismologists recorded an earthquake, Norwegian MPs did the row in parliament, Prince Sverre Magnus 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.
The row has become part of the team’s World Cup identity as much as the results have. Martin Ødegaard led the squad row with a drum grabbed from the stands and said, “makes you realise you aren’t just 11 guys on the pitch – you’re a whole crew. It’s an unbelievable feeling.”
For Norway, the practical next step is simple: keep winning and the chant keeps moving with the team. For Frøystad, that means staying in the US for however long Norway remain in the competition, while the row itself keeps showing how fast a deliberately built fan ritual can escape the stadium and become the story.
