After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - What Did The Vikings Do With Their Dead?

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

The world of Viking death rituals and their beliefs surrounding the afterlife is truly fascinating... What happened when a Viking died? What ceremonies and practices did they partake in? And what awaited the spirits of the dead when they departed the world of the living? Today we welcome our returning guest and go-to expert on all things Viking Eleanor Baraclough! Eleanor is a historian and author of books including Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age.This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. The producer was Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listener, never fear tis I, Dr. Anthony Delaney from the After Dark podcast. And I am possessing your phone or your car radio or whoever it is that you listen to podcasts to ask you to vote for us in the Listeners Choice Award at this year's British Podcast Awards. Ooh, it's that time of year again. You can vote for us while you're folding laundry or learning about mass poisonings or while you assemble furniture and contemplate mutiny, which I would mutiny if was assembling furniture, or while you're lost in a graveyard that you thought was going to be a shortcut, but now you find yourself in the bowels of hell.

Either way, you can simply go to www. Britishpodcastawards.com forward slash voting and search after dark. Okay, off you go and do that, and I promise we'll stop possessing your phone. Thank you, love you, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. For the Vikings, death was a ritual. A funeral was an elaborate ceremony. blazing hot cremations to help the smoke carry their souls to the afterlife. Some were entombed in enormous ships buried underground,

along with lavish treasure, slaughtered animals, and even human sacrifices to accompany the deceased on their journey to Valhalla. Today, we are exploring the fascinating world of Viking death rituals and their beliefs surrounding the afterlife. What happened when a Viking died? What ceremonies and practices did they partake? and what awaited the spirits of the dead when they departed the world of the living. In this episode, we'll be uncovering what the Vikings believed about death, memory and their journey into the beyond.

Welcome to After Dark. Hello everyone and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. Now, this is the last recording of today. We were a little bit tired. It's really hot outside. There's like the fifth heat wave of the year happening. We've got some coax. Not sponsored though.

Fisible drinks. Other visible drinks are available. Other physical drinks are available. We're really tired. We're going to be dove into the world of the Vikings. We have an amazing guest. But first of all, let's air some these little cans, shall we guys? Oh, mine's gone everywhere.

Oh, shit, is it actually? Ruining the new studio. I did it. That is refreshing. Just so you know, Dr. Eleanor Perikloff's here. We're doing things very formally today. She's got a hidden packet of crisps somewhere. We have Coke zeros.

She's down the sun all day at a sports day. It's an absolute disaster all round. But she also wrote a very good book called Embers of the Hands, Hidden Histories of the Viking Age. It's good crack. And it is very, and with lovely covers. Yes.

Various lovely covers, by the way. Isn't your book, Eleanor, the one that has a hidden penis in it? It does. Have it a hidden erect penis? No, no, don't. Because that's what you're going to clear. Yeah.

We are. There's no point to say that. Chris sold out your fronks. In my pyjamas. It's hidden erecting. It does, but it's Freer, who's like the fertility god. Nice. Yeah.

And he's just in the corner. Yeah, because you and I have the same editor and the same publisher. And I think we've both. The same of the. Yeah. And I think we've both had strange conversations with our editor about inappropriate things on covers. I've had to cover up a dog's bottom before. Oh, that's a good.

Yeah. And you've had to cover up an. or you didn't cover it off. I didn't cover it. But she did say this fabulous, very long suffering editor of us, she did say she woke up 3am quite a lot of thinking I can't put an erect penis or indeed a dog's bottom on the front cover and yet. Turns out.

And yet there we go. Turns out. We're going to be talking about Viking funeral rights today. Not penises. Not penises. Could we do an episode of Viking penises at another point? You might have to, I'm trying to think how many penises could we get in there? We might.

Sorry. Listen, it depends on day of the week. And that is the end of this episode. Goodbye. We can expect Roman penis. There's a lot we could say. Should we move on. I seriously.

We should. Yeah. Roman penises would be great. Now, one of the things that I like about... And Zeus keeping us on track. Yes. Someone has to be professionals. Very rarely me.

So much as I'll do it. The one of the things that I took from the last time that we spoke on or was that Viking as a concept of a group of people as an identifying marker for a group of people is a little bit anachronistic. Yes. And so they, they wouldn't have known themselves as Vikings. No, although some people actually called their children Viking or Wikinger. So they would have definitely, but that doesn't mean they were necessarily Vikings in the sense of raiders or pirates or anything like that. As a name. They called, as in a first name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I try to think Vikings called Viking.

The Vikings called Viking. And is there a Viking? Was a Viking a raid in itself? Yes. Also that. So we will go, we're going on a Viking, which is sort of like a summer race. Right. And can one do Viking?

Like one could do Viking or hiking or hiking. Or you can sort of, there's an anachronist, anachronist. And that's a hard word. It is. I know. I have to practice. There's an old words. You could say, you could say he went on, he went a Vikinging.

Right. There's a lot of that's hard. Yeah. Anyway, you can go on a Viking. You can be a Viking. You can't Viking. You can't. But you can be called Viking.

Don't identify as a Viking. You might say he was a great Viking, but that means like he was a great raider. And there's always that which we also may have talked about last time, there's a point where you're a bit too old to be doing it. It's like, mate, not cool anymore. Oh, yeah. So too old to be a Viking? It's like he was. Yeah, it was like he was still out there Viking and when everyone else had sort of was in,

their cocoa and getting their slippers on. Cringe. A little bit cringe. So we've established nothing. The language is complicated. Let's talk about the time period of the Vikings then, and if that is any clearer. I mean, I think one of the dates that everyone,

certainly in Britain will have in their mind, is AD 793, the raid on Lindisfarne, very famous, supposedly the first big moment the Vikings arrive on the British shores. That's, I guess, debatable. but where around that date do the Vikings fit in? Are they at the height of their powers at that moment? I think it's quite a useful date.

I think it's important not to throw that one out because it's the first definite date we've got for a big Viking attack on the show. Now, having said that, it's from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a few years earlier, but it's maybe sort of 7-8-7 or something like that, 7-89, there is three ships of the Danes

turn up on the same. South Coast on the island of Portland and they kill a Reeve who comes down basically is like what you're doing here lads so there's definitely a bit of that but that one he that we know they kill one person but it's not that idea of that classic Viking raid idea so 793 is still quite useful it's also useful because of sort of how people react to that so you have Alquin writing from the court of Charlemagne he's like oh never before has such a terror appeared on the Shores, behold the church of Lindisfan, splattered with the blood of the saints and everything. All right.

There's a lot. It's drama. Literally, biblical, right? And that's it. It's very much that sense of evil comes from the north, very much within that biblical context. Can I just say, I feel so sorry for that Reeve before the raid on Lindisfan happens and that's put out there. Like, was he just walking up to them going, hello, welcome, what's happening?

Run, run, run. Lovely furze, guys. I love those big. sorts you have. Oh dear. Oh, dear me. Yeah, exactly. So it's and the thing is it's around that time that we're seeing those raids around the coastline of British Shards and Ireland. And then what you see there is this sort of, it's kind of, it's increasing activity, but it's not like they come out of nowhere. It's even, even, I think it's, I want to say it's Alquin writing these letters. You have to understand, there may be a lot of inaccuracies. I feel I should cover my eyes here. I've been very

hot and out in the sun all morning. We did warn you all, it was chaos. I haven't had any lunch, got a packet of crisps here, yeah. So, but. She's demanded exclusively pink food just to go with the outfit. Percy pigs. She has literally bought a bag of Percy pigs. All the product placement we're doing. Yeah, you're welcome. I mean, so, please enjoy this scholarly

debate. Right. So, I think it's out. Anyway, there's a point where he says, look, you've all, you monks all up there, everyone up there in Northumberland, you've been sort of like dressing a bit like these sexy Scandinavians and you've been, you know,

he's basically, it's very much the sense from the letters that he's writing back to the victim communities that there has been contact before and there's this sort of cultural awareness of these people from over the North Sea. So it's not out of nowhere. It's not that sense of boom, who are they? But it's big and it's nasty and it's dramatic. And that gives us that rough date. And so that, coming back to that word Viking is then why the Viking age, it's the age in which this stuff starts happening. It's the age when shit goes down. So it's not necessarily, the Viking Age is not necessarily

the description of when the people of Scandinavia sort of come into existence because they've been around for a long time. But this idea of raiding and these encounters with other communities around Europe. That's the start of it. Exactly. And then that also then the question is, well, when does it come to an end? Because it's not like they just wake up one morning and go, that's the Viking age. Do you know what? Raiding, overrated, can't be asked. I'm going to stay home in my pajamas. That would be me. So one one thing the Vikings do do, other than raiding and murdering monks is they bring their practices and their beliefs with them and there is a kind of overwriting and an integration as well within these encounters but they do bring these a lot of

beliefs from Scandinavia just thinking specifically for this episode Elena we're talking about burial rights funeral rights and the Viking relationship to death do we have any primary sources there's any written accounts of what Viking or Norse burials looked like, what their funerals were like? What are we going off here other than the archaeological record? Okay, so leaving the archaeological record aside, what we, so there's a couple of things. One is we've talked about their relationship with sort of British Isles Island, that sort of reed. But the fact is that period of cultural contact and assimilation, that comes later. That's when they start to settle instead.

And it's not just the British Arles and Ireland, it's also much further afield. And so we have to, you know, all the way down to sort of that they're out in Byzantium. They're out near the Black Sea. They're out, obviously, across the North Atlantic, you know, all these different areas. And that means that when we're thinking about burial practices and texts for burial practices, often we have to think within that context. It's not just one sort of cultural node. There's all sorts of influences that can be coming in.

So that's the first thing. The second thing is when we are thinking about sources that come from the Norse, you know, that kind of Nordic world itself, they don't start to write things down until quite a lot later. The Icelandic saga is written in the 13th century, really good example of that. So we have texts that describe burials, but we've got that distance. It doesn't mean they're not useful, but they're complicated. Four burials that are sort of really in the heart of the Viking Age itself, The most famous text comes from Ibn Afadlan, who is from Baghdad. He's a diplomat.

And he's, oh my God, my brain, I know this date so well. Sort of like the first, like very, very early 10th century. He is on this mission going up the River Volga as part of a diplomatic group that's sent to, I think it's like to convert the king of the Volga Bulgars. I just really enjoy saying the Volga Bulgars. The Volga Bulgars. And he's been shopping. uping around from what I remember.

So he, there's, so, so, so there's, there's different religions he's, he's thinking he might be interested in and basically they're there to sort of put their case forward. What's interesting is that on their way north, he comes across this group. It's, it, they're, that he calls them the, um, Rusia, so the Rus, basically. And they're on the banks of the River Itil, which comes off the Volga. And this, the Rus, and this is where it gets complicated. probably more than it should because like I said, I'm not entirely

in sound mind. Let's give it a go. So the ruse are of Scandinavian or Nordic extraction and they are traders who are sort of going up and down the waterways of sort of the Eurasian steps that region.

But of course there are lots of other different cultural groups that the Norse are sort of masters of cultural assimilation. And so we are dealing with people who do seem to have Nordic sort of roots, but that doesn't mean that the description of what Ibn Fadlan tells us is, oh, this is a Viking funeral tradition.

Okay. So that's the most, so it's more complicated. And of course, he is there with a translator, without any cultural context, without any understanding of what's going on inherently, because he comes from a very different cultural tradition, which makes it complicated, but also makes it absolutely fascinating.

thing to read about because we're seeing there an outsider looking at this incredible funeral description which is unlike anything else we've got for the period for this sort of cultural area. And what does this funeral look like? Well, okay, so again, this would be so much easier if I had lunch. Chris. It's like looking at them longingly. Do you eat the crisps while you charge your house. Can you imagine the complaints you get.

If I'm sorry, Ibn Afadlan, crunch, crunch, crunch, right, okay. What did you say? What? And that was the end of after dark. Right, so, Ibn Afadlan, he talks, for a start, he's got this description of the roots and they are traders. They're from his point of view, very rough and ready. But we've got to think he's coming from an Islamic tradition.

So some of the things that he is horrified by, I was quite enjoy. So he describes their bathing habits. And he's like, they are the filthiest of God's creatures. They wander around like asses. See, that's so fascinating because, of course, famously, the Anglo-Saxon account of the Vikings is like, all the Anglo-Saxon ladies fancy the Viking men because they clean and they plant their hair and they put things in it and they're so hot. Exactly. So I always, I love, I just love imagining the fanfic I'd write where Ibn Afadlan visits England and the Anglos.

And he's like, he would take it my stock. No, no, no. Anglosaxon women flocking towards him. Oh, my God. This man has washed more than once a week. Oh, wow. And he's just sitting there gagging every time in anger. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Well, he would hate it, but he would do so well. Oh, he would hate it so much. So what he describes, I mean, it is pretty icky. So again, not a time to be eating crisps, to warn you. So when he describes, so he says for us that they're very, they're sexy specimens, the men, they're very tall, they're ruddy like palm trees. They're tall like palm trees. They're ruddy.

They've got these sort of like green, you. I want to say tattoos, but we don't know. He doesn't use that word. But they're covered in these sort of like patterns all over their bodies. The women have a lot of bling, which sort of depend on how rich their trade of husbands are, all this sort of stuff. But then he describes them washing. And he's like, oh, they basically, you can just like hear him gagging. He's like, it's like, it's got one bowl and it's full of water.

And they just pass it round and they're like spitting into the bowl. Oh. And then they're like cleaning their teeth. They're spitting back in. They're doing their nose. And he's just like this. Oh, now I want to gag. Fair enough.

Yeah, not a time to be eating crisps, right? So, and then there's other things. And this is where, so it's not a nice description. And this is definitely sort of trigger warning territory, you might say, because there's a lot of sexual violence and human sacrifice. But he's describing from there. Exactly. So what he says is, so before we get onto the actual funeral,

because this is significant. He says, for example, the traders, there's a lot of young enslaved girls, right? and he says they just have sex with them out in the open. And so it's like it's not a nice society. And there's this line where he says, sort of if someone comes to buy one of the girls, but their owner is busy having sex with them, he just has to stand by and wait until this finish.

So it's like it's not great, but it gets worse, right? So he said, I was really interested to know what, how they bury their dead or how they, what, what a funeral looks like for these people. And for start, socially, obviously it's different. So he says if it's an enslaved person, they're just left out for the dogs. If it's a person who isn't very rich, they might be put in a little boat or something like.

So he goes through the different ones. But he says, and this is the famous one, he's there for one of the very sort of powerful traders, one of the very rich traders. He's just died. And so his funeral is happening. And so he describes how the trader's boat is pulled ashore. and it's sort of set up with all these wooden planks on it. And then they put, the trader has sort of been, he's taken out, he's been buried while they get everything ready. And he's sort of turned blue, black, like kind of corpse coloured because he's been in the ground for a long time.

And he's set up in his ship on this sort of sumptuous golden sort of bed. And they, they sacrificed lots of animals to join him. And unfortunately, this is as good as it gets. So there's sort of, I think there's a dog. There's a couple of oxen. They, I'm trying to remember. They make two horses run around until they're sweating and they kill them. Oh.

Yeah, it gets worse. Yeah, it's like there's chickens, all sorts, together with the food and drink that he'll need for the next world. So it's bread, it's alcohol, it's fruit, that sort of stuff. So that's all there. But unfortunately, meanwhile, they have said, and this is really tricky, because the way he, he writes it, it very much is someone volunteers, but this sense of, yeah, exactly, how voluntary is this? So he says, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the people he owns, essentially, they're asked, who wants to join their master in paradise.

And he says, usually it's one of the, as he calls them slave girls, who volunteer. And once they volunteered, they can't turn back. And they spend the next few days having a lovely time, lots of whining, and dining and it's wonderful until it comes to the funeral. And again, this is not nice stuff. So she is then, I can't remember quite the order it happens, but she's taken around to the tents of the other leading men and they each have sex with her. And they say something like to her,

they say, tell your master, I did this for the love of him or something like that. Then she has all sorts, it's a, it's so, the detail is, is extraordinary, but it's really hard to know what to do with it. So they then lift her above a door frame. And the first time they lift her, she says, I can see my parents, my dead parents in paradise. The second time, she says, I can see all my other dead relatives. They're waiting.

And then the third time, she's, I can see my master. He's waiting for me too. Then she's given a lot of alcohol. And there's this, and she's taken up onto the boat that he's up on. And there's this really horrible character. And he describes her as the angel of death. And she's there. She's this sort of,

um, how does he describe her? It's sort of like she's, she's, she's, she's neither old nor young. She's quite stocky. She's quite,

she's got quite nasty expression on her own. Like angel of death is not. You know, yeah, and she's got her two daughters with who were, her, um, her assistants.

And so she then, she starts the process of, like the slave girl joining her master essentially and so there is a tent that has been set up on the ship and she is taken into the tent and again six men then come into the tent and they all have sex with her. Jesus.

Yeah, it's it's, it's horror, it's such a horrible description and then it gets worse. They start to all sort of bang their shields so that the other slaves and the other girls can't hear the screams of what, going to happen and in case they then don't want to join their dead masters later on. It's like, yeah, no shit, shit a lot. There's also a really horrible bit which is incredibly personal where she's obviously had been

been given stuff to drink and Ibn Afadlan says, I could see that she couldn't work out how to get into the tent, you know, she was sort of like she's obviously drunk, you know, and so the angel of death sort of has grabbed her to take her into the tent and then they put a rope around around her neck and the men, oh, and then she gives her bracelets to the angel of death. She gives her anklets to the angel of death's daughters. The men, I think this is the way around, pull on the rope to kill her while the angel of death stabs her. It's horrible and it's incredibly, there's a reason this is such a well-known, there's nothing

like it. There's absolutely nothing like it. You can't forget it once you've heard it. No. And I remember having to sort of give lectures with this. I'm like, I'm really, so this is not going to be a fun lecture. This is horrible. So then what happens is they, they, so she's there with the master with all these, like, all the food, all the dead animals.

You just imagine sort of what that would have been like, so literally viscerally, you know, and then they, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the closest relative of the dead man, who is naked, by the way. Obviously, because, yeah, he then. so it's not penises but it's like not far off so he then has this flaming torch and he's going to set fire to the structure surrounding this ship but he has to do it with his neck is to the so it's almost like he doesn't want the spirits or something I don't know what it is to enter his oh so he has to look away so he's looking away so he's back to the ship he's going around lighting it while covering his anus with one hand in case the spirit goes in that way your guess this is yeah I mean Why not that? Yeah, and then everyone else comes in and they're all lighting. And then there's this bit where the translator, Ibna Fadlans, translator is talking to one of the ruse. And I'm Fadlans says, what were you saying?

This poor translator, I mean, having to explain what's happening. I know, just stick with me. And Ivina Fadlans, you just imagine the, yeah. So he says, what did he just say to you? He said, oh, well, you, you know, not Baghdaddies. I can't remember, you, you're fools because you bury your dead in the ground where the worms can get at them. But we light ours on fire, so their souls can rise straight to paradise.

And that's the end of the... It's a lot to digest. It's a lot to process. Well, let's just leave that there for a second. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk through this process in a little bit more detail. Okay, Eleanor. Oh, that's a lot.

One of the things that is striking me about that, I mean, there's a lot. but is the sort of the perceived power of the body right and obviously what you described there is a lot of sexual violence yeah yeah and you know that is very much how we would read it from modern perspective and indeed how presumably some of the people watching would have understood it at the time as well but there's is there something else going on in terms of sex there and and thinking about the naked man covering his anus as well not a sentence i thought i'd be saying today um the process is that the human body is subjected to. And obviously we have a dead body in the midst of this. Yeah. Is there something about sort of liveliness and living and sort of vitality?

Yes. So I think possible. I don't want to go back to the bit where like everyone's like going into the tent. But yeah, I think it's that sense. You know, almost like she becomes this conduit, this living conduit into the afterlife. You know, so where, you know, she's being lifted up over the doorframe and she can see them. And then yeah, yeah, it's sort of like this. there's no nice way of putting it

all this seminal fluids and some yeah it's yeah I mean it's really but what's interesting well many things that are interesting about it is this becomes the standard almost like this is what a Viking funeral looks like

right and specifically a burning ship but there's only one other textual reference to anything remotely like this which is entirely mythological and it's when Balder whose Odin's son is killed and he's there. And then there's again 13th century text describing the mythology,

so sort of from much later on when they're Christianized. But he's put on the in the boat, the boat is pushed out into the water. His wife then dies of grief and so is put on there with, but there's not a sense of a sacrifice. And then they set the boat on fire. So it's like purely mythological. There's nothing like that. If we think about, say, the archaeology or other textual,

evidence. It's not that ships, absolutely, burials, yes, cremations, yes. But that particular sequence. Yeah, the sort of the Vendaiogram in a way almost doesn't match up. I'm not then suggesting that what Ibn Fadlán saw isn't what he reported, but then we just have to think, okay, so this is out on the vulgar. This isn't how representative, another hard word, How representative is this funeral of what we might think of as sort of Norse funeral culture, given that we don't really know an awful lot about these people or the context in which they are sort of living their lives, relatively speaking. Okay. One of the things that I'm thinking here is when we talk about the Aztec, for instance,

we interrogate that source material that's coming from white Europeans by going, you know, in terms of the display of savagery that those texts will often contain and go, well, actually there was an agenda here from the white Europeans, blah, blah, blah. And given what you've just said there, and I really like that nuance of going, well, yes, but we're in a particular space in time

so we don't know what's going on there. It could be that. But I presume we're also considering the fact that there is an agenda in this source material. Yeah, there's always an agenda. There's always an agenda. But it's how. there's no, it's tricky because again,

archaeologically, if we're looking at that violence, for example, it's not constantly there in the archaeological record, but there's absolutely cases where there seem to be, probably for the most part, enslaved people who have been killed, sacrificed to join their masters in the next world. That absolutely is a thing. There's one from the Isle of Man very famously. There's some really horrible ones.

There's one where it's like two men seem to have been sacrificed, It's not just a female thing, but definitely there is enough of that to tell us that he's not, this isn't some like mad, Bavidream. No, no, no, yeah, yeah, I think he's on to some. And again, there are elements, like I say, of what Ibn Fadlund describes that are absolutely there. So ship burials, have to be very careful how you say that. Burials, right, are very much a thing, particularly high status ones. The Osseberg ship burial is a really good example of that. that. That's from, I think it's 834. It's from Norway.

It's the two women. It's the two women. This is the wonderful thing. I am obsessed with this. I think you told us about this on a previous episode, very, very briefly. And I have, this has been in my mind since our last conversation. So good. This is my favourite. Because again, if you think of a Viking ship burial, you think of a male warrior, basically, because again, it sort of plays into that image, it plays into what Ibn Afadlan. It even plays into that mythological idea of its boulder who's on that, you know, but, absolutely the most famous, the most exciting and mysterious of these burials, very high status. And it's two women.

And it's two older women as well. So one of them, she might be in her 70s or 80s. She seems to have had a lot of physical sort of health problems, should we say. The other one, and this is really interesting, it's a woman who's possibly in her 50s. she may have DNA that connects her back to somewhere around, I think maybe the Black Sea or something. So maybe it's not that she would have come from there, but maybe her ancestors did. There's not an awful lot of her body that remains. She seems to have had a broken of collarbone a few weeks before death.

But again, that starts to have healed. There's no sense of that's what's killed. I can really hit my tummy going here. But so there's this question, again, okay, has she been? Has she been killed to join the older woman? Or is that not? We just can't tell. We don't know.

Not enough of her body survives. There are definitely, as I say, there are archaeological cases where it's a very nasty blow to the head that's killed. But that's not what you've got here. And they're side by side, right? Yeah. Well, as far as, I mean, it's, yeah. But yeah, exactly. And they're both.

And what's really interesting is then the grave goods that surround them, which are sort of bling beyond bling. There's wagons. There's sledges. they're all intricately carved. There's cat heads. There's human heads, sort of like carvings of, not actual ones. There's this Buddha bucket that's got that has this image. It looks like a Buddha.

He's sort of on the edge of the bucket, and it may well have come from. Oh, wow. Yeah, really, because there were definitely these connections. You see other places where you see, you know, these trade connections. My favorite, there's two things that I love about this. Well, there's so many things I love about this burial, not least it's, just like two women and there may be a magical connection there because of some of the same, were they magical practitioners?

There's a lot going on. One thing I love is that there's a bucket of red crab apples. So that tells us, so remember from Ibn Afadlan's description, there are, there's food that's put there. That's very common, you know, that's not a strange thing. But here it's red crab apples, which tells us that the burial is probably sort of late summer, early autumn. Oh, that we can literally. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's like, oh, so you're already seeing this sense of that the kind of the world building out from the ship itself and the women in it. Those moments where you can pinpoint something through archaeology and history. It reminds me of when we had Dr. Jess Fenner on talking about Pompeii and she talks about some of that. I think it's the seeds that had fallen from trees or plants that dates the eruption at Pompeii to slightly later in the year than people thought. And that blows my mind. I love that. I love. I'm totally sort of, I'm looking at the moment at a, a, a.

Roman army latrine from near Glasgow. And the stuff, again, it's like, as you do, as you do, that's, you know, how I, how I while away in my life. But again, it's like, oh, right, they were going out there. There's raspberries in there. There's, you know, you can tell exactly the time of year. There's, I mean, poo is very, archaeological poo is the most amazing thing. But also when you see it.

But with the Orseberg ship burial, the really lovely thing about that is there are other details, which we can then very tentatively connect. to other sorts of beliefs about funerals, about the afterlife, what happens to the body. And one of these is, so there are horses that have been sacrificed there as well. Again, animal sacrifice absolutely a thing. But these horses have got,

sort of, I don't know what you'd say, sort of like ice crampons attached it. So they're to stop them slipping. Oh, wow. But of course it's late summer, early autumn. So they've not been, they've not got these spikes because they needed them to get to where the funeral was happening

and so then... It's where they're going next. It's where they're going next, potentially. So interesting. Let's take a little break and in a minute we're going to come back and we're going to talk a little bit more about these beliefs in the afterlife. So, Eleanor, ice skating horses, we have. Do we know, I think I can predict the answer to this.

Is there a kind of unifying... belief that the Norse peoples have about the afterlife or is it you know there's sort of magpies in their beliefs there magpies in their material culture and a lot of their sort of aesthetic languages is that the case when it comes to the afterlife as well they're borrowing from the other people that are encountering around the world so definitely that it's really tricky because it's more question of what's our source material for it and if we are looking at as I say sort of textual sources from within the Norse world they, well, there are runes, but runes are only, and there are things we can talk about with

runes and picture stones, which maybe give us clues. But in terms of sort of full written descriptions of things, a sort of credo idea of this is what we believe, we're not, we don't get anything like that. And it's only when people start to write down the mythological stories and poems in the 13th century that you're seeing, yes, okay, the sort of more formalized narratives where you're like, all right, yeah, these are the characters and this is what they did and this is what people believe. But of course, they're written down hundreds of years later. They're written down in Iceland, which again is very specific. It's not, you can't say that speaks for the whole of the Norse world.

And, you know, it's always that problem with belief. I mean, I was brought up Catholic. But I don't think there was any point where I could have said, yes, personally, I believe that, you know, wine turns into blood. However, if you looked at my biography from a historical perspective, you might well think. You know what I said? There's a difference between religion and ritual and belief. And we always talk on this podcast. You're obsessed with this idea of not believing as well, aren't you?

I think we take it too literal in all faith aspects or belief aspects where we're like, well, that's what the credo says. And so therefore that's what one must believe. Yeah, exactly that. And so that's really tricky because you always. it's really hard to sort of work your way into what that looks like. Having said that, you can also say, okay, no, but this is a cultural sphere. They do have shared ideas about, for example, gods and ideas of, yeah, cosmography and what

happens after death. It's not like it's just a random free-for-all. So there are ideas that we can sort of connect through. one of those, talked about the ice skating horses, but these sort of like ice crampons that the horses are wearing. What the hell's a crampon? It's like a spiky thing.

Like if you're walking in the snow, like if you're going to the North Pole and it's like spiky things that you put off under your feet. The horses are wearing them. The horses are wearing them. But this sort of makes sense because, and again, we have to sort of connect up different sorts of source material.

There's a saga, Gisla saga, about this outlaw. And there's a point where someone has died and they're preparing him for the funeral. And one of them says something like, right, I'm putting on these hell shoes. And we can talk what hell with one L. And if I don't, if these come off, then I don't know how to bind hell shoes. And so it's this idea. But remember, this is being, it's got an oral.

This story doesn't sort of originate in the 13th century. It's got longer an oral tradition behind it. But the text comes from later. So it's like, all right, what do you mean by that? There's one that then you have another textual. So this is Snorri Stuttleson, again, writing a lot of the mythology in the poetry in the 13th century in Iceland. And he talks that he says, the road to hell is downwards and northwards. And it's this idea of it's cold and slippery.

And when hell itself is described, which makes sense because etymologically, hell isn't sort of like demons and pitchforks and fire. It's this idea of a covering over, something that's sort of the underneath, almost the underworld, but something that is concealed. It's this very, very ancient word that goes way, way back. And why wouldn't it be cold down there? Well, exactly. And if it's north. And so maybe the idea here is that hell shoes are put on horses or sort of humans to stop them slipping when they're on the path to hell. And again, we know there is a path to hell.

And like there's there's Brynhilder, you know, like of sort of later Wagner fame. Brynhilder's like hell ride. And she's like riding down the path to hell. And in one of the poems, there's very much that sense that it's a place that you. you get to. Wow. Having said that then, archaeologically,

it's quite frustrating. I remember trying to find good evidence of burials with these spiky crampons shoes. It's like, okay, if this is a thing, you'd expect to find it. Hopefully,

someone will now write in and say, oh, I think you'll find there's like 27. I'm like, please, yes. Yes, I'd find one, one example. If you have excavated, write in. Please, I've been looking for these. I've spent way too much time. But there's,

I think there's one maybe in a double burial in Sweden where you could say like, okay, yeah, that might be. But given sort of the fact that this idea seems to be sort of circulating, we don't have that much archaeological evidence. And so once again, it's where does this Venn diagram? It's a bit like the ship burials. We know there are ship burials, but we don't really have anything about them being on fire. And yet we do have cremations. And it's like, so where does it all match up? probably it doesn't

you know there's always going to be the sense of we can only tell so much because our source material is just so random anything that survives I thank God for that but there's so much that doesn't at the same time you do see these sorts of ideas that are circling that do

seem to have some connections we just can't always see what those connections are now can I ask a question before I ask my real question are you a historian an archaeologist definitely not archaeologist I'm married an archaeologist I could get all the like juicy I'm like Can you just explain this? You can enjoy the best bits.

I just think archaeologists are so cool. Not that I don't think you're cool. I wanted to be an archaeologist and it's the biggest regret at my life. Well, no, if it helps, if you have an intact back, I have a spouse without an intact back because of all the digs in Ireland, in the bog. Basically, that was how he spent his misspent youth and has been sort of in a bog. Also, I don't like being outside. So I don't know why I'm saying that.

But the dream, the dream is nice, but the reality is not the dream. No, because the nice thing is, you can then enjoy all the nice thing is, you can then enjoy all the nice. nice shiny stuff that the archaeologists find. Yeah. Yeah. Do a little bit of typy, typy, reedy, ready about it. There you go, in the warm. Now, I'll tell you what this is about.

With a good back without your damage back. Now, okay, so one of the places you're talking about there is hell with one L. Yes. And I'm going to say up front before we get into talking about some of these halls more generally is that I would want to go to hell in this, in this iteration of afterlife. Yes. Right, go on. Okay.

Tell me, yeah. But the afterlife that probably most people know about in terms of, Vikings is Valhalla. Yes. But it's not the only one. No, it is not the only one. Talk us through every single one of them. No, I'm joking. Talk us through some of them.

Valhalla to begin with. A goodly number of them. Valhalla is the one that everyone knows. It's like the hall of the slain Valhood, right? Which is, again, we are talking about predominantly, but don't forget to talk about the Gotland Picture Stones, because they're very cool. How could I ever? I'm just saying.

A more willings, Jesus. I would never have picked that up. For years, I looked at them. I didn't see any phallic shape. And then now ever, don't put that in. No, I'm going to put it in. So, right, right. You talk away.

I'm going to Google them while you talk. Gotland picture stones. Have a look at the shape. You tell me. Gotland picture stones. Go on. So, right, from our 13th century predominantly, yeah, sources where everything is sort of put into a nice framework,

nice narrative framework. Valhalla, yes, exactly, is one of the halls where if warriors dying battle, they get to go. They feast with Odin every night. They then have big fights. They kill each other. They wake up the next morning. They do the same. Basically, they are in training for Ragnarok, the end of the world. So they're there. And at the final battle, they are going to help defend sort of the gods, you know, as they fight against the forces of evil. Lovely little detail, which, again, this is Norris Sturluson, this 13th century, Icelandic writer, poet, politician, all sorts. who actually had a very exciting, very sort of dramatic death himself, which I can tell. But there's a point where he says, he's talking about Ragnarok and the end of the world and sort of, you know, this preparation for it. And he says, and this is why you must cut, you must trim the nails of the dead before you give them a funeral. Because there is a ship which is going to come out of hell at the end of times.

When Ragnarok comes captained possibly by Loki, that sort of trickster God, not quite God. The ship is called Naglfar and it's made from the nails of the dead. No, thank you. No. No, that's too much. Made from the nails of people on the tube cutting their nails. I saw a woman doing this recently. No.

On the tube. Oh my God, have you never seen this? No. It's disgusting. Maybe is it just the same woman who goes up in Dan-joo. Like, clippity, clip, clip, clip. Oh my God, yes. Anyway, so the point is, she's actually doing as a favour.

Because her nails are not good, because basically the longer your nails are, the faster Ragnarok's going to come about because the faster the ship's going to go. Okay, so she's actually some kind of like mythic Norse woman who's traveling the tube in London, staving off Ragnarok. Thank you for your service. There you go. Exactly. So next time go up to her and thank her rather than gagging and then moving to the next carriage. Yeah, exactly.

So there's very much, so Snorry just to his death because he was also this international politician. Iceland, this horrible civil war is going on in the 13th century. Basically, sorry, Snorry partly responsible for this. The Norwegian king is trying to essentially work with all the political kind of crap that's going on in Iceland to get control of Iceland. But Snorri ends up on the wrong side of the king. And so he sends assassins to kill Snorri. Snorri gets down to his own basement. The assassins arrive.

And Snorri's last words famously are something like Eki Hugvars. I don't strike. The response to that is Hugvah. Strike. And last Snorri ends his days. So which I think, so this is the other thing. It's not just about funerals. It's about the manner of Viking deaths.

That is quite a big thing itself. And that has an impact on where you're going. Exactly. So Snorri, technically, he was a Christian. You know, we're very much Christianized Iceland, but he technically is killed in, if not battle, but certainly sort of violently. And so Valhalla, that's where you go, if that happens.

However, justice for Freya, because, half the dead also go to her. Yes. So folk van Gür is her hall. And that's just as important as Valhurtli, except it gets forgotten about. So what are the criteria for entering Freight's Hall? Not clear. It just basically says she chooses half the dead and then the other half of the slain.

It's not as cool as dying in battle and getting to fight every evening. But it's probably a battler, I think. It's from, it's like the slain, those killed in battle, she chooses half of them. Wait, what? Yeah. So. Fray is so much cool. She's not like, girl and goddess of love. No, she's balanced. Yeah, okay. But so if you,

if we were to have a battle now and you killed me, would I get to, I'm not debating in my head who would win. We could do a paper review on that if we want to. That's for subscribers only. It's not my gig, but I'll compare. I don't think I'd win.

I'm an awful cowardice. I think neither of you would win if that's possible. I think there'd be, okay, fine. No violence in the studio. But, okay, if one dies in battle, do you get to choose? Freya gets to choose. Oh, Freya's choosing. That's fascinating.

She chooses half the day. It's just one textual reference. Is she picking the better? Is she picking the people she wants to spend time with? You're actually interesting. Basically, my feeling is that's where the cool kids go. Yeah. And not being a cool kid, I would still like to hang out there with the cool kids.

You know, so yeah. You're a cool kid. You can imagine Viking Key. That's why I asked you if you're an archaeologist because it's like, you're cool. You're a bit of an archaeologist. Maybe again, I would debate cool, I mean, look, let's not get, we're all sitting here in the studio, didn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That ship sells a lot.

Talking about crisps. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, but that's it, but then of course not everyone dies in battle. No. So hell is where most of the, if you die in your beds. Yeah. Why? Because, okay, this is, okay, this is basic knowledge.

You can fill me in, right? From what I understand of why I want to go to hell. Cold, damp, dark, yeah. And like, you don't have to die in battle. And it's kind of a comfy death. Yeah, you can die in your beds, you die old age, sickness. I want it to be cold. I want it to be damp. I wanted to be dark. I mean, tell me this, though, Eleanor.

Yeah. Does the type of death you have then dictate the type of funeral you have? That's a good question. I don't know is one answer. But no, I think it's more about status. And so, for example, you are more likely to die in battle. Right, so Ossiburg ship burial, we talked about. There's also the Gockstad ship burial, which, which was always, so they were little siblings hanging out in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo,

which is now being sort of reworked and funkified. But the technical term, very technical term, archaeological, technical term, yep. The guy buried in that very much sort of warrior in his prime, killed violently, what you'd expect from a ship burial, essentially. So yeah, he's going to get that burial because he's a, most likely, he's a big sort of war leader, right? But then the two women, And sort of like, call me cynical, but I suspect that the 80-year-old woman probably did not die in battle, you know. She also gets this sumptuous,

if not more, sumptuous Viking ship burial. Yeah. So would a ship burial then, and you know, you're talking about putting grave goods in with the body, so we've got food for the afterlife. We've got horses with that ice skating equipment on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that trying to persuade Freya of where,

they're going to go or is there a sense that that's already predetermined and if they're wealthy enough they can take some stuff with them wherever they are going i think it's more about let's equip you for the afterlife what that afterlife looks like but you're not picking it no i and also i mean i think i think sort of i it's tricky isn't it because again our source material doesn't necessarily reflect the time in which the burial happens or not not in the way that we think it might so for example, that's why the Gokstad picture stones are so useful. Oh, quite penacy. I have Googled, yes.

I just think that occurred to me. I was busy looking at the pictures. I'm just too innocent, clearly. You're too busy looking at Roman toilets in Glasgow to be thinking about this. Right, so, blah, blah, right. Yes, Gokstad picture stones. The interesting, the Gautland picture stones from this island off the coast of Sweden. The interesting thing about them is that they are pictorial depictions of possibly the sort of funeral thing and the afterlife thing that we see reflected in the archaeology and we see reflected in later textual sources, but they are telling a narrative.

And so there's somewhere, and again, the problem is interpretation, but it looks like there is a woman with a drinking horn handing it to what might be a warrior who might have died and who might be coming to Valhalla. But the thing is that to interpret those, we're also then using the textual sources. So it's are we putting the right interpretation on them? But certainly a lot of elements on some of those picture stones back up what the textual sources and what may be some of the archaeological. It's the same way you often see sort of burials with weapons. It's the same thing. It's like, yeah, it's about your status.

It's about who you are seen to be in life, but also possibly about who you are. thought to sort of be in the afterlife and therefore what you might need. Hence also why you end up with, you know, tools of people's trade. You end up with, there's a wonderful one from Orkney, the Scar Burial. It's a boat burial. It has a man who's about, and this is, I want to say, sort of late 10th century, possibly, I think so.

We'll believe you. That's always a problem. But it's got three bodies in. And it's got an older woman. It's got a child of maybe 10 or 11, sex sort of indeterminate. And then it's got a man who's about 30. And it looks so you can sort of see

and they've put goods in with them. And the very famous one is the scar pluck. It's, I think it's whalebone. And it's this sort of flat piece of white bone that's got these incredible sort of dragon heads coming out the top, it's got cut marks on it, and it seems to be associated with the woman. And the suggestion is, okay, maybe it's a textile, it's something for textiles. It's like smoothing out the fabric, cutting the fabric. Maybe it's for food, cut marks again,

not sure. But again, the items that they're then buried with might reflect something about what they did in life and sort of the person that they are. There's one more thing I want to tell you, go on. Please do. Zombies. Why? Because I was thinking this on the way, and I was thinking we can't not talk about them. You can cut them out. But have you heard the droiger, right? The undead. This is a big thing in Norse mythology.

It's a big thing in the sagas, this idea that if you're not very nice in life or you get attacked by something else that's a bit spooky and supernatural and undead, you might turn into a driger. It's like the restless undead who comes back to haunts and sometimes sort of maim or kill the living.

And they're absolutely terrifying. They sort of... Like a revenant. Like a revenant. Except the way you can... Why is it all come back to anus? Ah, here. What?

Right. How on earth is this? Yes, go on. Right. So if anyone has watched, now what's Robert Eggers' film? Yes, we have both. Right. The Norseman.

Yes. Do you remember the scene? Oh. I swear to God, I came in here today thinking, don't talk about genitals. Don't talk about just like, regret it. You failed in that regard. You see it up.

It comes up on your social media and you're like, oh. I talked about it. Right, but you know, there's the scene where he's down in the burial mound. Oh, yeah. Fighting the undead. Incredible scene. Right.

My favorite. So good. Right. So I remember watching that with said archaeologist spouse and saying, right, if he cuts off that dead droegers, the dead king's head,

and sticks its nose up its bottom, I will know that Robert Eggers has been reading his source material. Next thing that happens, chops off the head, sticks straight out of the bottom. I'm like, Robert Eggers is nothing,

if not historically attentive. You want to be an old English? Yeah. The next movie. Really? Yeah. Yeah. They've got experts on it.

It's a whole, it's the best news. Werewolf. Oh, well, I haven't seen. Yeah, yeah. No, it's all going to be an old. We've done a lot of proper placement in this. Yeah, yeah. It's just, right.

So, we're not, not. Not, not yet. Christmas Day this year. Oh, Christmas Day. I know. Merry Christmas to us all. What's it? Ray.

Oh, yeah. The Bay Wolf, I need to kill you a monster. Okay. Which I love and also hate. But anyway. Anyway, anyway, the point is because in the saga sources, this is one way that you kill a revenant. And honestly, I'm now going to feel really smug because I'm bringing it back to Ibn Fadlan. And you remember, thank you very much.

And you remember the flaming torch, the closest relative covering up his steyness. Right, there's something about that active sort of penetration or being able to, there's something really powerful. Comes back to what you were saying about sort of bodily controlled autonomy. Stuffering yourself. Right. Exactly. But also a little bit embarrassing. And it's this sense that if you basically have been killed by having your undead head chopped off and then shoved up its your own bottom. I mean, honestly, are you going to feel too embarrassed to come back and haunt after that? I would just be like, cannot show my face one here again. Well, you literally won't be able to show your face because it's in your bottom. Maybe that's maybe it's just

practical. It's like you're not going to be walking around with anyway, no. But so this idea of sort of what the afterlife looks like sometimes and this is not just a Norse thing and there's like really cool Anglo-Saxon stuff about this like deviant burials. But this idea of the dead being unquiet, there's one saga where they have to have a court case to get rid of all these zombies. There's another one where they're out in the wilds of Greenland. And they're all sort of like coming back from the dead. It's like this plague,

but they just keep on popping up again and they have to get rid. So it's like there's a lot of that sort of stuff too. And so again, coming back to belief, what was the belief? What was the sort of practice? How much of it was a good story? What's going on here? That's always the problem when we're looking at this stuff. It's if we go back in time,

to what extent some of the things from any period where we might think, oh yeah, that's definitely what they thought. Go back to that period and they're like, you think we thought that? I think that's happening a lot. If we were to time travel, I really do.

That's my instinct on it. I kind of hope so, because it's cool. Now, look, we are done with the willies and the bums and thank you very much for all the Vikings. Mind you, Vikings, Willis and Bums are probably not the worst willies and bums you could talk about. It depends if you're asking you'mna Fadlan or you're asking the English. True.

Why do you do this? Why? This is... Well, you came here today, you, I didn't bring information. You brought this to our door. I think I have mild heat stroke from being out in the sun for so many others. She's going to get home later and calm down and be like, wait. Yes! What?

Leave it home on the tube. On the tube. Just don't cut your nails on there, okay? Oh yeah, good. Well done. Mixing it all together. Yep. Thank you very much for listening, watching and consuming after

dark. Could you be in better company? No is the answer. Go and get yourself a die coke. Coke zero is my prefer, but we didn't have any in the office. And die coke, if you want to sponsor this podcast, then you can absolutely do so. Get in touch that afterdark and history hit.com. That's afterdark and history hit.com. Leave a review wherever you get your podcast. Five stars. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Thank you. Love you. Bye.