Empire: World History - 263. Viking Greenland: Erik The Red & Horny Zombies (Ep 1)

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

How did the Norse settlers in Greenland adapt to the harsh Arctic environment, and what did their diet consist of beyond fish? What role did walrus ivory play in their trade with Norway? And who were the "horny zombies" encountered in the Vinland sagas? In the first chapter of the new series on the history behind Trump's Shopping List, William and Anita are joined by Eleanor Barraclough, author of Embers of The Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age, to discuss how the Norse made their way westwards to Greenland. ----------------- Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. ----------------- Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to a brand new series of Empire. Now, as we hinted in the last episode, this is the first mini-series in our collection on the history of the places on President Trump's shopping list. And so we're starting with Greenland. We're looking at the different waves of colonisation of Greenland from Vikings to American airbases.

So, look, there is history in them there hills. In this episode, though, we're going to go all the way back to the 10th century. And we are going to ask, how did the Vikings actually get to Greenland to begin with? And we are joined by Viking expert, Eleanor Baraklough, to explore just that. We should give a bit of Eleanor's remarkable biography, which is contained. in her books. She describes herself as someone who's pursued her research into the ice flows of the far north and west under the midnight sun with a caribou hunter. I love that. And on the way, she writes, I've been knighted with a walrus penis bone. And that has to be the first time

we've had a warrous penis bone on this podcast in the Royal and Ancient Polar Bar Society. And we need to know a bit more about that before we get any further. A little bit more about that, please, Eleanor. I mean, you know, it's not nothing to do with, you know, Realpolitik, but I want to know. Why did this happen to you? Well, this was actually in Arctic Norway, to be fair. This isn't in Green. The Caribbean, the Caribbean, but we were doing a radio documentary

about the supernatural North and this Norse explorer called Octor, who comes from the time of essentially the Great Heathen army when sort of the Norse are attacking the Anglo-Saxons and it's all getting very messy in England. Great Heathen army being

the army that we talked about on a previous episode with Kat Jarman and her Repton, a little bit of amber, which came from, exactly. Yes, exactly. And this is very much around the same time, but there's this character, Octoran. He's a very rich trader and explorer who lives in Arctic, Norway, essentially. He goes all the way around the coast. So I was on the trail of him.

He ends up in Anglo-Saxon, England, which is why we know about him. He tells King Alfred and his court all about this amazing Arctic landscape and the people and the animals and the resources there, which is, but I was basically on his trail. and stopped off in Hammerfest, where they have the Royal and Ancient Polarizers. It's not ancient. If it's going to be a history podcast, I've got a level with you. I think it was probably the 1960s. I was going to get 70s.

But why a waris penis bone? What's the role of that in the Royal and Ancient? I was so. Makes it special, darling. It makes it special. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about it, aren't we? You know, you have to sort of get knighted on either side. The really disturbing thing is that there.

is actually a stuffed walrus head mounted on the wall that's essentially staring down at you as you get knighted and you just end up feeling very apologetic. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. But yes, and then you become a member of the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society. You get a certificate, little badge, everything. Well, can I just reiterate your credentials as being the perfect person as if you weren't before. Now, proof positive. You are the person to talk about the Vikings. Now, you mentioned sort of Anglo-Saxon Britain getting their heads around the fact that there were Vikings. The people of England who first heard about the Vikings, we're talking about in the year sort of 7-9-3, aren't we? And it's not a lovely story either.

Can I read the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for that year? Go on. The famous entry. The arrival of the Vikings, it is written in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was foreshadowed by omens that seared the Northumbrian sky. in this year came dreadful portents over the land of the Northumbrians, and the people were terrified, most pitifully. And there were immeasurable whirlwinds and sheets of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying through the air. These signs were soon followed by a great famine, and a little after that, the despicable ravagings of the heathen men annihilated God's church on Lindisfarne with plundering and slaughter. and the Baraklough, what's going on?

Tell her, yeah. Do you want a bit of that in the original Old English? Oh, yes. Yeah, I'm not going to be able to match it for drama. And also I should preface this by saying that I have a colleague who once said to me, you know you speak Old English with an Old Norse accent. There's not a compliment. But it starts, here were an reidder for beck and a common o for Northumbra land

and that folk, Ermlich-Bregdon, that were an orm, met her thornas and ligresias, and fearing a dragon warring yesewen on them, leaf the flio gregons bit. So you know the whole of the Anglo-Saxx's chronicle by heart? You're not reading. She's not reading. No, no, no, no. I mean, every single, and not just one version, every single version, off by heart. Yeah, yeah, complete. And the whole of Beowulf. As I said, the perfect person to be talking about the, if I've not mentioned it before. Now, so the Vikings fell upon Linda Spine like stinging hornets. What were they doing? doing and what did they do to Linda Swann? What is the truth beneath the Anglo-Saxon headline there?

Pretty much that possibly minus the fiery dragons. You know, it's very portentous, but that's because they know what's coming next. They know that this is the start of raids around the coastlines of Britain and Ireland that will eventually then lead to the arrival of the Great Heathen Army, as we've already mentioned in 865. But so this is the first major recorded raid. It doesn't mean that it's definitely the first. We have something from maybe three, four years earlier at the Isle of Portland, so right on the south coast of England. There it says that was the first three ships of the Danes that ever appeared on the coast. But yeah, it seems like that's maybe even a trading party, a tourist part, something gone wrong. Lindisfan, why it's so important is because

it is a proper raid and they attack Lindisfarne. It's this sumptuous, very wealthy monastery. We have the Lindisfan Gospels from around, I think, 700. I'm giving this interview from about 20 miles away. I'm a little bit up the coast. There you go. Yes. I think they still have the original in the museum on Lindisfarne. But they have the Raiderstone, which is from a couple of...

They do. It's still there. Yeah. It's brilliant. And they're on the back. So what is the Raiderstone? For those who aren't in Berwick this moment of time. I mean, which is everybody except William. So what is the Raider Stone?

So the Raider Stone they found in Lindersfan in the context of... of the monastery or the abbey that was raided. From a few decades later, it's not completely contemporary, probably. But on one side, there are seven figures with axes and swords raised, hence what's called the raiderstone. And then on the other side, there are these two big arms coming around, sort of these hands to meet each other in the middle, and there's the moon and the sun. And it's this sense of doomsday having arrived.

And I think it's probably a grave marker, something like that, maybe for one of the sort of holy men. Always used as the illustration of the first of the first raid. But I think it's fascinating because without it, you don't get that sense of kind of how it felt to be on the ground, as it were, in any sense. You know, you have those fiery dragons in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but you don't have that sense of these are real people who are attacked out of nowhere. And that's why it's so shocking. And you have people writing in the Carolingian Empire basically saying, what did you do wrong? you know, why have they attacked you?

And they assume that it's their own sins that have brought this down on them. But what it does show is that people from a remote place far, far away, are flinging themselves into the ocean and they are, I mean, are they just raiding? Is it conquest? Is it colonialism? I mean, what is the motivating,

what is the motivating factor for flinging Vikings all over the world? So this is a question that people are still asking and trying to answer. So whatever I say is like subject to change. just to do a bit of covering of myself beforehand. But definitely at this point not conquest. We're talking about hit and run raids for portable wealth. What's really fascinating is that you find in some, you know, a handful of Norwegian female graves from around this time,

little bits and pieces of what appear to be raided items that were brought back. This is a huge part of why people think they're now doing it. It's essentially, if you are not already the top dog back where you come from, this case with talking those raids in this instance seem to come from Norway. It's a really good way of getting yourself some money and some status. And so you come back and suddenly you might have got yourself a wife, you might have got yourself some followers, and then you can build up your reputation.

Have some slaves. Often very much. And again, you know, you can either enslave people to sell them off to get money or to ransom them back. You have quite a lot of, again, kind of abbots and holy men being ransomed back to their communities. or yep, take them yourself. And I think that's a really important thing that often gets missed out of that fairly glitzy opening.

Slavery is a big engine of the Viking Age. So you get this crescendo of raids. And it starts off with this one, a few follow. Iona is then raided, all the kind of most glamorous monasteries with all the gold, all the lovely gilt crozes, all that stuff you see in the National Museum of Dublin with those gorgeous interlaced crosses and all that sort of stuff gets carted off to Norway.

And then there's a step change. In 865, it's no longer raiding a great army turns up on the South Coast and begins to take over. This is actually now an invasion. It's something completely different. Yeah, and this is really important. This is a real sea change. It's when you start to see them overwintering, sort of on the islands of, say, Thannett, for example. And then from there, it's this.

Repton. I dug as a teenager. in the vicar's garden, unearthing the bones of Viking elite troops, all of whom were kind of six-foot-six, all very in alignment with the church. Yeah, well, but this is exactly, I mean, something like that, the reason that's so important is because we get this sense of, they've been described as almost like mobile war bands. So they're still pretty flexible. It's not like they arrive and then they're all just going together. It means they can sort of go between the different. They've got their ships. They go up and down the rivers, don't they?

They go up and down the rivers and then there's a point where they get horses, I think, and the Anglo-Saxons are like, oh, oh, this is not looking good. But it means they can move up and down. So the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms start to topple. You know, we have the murder of King Edmund of East Anglia in 870 or so. And they begin to settle. That's the point. And then suddenly the whole north and east of England become the Dan law,

where suddenly you get all these Danish names for Danish farms or Norwegian farms. I went to school in Yorkshire and all the names around there were Thorps or Bees, Dan Bee, Norman Bee, all these Viking names. And Thorpe means? Well, Thorpe is a bit tricky because you also get it in the Northern Isles, so Orkney and Shetland, where it takes a different form, which is Twat. And it basically means a cleared place. Sorry, what? I do apologise, but it's true. Yes.

You actually like it so much, you put a picture of a Twat signpost in your book. So, so the Thwait or Thorpe or Twat, you know, it basically means a cleared place. It's sort of a secondary place. But yeah, this, so, like the last time I was up on Orkney though, did a little detour through twat. Of course I did. I wasn't not, I'm a professional historian. Everyone has to get a twat. Yeah. Well, but apparently everyone has been going. And so the problem is the signs keep being nicked. And so the last time was, there was no sign. Can I find a twat anywhere? No, I cannot. Oh my God. She looks like such a lovely girl. She says, seriously, this is going to be our last broadcast on Empire. I hope you've enjoyed what you've heard so far. Okay, so look, the raid, she says, trying to take control. Of the children. Unruly kids at the back of the bus.

So, I mean, it's now turned into colonisation. And as you say, I mean, is it an argument whether it was deliberate colonisation or accidental colonisation? Could you hang around for long enough and you fall in love? I mean, what happens here? Well, I think probably that did happen to some of them, but there is that sense that these are, for the most part, young men who are off on their raids and then it sort of gets a little bit heavy. Lads off on a trip. Yeah, but eventually you get a bit tired. You want to settle down.

You want some good farmland, you know, and so that's the point. The stag party's gone on for too long. Well, Hans, you know, in the sagas you do find, which I'm sure we'll get onto when we talk about Greenland, but these stories written down a bit later, but about this sort of era. If you were a Viking but you're an older Viking, it's a little bit embarrassing. You've stayed at the party a bit too long. Everyone else has gone home. You're still there. There's one entry in the Angluxan Chronicle that says rather ominously, they started ploughing the land. And that's a really important part.

Because when they start ploughing, then this is something they're invested in and they want to stay and they want to sort of bring their families or make new families. So from that we move from a Dane law that has now got Vikings with plows and with horses and the poor old Anglo-Saxons are shoved off into the margins, up into the valleys, up into the hills and the less good land. And then they've settled around Dublin, and Dublin has become a Viking kingdom. And it is people from perhaps Viking York, Viking Dublin,

that seem to be making the next move further westwards into the oceans. What do we know about the move towards Iceland? The interesting thing is that around the time that we see the North's very heavily invested, in settling parts of Britain and Ireland, we also see this move out across the North Atlantic. So around 871 plus or minus two, very specific dates because a volcano goes off around the same time and so we know when... Brilliant, we've got the date. Yeah, we do.

And also, so we have... He's called Auri in Frodi. He's in Iceland. He's writing in the 12th century. And he also describes the settlement of Iceland. And he dates it to when King Edmund of East Anglia is martyred. and he says it's 870, but he's using oral tradition. But what's really interesting is that Auri out in Iceland is using that same date,

and then we can corroborate that date with an Icelandic volcano going off just before the first settlers arrive, which I absolutely love. So we're talking mostly sort of the male seem to be predominantly from Norway, but there's a very high population of the first female settlers, and we can tell this from genetics, who come from the British Isles and Ireland. So there's that strong element coming in there as well. Are they slaves? We just don't know. We don't know. It's possible.

And certainly some of them probably are. And in the sagas again, which are these later sources that look back to that time, a lot of the slaves have Irish or Celtic names. But there's also that tricky thing that someone's genes don't tell you necessarily what sort of heritage or how they grew up. So if you looked at my genes, they'd look quite Dutch, but I can't speak Dutch. It's my granny was Dutch. Do you know what I mean?

So it's like, so we don't know whether they are sort of people of the British Arles, of Ireland, sort of who are living in Norse cultural communities and then going up there. I'd imagine quite a few of them probably are slaves. But we do know what they did when, I mean, when they got to Iceland, Iceland was very heavily forested and we know that, you know, they were industrious. They cut down a lot of trees. They needed building materials.

It's a tricky one. Heavily forested for us, not living in Iceland, probably means something different to what it meant for those first Icelanders who were describing it. certainly we've got trees, but they're all a bit scrubby and sort of almost in the Arctic of the North Atlantic sort of thing. But yeah, it's certainly true that we start to see. The reason I'm being slightly cagey about this is because I've written a very academic article about deforestation in Iceland. And it is gripping, but you probably don't want me to go into as much detail as I'm going to. I mean, we're talking about some sickly trees,

not that many, don't get too excited, Anita. Basically, that's what I'm getting the abstract from your academic article. Okay, I won't. But are they, are they chopping, down timber to sort of set up villages or is it to make boats to go even further exploring? So what is it for? This is a really good question. So they need it for fuel. They need it. Yes, for boats, but you find very, very few ship burials in Iceland.

I think it's like six compared to, say, if you go to Norway. And that's partly because you're not going to have the wood. So you've got to think those boats are often going to be already have been built in the British Isles or Norway. But it's what happens next. And yeah, it's this, so we don't get that movement going further west. So remember, Iceland settled in around 871. We're talking 9-85 before we know that someone has sort of intentionally gone off further west and has found Greenland.

And is this regarded as a staging point for further travel, or is this a place that isn't ended itself? What's the... Iceland is very much somewhere you settle. Yeah, so Iceland is somewhere that you go and you find land. and the first people to go out there, get the most land and the best land. But it is all the way around the edge. That's something.

Because even today, you can't really live for the most part in the interior. It's very icy and rocky. And people turn up with IKEA kits. I love that in your book. They've got prefab houses. They bring with them from Norway. Yeah, they're very smart.

You can see why today's Scandinavians came from those Scandinavians. You know, it's things like they bring, they bring the same blueprint of farm animals. Every time they make this. movement across the North Atlantic and then it's essentially suck it in sea, which ones are going to survive. You know, pigs, great in the pharaohs, not so great when you get to Iceland and even worse when you get to Greenland. So they're in Iceland, you know, they've

chopped down trees for some really pathetic trees from the sound of them that nobody's going to miss. And, you know, they've been sort of building their little homesteads and their ships. Flinging themselves into the ocean and then sort of heading for Greenland, is that a deliberate move? Because after the break, we're going to talk very much about Greenland and the Viking presence there. But, I mean, is it deliberate or is it kind of an accidental? We're just wandering around and, oh, that's interesting. Well, this is mostly, when you're talking about these sorts of places,

they are accidental discoveries. Someone gets blown off course, and then they're like, hmm, something's over there. Goodborn son of Alf the Crow, no less. We don't have Alf the Crow on the show enough. I think we need a... I completely agree. They're good names, aren't they? Yeah, no, the problem is, though, he gets into...

I say a lot of trouble, but he doesn't want to land. They get blown off, and they're like, oh, you didn't land. You didn't, okay. So it's those sorts of feelings that, you know, if you're not the one to actually go and explore, it's not cool. Alfa Crow cites the land, but the person who actually realizes that this is a place that you can try and settle is going to be the hero of the next half. After the break, we're going to introduce you all to Eric the Red, who Eleanor describes as a hot, tempered serial killer. He sounds dreamy.

Okay. Welcome back. Well, just before the break, we'd met Eric the Red, the hot, tempered serial killer, a difficult, violent but intrepid man with limited options. I think that was pretty much spot on. I think he'd probably have quite liked that description himself, to be honest. So he starts off in Norway,

and he gets outlawed from Norway because of some killings, as the app, that the saga say, rather darkly. So then he goes off to Iceland. He settles there. He's got a family. It's all goods. gets into another fight but then yeah there are some more killings

over some bedboards that I think don't get returned and everyone gets a bit cross and so yeah some more killings happen until I read your book I always assumed Eric the Red was like that character in Game of Thrones with his big red shaggy beard

and his red hair but it's Eric the Red because he's covered in blood pretty much most most of the time I mean let's say shaggy red hair possibly also covered in blood you know this guy I don't know I mean he's the right guy to settle Greenland put it that way

because he's intrepid He only gets outlawed this time for three years. So this is called lesser outlawy, which essentially means you get out, you think about what you've done, you sit on the naughty step, and then you come back. And so he does that. It's only when you've killed a handful of people as opposed to a full-scale massacre. Yes, exactly. Off you go. Yes.

Very naughty boy. So off he goes. And he decides, yeah, he's heard there's this land. And so he's going to go and explore it. But really importantly, it's the West Coast that he explores. And that's important because East Coast, although there are people who live there now, they're people who are very much

hunter-gatherer, Inuit way of life. We've got to think of the Norse as being part of this medieval northern European culture. And so they need land to farm. They need to be able to hunt. They need to be able to grow things if they can, but honestly, it's, Greenland is pretty harsh for that. So he goes up and down that west coast.

He discovers all these fjords that are really quite lush in the summer. and he then comes back after three years, gets his family and his followers together, and he says, off we go, we're settling. And so this is around 9-8-5. And then he does a kind of sales pitch. Rather than come back and say, it's this really icy place full of rocks,

he decides he's going to do the kind of estate agent thing, and he's going to call it Greenland. Greenland, which is something Iceland that has more greenery, never bothered with. We'll just call us what we are, but Greenland, you know, let's just change the thing on the tin. everyone thinks we're a different colour than we are. And to be fair to him, those

fjords, because I've spent a bit of time out there researching sort of in the trail of the, hence the Caribou hunter that we talked about. But in the summer, it's good land. It's not brilliant, but it's good. The problem with Greenland comes in the winter because it's dark and it's very, very cold and they're very long winters.

And so that makes growing very difficult. It makes keeping animals really difficult, particularly slightly more tender animals. Like I said, the pig, not a big fan of Greenland. The goat, great, sheep, great. It's that whole yearly cycle that becomes difficult. What they do have, however, is really good hunting. And they have these two settlements.

They have the eastern settlement, which is all along the West Coast, but it's bigger. It's got his own bishopric. And then they've got the Western settlement, a few hundred miles further up the coastline. It's about a third of the size. And then, if you go further than that, beyond the Arctic Circle,

around what's now Illulisette, Disco Bay, that area, very, very icy and cold. You have what they called Norther Seta, which means the northern hunting grounds. And there you have things like walrus. Great thing about walrus. They have really tough hide for ships ropes. But more importantly, perhaps, they've got ivory. And ivory is a big deal and people will pay a lot of money for it. So the Norse have access to this.

So, I mean, a lot of what we know about this period and this settlement, I mean, it's from the sagas. And I just wanted to know, are the sagas history? Are they sort of epic storytelling by the fireplace? How do we know what's true? What's not true? And when they were actually written? Oh, wow. Okay, so both of the above is the first answer.

We often don't is the second answer. And yes, we do know when they're written down. I can give you that. So, yeah, the thing is, the saga, saga literally means it comes from an old Norse word say to say to tell. So they're based very much on oral traditions that get passed down the generations. And we've already seen from the settlement of Iceland that oral traditions can be really sort of really good markers of time. So it's not to discount that, but other things can slip in.

And so our idea of what is a historical account might not be the same as sort of medieval Iceland's idea of a historical account. The sagas get passed down and they change and they sort of wiggle around and you end up with extra things in. And then particularly in the 13th century, you start to see them being written down. And that's partly because by that point there's a horrible civil war going on in Iceland, and the Norwegian King is very heavily involved in that civil war, and sort of wants to take over and eventually does in the 1260s. And so by the time they're writing down the sagas, they're looking back at a time, and we're talking particularly the sagas of Icelanders here.

There are other types, but these are the ones that we're talking about in this context. But they're looking back to those first centuries of settlement, when they are what's sometimes called a Commonwealth, but they're an independent country without a king. And so that's the context. You know most about your own identity when you come up against something that is threatening it. The greatest tests of your matter.

I mean, and I just wonder with this, I mean, you mentioned, you know, they sort of hug the coast most of the time, which is just more hospitable whenever they find these landfalls of Greenland and Iceland. But, but, but, but, do we ever have in the sagas any kind of account of what happens when they make first contact with the original inhabitants, you know, sort of the Inuits who live there? Are the original inhabitants?

I mean, are the Inuits already there all over the coastline in the interior or not visible at all for many years? It's tricky because there are different groups, sort of Arctic hunter-gatherer type groups that come in and out of Greenland. We can talk about Greenland and we can talk about, because they certainly, we know a little more actually about the people they encounter when they move even further west than that. But in the case of Greenland, when the Norse actually arrived,

That's a period where it doesn't look like there is actually other cultural groups living in that particular sort of more southerly part of the Western Coast. There have been... Because if your hunter-gatherers, you want to be near the walrus and the seals, you don't want to be on the southern coast. Exactly. And at that point, it's a little bit warmer. What we find from sort of the 1,200s onwards, is that it gets stormier, it gets icier, the temperatures start to drop. It's not sort of a downward slope, but it's kind of a gradual descent. And what you find there is that life becomes more difficult increasingly for the north. But if you think further north, you end up with more coastline that is more suitable for this sort of Inuit way of life, essentially.

And so they start to make their way further down. Now we have this quite, it's quite dark account. It's in the historian of Meguii, so in the history of Norway, and it's written in the third. 13th century. And they say, you know, the hunters in Norse Greenland, the Norse hunters, have found these people further up the coastline and they call them the Scrialingar. And Scrialingar is not nice. It means sort of wretched ones, but it's not meant to be complementary. Savages. Is it savages or puny ones? I mean, is it more puny ones? Yeah, exactly. That's what I thought. You know, the weaker human, the lesser human. Exactly. Exactly. Like mannequins, little ones, wretched ones. Exactly. And then

rather worrying it says, you know, they, when they're cut a little bit, these people, and their wounds turn white and they don't bleed, but when they're cut more than they bleed and bleed and bleed and you just think, oh, this is not good. Not going to end well. Exactly. Now, that has then, it's really tricky because what you don't, you don't see regular contact between these groups, although it seems that definitely are starting off in these northern hunting grounds. They are coming into contact with each other in the kind latter part of the Norse Greenlandic settlement.

For example, the people who are sort of the ancestors of today's Greenlandic Inuit, in their archaeological evidence, they seem occasionally to be carving little wooden figures that look like they are depicting the Norse, for example. Or you'll find bits and pieces of Norse artefacts in their occupation layers, in the Inuit occupation layers. But we don't know what that, you know, did they sort of get those later? Trade, does that mean conquest? Does that mean defeat? I mean, that's fascinating.

Or none of the above. And actually, it's that they sort of find these things later on when the Norse have disappeared. So it's tricky. We don't know. There doesn't seem to be any sort of genetic evidence to go on there either. But just to clarify, when they're arriving on the South Coast, this is pretty well virgin territory. There's no evidence from archaeology that it's been inhabited before. On the South Coast of Greenland, no, no.

So there is. I can't remember how far down they get, but there's an earlier population. who definitely, and I think there is actually a Norse text that says, you know, they found evidence of these people and their tools and their weapons. So there is, but we're talking a significant amount of time. It's a dead population. It's like finding a lost civilization. Exactly. And because it's stone tools and bones, they survive. They don't sort of deteriorate in the same way that more kind of soft organic material would have done. How easy is it to settle? You've got Eric the Red, the psycho killer, turning up with his family. they haven't got, there's no wood, they can't grow wheat so there's no bread, what are they living off?

The only wood that's there really, I mean, there's like puny bits, there are some bits, there's, exactly, it's mostly the good wood is driftwoods from Siberia or they're having to import it from Norway. And even more so as time goes on, and it gets sort of increasingly precious. So they're building from turf or what? Yeah, so, and this is true of Iceland as well. What you'll see is like the lower layers are stones and turf and they build up the walls. And it's really effective, particularly for these long winters, you know, these thick, thick walls. There's one church, it's at Kvalsi, so this is in what was, you know, would have been known as the Eastern settlement.

It's still standing. And I've been that the walls of this stone church are so thick, like crazy thick. But it makes perfect sense within that context. And in fact, one of the last written records we have about life in North Greenland comes from the church at Kfalsi. It's from the first decade of the 1400s, and it's a marriage that takes place there. And so, yeah, you can see, you can see kind of part of the fascinating thing about North Greenland is that it hasn't much been built over. And so a lot of these farmhouses, the remains are still there. And you can see that they are in areas that are sort of the luscious parts of North Greenland.

And so, you know, certainly in the early years, it's not a bad place to settle at all. You know, they have, like I say, their own bishopric. What are they eating other than fish? I mean, I remember Robert McFarlane writing about how disgusting gannets are to eat. Are they eating razor bills and gollymets and puffins? Is that blubber? I mean, blubber must be a big thing. There's a lot of seal blubber.

And more sealed blubber as the years go on, sort of as things get harder, you see an increase in that in their diet. No one chooses to eat sealed, do they? It's not a delicacy. No, no. Blubber is quite yummy. Yeah, exactly. I think it's just, I'll tell you who didn't like it very much. the Norwegian bishops who were coming in. So they weren't native North Greenlanders as it were.

They didn't enjoy it. So you see more reindeer, for example, on their plates. And there are certainly reindeer. But I mean, no, I think it's, you're talking to the wrong person. I'm vegan. I haven't got a clue. I'm like such a rubbish Vikingist. I did once try Blubber. It is, I mean, it's not to my taste at all. Where did you try your blubber? Well, it was an opportunity to try it in Kiruna, which is sort of in the Arctic Circle, where they also like a lot of reindeer meat and lingenberries and things like that. Blabber, not delicious for me, but I know that it is a massive delicacy for something because it's so high in calories. It's calerific and in cold weather, it really, you know, bolsters you up. You get used to it. Exactly. Exactly. And I mean,

speak to sort of the Greenlanders today, modern Greenlanders, they would, you know, very much, you know, And there are other things that you can eat. They do try and grow grain. I think barley at some point doesn't go very well. We're talking, yeah, a lot of seal, a lot of reindeer where you can get it. But there's also a very regular trading route coming from Norway, bringing supplies in. And that's absolutely crucial. And when that disintegrates, that's the problem.

Sure. But while it's good, I mean, it's very good. Greenland is not like some kind of, you know, poor cousin because they do give tithes to their Norwegian king. They're able to. I love the gifts that they bring to the Norwegian king, you know, because, and you can only do this. You can only do the flex like this if you see yourself and others see you as a vibrant society. So they will bring sort of, you know, ivory, as you said, walrus ivory. It's like gold.

Hyde, furs, you know, sort of all the reindeer skins, gyro falcons and live polar bears. Now this is to me a wonderful gift that no king needs, which is, Your Majesty. I present. I present to you. a thing that's going to eat your face, you're welcome. You can only do that. You can only give a tithe like that if you see yourself as, if not an equal, but then something, something to be reckoned with.

Yeah, no, exactly that. It's really important. I think equal is tricky, but we are talking about a Norse diaspora. We're talking about a connected cultural world. And that's a really important feature. So the people living in North Greenland in New Settle would have absolutely considered themselves part of that world. And as you say, they're giving tithes to Norway.

They're getting, they have trade routes. They start from Iceland, but really over time, the trade routes with Norway become the most important ones. They have bishops imported from Norway. So those links are absolutely crucial. And they have a common language, for example. And what they have to offer the walrus ivory, this is a very valuable thing. This is a treasure. Hugely.

And you look at something like the Lewis chess pieces. and most of them are wool recivory and there's a very good chance they're starting to do DNA evidence on wool recifery and I'm just waiting for them to do it on the Lewis chess pieces. To my knowledge not yet I have asked sort of begged because I'm desperate to know

but in all likelihood that wool resivory probably comes from Greenlands. Yeah and in fact there's... Found in Shetland? In Lewis, yeah. Lewis. Lewis Chessman, of course. Hence the Lewis chess pieces.

I could have worked that out, couldn't I? But there are other gaming pieces very much found in Orkney and Shetland all over the place. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, Lenner. She always enjoys these moments. I just revel in these little puddles of joy. Lewis, please.

Are they the ones from Barbados? No, no, Lewis. Still Lewis. I'm going to bring things back to Eleanor. Tell me about horny zombies. This is something I've been longing to discuss with you. You have a wonderful section in your book, which is called porridge, passion and paganism.

And so quickly, quickly tell us about the outcrop of horny zombies in Greenland and indeed witches. I've got to say this from, I've got to say this from my earlier book. So you're really testing me now on horny zombies and that is not what the question I thought you were going to ask me there. But essentially, that's from one of the sagas, the Vineland sagas, which also look at North America. It's called Greineninga saga. We're going to come to that in the next episode. Brilliant. So this one is the saga of the Greenlanders.

Okay, so one of Eric the Red Sons, whose name is Thorsten, and his wife, Guadrived, who becomes a really important character, they are, it's that classic thing, they set off, they're lost at sea all summer, they're driven by storms, they end up in the Western settlement, which if you remember, is that one that's a third of the size further up the coastline. So it's still the Western coast, further towards the Arctic.

And they end up with this, just imagine of this really grumpy, farmer called Thorsten the Black. And he says, yeah, you can stay with me, but it's not much fun here. And it's just me, my wife. And so they hang out there. And then, of course, because it's a farm said, you know, there's lots of other people there as well working there, living there, despite what he says. And plague comes, or at least sickness comes. And this is a real horror story that you have in your book. It's a proper, it's a movie. So one by one, everyone begins to die. Everyone. So then the saga, so there's two versions of this story. And there's two versions of this The other one is told in Eric Saga Röyther, which is the saga of Eric the Red, which is the other one.

And Goodreither, so Thorsten's wife at this point, she's going to the privy with Thorsten the Black, his wife, and she's very not well. And then she suddenly looks towards the doorway and she's, I can't go outside and there's this, there's a whole gang of the dead just standing there. Zombies, yeah. Well, they're not dead. They're not zombies though. Hang on a minute.

They're very sick people. They are zombies. The zombies? They died. Well, yeah, no, no, no. But I think at this point, we're not, I'm going to get so much trouble for calling them zombies, right? At this point, we're not even sure.

There could be ghosts at this point. Got to wait for you zombies, right? Okay, okay. So she's basically saying, among all these, the dead, who are standing outside the door, in what corporeal form we do not know at this point, she says, I recognize your husband, Thorsten, and I see myself. Oh, my goodness. So, cut to the morning.

she is indeed dead. But then this is where, okay, I do describe them as zombies. It's my own fault. We need this movie to be made. Netflix, are you listening? Wait a minute. Stop interrupting. Explain the zombies.

Why do you say zombies? So at this point, Thorsten, who's Eric the Red Son, Goodreitha's wife, husband, is lying in bed and he's dying. And at this point, the farmer's wife kind of is basically her corpse is reanimated. Now, I should say there was an excellent. Yes, well, they call them Droygar, like zombie, the undeads. These years, so there's a special Drogir, yeah, and they live in Hoiger, which are the kind of burial man. You're the drojig from Hoiger?

The drohs from the Hoiger. Yeah, exactly. But she is not from the Hoaguer. It's a limerick. No, it's for a droir from Hoaguer. But she basically, the horniness comes in because Thorsten, despite the fact that he's dying, manages to get word that essentially, I don't have any peace because your dead wife keeps from trying to get under the bed covers with me. Into my bed?

Into my bed. Yeah. So again, I mean, maybe she's just cold. That's a reasonable complaint. Well, I think so. He's trying to die in peace and there's a horny zombie trying to get into his bed. But, I mean, it doesn't end well. And this is, yeah, so basically the only way to unanimate her essentially.

Is that the boring farmer takes an axe and cleaves the dead woman in two. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is Barry saga. It's absolute Nordingua. Yes. Can I just say, when I. I thought we were going to talk about the history of Greenland. I didn't think we'd end up here, but I'm not sorry.

I'm not at all sorry about that. Listen, we're going to end it there, but join us for the next episode with the wonderful Eleanor, and wonderful, unpredictable, slightly mad, Eleanor, who is going to take us further on this Viking adventure. We might actually, we might stride between two of the subjects that we're doing in this here miniseries, Greenland, but also. Canada, because we're going to be looking at something called the Vinland Sages. I can't promise you zombies or sex with zombies or any of that.

I am definitely going to ask because there's some very witch stories. Okay, well, there'll be witches. Okay, there will be witches. And you know the score. If you want to get all four of the Greenland episodes and not wait around at all, just join the club. That's EmpirePodUK.com, EmpirePodUK.com and you get lots more besides. Until the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan.

And goodbye from me, William Drupal.