Gone Medieval - How The Vikings Turned Christian?

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Denmark's King Harald Bluetooth was among the first Scandinavian rulers to officially embrace Christianity in the early 10th century. Norway followed later that century while Sweden's conversion occurred gradually in the following century. But contrary to the common narrative of Europe's military and religious conquest and colonisation of the region, what if rather than acting as passive recipients, Scandinavians converted to Christianity because it was in individual chieftains' political, economic, and cultural interests to do so?In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega finds out more from Dr. Anders Winroth, author of The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe.This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga and today's episode I will be speaking with Professor Anders Vindroth, a historian specializing in religious, intellectual and legal medieval history in general and of the Viking Age in particular. Today we're going to be talking about the absolutely huge topic of the process of Christianization of Scandinavia, the politics of changing religion, and what?

what it means to Christianize. Anders, thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm happy to be here. As I say, this is a ridiculously large topic. But I think it would help if we're saying that there's this process of Christianization, we probably also need to establish

what the people of Scandinavia were Christianized from first. So what does religious belief look like prior to conversion to Christianity? That's a very difficult question. of course. But in a way, I think it's wrong to talk about belief. Belief is something that comes with Christianity. Pre-Christian is about what you do. It's about practice. And what you do is that you get together and you celebrate your religion by doing sacrifices of various kinds and then having big parties in celebration of that. I think one way that is quite interesting to look at religion

sometimes is the concept of orthopraxy, saying that there is a practice. that we're all kind of engaging in as opposed to orthodoxy. We all believe one thing. So when we're kind of talking out pre-Christian Scandinavia, we're having a sacrifice, we're having a party, there's a large fire. But there is also difference in Scandinavia about what that looks like. For example, if you're in modern day Denmark, you're less likely to have actual idols or something like that, whereas, you know, maybe up in Sweden, you've got run stones and you've got idols and things, or sometimes people worship or get together at springs and have a party. You know, again, to say Scandinavia, this is maybe perhaps us oversimplifying again, yes?

Yes, that is oversimplifying. It is different in different parts of Scandinavia. We actually don't know very much about the details of how it works. But it's certainly true that the pre-Christian religion in Scandinavia was very much oriented towards nature. And nature is very different in different parts of Scandinavia. So it will sort of automatically be different. It seems that things like forests and groups of trees play a role in the cult of the pre-Christian religion. You know, you kind of have these expressions of natural interests.

So groups of trees, springs. Do we have a sort of recognition of the seasons along with this? Do we have festivals tied to, I don't know, for example, midwinter? Yes. I mean, there's very much connection to the seasons. The seasons are very important in Scandinavia because it really gets cold and dark in the winter. So you do want to celebrate when things are turning at the midwinter. And it seems that the midwinter was a particular occasion to hold this sacrificial parties

in the same way as midsummer did, and of course spring and fall as well, but we know less about that. This is not an unfamiliar story. We know a little bit about this from other European pre-Christian cultures. You generally have a midwinter party, right? Like, everyone likes to have one in general. It probably feels more necessary, I would imagine, in Scandinavia. But, you know, we would expect to see kind of something happening, I suppose. Everybody do.

I mean, even Christianity as a midwinter party. Exactly. You've got to have one. You know, come on. It's winter's long and dull. Exactly. Yes, yeah. Okay, so this is what we're kind of experiencing in terms of practice.

And then in terms of, I don't know, mythology, are we kind of seeing the standard sort of what we call Norse pantheon in English, you know, so your Odin, your Thor, your Freya kind of situation? Yes, you do see the ones that we know about. Those are the ones of the sort of recent past. It seems there were other gods earlier on, like, you know, centuries before the Christianization. What's also interesting is that they are different across. Scandinavia. So it seems that some of them, such as, I mean, there's a god called Ull, Ull,

who, looking at the place name evidence seems to be particularly a matter of cult in eastern Scandinavia. One can do the same with all the different gods. They are not evilly spread over Scandinavia. Okay, so we've got a fairly heterodox kind of way of looking at varying gods. That varies from place to place. We know they're having parties. we know that they're doing sacrifices. What does this kind of mean for Scandinavian society as opposed to other regions of Europe at this time? You know, right before they kind of Christianize. Because I know from the Germanic way of approaching this, it's very much like, oh, here's these scary pagan others.

And they kind of show up to trouble the meaning of what Christendom is. And it's, oh, the Vikings are back. They're outside Paris. what does this mean in terms of my Christianity? But how does this kind of play out in Scandinavia itself? This is one of the things that holds society together. Those parties, it's important where you are going to the party, who you are celebrating with, and so forth. That is how you form a community.

I think that it was those parties that people agreed, let's go to Europe and plunder. And people volunteered and joined up at the parties. And this is one of the reasons why then at Bristolization, at the conversion, the rulers in Scandinavia, who become Christian, are very concerned about outlawing paganism because it's an alternative way of having political power. You do kind of see them struggling often with what feasts mean, what does, I suppose, hospitality mean? because there's so much emphasis placed on, are you throwing good parties? You know, someone shows up at your door, do you have a really good party? And saying that you're going to have these midwinter festivals, saying, oh, well, we're going to get together and do a lot of sacrifice. And, hey, guess what, that means barbecue.

That's a great and exciting thing for people. No, I mean, that continues also after the conversion. Of course, before the conversion, you had some religious value ascribed to the food you were eating. You very much have the same thing after the conversion in the form of the Eucharist, which is a meal. It can look more like a meal, so the partying is still there. And then it's also very practical in Christianity that it has a kind of built-in kinship model in terms of every person whose Christian is baptized, and every baptized person in the Middle Ages has a godparent or several godparents.

So that gives you, in addition to your blood kin, it gives you a second kind of kin, a second group of people that you are related to, which is also a group that is considered to be so close to you in relationship that medieval church law, well, not just medieval, modern church law, outlaws you from marrying. you can't marry the daughter of your godmother, for instance, which otherwise would be quite natural because your godparents will, of course, be from families that you are allied with and that you get along with. But you can't marry anybody from that family once you have that is a godparent. That's really interesting because that's quite a destabilizing emphasis, right, to kind of renegotiate where we're going to get potential brides and grooms from, which is, the way of establishing connections to other families in the Middle Ages generally. But it's also a way that you expand the group that you have connections with.

Because if you have this spiritual relationship through godparent or with one family, you will have to have a marriage relationship with another family. So then suddenly it's two families instead of one. And this seems to be, it's certainly there in the context of why we have these sometimes quite absurd prohibitions against marriages in medieval law so that you expand who you're related to who you have social obligations towards. So, I mean, not necessarily a bad thing. Okay, so maybe we should back up here a little bit.

And I'll ask you a somewhat easier question, but when can we say that the process of Christianization then begins? It's a very long process. I like to talk about the process of conversion as something separate. which kind of begins in the early 800s and go on into the 12-1300s, at least for the central part of the Scandinavian kingdoms. The process of Christianization, I think, goes on much longer

because, I mean, you know, the Roman Empire is Christianized in the 4th century, and Scandinavians were in contact with the Roman Empire. I mean, there were Scandinavians who were mercenary soldiers in the Roman armies and so forth. And some of them might have come home and were Christian or something and brought ideas long before we hear of any missionaries being in Scandinavia. And then in the same way in the other end,

it's like you have the conversion, which is at least partially from the beginning process that has to do with the community and society. And then you have the more teaching Christian belief to people, which is a process that goes on for a very long time. This is something that we see across Europe, I think, too, and throughout the medieval period. You know, we will see constantly that, you know, the church will go check in on some little village even in France, and it turns out they've got a whole wild collection of beliefs,

but they'll tell you they're Christian, but they're not kind of like worshipping as Rome would wish them to, for example. So that's, you know, very familiar. But I suppose it's just that we, I don't know, are maybe a little bit more critical of a Scandinavian culture for this because the process happens a little bit later, you know, and we're kind of saying, oh, well, this is this group of people who are so other because of Viking, for example. Yeah, it's a later process in Scandinavia as in Eastern Europe, which means that you can get more written sources about it, so you have more to worry about, as it were.

So then a big part of what history is. historically, often people who are not experts such as myself, if someone asked me, oh, you know, the process of Christianization, I would probably start talking first of all about missionary journeys, you know, people like Vildebroad, who gets sent to the Frisians, this kind of thing. Am I being overly simplistic, but that is a part of the story, no. It's a part of the story. It's a question how important a part of the story it is. I mean, it's the part of the story that the church has been very good at telling us over the centuries, because I mean, Villabrold went to the Frischens, and then you have the next generation, you have Saint Ansker, who's a saint, of course, so that's why there are stories about him, who got the job of converting the Scandinavians. And he actually brought with him relics of Villabrold. He had with him in his headquarters in Hamburg. And those were the only things he really got with him, when they were.

Vikings attacked in 845 and he had to flee. The most valuable thing he had were the relics and he grabbed them and run. But yes, the missionaries in the Middle Ages as today are only as successful as whoever holds secular power allows them to be. And I think that if one tries to shake off the perspective of the hagiographies, the saintly biographies that's written about Ansker and other missionaries, if I try to read them backwards or against the grain, as it were, you can see that it's really the rulers of Scandinavia who decide, oh, Christianity is a good thing for me to bring in. So I will welcome this.

What are some of the benefits that rulers do see in terms of bringing Christians in? I mean, I would say there are two or three factors that are important. One of them is simply that if we were met in Europe during the Viking Age, Christianity is prestigious. Certainly from a Scandinavian perspective, I mean, think of all those churches and monasteries that Scandinavian Vikings have been out there plundering. They are enormously rich. Everyone knows of the emperor is Christian. I mean, both emperors, both the Western Emperor and the Emperor. in Constantinople. The king of England is Christian. The king of France is Christian. They are all

very powerful. I mean, if you imagine the Scandinavian small ruler, he's like, oh, I would like to be like Charlemagne, and of course they're Christian. So I must have Christianity. If I give Christianity to people, they will then be bound to me. in an additional layer of loyalty from what they had before, especially from their godfather. And in a way, I suppose, if you look at the kings

who do big bouts of Christianizing, you become sort of like the godfather to the country. I'm thinking of like, Hack on the Good in Norway, where then you become written into the history of society, and everyone says, oh, here's the guy.

That's the person who did it and kind of figured it out. And one can even trace that on an individual level. There is a rune stone here in Norway that says that I, Avind, built this church. I am the god's sword of St. Olaf. So he's sort of, on the one hand, declaring his loyalty to Olauhraldson, who's now that St. Olaf. And on the other hand, he's also declaring that, look, I have this really prestigious thing. It's a new religion that I got from a very famous person. And I built a church here and you can come. And then, you know, you can be a part of my circle in my community. St. Olaf is a personal favorite saint of mine. And we have a couple of, you know, churches to him here

in London. And he's such an interesting person because I love his conversion story. I'm very interested in people's conversion stories. And I love this idea that there's a seer that is like, oh, you're going to get mutiny, but they're Christian. So there's this kind of a bit of Christian magic that gets done. He's proved right. And then, oh, I. says, oh, I better convert to Christianity. And I think that's such an interesting way of talking about these processes, because down in Rome, you know, if you were to say, oh, well, people are doing portents and using Christianity, that would probably not fly.

But up in Norway, oh, yeah, please, I love to hear the future from a Christian. And that can become part of a story and this really useful way of explaining the process of someone's personal conversion. Yeah, wonderful stories. of course, St. Olaf was already in the Middle Age is a favorite saint in Norway. There's like tons of medieval books written about him, and there are tons of modern books written about him. When you look at these books, you know, when you look at the story of St. Olaf's, oh, Olaf converts.

He sends out missionaries to the pharaohs and Shetland and Iceland and da-da-da-da. But that presents this really kind of easy story of conversion. It's like, oh, all it takes is one king, and then suddenly everybody is Christian. But people didn't just sit there and say, oh, I guess that we're Christian now. One ruler said that this happened. Like, there is actual violent resistance. Yeah, that is certainly resistance. And I mean, if you think about what I was saying earlier, that the pre-Christian religion is a way of building community.

And then this converting king, they bring in a better way of building community, a stronger and more prestigious religion. that's going to destroy the circles of loyalty that various other chieftains have in the country, and they will not like it. I think this is a reason why in many places the pagan religion has a kind of intense period just before the Christianization, where in Norway, for instance, the Earls of Lada plays close to Trondon, in the North seemed to be particularly pushing for pagan cult, the cult of the God Thor, it seems, just as St. Olaf is spreading Christianity in southern Norway. So it's like, okay, now we have this real threat.

Olaf, who is bringing from England and Normandy, not just a new religion, but also, of course, a lot of silver and gold of money, the other method by which one can win a loyal following. He's there. We have to work against him. We also have, you know, silver and gold from other sources. And let's push more for our religion. As a result of that, we do kind of see this. Sometimes I refer to it as kind of like waves. The Christians sort of lap up and then it recedes. And then they try again. And it kind of comes in slowly like the tide, almost, because you do have challenges back and forth. You know, it depends on who's powerful. Is there a war going on? Norway and Denmark famously go back and forth about this one.

Yeah, I mean, that's an aspect that's also very important. What is your neighbor doing? Denmark is Christianized earlier than Norway. So you always have also, potentially, if you are a Norwegian chieftain and you embrace Christianity, you might be sending also the message that I'm allied to the king of Denmark. And the king of Denmark always wants to have influence in Norway. So it's really a great political and diplomatic game on a high level that involves not only the king of Denmark, but also the for a very long time pagan king of Sweden and the Christian kings of England and the Duke of Normandy and so forth. And of course the emperor there in the background.

The emperor who's more of a problem for Denmark because they're closer to, in fact, share a border with him. Of course, when you think about all the politics at play, it makes sense that Denmark. Christianizes a little bit earlier. Literally, the emperor is saying, oh, did you want troops? Do you want help? Become a Christian. Because, of course, the Holy Roman Emperor isn't going to promise you anything

if you're some pagan guy, right? So there are financial reasons to do this. And I mean, that happens in the 8-20s, this Danish guy who claims that he was king of Denmark, or at least a part of Denmark, in the 8-20s.

He's defeated and thrown out of the country, and he goes to the emperor, Louis the Pazte. and negotiate with him about getting help with troops and stuff to go back. And as a part of negotiations, he accepts to be baptized in Germany, in Mainz, and he gets his troops, he gets his missionaries. I mean, Anskar is one of the people who are with him. And he tries to come back to Denmark, but he fails.

Then he sort of becomes the client of the emperor and gets to run some small part of the empire, as an administrator. Okay. That is, I think, a really useful story as well because it shows how it's not all that easy. Even if you have a big power behind you, like the empire, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to show up, everyone's going to Christianize underneath you, and then Denmark is Christian. You know, there are these pushbacks. And also, you know, the level of interest that the empire actually shows, are like, oh, yeah, yeah,

we'll send you the troops, you know, but maybe not that many. There's still going to be some expected buy-in, I suppose, on the part of the people who are converting. Yeah, you have to get the buy-in, not just to convert, but also to conquer. I mean, warfare is simply different in the Middle Ages from it is today. It's not about moving territorial boundaries and things like that. It doesn't really work. You have to get the people on your side, either through persuasion or by forcing them, but it's not that easy to force them in the Middle Ages.

People tend to look at history and this quite top-down approach, you know, because obviously the things that survive to us are, what the church wrote about the process, what the kings and yarls are writing about themselves. But very ordinary people have contact with ideas of Christianity on their own, right? There are all kinds of cultural ways of becoming more familiar with Christianity and Christianizing on a lower level or an individual level happening as well, yes? For starters, people traveled more in the Middle Ages, even in the early Middle Ages, than we usually expect. And then they are exposed to new cultural, religious, et cetera, influences. And people will pick up on, I mean, if they travel south to trade, they will trade with people of a different religion and they will learn about it. it's very hard in the archaeological evidence to see something very specific about religion.

But what archaeologists have noticed is that you get at a very early point long before you can talk about any conversion in Scandinavia, you start to see that graves are organized with a head to the west so that you raise up and look towards the east at the last judgment according to Christianity. And you have entire cemeteries in like northern Sweden, where this happens in something like the 6th, 7th century. And it's very hard to understand why. But I think that's about that idea of burying people in that way, that can travel without necessarily having to travel with Christianity.

And these are people who are moving around a lot. You know, you have endless Scandinavians showing up in England, in Ireland, in what is now France. Like the Normans are essentially just like, a Frenchified Viking. So there's this sort of like constant contact that's going on. You know, people take wives who might be Christian and bring them home. And so there is a tendency to exotize Scandinavia and kind of desire them to be this like very wild pagan people who are in need of the kind of civilizing process of Christianity. Or indeed, I think now there's kind of

also some pushback to the idea that Christianization is good at all. And you know, wouldn't it have been better if they remained free and wild and worshipping Thor. I think that there's a lot of romanticization the other way, whereas the truth is a lot more complex. Yes, exactly. People did travel, and I'm glad you mentioned that people got married and the two parties might be from different parts of Europe and so forth. It is something that occurs very often in medieval stories about conversion, that it's often a Christian wife is the conveyor. I mean, that's the story about the conversion of Kent in England, as well as of Poland and Sweden. It's one of these things where I, as a historian, wonder, is, in which cases is this a literary

topos because it's everywhere, and which case is it a, as it were, a historical topos? It is a way in which conversion is conveyed, or that conversion spread. It's one of the things that I'm quite interested in because it's this sort of expected function of women, right? Your job as a good Christian woman at times is to have this kind of religious influence on one's husband. And especially at high levels, like if we're talking about yarls, if we're talking about kings, the part of what queens are expected to do is have this restraining influence on their husbands and be sort of like the angel of your better nature. And that can extend to the wholesale conversion of someone, or just saying, actually, maybe don't be quite so harsh on our enemies that we've defeated in battle.

We still need to trade. Exactly. Those are the stories that are told. At the same time, as you also get these stories where the woman is the real culprit behind. You know, we talked about St. Olaf. What makes the history of Norwegian conversion so confusing is that there's also a second Olaf, Olaf Tirgelssohn. who was killed in this big battle in the year, 10,00 exactly, it seems, or possibly 999.

And when you read the Saga, there's this marvelous story about this pagan Swedish woman who is upset with him and gets her husband, who's the king of Denmark, to ally with her father as the king of Sweden, and Earl of Lade, from the neighborhood of Trondheim, and together the three of them, managed to defeat the great Olaf Trigvason, which they probably could not have done on their own.

And she's the person who makes this happen, and she's really evil in some of the stories. There's probably no truth at all to this, or very little. But it's a very interesting story also because the alliance of three people who are defeating the saintly king Olaf Trigvason, they're not all Christian or all pagan. Some of them are pagan, some of them are Christian.

But it seems like when you tell the story, you need to have a really bad pagan culprit. And she takes that role then in the stories, Sigrid is her name. It's a perfect moment for Christianity to really shine in its ideas about women, too, right? Because on the one hand, you know, yeah, there's the idea of the good woman, you know, the saintly woman who is nice and calm and lovely and can convert her husband to Christianity. But at the same time, you have the evil tempteress who is out to be. probably quite sexy, I'd imagine. They're usually sexy. They're usually sexy and pagan and violent and, you know, using these things in order to usurp the rightful position of Christianity in the world. And I think that's another topos, really. So, you know, in the Christianization of Bohemia, we see that as well. It's a St.

Wenceslaus's mother, Jhawarumira is evil and pagan and very sexy. And is the reason why, you know, his grandmother is killed and all this. So, you know, you always have to have at least one woman batty. No, I mean, Sigrid, who sets up the defeat of Olau Trigvson, is also sexy. And I mean, she's doing it all because Olau rejected her. Oh, classic. Absolutely classic. Yeah, yeah. What are my very, very favorite things about this process of Christianization in Scandinavia

is that because it happened so late and because we have great sources for it, you can also really trace the process of it kind of coming through. So, you know, certainly in sagas I've read, we'll be talking about Christian individuals and there'll be a storm and they pray to Jesus. And then all of a sudden, Odin's there. And he's like shown up on the boat and is in a fight with the hero of the story. And so I really love being able to kind of trace the cultural legacy. I mean, yeah, okay, you can be nominally Christian. You know, you can have churches everywhere. But that doesn't mean that everyone kind of completely jettisons their old ideas about culture. No, exactly. I mean, that takes a long time. And it seems like in the folklore of Scandinavia, the memory of some of these pagan practices and pagan gods live for a very, very long time. It's difficult to pinpoint it with any precision, and it's also a field I don't know very much about. But it's very interesting. But I think it helps if one thinks of conversion as being really about community and society in the first place. and about belief and culture sort of coming along on the way,

but taking you a much longer time. The trouble is if you've got a really good story, it's hard to kill that. And maybe your ways of interpreting community or your ways of celebrating midwinter have changed. But, you know, you don't want to get rid of a good story. Winter is long and someone's got to do something around the fire, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. You continue to tell the same stories. You might change the people involved

to sort of Christianise the story by including Christian people instead. I mean, stories are very powerful, and we certainly see that in medieval Scandinavia with all these wonderful stories from Iceland in the sagas that told and retalled that are always giving new twists and new context in which to understand them.

I mean, I suppose we're really not very different to the people in question, you know, because we are as likely to kind of fall back on these easy stories about conversion and saints and the church sends one guy and then suddenly everyone believes in it, you know, and oh, and here's Saint Olaf, so Norway is Christian now, you know, and I think that it really speaks to the power of cultural memory because we're susceptible to it as they are. Exactly, and I think that's absolutely right. And there are good stories about the conversion. one of the reasons for that, I think, is that the specific stories that were told in the Middle Ages about the conversion of Scandinavia, in a way, it's almost like a jazz musician riffing on a theme

because it says there in the Bible, in the gospel, how the world is going to be converted. Bo ye out and convert all people. One can read all the stories about St. Ansker, St. Olaf, and so forth, all the different moments of conversion in Scandinavia as a kind of variation of that original story. And that's also why you have to tell these stories in a particular way. So it conforms to the model. There has to be conflict. There has to be really bad pagans.

As you point out, preferably sexy women, but also others. one of my favorite passages in the stories of a Scandinavian conversion is in the saga of Olaiqvason, the very first saga of Olaiqvson, where the author who is actually for once we know his name, his name is odd. He was a monk in Iceland and brought this saga about 200 years after Olaiqv Trigvson lived. But he's talking about how Olaiwold Riegwelsen collected a lot of Norwegians into one place, and then preached to them and, you know, spoke very sweetly, so everybody was persuaded that Christianity was the right way to go. And then one sort of wonders like, okay, here is a guy who's famous for being a very brutal

Viking. I mean, where did he learn to become a good preacher? But the saga tells you that what he's doing is his channeling St. Martin of Tour, who, according to the biography, comes to him in a dream the night before and says, don't worry about preaching, I'm going to give you the right words. So there you sort of see that

from a medieval perspective, St. Martin of Tour is one of the big missionizing saints of a much earlier period. So of course, he will know how to do it. So he can even teach a Viking to become a really persuasive public speaker. That's great because you get this kind of double aggiography. So you've got Martin of Tours, gets a look-in, and we all get to

talk about how he's great as well. And here's the next generation of Martins going out. Always a new frontier, always a new group of pagans. And St. Martin is very prestigious as a converter. So some of that wraps off now on his protege. I could talk to you about this absolutely all day, Anders, but unfortunately, we're going to have to leave it there with an incredibly complex picture. Thank you, and there's so, so much for coming to talk to me about this. I've had such a lovely time. Thank you for inviting. I had a lot of fun. Thanks, everyone out there listening to us. This has been Gone Medieval from History Hit, and if you like what you've heard, please don't forget to rate, review, follow the podcast

and tell your friends about how the process of the Christianization of Scandinavia is really quite difficult. If you fancy suggesting an episode, you can drop us an email at Gone Medieval at HistoryHit.com. Otherwise, I'll be back again next Tuesday for another episode, and by co-host Matt Lewis will be back again on Friday. Until next time.