The Complete Viking
I recently received the “final touches” on my Viking collection. Gorgeous in their branding and design, Viking does not have an especially wide line of pencils. Where many larger brands tend to have a line for artists, a line for technical drawing, a line for writing and a line for school kids, all with various grades, Viking focuses on doing HB right, and likely understands that honestly a normal human can’t tell the difference between an 8B and a 7B.
Viking’s three standard HB lines are the Skjoldungen (office pencil), Skoleblyanten (school pencil) and Element (extra dark/test scorer). Skjoldungen is lacquered in a bright glossy red, whilst the Skolebylanten is a true glossy yellow, contrasting it from the more subdued orange-gold of traditional American school pencils. The Element is lacquered in a sharp matte black. All three are excellent writers, though I enjoy the Element the most for its dark black lines.
Beyond HB, Viking makes Rollo, a line of artist pencils. Rather than the “finely graded” lines we see in other brands, Viking has just 6 grades, and I’m just fine with them. The Rollo are finished in a smooth natural wood, and like all the Viking lines they use California Cedar.
In addition to these “standard” pencils, Viking also has a few oddballs. They make Crystal, an intriguing round HB pencil capped with a sparkly plastic crystal and with a dyed black wood. These are comfortable to write with and seem to have similar cores to the Skjoldungen or the Skoleblyanten (which I can’t tell apart). The crystals are backed with a plastic foil to help refract the light, but I find that both the crystal and the foil need to have better adhesive, as they detach quite easily from regular carry and use.
Viking does not have a “regular” line of coloured pencils with a wide array of pigments like we see from most brands. For some time, they offered Viva: a tiny pack of short pencils in 6 colours, but I was told by their customer service that this is no longer available. Finally, they have an odd 2-sided pencil with half its core in HB and the other half in 4B, called the Verso.
I’m not a massive fan of jumbo pencils, but Viking has three jumbo-format lines: an HB Rollo and two Valgblyanter “voting pencils” - one dressed as a Skjoldungen and one as an Element with a red core, both of which have a hole drilled in the end for attaching to voting booths I assume..
Their short eraser-tipped Miniblyant and tiny slim Mikroblyant are cute, and the latter quite impressive in its construction and branding: identical to standard pencils but on such a small scale.
Finally, Viking has some branded notepads, colouring books, erasers, rulers and sharpeners, (plus quite a few - horror! - pens) all of which share their very cool design aesthetic. They also sell various “sæts” of pencils and accessories, all packed with the loving care and design you would expect with Viking.
Something that really caught my eye though are their branded pencil glasses complete with 36 pencils from each of their four lines. You can see the unboxing here, and I think these are fantastic. The Skjoldungen and Element packs are special editions of those particular pencils, with unique foil branding and laquer not found on the standard editions. Alas, I need pencil cups that hold far more than 36, so these are likely to do their work as brandy or whiskey glasses.
It’s hard not to get quite infatuated with this brand when you see and feel their stuff with your own hands.
Standard editions vs. Shotglass editions
