Gone Medieval - Ivar the Boneless

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Ivar the Boneless is renowned as a fearsome Norse leader who invaded England and Ireland. But beyond the myth-making, who was Ivar really? Was he a son of the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok? How did he get his not very fearsome name? What was his role in the infamous Great Heathen Army and the Viking invasion of England?Dr. Eleanor Janega returns to the bloody, brutal, and often baffling world of the Vikings with Professor Clare Downham to try to uncover the truth behind one of the most mysterious and fearsome figures in Norse history.MORE:Ragnar Lothbrok: The Viking Legend:https://shows.acast.com/gone-medieval/episodes/ragnar-lothbrok-the-viking-legendHow to Live Like a Viking:https://open.spotify.com/episode/7DTRpIGPS9ygGa6pjodHnfGone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producers are Rob Weinberg and Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on 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, I'm Dr. Eleanorianica and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were. And how we got here.

In the harsh, unforgiving world of Viking Age Scandinavia, blood ties are sacred, and family loyalty is paramount. Yet even these bonds can be shattered by jealousy and ambition. One such fateful confrontation is between the sun, of the legendary Ragnar Lothbrook, the youngest, Eva the Boneless, and Sigurd's snake in the eye. The Great Hall of Kattegat is buzzing with tension. Ragnar's sons have gathered to discuss their future plans, the firelight casting long shadows across their faces. The eldest sibling Bjorn Ironside speaks of raiding the Mediterranean, his eyes gleaming with the promise of exotic treasures.

But it is Ivor, the youngest and most ruthless, who commands attention. His mind sharp as a blade. Evar proposes continued raids on England. His voice carries the weight of ambition. As he speaks, his piercing gaze sweeps across his brothers, challenging any who will dare oppose him. While Iver is all cold calculation, Sigurd snake in the eye burns with a fierce prospher.

He has long resented Evar's growing influence, the way their mother Aslan has doted on her youngest son. Sigur's voice cuts through the silence like a knife. And what would you know of raiding, brother? He sneers. Iver's face darkens. His hands gripped the arms of his chair until his knuckles turn white. But Sigurd, emboldened by the tension, provokes him further. You speak of ambition, Eva.

But what do you truly know of the world? Of battle? Of being a man. Eva's eyes flash. But Sigurd is heedless to the unspoken warning. Years of resentment pour out of Sigurd like poison from a wound. You think yourself so clever, so worthy of rule. But you forget, brother.

you are not the only son of Ragnar, and he were certainly not the most loved. In a flash, Aver's hand closes around the hilt of his axe. Those nearest to him flinch back but Sigurd stands his ground, a mocking smile playing on his lips. What's the matter, Aver? Did I strike a nerve? Or perhaps you're just realizing that our dear mother is no longer here to coddle you. Suddenly, with his face contorted with fury, Iver hurls his axe across the hall with inhuman strength.

Sigurd barely has time to register the glint of steel before the axe buries itself in his chest. The hall erupts into chaos. Other brothers rush to Sigurd's side as he collapses. As for Iver, he remains in his seat. His expression unreadable as he watches the life drain from his brother's eyes. in the stunned silence that follows all eyes turned to either. There's no remorse in his gaze, no hint of regret for the blood on his hands.

Instead, a cold smile plays at the corners of his mouth. The smile of a man who has just removed an obstacle from his path. With a gentleness that belies his earlier violence, he crosses the room and reaches out to close his brother's eyes. You should have learned to hold your tongue, brother, he murmurs. Now you will never know the greatness I am destined to achieve. For the sums of Ragnar Lothbrook, an already fragile trust is shattered. Fraternal bonds once thought unbreakable lay in ruins alongside Sigurd's lifeless body. Eva the Boneless has taken his first steps towards the infamous legacy that will one day be his.

In the sagas and stories that will pass down through generations, the killing of Sigurd by Eva will be remembered as the clash of two brothers, two alike in pride, too different in ambition. It's a reminder that even in the world of heroes, the greatest threats often come not from without, but from within. And as for Eva the boneless, his path is set. With power within his grasp, people go on to carve his name into history as a figure of terror and awe. This is, I am sure you can agree, an incredible story, and one we have been telling about either the boneless for centuries.

But does this fantastic myth align with what we actually know about the historical person himself? Or the Viking practice more generally? In this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm joined by Claire Downham, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Liverpool. Together, we will get to grips with one of the most enigmatic and formidable figures of the Viking Age, Eva the Boneless, a leader of the Great Heathen Army,

founder of the Uyamar dynasty, whose life shaped the political and cultural landscapes of England, Ireland, and beyond. Claire, welcome to Gone Medieval. Nice to meet you, Eleanor. I brought you here today to talk about one of those household names of Viking history, Yvar the Boneless. And I think that when you want to talk about Eva the Boneless, we first kind of have to think about his early life and his relationship with his brothers and fathers, because that's where this story usually begins. Right. So this is one of the things where over the boneless, has become very much a figure of legend.

So what we think we know about his ancestry and siblings is really first-detested centuries after he died. And I think this is often the way with medieval dynasties. Like, Ivo was clearly a very important leader. So we have contemporary evidence of his activities in England and in Ireland. And at his death in 873, he's recorded as kids. of all the Vikings in Britain and Ireland, it's cheerily achieved a lot in his own lifetime. But it's really only after a few generations that people realise, oh, there's this thing called the dynasty

of Eva that's really important. Now we have to make up a story of who Eva was to justify the greatness of this dynasty. So we find them kind of mining back and linking him to other stories. And I kind of like it in a way. There's this almost like this kind of cloud of figures that cropped up in sagas. And, you know, it's, you know, it's a bit like a kind of, I don't know, like a soap opera or a series of kind of superhero movies where different characters come in and they link to other movies and sometimes they have a walk-on part and then they crop up somewhere else. And it's sort of part of this story world. So it's actually very hard to say any historical accuracy about Ivor's family. So the idea that he's the son of Ragnor Lothbrook,

and I know you've already had a podcast on Rognom, which hopefully people have listened to. Evo's link with Ragnar is really only first aired in the late 11th century. So this is Adam of Bremen who calls him a son of Lothbrook. So it's almost like the elements of the story are still being worked out then. And it grows with the retelling. And I think it is because people love a good story, but it's also the role of stories to explain. how could Eva's dynasty be so great if they didn't have a really brilliant story at the start of it all? And so they're kind of feeding that human need to have that story.

So, you know, all the sort of elements of the Ragnar Lothbrock and Evar and his son's story are quite familiar. You know, the idea that sort of Ragnar was thrown into a pit of snakes by Ella, king of Northumbria. And then his sons, including Evar, come for revenge. And Ella is captured. and then they're supposed to be this blood eagle ritual. I mean, it's all great storytelling. Did it happen? Well, we know that there was an Erler of Northumbra.

We know that there was an Evar. Do we really know there was a reagan or Lothbrock when the sources that first attested that existence are quite late? And do we know that Evar was their son and was there a blood eagle ritreling? Was there a pit of snakes in York in the late 9th century? Every time for me, it's the pit of snakes. I'm like, what snakes, babe?

You know, we don't have many, yeah. We do not, the island of Britain is kind of like, the poisonous snakes are kind of scant on the ground. I don't know. Like, where are we sending away to Africa for these snakes? Possibly, but it just seems like a lot of trouble to go through to execute one's enemies when you could just cut their heads off, for example. It's a lot of trouble, isn't it?

Like, who's going to feed the snakes before and afterwards? What do you do with the snakes? I mean, you know, nobody really thought this through properly. They're logistics. They're snake-based logistics. Snake maintenance is not a simple. tasks. Exactly.

I mean, now, to be fair, it is a hell of a story, though. And we do have to give them that one. And I suppose that this is one of these, you know, quite interesting things because medieval people love to do this, you know, and especially, as you say, kind of getting into the high medieval period around the 11th century, you get this great amount of myth-making that starts getting involved. You know, everyone, oh, the Brits are descended from Aeneas and, oh, the Merovingians were descended from a sea monster and, you know, bloody hell, you know, the Czech royal family is

descended from a fairy. You know, everyone's got a really good story about how these things came about. And that's really important. Now, whether or not people actually believed it at the time, I'm not sure that they did, but I think that they believed it was important to have a story. And, you know, that's sort of a different thing. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, you know, if we look at quite lot of content on media, TV nowadays, like historical drama. And yet we know that this isn't actually a rigid factual account for what happened. But, you know, the past has always been a playground for people's imagination, you know. And I think people love stories where it does mix myth and fact. You know, it kind of gives an imaginary life to these real events. And I think that's

actually quite a good thing. Sometimes as a historian, your job is that job of coming in saying, no, it didn't really happen like that, you know, which kind of feel you're killing people's fun, but, you know, mostly storytelling and adherence to historical facts can pull in different directions sometimes. You know, we're here for the story. We're committed to the bit, I think, and that's absolutely fine. And it's okay to say, this is myth-making, and that's as important as whether or not it actually happened. Because, you know, it did happen. It's telling the story, right? Well, myths can sometimes be more powerful than historical facts. in determining people's actions as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, and then we have this great, the enigma surrounding the name itself, because, you know, how does one come up with the name, like, the boneless? Because this isn't, you know, one of the great Viking names that we, you know, like blood acts or something like that. You know, you get these more hypermasculine names elsewhere.

But here we've got the boneless. What's going on? Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? I mean, as you say, Eric Bledax is such a vivid name. And as you say, you know, evokes masculinity and, you know, prowess and everything. With boneless, you know, does it spineless? Does it mean impotent, you know?

So various theories have like been circulated as to what it means and where it comes from because it doesn't really sound like the kind of epithet you'd give somebody to flatter them. You know, we say Trump the Boneless, for example. It just wouldn't sound as good as, you know, Trump the bloody X or something. But originally we get a lot of the records regarding this from the Latin, right? And so we're kind of translating from there, no? Yes. So there's this possibility that one of the episodes that may have been linked to Evar in early Latin text is exosis, which means odious or evil. I mean, when we do have Latin accounts of Evar, he is renowned for his cruelty.

And so exosus, if you didn't know, Latin very well, you might go, oh, this is an unfamiliar word. You go, X, it means from or out of. And osus is like the word for a bone. So it could mean boneless. And then obviously maybe people's imagination started to run away with themselves. Oh, what does baneless mean? And it's stuck. So that's one possibility. A couple of the other ideas, you know, is that, yeah, it could be linked to impotence. He might have had some, you know, genetic condition or disability

that meant that there was a problem with his bone structure. And that's kind of stuck with him. We do know that the Evor and historical sources lived many years on military campaign. So if he did have some sort of physical disability, it wasn't enough to stop him being a very able to. leader in his own lifetime. I kind of like that idea. You know, I'm one of these people who I hate to do a bit of retrospective diagnosis. But it is kind of fun to consider that someone who might have been, you know, struggling with impairments and still kind of getting out there and doing his thing.

That is fun. Although I also like to say, well, what if he was just very flexible? What if he was just great? Great. You know, you know. Yeah. Yeah, he might have been able to sort of slide under doors or something and people were like, how does he do that, you know?

A limelow king. know? Okay, one way or another, these stories and legends that we're working with involve a kind of coalescing around a familial unity if we accept that he is the son of Ragnar Lothbrook, which, you know, as we say, we don't necessarily do. But initially there's supposed to be some kind of like familial plan and idea, right? Yeah, definitely. So I think I really, as I've said, I think because Evar's descendants ended up holding powerful positions on both sides of the Irish Sea in the Viking Age, there is this idea of the attributes of the dynasty. I mean, we can look at the way it develops. I mean, there's a whole kind of like, you know, trajectory of the way that there are these sons and grandsons and great-grandsons. And then you start to get royal regalia associated with the kingdom of Dublin.

Even into the 17th century, merchants of Dublin claimed that they were descended from Evar's dynasty. So it's incredibly powerful idea and it comes from this sense that somehow, you know, your bloodline is somehow drawing on the succession of attributes of your heroic ancestors, that some of that is channeled and feeds into you as a person. So if you want to justify your power and position in the Middle Ages, you claim these great ancestors and some of their reflected glory will shine over you. And I mean, we've got some pretty illustrious in theory figures here, you know, not just Ragnar, but, you know, there's this idea that these are people who, you know, they were part of the Great Heathen Army, you know, excellent name. That's a free name for metal band right there, if I've ever. heard one. You know, there's these ideas that not only is he the son of Bragnar Lothbrook, but also, you know, one of his wives who is essentially a seerers, you know, the seared snake in the eye, which, again, wonderful names. You know, there's nothing but incredible names going on with

this theoretical dynasty, you know, but, and so this creates kind of a cast of characters that people can draw from, I think, and, and that, that's used rather heavily, right? Yeah, oh absolutely. And, you know, that myth-making and legend kind of continues in the Scandinavian world long after their political power of the dynasty of Evar has ceased. So whilst they have not continued beyond the 12th century as a historical reality, actually most of the stories that were invented are 12th, 13th, 14th century onwards. So it shows the power of really good storytelling, you know. It continues to grow and grow over the centuries, a way. from, you know, the events it was actually tied to. And, you know, to be fair, I think to Evar, we have a set of circumstances that mean that you're going to want this dynastic story, right? Because he creates this incredibly powerful dynasty, you know, whether or not his parents were anyone that they said they are. He's able to be incredibly successful on military campaign. He's got settlements in Dublin.

he's got settlements in York. You know, he has a real domineering presence across the British Isles. How does someone go about doing this at the time? Yes, well, obviously, like, there's a kind of bigger history of the kind of Viking age. So really from the end of the 790s, England and Ireland is being beset by Viking attacks. And it seems like quite the early stage of attackers is fairly small groups. And I think suddenly, you know, people are saying the potential to like, build this power base outside Scandinavia and almost walk in and take over the conquest of earlier

Viking groups. And that's kind of almost how we see Ivor kind of operating. So he's first attested as active in Ireland. And he's part of a trio of kings that work together. Evar works together with Olaf and Owlsly. And these are three Viking kings who are raiding around the Midlands of Ireland in the 850s. Quite often sources call them brothers. So they The idea is that they're either brothers in arms or they're genetically related to each other. And I kind of feel that they are coming in as that kind of second wave. So it's like the early Vikings have already fought loads of battles. They've claimed Dublin in 841.

You know, that starts to become a really important port or Viking activity around the Irish Sea. And at the end of the 840s, we get this new wave of Vikings, which is linked with Evar. And it's a bit like they're like, okay, guys, we'll take it. from here. You know, the hard work has been done. They just come and impose their control over the Vikings that are already there. But of course, you know, in the Viking Age, the sea is a routeway, not a boundary. So Dublin is merely a springboard for then activities on the other side of the Irish Sea. Evar and his associates, particularly Olaf, is campaigning a lot in North Britain, so what becomes Scotland. And it seems then Evar is linked with a large Viking army that then

attack southern England and works its way around the country. And that is the army that we call the Great Heathen Army in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. But there's so many good stories that then develop from that. I mean, the main one is the story of the Mothstem of King Edmund of East Anglia. And this is really where we get the first clear references to Evar as leader of the Viking army. We've got incidental references until then. We've got some records in the 870s of a brother of Evar and Halft. Dan is who's active in Devon. That's got some great stories too. That's got this story of

they go into battle with this magical Raven banner. So if you want to tip about that, I can tell you yeah. Well, come on. Do not leave me hanging, Claire. Come on. Yeah. So 878's is this low point in the career of King Alfred the Great. This is when it looks like England is lost and he's thrown out into the marshes and gathers a guerrilla army and starts fighting back against the Vikings. And 8-78 is this year when a Viking fleet comes to Cantersbury in Devon, and they are defeated in battle, which is a kind of key event, but it said that they have this Raven banner, the banner called the Raven. But even English writers were like, we need to know more about this banner.

And so by the 12th century and the Annals of St. Neitz, which is like a more kind of developed form of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, they then added a story and then they link it to the Lost Brock legend. And it's that these sisters of Evar have woven this magical banner. So this idea of women having the power to make magic, but also associated with their skill in weaving, have made this magical banner that, you know, when the wind is blowing through it,

it looks like the raven's wings are fluttering. And it's supposed to bring luck in battle. Although, you know, it doesn't necessarily succeed. And we have another Raven Badmer, which is linked with Evar's dynasty centuries later, at the Battle of Klontov, when Sigurd of Orkney, who's fighting on the side of the Dublin Vikings, brings a magical banner with him as well. So there's all this storytelling. So that appears that we've got Eva active in Ireland and Eva active in England. And we've got these events in the Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle. But we've also then got the martyrdom of King Edmund of East Anglia, which happened in 869. So that's a historical event that the Viking army, fought against the English king, the English king, was killed in this battle. But a century after his death, the story of the martyrdom of the king is told. And this is where Evar comes in as a central figure. And there's also some fantastic manuscript images associated with this story. So if you look at Evar or Great Army Online, you're often getting images from the Morgan Pierpoint Library manuscript of the martyrdom of Edmund of East Anglia. this beautiful manuscript, it's red, blue, gold, all these really vivid colours showing images of kind of Viking fleets and Evar himself coming to land and being responsible for this most heathen acts of beheading a Christian king.

And so, yeah, in that story, Evar is responsible for leading the Vikings. He's responsible for torturing the king, trying to make the captured king renounce his Christian face. He's tied to a tree and hit with arrows. and he refuses to give up his faith, he's beheaded. But then later, a wolf has been protecting the severed head of the king is reunited with this body. It reattaches, of course, like they always do when they're a saint's head. Exactly. But this kind of paints Evara's the most utterly evil pagan. You know, he's a powerful military leader, but he's cruel.

He loves torture. He's anti-Christian. He's everything you want a bad Viking to be, really, from a Christian writer. perspective. You know, we are gaining evidence, I think, for Ivor the cruel as opposed to you or the boneless as I think here. Yeah, it supports this idea of exosis as the Latin origin. And I will say it's, I mean, it would sound like a bit of a stretch to argue that theory. But, I mean, we've got examples of people's bad Latin being responsible for other historical events. So one of my favorite examples is St. Fibulus, which is the word for cloak that somebody's kind of

mistook an object in a story and made it into a person. So St. Amphibulus becomes a saint. And obviously, it's just because somebody's mangled their Latin. And I think most medievalists, we've all struggled at some point in learning Latin. So it's very relatable. Yeah, exactly. I'm like a relatable. I can cast absolutely no aspersions in this one. So, you know, that slide. All right. Before we get Yvar in a boat and over to England to do a fair bit of marauding, You know, he's been in Ireland, as you say, essentially showing up and taking credit for a lot of other people's work. But to give him his due, he does have some impact on what's going on in Dublin at the time, right? Like, he is pretty, I would say, canny in terms of promoting urbanization, which I think is cool.

I mean, I'm a city's girl. I can't help it. I love it. I'm like, ooh, did you fortify that trading post? Oh, wow. Yeah, well, this is it. So, I mean, before Vikings arrived in Ireland, there were some very powerful ecclesiastical settlements.

And churches and kings control the trade in Ireland. And so there's evidence that some of these ecclesiastical settlements were kind of growing. There'd be the workshops of individuals supplying the church. And, you know, there'd be places for hospitality where pilgrims and visitors could come. But there weren't actually towns. They didn't have the full. set of the features. But clearly, Ireland was bursting with trade potential, you know,

and there was kind of, you know, growing population and growing, you know, sophistication in economic activities through the 8th century. And it's as if the Vikings are able to come in and channel that. So one of the ways I like to see the Vikings is a sort of militarised trade diaspora. And so, you know, they come in with all these kind of maritime contacts, means to transport goods from one place to another, but they break through the existing social structures that means that it must be controlled by the church or by the kings. And I actually think there's quite a lot of cooperation between the Vikings and the Irish buying and selling goods. And this facilitates the development of urbanisation in Ireland. So they do take a fortified settlement.

It's not clear because, you know, historical geographers will debate for days about what exactly is a town. How do you define a town in the Middle Ages? But, you know, the kind of things that would denote urban features having a distinct corporate identity, you know, having defensive enclosure, whether that be walls or ditches around. But it seems to really have developed by the 10th century. And really, it's because of Vikings in Ireland failed to take large areas of land, what they did is they did a kind of economic conquest instead. They really became the go-between and overseas trade. And Evar must have been part of that story because it was his descendants who dominated the fortress of Dublin. you know, put for centuries after.

And that is their long-term thing that they achieve in Ireland. Their achievements in Britain are shorter term, but the dynasty is also involved in the Kingdom of the Isles, which is this chain of islands running down the West Coast of Scotland into the Irish Sea with the Isle of Man. And a branch of the dynasty sets themselves up of kings on that area as well. So it's a really ambitious, widespread range of activities that means that Evar becomes a figure of legend.

you know, that one man was able to start this ball rolling and his descendants were to play such a dominant role in insular politics for a century or more after. I mean, I think certainly we can say that there's real importance to Evar's legacy in Ireland and possibly along the coast. But I think in comparison, we get these great stories about his campaigns in England. But these don't necessarily have the same kind of lasting impact,

You know, it's certainly I would argue destabilizing. You know, it's not great when you get your king killed and decapitated, for example. You know, and we get Evar like capturing York. But that isn't what we tend to talk about when we're like, oh, his legacy. You know, these are kind of like things that he also achieved, but it's not like, this is the thing about Evar. Yeah. And of course, that is what we see in retrospect at the end of the story.

I mean, you know, in the early 10th century, for example, so, you know, 50 years after Evo's death, defendants of his were ruling the kingdom of Northumbria. They were dominant, you know, in the northern part of England. And so, you know, whilst his direct legacy hasn't continued there in that, you know, the Viking Kingdom of York ended in 954 was incorporated into England, but the legacy of Viking heritage in northern England is massive. And, you know, that's, left of a long-term cultural imprint. And arguably, I mean, I kind of think one of the reasons why people are attracted to the Vikings in the north of England, certainly I can speak for my own area near Liverpool, people are very proud of the idea that there is a Viking legacy.

And I think it's a bit of the old kind of north-south divide coming in. I think the northerners want to think that they're a little bit different than people in the south of England. How do we justify that? Well, it's our Viking ancestry. That's what makes us unique and different and exciting. and the Anglo-Sexans are just boring by comparison. You know, I kind of feel that there's this, even this contemporary kind of identity thing that kind of feeds into Viking heritage in the north of England. And it was the success of Evar and his descendants in controlling Northumbria that enabled it to have that separate kind of cultural character.

You can still go to kind of churches in the Norse of England. There's Viking Age stonework. There's the place names. We've even got Norse language in use. in areas of Cumbria that were kind of still linked to the kingdom of the oils in trade as later as the 12th century. So it is a very lasting legacy in that sense. And I think people were aware of that in medieval England too, because, you know, the stories of Havelog, the Dane in East Anglia, which is linked to Olaf Kouron, who's a descendant of Evar. You know, they're still telling those stories through the Middle Ages.

They're intrigued by their Viking past. And I mean, I suppose one of the things I find quite interesting about the stories that they're telling when they're talking about Evar is one of the things we're definitely seeing here is there's a bit of a shift from just raids. You know, we've had raids the whole time, babe, right? Like the raids have been around to active conquest. And do we know why there is this shift? Is this just something that is kind of like an Evar special or has this been happening more with Vikings generally at the time? It's been happening more with Vikings generally at the time. And, you know, in a way that's maybe what attracts Eva to come in.

Because when the Vikings are roving groups, it's very hard to impose some kind of authority over the Vikings. But really from the 830s, late 830s onwards, they start founding Viking camps, certainly in Ireland. They're starting to do that in England as well, certainly associated with the Viking Great Army. And so once they become settled, then Evo can come in and be like, right, well, I'm going to be king of Dublin now. So that settlement is that stage. The reason for the shift in tactics is that, you know, raiding is, it's very high gain, potentially, but it's extremely high risk. You know, you might have one or two good raids and you're set for life. You might have one bad raid, game over. Or you might just have a few raids, which are really brutal and actually weren't that successful. If you really want to make a more continuous stable income, go into trading, settle, you know, do deals, buy and sells. So people talk about a shift from raiding to trading. It's never that simple. They were always piratical merchants, you know, they were quite happy to go from one to the other. We hear of Vikings trading really from the earlier stage. I mean, when we look at the sort of

treaty between Alisford, the Great and Guthram, say 870s, say the Viking army, they're talking about trading. They're like saying, well, you can't buy these goods. And if one of our slaves run away to your side, then, you know, you're supposed to give them back and that kind of thing. So it shows that buying and selling of goods and slaves was happening across these cultural boundaries from the very start. But that the trading element becomes more important as the Vikings settle. And it's actually a much cleverer way of making a long-term income than sort of living a life of crime on the run almost. You can, you know, you can become a capitalist instead. And that's sort of a kind of a better route to making wealth long term.

I mean, I agree. I think that the smart thing to do, the smart money is on the settle down, you know, for sure. But we've got some stories. We've got some stories. Can we talk about the Blood Eagle in the room? Can we talk about the theoretical capture of York in 866? You know, and everybody says, look, all the stories are, oh, here we go. King Ella gets made to go through this horrifying ritual where he's cut up.

But I don't think any of us actually think this happened at this point in time, do we? So the historical events are the Viking army have arrived in the south of England and then basically they're tipped off. I think it's a good way of saying, don't persecute us. There's a civil war going on over there. Go up to Northumbry. You'll get a much better chance of making yourself successful. So they go up and exploit the fact that there is a civil war at that time in Northumbria between two rival kings. And Ella is one of these who sees the king of York.

According to the English sources, a battle is bought and Ella is killed. And then the Vikings are able to take over York, which there's a say they're then hold for the next sort of 80 years or so. Now, according to the story, because the story is that the Vikings have gone to Northumbria is an act of vengeance for poor Ragnar being thrown in the snake pit. that Elethan has to suffer some equally horrible death. And this is this kind of ritual of the Blood Eagle that we hear about in other sources. I was actually, I actually having my... I was reading Orkneanga Saga today. This isn't Ella, but it is actually a medieval description of a blood eagle when somebody was captured.

And it says, so the victim had his ribs cut from the spine with a sword and the lungs pulled out through the slits in the back. And the victim is dedicated to Othin. And that was kind of seen as a suitably horrible death for Ella of York. And again, fits into this idea that the Vikings are bloodthirsty and pagan. And really people have, their imaginations have gone wild with this idea of blood-eagling. You know, the Victorians are very enthusiastic about it because they loved a bit of blood and gore and Vikings. But more sober analysis, and I think particularly a key work done by Roberta Frank, was like, yeah,

there is an actual historical evidence that's happened at the time. And the argument is that carving an eagle on somebody's back is actually a poetic kenning. So the idea that if you died in battle that you were food for eagles or wolves, that you would be pecked apart on the battlefield. It was kind of seen as almost a perhaps dishonorable thing to happen after a battle, that rather than your body being carried off and treated honourably and buried, that the beasts of battle would be coming over and picking the flesh off your bones. And so the idea of an eagle cutting your back, it's like you're going to die in a ditch on a battlefield

and an eagle's going to come and, you know, chew your guts. It's not nice. But it's not a form of torture. It's not a ritualistic death. So, again, it's one of those things where a little line in a poem, you know, an eagle will cut your back, suddenly becomes this really gory description. of a way of being put to death. So, yeah, so people are probably a bit disappointed about that

because they like the idea of her Blood Eagle. I was talking to one of my colleagues the other day working at another institution, and she was saying she had a student in a class who wanted to know about Blood Eagleing and gave them all the literature about Blood Eagleing didn't happen. They're like, yeah, no, I just want to think that it happened. So they weren't going to change their mind.

So sometimes we do get quite attached to an idea. You know, we love a bit of gore, don't we? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we like horrific death when it's happening to somebody else, definitely. Yeah, especially in the past, you know, and especially when it manages to cement our preconceived notions about a group of outsiders. That's fantastic stuff, you know. Yeah, exactly.

And yeah, a lot of people have this thing about early medieval people just being really bloodthirsty. Barbaric, obviously, is term, you know, that the whole idea of medieval is somehow, you know, dirty and deficient. But I have to say, I mean, I like the early Middle Ages. And I don't actually think it was, you know, as brutal and as horrific as people make out. I think we tend to think we hear a lot of later Middle Ages as the power of the stay increases and centralised control almost requires more dramatic demonstrations of power and authority than obviously we get torture chambers and horrible ways of death. But actually, you know, 8th, 9th, 10th centuries, you don't hear too much about torture.

And I don't know whether that's just because we don't have as much in the way of sources or whether, yeah, people just dispatched each other a bit quicker. Where we do got ritual deaths in Irish sources of this period, it seems to be drowning. That's, if you're a bad person and you're captured, you are ritually drowned. That scene is not a nice way to go. But we don't get, you know, dramatic accounts of, you know, people's entrails being pulled out bit by bit and so on that. That seems to be a bit more of a.

later phenomenon. Do you know, I still blame the Victorians for half of that. Because, you know, anytime you see one of those ridiculous medieval torture museums, there's just a bunch of stuff Victorian's made up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they hadn't. I mean, yeah, Victorian attitudes were both the kind of puritanical attitude to sex, but also the desire for images of torture.

It's a bit disturbing, really, isn't it? Yeah, well, you know, my position is anti-Victorian. Thank you, so, you know, please, all of my calls. colleagues do not come fight me about this. But yeah, no, I'm with you. I think that Victorians have quite a lot to answer for. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, but one way or another, you know, I'm team, there's no such thing as a

Blood Eagle. It's just a story that we tell. But we do know that Evar takes York and we do know that they then establish the Dane Law, which is, you know, all medievalists. We love a bit of the Dan Law, don't we? You know, can you tell us a little bit about its establishment in the east of England? Yeah, so well, that's kind of, yeah, that's quite a story all of its own.

So we know the Vikings control, you know, the kingdom of Northumbria, that they're taken over York, although Northumbria becomes split. There's a little section that belongs to an English dynasty, which is a sort of northern section, but the rump of Northumbria. So the kind of main power base of York is under Viking control. And then we've got Guthram, a Viking leader, who sets up a power base in East Angles. But these were separate kingdom. Sometimes they work together on campaign, but quite often they work separately. So sometimes there's a kind of false unity to the idea of the Dane law,

because we get it first referred to in sources in the early 11th century, but people will draw a map of 870s England with a big area that says Dainlaw, as though it's one kind of unified area. And it is a bit more complicated than that. I think so often we look back on the past, you know, wanting to draw maps with neat lines and something. sometimes wanting those lines to conform to modern units and modern identities. And they just really weren't playing by those rules.

They were making it up as they went along. And so it tends to be a bit more kind of messy. So we do have this treaty between Alfred and Gretchen, which I've mentioned, which really sets a line between Wessex, which is the area of England that remained under English rule and, you know, the area that was under the control of Vikings. But, you know, was that some sort of permanent boundary? I mean, you know, the place names kind of conform to some idea that there was a kind of linguistic divide. But, you know, but I don't think at the time they thought, right, we are founding the Dane Law.

They just thought, we're just making a deal between two kings to stop more people dying. And again, that's something which I think tends to get underplay. There's an awful lot of peace treaties. You know, there's a risk that we kind of go into the Middle Ages. We just glorify battle. It's all battles. all bloodthirsty. But if you actually look into the kind of details of the Anglo-Sexam Chronicle, there's as many treaties and negotiations sometimes as there are battles. I think they always

kept the back tunnels open. There were actually ways that they tried to limit conflict. You know, so it's not just one big bloody battle after another. There are, you know, periods when agreements are being made. And periods when Vikings kind of settle down into Mary, you know, there's this other narrative of what's happening at this period. It's. not just bloodshed. But maybe that's less good for storytelling. Well, this is the stuff that I'm really interested in, unfortunately, though, because, you know, we begin to see at this point in time, you know, again, as you say, we're wanting to make these big lines like, there's the Dane Law, there's Wessex.

Here is Dublin. There is the rest of Ireland. But, you know, we're really seeing greater and greater integration between these populations at the time, right? So it's not as though Norse people get to Dublin and just say, oh, yeah, okay, well, that's it, right? We have pretty serious intermarriage, pretty serious, yes, competition, but also, you know, trade is one of those things that really gets people to come together, right? So, you know, what effects is this kind of integration having on both Ireland and England at the time? Yeah, well, it tends to have different impacts in different places.

So, you know, firstly, yeah, you've got that thing that from the perspective of people, living close to the Vikings, right? You've got this dynamic, even from an early stage in Ireland, like the same decade that Vikings settle in Ireland is when we start getting military alliances between Irish groups and Vikings. And it's a bit like, well, we could fight these guys or we could ally with them and then they'll fight for us, right? There's a win-win situation.

There's one sort of particularly like, which is the life of St. Findon, who's an Irish saint who's captured by the Vikings, but he was a chieftain. And it appears that, whilst he's captured on two occasions, the second occasion, the Vikings have actually been employed as hitmen, that they want him disappeared. He's involved in an Irish feud. They strike a deal. Fendon is basically invited to a beach party, like, come, we'll feast by the coast.

And then the Vikings come and just whisk him off. And, you know, so Vikings have a, yeah, they're kind of, they are this really fine line between like they are merchants, but they are also gangsters, they are also pirates. You know, they dabble in these different areas. But for people, you know, living within the sort of sphere of the Vikings, like these guys have come in, right? They want to buy and sell from us. You know, they are paying so much more for our agricultural produce than, you know, than we're getting through other means because they need to restock their ships. You know, they're offering to go to war against our enemies for us. Maybe we can hold our land if we cede it to the Vikings on more

favourable terms than we held it. Forces, all these negotiations going. So, you know, individual self-interest is going to be a leader in people's decision-making here. And I think quite often, as historians, we go back and say, yes, but you weren't a Scandinavian. So you should have been fighting against them. And it's felt like, well, people just kind of like, people are just trying to live their lives. They're just trying to, you know, be as successful as possible, avoiding getting killed. And if they can can be rich and successful in the process, that's all a win-win situation. And so that means that the reasons for working with Vikings are often very compelling. And I think this is also a tension we can see in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that the Kings of Wessex are going,

no, no, no, the Vikings are definitely the enemies. They're the bad guys. We need to fight against them. You don't need to kind of be making that point. If it's self-evidently, You don't need to argue it. So clearly there are a lot of people working with the Vikings. In New York, for example, Northumbria, when Viking armies are in the field in the 1890s, they call it the Northumbrian army. They're not calling it the Viking army.

The Vikings have gone native. They are now the Northumbians. Those armies are presumably mixed groups of Vikings and local levies, Northumbrians, working together. And so, you know, as they say, they almost become embraced as part of this regional identity in England. I mean, I think that this is such, important point because I think we have this tendency to kind of think of the medieval period as a mirror of our own. And so, oh, there's a unified idea of Englishness. There's a unified idea of Irishness. And it's like, the Irish kingdoms are at war with each other constantly. You know, like, tell someone from Leinster that like the guys from Munster are like great, you know, actually and you should really get together with them. Right. And Evar is really good at kind of getting in there, exploiting the.

these extant issues and building up alliances in the right places. And it's less sexy than Big Battle, Blood Eagle, whatever. But this is the real stuff that enables you to be a leader on a large scale. Yeah. That is how you build power. And that is how you build enough power that, you know, several generations down the line, your descendants are still ruling large kingdoms. Well, now, Claire, I'm wondering if I can do a speed round of controversies and myths.

about Evar with you and see what you have to say with these. Because like here's some of the big ones other than, you know, the blood eagling and the snake pits of the hay, hey, hey, hey, right. Okay, so one of the big Evar myths, did he or did he not declare himself a god? There is no evidence that Evar declared himself a god. I'm sorry. A boo, boo.

This is a funny-duddy historian coming in, coming in destroying everybody's widely held notions that they've seen on TV or something and just saying, nah, sorry. Yeah, yeah, it's like there's this idea that he declares himself a god while he rules. It's catagot, right? And then everyone says, oh, that is it. That is it. I don't support Evar anymore.

But it doesn't even make sense, like, from a Norse-Smith's point of view, I don't think, you know. Yeah, I think quite often, because the thing is, is that obviously power in the middle ages was a concern. We are living in an age too where we're worried about, you know, power going to people's head, then overstepping kind of the normal rules of society. And so a lot of medieval stories have caution retells that quite often you'll get a story about a leader becoming so powerful that the power then goes to their head and they think that they can do whatever they want. And then that's usually precedes a downfall and that leader usually has some messy ending because they overstep the mark. So I think sometimes these things develop as kind of caution me tales.

Like, don't get too big for your boots. Once you start thinking you're a God, it's going to be game over. You know, that becomes part of a kind of moral story. I do love a good moral story, though. So we're going to keep that part. Please do not think that you are a God. That's good. Yeah.

How about the campaign of backbreaking of rivals in Ireland and other subsequent tortures? Is this kind of more in the blood eagle realm of things, or do we think that, you know, routine spinal injury is matter, of course? Yeah, again, you know, we get references to battles, you know, we don't get references to people's having their spines broken. And I mentioned already that ritual drowning is, it seems to be used in Ireland as a form of punishment. It's actually the Irish that are doing it to the Vikings they capture, not the other way around. So we've got, yeah, a famous Viking leader in 845 is ritually drowned by the NAL Ova King at Loch Owls, which is in the centre of his territory. And we get another leader who is allied with the Vikings. So he's Irish.

He's captain. He's drowned as well. So there does seem to be a bit of a pattern of drowning. It's a bit like the falling out of windows. You know, if you've got a political enemy, you don't like, they seem to drown. But I don't know quite how ritualised this is. You know, were they drowned with an assembly of people watching this? unpleasant death or did it just appear like a bad accident?

You know, we don't know whether it happened in secret or public. So, yeah, no, we don't have any kind of gory details. And, you know, I guess early medieval chronicles are quite frustrating like that. You know, they just tell us the battle was fought and somebody died. And if he wants to know how, tell me how they died exactly. No, we just don't know. So that's what leads perhaps to the speculation and the storytelling. How about the specific targeting of monasteries?

because this is one that I think is probably more likely to be real. Oh, 100%. Yeah. So if you think about it in terms of, you know, where are you going to strike? Well, what do you want out of your raid? You want riches. You maybe want to capture some slaves as well. And you're going to need to restock the ship.

Like, guys are hungry. Like, you're going to be in a bad mood. You've just made a very dangerous journey to get to your destination. And obviously, like, the one thing that can stop an army and its tracks is lack of food. And we've got a few really good examples where Viking armies in England had to move because of lack of supplies. There's one account where they're forced to eat their horses. So where are you going to get riches, people and good food supplies? It's going to be the churches because that's where people have come and paid food renders.

So monasteries are big landholders. There's lots of riches there because of shrines and donations and things from pious individuals who want to buy their way into heaven. And they're people by monks. They're not terribly well defended at the beginning of the Viking Age because people don't expect people to come and sack a monastery. I mean, certainly in Ireland, you do actually kind of get the church being embroiled in warfare to a certain extent. But at the same time, there's still this sense of you don't go and strip the shine of its gold. Because that's the kind of thing that you've read stories or heard stories about as a kid where you're going to get struck by light or something horrible is going to happen.

You know, there's this fear of destroying the most holiest part of a church, which Vikings don't have that baggage. They're quite happy to come in. And that's actually in the wording of Irish Chronicles because they draw a distinction between Irish Wages that quite often go as far as the door of the church and the Vikings don't follow that rule. And I think that's one of the things that makes the Vikings seem shocking.

Like, they seem to have no moral compass. They have no fear of God. That is very surprising to a deep. pious audience writing in the 8th and 9th centuries. They targeted churches. I think, you know, they carefully planned from church to church where they would go, and churches were quite often on communication routes. They were on roads and they were coastal locations because they wanted pilgrims,

but not that kind of pilgrim, obviously. Well, I mean, and I suppose that this is how you end up with big stories about blood eagles and broken backs, as, you know, for all intents and purposes, raiding a monastery is as shocking. as, you know, doing horrid torture. And who writes the sources that we read, you know, a lot of times it's monks, right? And this is the thing. I mean, where are we getting these sources? You've mentioned in particular, when we're talking about Eva, we're looking at the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, right? Yes. So, yeah, we do have a myriad of sources for the early Viking Age, but in England,

our key text is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was very much written in the orbit of the courts of kings of Wessex as very clear propagandist elements to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, both in creating this sense of what should be a unified England and the control of Wessex Kings. You know, they sort of set the seeds of this idea of a common English political identity in a way that it hadn't quite been expressed previously. We've got Bede talking about a kind of spiritual identity of the English people, but the idea of a unified political kingdom is something that's peddled by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. They achieve it, you know, the power of propaganda to kind of lay the ground for what will later happen.

But you've got monastic writers like Alquin who writes the outraged letters about the Radon Lindisfon in 7-9-3 in such vivid terms that those letters are often still quoted today, you know, where he talks about the blood of God's priests splattered across the altar. Like, that is an image that sits with you. So, yes, you know, obviously the same in Ireland. and the chronicles are kept by ecclesiastics where we've got sources like the life of St. Finder. It's written by somebody who seemingly knew the saint in his lifetime. It's written within 10 years of his death. So it's quite close to an eyewitness account. So I think we have to sort of take a, you know, a level-headed approach to this that, yes, of course, it would be in their interest to exaggerate the heathenness and evil character of these Vikings.

But then we don't want to get so far over that we think that, you know, oh, Vikings, they're weren't that bad because it is clear that, you know, they did enslave. Maybe there weren't these kind of very vivid ritual deaths of particular leaders, but, you know, if you're capturing people and raping them, men and women referred to as victims of raped by Vikings, that's a form of torture. It's just not high-level political torture. So, you know, there's a risk in saying, well, because some elements of atrocity are made up later that this somehow sanitised. as the Vikings. I think that's a dangerous thing to do because I certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of a Viking raid. But at the same time, we can also see how storytellers kind of ran

away with their own imagination sometimes. And the story's got bigger in the retelling. You know, it's, I was, when I talked to my students about, you know, how stories grow in the retelling, I'm like, well, imagine something happens in the pub on Friday night and there's a fight between two of your friends who get very drunk. By the time it's Monday morning and everybody's retold the story, it's already got significantly distorted. You know, we do that, you know, depending on, you know, whether it was your friend who was, you know, punched first or through the first punch or what the story was as the conflict between these individuals, you know, was it some kind of love triangle? You know, so even in our own prism of experience, we can see how

in a short time a story has legs. And when you expand that across centuries, then you can see the capacity for stories to keep growing and changing in the retelling and to adopt these more and more sensational elements involving torture and things like that. I mean, I think especially in the case of when we're looking at things like sagas, you know, I love sagas as a source. I think that they are a very useful one to tell us things. But, you know, Odin shows up sometimes too and is like, hey. And I'm like, I'm sorry. I just, I'm not sure that that's what was going down. at the time, right? So there is a real premium put in sagas on these cool stories, on these

big dynasties who do bold things and bloody battles happen and all this gross stuff. Because, you know, it's not, as you say, it's kind of a historical fiction. You know, it's like a sexy version, you know, to tell round the fire at night. It's not, you know, are boring. Well, actually, it's more complex than that. Yeah, exactly. I quite often think these are, you know, we like watching kind of model superheroes. These are their superheroes. And, you know, they have to be big personalities with big things happening with almost supernatural qualities. And the other thing is well about, you know, the medieval mindset is they, you know, they did believe in the supernatural. So they did think that, you know, dreams could foretell the future. You know, they did believe of the interaction

of, you know, whether it's gods or demons, depending on whether you're Christian or pagan, interfering in worldly affairs. That's pretty cool as well, really. But obviously, that's where most people in our society go, I know that's just nonsense. So it's funny, we will suspend our disbelief in some things and not on others, but to the medieval mindset, all of these things were possible.

Do we have any archaeological evidence specifically for Evar? Do we know where he's buried or anything like that? Yeah, well, there's been kind of obviously debate about this. discovery of a central burial at Repton. So this was a Viking camp at the 870s of the Great Viking Army where there's this mass burial, I think over 270 bodies in a grave at Repton. So Repton was a Mercy and Royal Centre that became the focus of Viking settlements. The Vikings kind of appropriated the site and as I say there was this mass burial. And within this there's a kind of high-status grave, very close by to the mass grave site, which has this figure which people

identified as Eva, the boneless, because it had been treated with such reverence, they thought that this is the grave of a leader. And this leader had died in a rather gruesome way. They were, you know, marks on the body. And one thing that kind of fitted with the boneless thing, so, you know, was that when this character had died, it looks like they had sustained a large sword blow across the groin. And so things got cut off. And in the grave, there's a boar's tusk

placed in a very strategic position as if it's making up for something that might have been removed. And so people went, oh, Eva, the boneless, it all makes sense now, you know. But more recent study at Repton, and this is sort of work done by kind of cat jarmin in particular, but there's obviously a whole team of people have been working on this material. But there's been some interesting study on that particular grave and a grave closely associated with it

with a genetic link between the two individuals. So they're either father, son or uncle nephew. And if we look at the chronology of who's dying at this time, it actually looks like it was Eva's associate. So there's Olaf and A. Stein. He was his son and they died within a year of each other. So it looks like it's probably not Evar because I think Evar died in Ireland because it's Irish sources where his death is recorded. And, you know, so it is very difficult because, you know, later saga sources link him with. his death in England. But yeah, the archaeology doesn't fit precisely with Evob. If there is one place where his grave has been linked with, it's at Repton where that argument has developed,

but it's far from conclusive. I love that I brought you on here to be Captain Bringdown. I'm like, hey, Claire, everybody loves Eva the boneless, you know, the guy with all these cool stories so that we can be like, no, that's not what happened. Yeah, I'm really sorry. I mean, fundamentally, we are still talking about him a thousand years later. So this is a guy who has a legacy one way or another. And yes, there's this huge fictional one, right? You know, we all like to talk about blood eagles and snake pits. And, you know, did he or did he not have his junk cut off? You know, these are wonderful things to speculate on. But fundamentally, there is at the very least, a political and trade legacy that this guy is leaving. Oh yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I could talk for hours about a descendants in Dublin and, you know, and I would encourage people, okay, so you've heard of Evol the Bainless and you've found something interesting. Believe me, if you keep reading, like the around his family and his descendants, I truly think that the history is just as exciting as any legend once you get into it. And that the family is kind of fascinating, you know, through what they achieve, through successive gender. but also the kind of, you know, the way that power is built up in a new land, you know, how do you establish your authority and, you know, how do they kind of make that space in Dublin kind of sacred land for that dynasty? And, you know, they do that through grave mounds and

thingsites and royal regalia. And I find that quite fascinating, actually. So there's lots of interest there. So I hope I haven't just come on to say, oh, no, that's not true. Oh, it's unlikely that happened or this is more complicated than you might have thought because there's such a rich body of evidence to explore and find out new things. Now, I don't think that it's that at all. I think that two things can be true. It can be true that we've got really great stories about someone that are not necessarily factually correct and that they still help us understand the legacy and impact of a person. So, you know, you can be interested in Eva are the Boneless. like all of the cool stories

and also just, you know, you can hold them lightly. You know, I think that it's all right for us to enjoy cultural output, but we just need to kind of put it in the correct place. And fundamentally, the correct place is at the head of one of the greatest Viking dynasties ever established.

Yeah, yeah. And I like to think the legends are a gateway drug to getting people into the hard history. Absolutely. Well, that's what I'm telling myself every day. Claire, thank you so much for coming on. This has been an absolute delight. Oh, thank you.

I'm always always happy to chat about these things. Thanks to Professor Claire Downham and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you haven't listened to our episode on Ragnar Lothbrook or the wealth of episodes on the Vikings, do go back and find them in our catalog. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent episode, The Medieval Apocalypse, and add free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com forward slash subscription.

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