Highland Park Debuts New Viking Influenced Scotch Whiskies

Scotland’s Highland Park distillery, given its location in the Orkney Islands, has long tied themes of its special bottlings to Nordic culture. This comes in large part to the fact Orkney, having once been part of Denmark and Norway, retains to this day elements of this past. They are now turning to this cultural identifier again with word of their new non-age statement Viking Legend series.

The new Viking Legend series, according to Highland Park, departs from the more traditional design schemes of the distillery’s other bottlings in a few ways. Danish designer Jim Lyngvild was tapped to help in a bit of rebranding here, and the results are said to be inspired by “a typical Viking pendant from around 300-700AD discovered in Uppland, Sweden and the ancient Hammar Stone of Gotland which details the epic journey of the Valkyries.”

What this all means on a more practical level is that the re-imagined design “maintains the distillery’s ongoing references to Viking design whilst updating the graphics with a bolder, hand-drawn aesthetic.” First appearing on what will be known as Highland Park Valkyrie, what’s also notable about this new 45.9% ABV release is that it is said to be more peaty then your typical offerings because of incorporating more of the distillery’s signature “heathery peated malt.”

Plans call for Highland Park to release Valkyrie next month at a price point of £55, or about $75 USD. It will be joined later on in the Viking Legend line up by Valknut in 2018 and Valhalla in 2019. The latter, interestingly, is also the name used by the distillery for a collectible line of colorful bottlings tied to Nordic gods.

“We’ve enjoyed delving deeper into Orkney’s history and heritage for the Viking Legend series,” said Jason Craig, Highland Park Brand Director, in a prepared statement, “culminating in this exciting new collaboration with bona fide 21st century Viking Jim Lyngvild.  Jim’s knowledge about Viking history and the Viking way of life is rich in detail.”

In addition to all of this, Highland Park is also going through a packaging refresh and rebranding for its core range of whiskies. Its 12 Year Old and 18 Year Old expressions, will now be known as Viking Honour & Viking Pride respectively.