Dan Snow's History Hit - The Viking History of the Lofoten Archipelago

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

Dan Snow explores the Viking history of Lofoten, an archipelago and a traditional district in the county of Nordland, Norway. Lofoten is known for a distinctive scenery with dramatic mountains and peaks, open sea and sheltered bays, beaches and untouched lands.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm just in a forest in the Highlands of Scotland, the Cairngorms National Park. I'm just beside the crystal clear waters of Loch an Island. It means in Gaelic, Loch of the Island. And near the middle of the loch there's an island on which there's a 13th century castle. It was once the castle of Alexander Stuart, who was known as the Wolf of Badenoch. Anyway, this podcast has nothing to do with this loch, or indeed the Hansa Scott, and this podcast is a repeat, one of my favourites from the back catalogue. I went to the Lofoten Islands off the coast of Norway in

the Arctic to sail on a Viking replica ship. I mean, it's difficult to fit so many cool words into one sentence. We went out with a group of reenactors, people that reconstructed this ship, and quite early on in the day they started drinking Viking Age moonshine, so things get a little bit loose by the second half of this podcast, but do enjoy it. If you want to go and check out the back catalogue of all these podcasts, they're all available at History Hit TV. It's my new digital history channel. We've got a couple of new programmes going up this week, we've got one about a Roman villa, excavating a Roman villa. Another is looking at all the evidence about what might have happened to the princes in the tower. Both those new documentaries exclusively up on

History Hit TV this week. And you can of course go there, use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, and for just one pound you get a month for free. And then for the month after that, your first month of being a user, a member of History Hit TV, you get the whole thing for just one pound, euro or dollar. You can check it all out, see if you like it. In the meantime, everyone, enjoy this trip to the Lofoten Islands. So, Hego, we're just walking now past the Lofoten Viking Museum. It is a pretty astonishing building. Tell me about this. It's actually a reconstruction of the biggest Viking house ever found in the world. And the biggest Viking house ever found in the world was found 40 metres away from where we have our reconstruction. OK, so is this indentation in the ground here?

Yes, this is where it originally stood. OK, so this is a huge... So there's a long... Well, it looks like the outline of a long house. There's a barrow about half a metre high. A huge, huge rounded oblong stretching right across the summit of this hill. And it would have been, I mean, I urge people to go and check out my Instagram and Facebook. I'll post pictures. But this Viking longhouse that you've reconstructed is enormous. It's enormous.

It's 83 metres long and nine meters wide and I believe nine meters high under the ceiling also. Who lived in there? Was it a whole community or was it one family one sort of royal noble family? Well it was the Viking chieftain we believe the last one was Olav Tvenenbryne of Lofodr and he would have been living here with his family and his most betrusted men and women or the closest people to him whether they were family or not inside this house we expect that 40 maybe 50 persons could have been living half of the house was a cow stable so there would be horses and cows so it's not quite as enormous it looks it's a barn as well there is a barn as well

and the barn was also big. And you know, the Viking chieftain of Lofoten, he was very rich and mighty and powerful in any way. And inside the barn, we've actually found gold-plated harness belonging to a horse. Wow. We've found so many valuable things in the earth here. But finding gold-plated harness for a horse I think it tells a lot about the chieftain and what sort of era so we're standing now on the original log house the foundations of the original house what period was this built this was built well it's a bit

hard to say because the first house came around 500 after the birth of Christ and then there was it was made bigger and longer and has been rebuilt and restructured a couple of times. But the house as we know it today, or as we see the reconstruction, it was probably around 900. So 900, so the Viking, what we call the Viking period, people from these islands, even high up in the Arctic, were attacking as far as England, Ireland and beyond? Sure, I believe they were. Because the Vikings... Well, on the verge of settling Iceland

and places across the Atlantic as well. Probably our last Viking chief living in this house, he left for Iceland. There is an Icelandic saga saying there came a man from Lofotr, Olav was his name. And we know that Lofotr was the former name of this island and has later given the name to the Lofoten

Islands and to take on a journey to travel to Iceland and conquer new land you needed to have been rich and mighty you needed to have a viking ship and horses and money so to say the economic resources to resettle again so chances are very very good that our guy Olaf went for Iceland too. So we're now inside really I can only compare it to, it feels like a church, doesn't it? It's vast and it's echoey and it's a very dramatic space. Yes, it has some sort of grandeur to it, I would say. It makes many, many people feel, not small in that sense, but that there is something bigger than them somewhere. I feel a great peace in here because I think it's wood.

It's beautifully hand-carved. There's no plastic or metal anywhere. It's a stunning palatial building. And all of the furniture is wood. It was all handmade. And then there's obviously sheepskin, reindeer skin that you guys have produced locally up on the walls, which give it a really cozy feel as well you can imagine spending a winter in here can't you oh it's it's amazing just coming in there any day of the year and especially during

the winter when there is a fire going there is the smell of smoke and tar maybe the sounds of the craftsmen people working with something the smell of, and you can hear the weather is maybe terribly bad outside and you feel warm and cozy inside this building. It's a great place. Well, it's an amazing place, and it's a great place for interpretation, presumably, because you've got, well, I've never been to a better Viking museum than this in terms of the buildings and things available.

Visitors, tourists, schoolchildren must love this. We get a lot of very good feedback, yes. People tell us every day how much they love the museum and how much they love the Viking Age history and how much they learn. That is a bit amazing to them because we often hear about the Vikings only as conquerors and with fighting situations.

But there is so much more to it and you get a glimpse of it when you enter the museum. I've been working on the Vikings now for about a year on various projects, and I'm really struck by what extraordinary craftspeople they were, and whether it's the ships or this remarkable building here, you think these guys were phenomenally good at working with wood and metal, and they had to be because they had to survive some pretty tricky climate. Yes, they were excellent craftspeople and they had to make use of the resources they had.

Wood was not plentiful on the Lofoten Islands, but it was not too far to cross the West Shore to import the big trees needed for the kind of work we see around here. So how are these big pine, these are big trunks of pine trees, would they be the central pillars? here. So how are these big pine, these are big trunks of pine trees, would they be the central pillars? Yes, these, what we see here are the central pillars and they are bearing the roof here. And they are, well, they're probably a good nine, ten meters high. Yeah. And they're thick and they've got beautiful carved decorations in them and they would have been once mighty trees in the Norwegian northern forests. The Vikings were also very skilled with textile work and with metal work. You should see some of the, or you have probably seen already, some of the things that they are making.

Rings, jewelry, sword grips, whatever they could make or produce of metal. It's so rich with ornaments and it's so detailed that it's hard to understand that we could have made it even today. What I think I'm learning about the Vikings is that in the modern mind, we're obsessed with the idea that the water represents a barrier. And we think the Lofoten Islands are a long way from Britain. In fact, of course, these people were at the center of a trading network because they were on the sea. They could travel extensively. They could trade.

They were actually in the center of the world. They were. They were due to their sailing abilities. And within just a few days, they could have reached from Lofoten to England, to Central Europe, to wherever there is water. They would have sailed in just a few days. So back then, this wouldn't feel isolated.

This would feel... No. It is the top of the world, I would have to say that, but it's a very rich part of the world when it came to resources. So it's easy to understand why people decided to live here. There was plenty of fish in the sea, other marine life that you could live off. There would be game in the forest and lots of, well, natural resources that would be sought after in other parts of the world and could make for a good living here. Well, speaking of good living, I'm coming to a Viking feast here tonight.

So I'm looking forward to that. What can I expect? Well, you will expect, of course, beautiful Viking women and handsome Viking men. The best of food is being served. And of course, the golden meat with the captain of this ship. You are dressed in the finest Viking clothing. Yes, I'm dressed correct. So you're wearing leather trousers, but this is correct for seafarers, is it?

Yes, you have to have something that's stopping the wind. So I have two levels of cotton under and then i have leather outside and it's oil on it so the leather is stopping the water and today there's about three knots of wind this beautiful blue sky the sun's out so we don't need full protective clothing. But have you worn that in tough conditions in big seas and when it's wet? You need warm clothes and you need leather outside. So for stopping the wind and the rain. And you have to move. You have to use your body in a ship like this.

So then you keep warm. Okay, well, let's talk about this ship because she's an absolute beauty. She's a long ship. What is she based on? She's a replica, but what is she based on originally? She's based on the Goxta ship, who's from nearby Oslo, west of Oslo. It's a ship that was used around 900, and she's 23.5 metres long and 5.5 meters wide. And we use around 8 tons of ballast in her. And the mast is 18.5 meters.

Is she a ship for war or for trade? It's a combination ship. It's an early Viking ship, so this ship you can use as a warship but you can also use it as a trading ship she can have as I said a lot of ballast so you can travel

to the big markets in Europe with a ship like this but if you need her for a war you could use 32 men for her, and you can use the big sail, 120 square metres, which is giving a good speed. You can sail up to 50 knots without problem.

50 knots, that's fast. That's fast. Wow. And you notice we've got little holes here along the edges of the hull for oars. We're sailing at the moment. They would have tried to sail. Rowing would have been exhausting, wouldn't it? So the crew would have tried to sail where possible.

Yeah. It's hard to row for many hours, but you have to change the rowers. So if you have 65 persons, you can change one hour or two. Then you need to rest a little bit. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History,

we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. So how many people would have been, how many crew would have been aboard this? When you are sailing, you need around 13 persons. You need eight persons to take up the sail, and you need somebody else around in the ship to handle it.

But if you're going on a long journey, it's better to be more people. If you're going to take up and down the sail when the rest is sleeping and for rowing so we don't know how many there was but we believe around 20 when he was on the journeys up to to the white sea in the spring they were sailing up to the white sea and he was trading trading with the Sami people who were living there. The hunters who were hunting whale and seal and whale rust. And they were buying all this skin from these marine animals. And they were making oil of the fat.

And then they were sailing south to Lofoten and catch up all the dried cod who was hanging around Lofoten. As I drive around the Lofoten Islands, I'm seeing hanging cod everywhere. It's all drying in the sun. We have done this for more than 1,000 years. And after that, they were sailing to the big markets in Europe and also to Britain. So then they load up with the dried cod from here and they go south? Then they were going south to the big markets in Europe, to England, maybe to Ireland,

and to the markets in Denmark and Norway and North Germany. How long would it take in a ship like this to get from here to, say, Scotland? Depends on the wind, but if you are going in May or June, it's northeast. So then you have... The wind on the beam?

Yeah, wind from behind. Actually from behind, yeah. Behind, and it's very good conditions for that, so you don't need to use a long time, maybe a week. A week. So this would, although this feels like we're on the edge of the world now, in fact this would have been very connected with the rest of the world.

Yes, they had a very good connection with the rest of the world. We can see it at the archaeological proofs here in Lofoten that they had very good contact to England

and to France we have drinking glass from France we have jewellery and many proves that we had very good contact with the rest of Europe Now you guys are all looking amazing you're dressed in your Viking gear

are the people of Lofoten proud of their viking heritage it's something people learn about in school learn about in the family yes uh they are very proud of it but it have been under communicated in norwegian history before but now it's coming more and more and the whole world want to be a part of it yeah everyone's fascinated would the lords of the lofoten islands up here would they have been uh going on the great viking expeditions to to england to scotland to ireland going as conquerors as well yes the saga story about the kings and the and the laws in the northern northern part of Norway tells us that they were everywhere. They were sailing direct from Lofoten to England

to King Knut and asked him for help to the battle of Stiklestadir when they were taking the king, Olaf. They were powerful men in the kingdom of Norway. They was. And they had like a parliament. They was gathering one or two times

each year here in Lofoten that it was decided how they going to do things. And if they had problems, they was meeting there. When you guys are out sailing this ship, is it about learning, do you learn things all the time about how the Viking Age mariners,

how they would sail, how they'd survive in the high seas? I mean, it must be like living archaeology, this. Yeah, it is. It is. If you stand on a museum, you see a boat like this, you can think a lot of dreams. You can dream about how it was. But when you start to use it, then you see the problems

and you have to learn how to do it. It's not so easy to handle a lady like this. What I love is I'm a sailor back in England, and I recognize many of your old Norse words you're using, like make it fast or bowling. I can recognize them in Norwegian as a sailor from England, so for me it feels like the distances have been shortened because of the language. It's quite similar.

And it's still in our language. because of the language is quite similar. And it's still in our language. The old people used this terminology in the original language. But, you know, it was nearly died out when we started to use it around 20 years ago. So you've done an important job saving that oral history. Yeah. And now we have a similar land which you use in Sweden and Denmark.

And they also use it in England if they have a boat like this on Balticum. Everybody's using the same little story. Well, the nice thing is we've now got a little breeze coming in from our starboard side. And the sail's just about filling. It's a beautiful day here, isn't it? How many days like this? It's actually hot. It's almost flat calm.

The snow is on the peaks. The sun is out. Is this normal for the sailing in the Arctic? Not in April, but you can never know. It could blow like hell today. You see here on the top of my head. Sometimes it's like a devil is outside. Brilliant.

What I love about these vikerships is they were easy to make with the right skills and what was available here at the time. You didn't need stuff from outside. skills and what was available here at the time they didn't need you didn't need stuff from outside no but here you had to go into the mainland to find wood for a ship like this what is the plank you made of on the sides uh plank is uh pain but it is oak the ribs and the keel ribs the killer oak so the backbone is oak then pine planking and and the ropes where do we get the ropes the rope is hemp the hemp yeah and horse tail too really and then the sail the sail is uh from lean okay okay and uh what about the coloring on the yellow one, and the red one is burned ochre.

But that's not enough. You need oil, you need salt in this paint. And it's stopping the wind. So the wind is not going through this material. What I respect so much about the viking age mariners is they were phenomenal navigators but also boat builders as well they had to know how to create their own vessels and repair them yes and um it's not so easy to uh build a viking ship like this and so you have to have to be a good boat builder you have to be a good sailor and you have to be a

good navigator to do this and you have to maybe do it for many generations to discover all the secrets about these boats what i like about the navigation we can see it today it's clear skies above the sea but you've got the clouds there above the mainland so those are actually useful navigational aids aren't they if you see those puffy clouds you know that lands over the horizon you don't even have to see the land itself no and um and but they also was using the sun you know they was experts for uh experts for sea on the sea stream, the sea grass, is it fresh or is it old, which way is the birds flying in the morning and in the afternoon, and they were looking at the stars,

and maybe they have a sun watch they were using to follow the shadow of the sun. They are, I think, the most remarkable maritime civilisation ever. Perhaps them and the South Pacific, the Polynesians. I mean, it's extraordinary. A thousand years ago, they were able to sail across the Atlantic and make accurate landfalls and things. They had to be very good navigators. You know, if you're sailing from Lofoten to Iceland for hunting seals and whales in the start of the 800s,

it's not so easy to find Iceland. Iceland is not so big, so you have to be a good navigator to find back again. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying, and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it, and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review.

It really helps, and basically boosts up the chart, which is good, and then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't want to my TV channel. I understand if you don't buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favour. Thanks.