Historically High - The Vikings

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

The history of the ancient Scandinavian people is one that has kind of taken on a life of its own over the years. It's been dramatized and embellished to gain popularity, and here's the kicker, none of it was needed. Vikings were an incredible group of people who's influence is still heavily felt today in our modern world. They discovered America wayyyy before ol Christopher "Turns out I was a huge douche" Columbus and interacted with civilizations as far as North Africa. Their shipbuilding and seafaring is legendary and lets not even get started on their warriors. Hit that play button and strap in, to Valhalla we go. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If sunlight was healthy for you, I'd be the healthiest motherfucker around here. Is that why you don't like sunlight? Because you're forced to spend your entire day, workday out in it. You know how hard it is to be sad out in the sun? Do you know how bad shit has to be for you to actually be sad in the sun? All right, love, we're going to record. We'll see you soon. Do you ever, like, just get, like, I'm trying to think of the right term for what I want to refer to it as.

You just get, like, instantly, like, almost like instant rage or instantly pissed like but it's over something just like ridiculous like i burned the bacon this morning i had it on the smoker and i wouldn't need to start making pancakes and i let it cook for like two minutes too long and went out there and it was stuck to the sheet and just burnt yeah and i went literally from like zero to just full rage you're describing most of my days i'm gonna say it was like this for you it sounds like you're describing something that's less common. To me, like, that's Tuesday.

But then I was, like, upset for literally, like, the next half hour about it. It was almost an entire pack of bacon. Like, you know how much bacon you can fit on, like, a large, like, cookie sheet. So, last night, very similar to that, we got... I got home and, like, we usually do, like, a steak or something on Saturdays or a burger. but you know how I do food so burgers aren't just burgers. So it's like 4.30, put the bacon in the oven, let it cook off in the oven, pulled it out of the oven, turned off the oven, and when it's time to like finish a burger, I have these little their aluminum plates. They're called sizzle pans.

It's like what you get a like a thing of fajitas in. Oh, yeah. So like at the restaurant. Yeah. So like the wood pan. No, it's like an aluminum dish, kind of. I use them for fajitas. Maybe it's.

I was going to say, like, I usually think, like, at a Mexican restaurant, when they bring up the heatas, it's on like the, almost the, like, oval cast iron. Yeah, these are oval, but they're aluminum, so they conduct heat really, really well. Always put those in the oven. Excuse me. When the burgers are done and the cast iron, they come out, they go on the sizzle plates, put the bacon over that and then we do pimento cheese.

So do you put everything back in the oven? Yeah, just to melt the pimento cheese and everything on top. Okay, so you put the burgers. Cook the burger to like rare and then finish it to medium rare or medium in the oven. Okay, gotcha.

So I had the burgers. They're all done in the cast iron. I open up the oven to reach in and grab the sizzle plates. Neither one of the sizzle plates is in there. It's like, God damn it, you forgot to fucking put it in there. So I go and grab the sizzle plates

and they're not hot, but it's not that big of a deal because they should finish cooking, put everything on the sizzle plates, go to turn around, open up the oven, put them in the oven, and I'm sitting there,

I'm like, all right, it's about time to pull out, look over at the oven. I never turn the oven back on. And it was just like, I hit pre-rage when I didn't have the sizzle pans,

and then as soon as I realized that the oven was off and it hadn't been cooking anything, it was just like, what the fuck are you doing? This is the, and you know exactly what caused this problem.

I wasn't high. You weren't? No. Oh. That actually might have caused the problem. The fact that you have a system down when you are a little bit, stone, you go to autopilot and now that, yeah, maybe. It's like being a, excuse me, like a chef in line, God damn it.

Okay, so I actually had a different question. I have a question, too. Okay. You can go first, but I'm going to go ahead. No, I usually have the question. So this mine can, if yours is good, we'll hold mine off till later. Okay. No lead-in.

but I'm going to start this episode by drinking my finish long drink the drink of my people. Mmm. So. Did you go? Where'd you go get that from? I had one the other day at one of the pizza places. And it's citrus flavored, but it's gin with natural grapefruit and juniper berries, which I thought I hated gin. But this is very good.

Yeah. Like not all gin tastes like super, like junipery or... Yeah. Is that the bear one? Yeah, it's the one from... Fuckface. is a bachelor party. Yep.

Nailed it. So have you ever been in a situation or a conversation where if there is a chance, like there's no amount of money in your wallet that you wouldn't pay to make that conversation stop? Have I, oh, have I ever just been in that situation? I'm sure I have. Nothing comes to mind, but like. Like somebody stops you on the side of the street and they're like, hey, we're out here

for orphans for Annie or whatever. And they're like, would you like to be a part of our organization or donate? It's like, if you had just walked up here and said that and said that you were going to have a five-minute conversation with me, I just would have handed you the $10. Like, I've been in, like, I've had people come to try to like sell like home security systems and everything. And you're just like, no, I'm not interested. And they're like, well, I mean, it's quick. Can I come in and take a look around? I'm like, motherfucker.

What about the first response led you to believe that that was a good follow-up question? This is how rape occurs. I say no, you keep going. The other day I had one where there's a lady in our office that's getting married. Okay. And I was kind of in the doldrums and just didn't really want to talk to people. That's a good word, by the way. Doldrums?

Yeah. That doesn't get used enough anymore. No. I was just in my own world. Didn't want to talk to anybody. Just really wasn't feeling it that day. And one of the other ladies comes up, she goes, hey, so we're going to get a card. and then we're going to have everybody sign the card

and we're going to do a couple of the things and she just starts rambling about the wedding that the other lady's having. And finally, I just turned to her and I go, how much do you want? She goes, what do you mean? I go, how much do I need to give you so we can stop this conversation

and you'll just walk away and take care of it? What amount have you determined in your head? I know you have an amount. So what amount of conversation did you put necessary for you to talk to me before asking for that amount? Whatever that amount is, cut out the conversation and just ask for it. Yeah. It's very simple. Like I don't need to be perused or

you know, fluffed into getting this. Here's the deal. I'm either going to do it or I'm not going to do it. Your lead in, your pitch is not going to convince me otherwise. Yeah. And most of the time, I'm going to do it, but it would take something like real special for me not to do it. In fact, you continuing to talk leads me toward not wanting to do it. And I'm willing to volunteer more money to make this stop. So she kind of looks at me and she's like, well, it's not really about the money. Just kind of I wanted to run down the plan. And I was like, I just grab my wallet, opened it up. And there was 220 sitting in there and I grabbed one.

You're like, no, the plan. What do you mean plan? There should be no plan required here. The plan should have been you coming in talking to me and then asking for money. Yeah. I'm helping you get to the end of the plan faster. Because there's nothing. You could be like, yeah, we're going to go buy her a gun and we're going to shoot her husband.

I'll be like, okay, well, if you want money, here's $12. $20. Just leave me out of it. So I pull out my wallet. I look in there. There's two 20s. I just grab one and I hand it to her. She goes, oh, do you want change?

Nobody else is given any more than this. And I was like, what? And she goes, yeah, I have some change over there, but everybody else has been like five and ten bucks. And granted, we work in an office where like 70% of the people are just bad people. And or you don't know them that much. Or you don't know them that well because there's so many of them. Yeah, I mean, we work together every single day.

So you kind of know, like, who the good people and the bad people are. And the people would be like, oh, yeah, I just have my card, which I do use that a lot. Yeah. But in this scenario, she's like, well, yeah, no, I have changed back in my desk. I'll go back and get that. And then I'll give you some change for this 20. And I go, nope, you keep the 20, you sign the card for me. You take care of everything else.

You're mistaken. Part of this payment within this $20 is the understanding that I'm buying you going away from me. Yeah. Like, I don't even care if you don't even, if it doesn't get to her, if you pocket that 20 and I don't have to conversation is over? Yeah, good enough for me. As soon as this 20 leaves me my hand and you stop talking, what happens is this 20 is none of my business. I just, I don't know if that's just like a bad personality thing, but there's just some days when you just can't take it and I'll just, somebody's talking. I all just almost want to be like, look, how much more money do I have to give

you for you just to walk away? Like, it doesn't even have to be a money thing. Like, if I hand you five dollars, can we just end this conversation? Like, can you get to like the last 30 seconds of this conversation? Because that's where the, that's where the crux of it's going to be. always like that okay we got a couple minutes I'll go to my question too do you think every subsequent generation

feels like the generation after them is like fucking up do you think that's a natural like a natural thing okay I think first I want to get some clarification from from you

what is considered a generation is it like every 20 do they consider every 20 years so enough time for somebody because like your parents are a separate generation from you, but there's usually not a generation between you and your parents. Probably.

So what I'm saying is like 20, I think 20 to 25 years would probably be kind of reasonable because you figure that's about the time age people are getting to and they start having kids. I say on average. I think our generations are getting bigger. The gaps between the generations? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Which I don't think does things, like I don't think it's a good thing. Well, I do think it's a good thing because the longer somebody takes between being a child and having a child is going to be able to hopefully teach them more to be a better person at that point and to be a better adult but at the same time I think when you widen that gap out then it makes grandparents look at grandchildren be like what the fuck are you doing because they're that much further away farther removed so do you think generations are determined usually by like because of course like you can't just base it off one person's birthday and be like this is this guy is going to start the new generation gen z or whatever gen yeah So do they base generations kind of like off of a event or kind of like a change in trend in society? So like you have the greatest generation that was the generation that was basically fighting in World War II.

So you figured that generation probably because before World War II they weren't called the greatest generation. That's just what we referred to them now as. No, they grew up during the roaring 20s though and then into the 30s. But what I'm saying, though, is how... So you're saying that they were born during the 20s? Because that generation, I think they would consider the generation for the greatest generation during World War II would be probably people age 18 to like 38. Because those were the people fighting and the people old enough to fight. World War II kicked off what?

38, 42? For us, it was 41 when Pearl Harbor got bombed. But for Europe, I think, I wanted to... Yeah, I want to say 38, maybe. So I would think probably anybody that came of... age? Yeah, it came of age into it. So like you're 16, 17, 17,

in the late 30s, 18, 19, 20, then you're over there. I would say that's probably the greatest generation. Okay, so you have the greatest generation. Then you have the baby boomers who were the babies born after World War II, born to the greatest generation, correct? Because that's what they said the boom was when everyone got back from fighting the war. Everyone started knocking boots, and then there was the boom.

How horrific do you think the stuff that they had to see was to come back and all they could do is just fuck it out of their system. Or just self-medicate. Yeah. It was just a combination of that. But if you hadn't seen your spouse or somebody like that for, you know, they were over there for three, four years, first thing you're doing is humping with reckless abandon.

Yeah, there's no. You're not looking for a condom or anything like that. You're barebacking it. Yeah. Okay. No, that makes sense. You're getting it in as quickly as you can get it in. So you got the baby boomers after that.

Who were the kids of the baby boomers? So that would have been, you figure, 46, people are getting back around 45, 46 from World War II. Baby boomer generation probably goes 46 to 66. And then the people born after that would be what your flower children, that would be like your beatniks, hippies, things that they would consider that generation, right? Yeah, because your flower children would then come into the Vietnam era. God, dude, that's depressing. Yeah. Every single generation has like a war that they lead into.

Yeah. Because you could say like that... But I mean, yeah. Since World War I mean, it's been, you know, the scale has been either... It hasn't been as big, but there's always something consistently going on. And even like when you look at like the Persian Gulf or anything like that, those were still legitimate wars. If those people over there fighting, then I consider it. Yeah.

So you have that generation. So who comes after that? So after that would be children starting to be born, I guess, like in the... like late 70s, early 80s? I think that's Gen X, isn't it? I think that is Gen X, right? Yeah. Okay.

So Gen X means like you came of age in the... Yeah, because you came of age like in the late 80s, early 90s. And then we came of age during the millennium, so millennials. So then you have your millennials. And then now it's what, Gen Z. No, there's been a Gen Y, too. There's some weird hybrid generation that they try to throw in between millennials and I think Gen X. Because I think millennials are...

I don't know if they can say them more... adolescent like in 2000. Anyway, what I'm saying, though, is kind of getting back to my other question, is does each generation look at the subsequent generation like, I don't understand you, I think you're fucking it up because you're not living to the same way we were.

Or do you think that's just been a recent thing? No, I think that every, it's kind of like it runs kind of right along the line of technology too. That's what I was getting at. There's a level of drop-off every once in a while, and right

now honestly self-admittedly I'm to the drop off of like I don't understand Twitter I don't understand reddit I don't understand excuse me TikTok I think I get it I get the premise behind it I don't know how to use it or anything like that and I think there also is something to be said about the difference between like understanding it or having a cursory knowledge of it but just not wanting to use it or care about using it yeah like you can know what it is be like oh is that you know what are you watching oh I'm watching a TikTok I know what that is and I'm sure like MTV was probably the same way for Generation X with their parents

like why are you sitting at home and watching music videos on the television and why did I go out and buy you this Nintendo and Super Nintendo and that's all you want to do I'm sure before that there was I don't know probably freedom liberation that's what I'm saying to get out was the whole technology thing

so like what if that is what if that's just natural evolution not from a biological perspective or anything like that or maybe at this point it is kind of a biological. But is that what modern evolution is now? Evolution is all about understanding like the newest technology. Because like it's been a rapid over the last, like since the 80s and like since microchips and stuff were embedded in computers. It's been much, much faster.

There's been a lot what I'm trying to say here. There's been much more growth as far as like things you have to. for innovation than there was within the last like 60 or 80 years before that. Because you got to understand from like even if you say from like the early 1900s or 1900 up to the 80s. At that point the most sophisticated thing was probably I would say it was weapons of war because war shaped that era so much. Yeah.

But so go from the 1900s to the 80s. Technology rose, you know, the car, the automobile. It got brought up to what it was from the 1900s to the 80s. Plains. Planes. Helicopters. Yeah, planes, helicopters. Travel. But then imagine from the 80s to even now that 40 years from the 80 is 40 years.

Yeah, 40 years. Got that sounds. 40 years from now, the leaps and bound. So in half the time, I would say that both technology and everything like that has far surpassed what it did in the last 80 years. It's more, I think, of like, a material shift. Like, we kind of laid the groundwork in those first 80 years for the next 40 years. We'd figured out travel at that point. We'd figured out long distances.

We were sprawling out into suburbs. As we sprawled out into suburbs, people realized that they had more time because they were spending less time in cities, so they needed something else to do. Then we started pushing towards technology of like surround sound systems, high-fi entertainment. When did the record player come out? Oh, records were light. Like, those were like in the 40s, man.

Yeah, so we went from what, probably the 40s to the beginning of the 70s with records, then A-tracks, then cassettes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that's true. So I think it was kind of like we'd reached the point of understanding that we wanted more mobility out of things. And then after we wanted more mobility out of things and realize that we could enjoy things like that at home, then we started trying to figure out how to take those with us too. So do you think technology now? Do you think evolution moved away from a physical evolution into more of, you have to be able to evolve like mentally?

Do you think that's what evolution is now? Yeah, I don't think that there's, because the technology at this point, like we've talked about before, when you see military technology and you hear that there may be more of a shift from sending people overseas as opposed to like... Yeah. We've learned how to protect people well enough to where we have to. technologies that are probably going to be infinite. I mean, we're going to figure out a lot of shit. We have robots doing surgeries now.

I mean, that's pretty advanced. I don't know where you go from there, except just making those things better. I think you just integrate. Okay, I won't go down that's travel hole because we'll eventually go down in. But I think that's when you start integrating technology into yourself even more so than you have now. So like that, like on your body. Putting a microchip in your body so you can scan your car with your hand. Yeah, it'll start small like that.

So do you think that like the generational gap are just kind of the looking down upon like the subsequent generations? I feel like when you know how you get those parents that are like, I'm going to raise my kids like I was raised and like try not to get them used to like tablets or computers. Like ideally that's how it would be nice because it simplifies the whole process. It takes away like, you know, if you're thinking about your kid as, you know, having information, I'm trying to think of how to say this. Like, imagine your kid is like software, and you're trying to go ahead and only feed certain information to that kid. Like, all these other points of, you know, entrance that information could get in. You're trying to minimize that by, like, minimizing, like, technology or certain TV shows and stuff like that. But at the same time, what if that's become the natural evolution by doing that?

And I'm not saying that that's wrong or that you should just, like, subject your childly, let your child go crazy with that. stuff, but do you think that later in life that that will almost like put your kid as it like at a disadvantage? That's kind of weird. We were having a conversation. Me and somebody else were having a conversation about this. Sort of yesterday. Not exact same, but sort of along the same lines. Like when we see things now and granted it was probably the same way that it was back in the 70s, but now it's just more of like a funny topic. Like when you hear books getting pulled out of libraries for having like graphics sexual content and all that kind of stuff there is a large not hopefully not a large subsection of people that think yeah that's a

bad idea and in the 70s that was somewhat logical but in 2022 to say i don't want kids seeing sex and books and libraries that is literally the least likely place that your child will ever see that i know right so to try to get rid of that seems hilarious because it's like yeah here's your phone it has internet, go to the library, but don't look at those nudie books. You just handed them a phone with internet that has a plethora of everything that you can imagine. And if you think that's the only way that they can access the internet, then... Friends, anything like that. So now it's like when you try to hold those things away from kids, like, I remember being young.

I remember my dad saying, don't watch a Simpsons. Yeah. My dad got home at 6 o'clock every night. Simpsons started five, right? Yeah. So it's like, okay, well, he told you. told me no, guardrails aren't on there. There's got to be something to this.

And he had to have known. He had to have realized, like, there's no way I can police this. So I don't know if it's just like parents trying to tell themselves nowadays that they're being better parents by trying to withhold things. Because sodas, anything like that. And maybe that is a good example from like when we were young. If your parents told you know sodas and you're like, yeah, we're going to go over to the park or something like that, there's a good chance you're going to walk by someplace and have a dollar on you and be able to buy a soda. take it to the park. Yeah.

If you don't want your kid to drink soda, okay, then make the rule that they just don't drink soda when they're around you or a home because they're going to be around you 90% of the time. But if they want to go out and get like a soda and everything like that, if they're so well, that's when you get people that like don't,

and it's a balancing act, I think, and I'm not saying I have all the answers as a parent because I sure shit don't. But like, to me it's kind of the same thing about how you would see people leave for college or the first time they got away from home, they just went crazy. They didn't know about their limits.

They didn't realize, you know, what to stay away from, what might be okay. And a lot of people get in trouble for that. And instead, like, would it be healthier? And I think it is, is if you start setting those boundaries leading up to that point, I'm not saying, like, get drunk with your kid or anything like that. But what I'm saying is leading up to the point where your kid is going to be leaving for home would be on their own to make those decisions. And you might want to go ahead and start talking to your kid about it and maybe being like,

okay, here, do you want to have a, have a beer with me when you're 18 or something like that? And be like, how does that make you feel? Okay, just so, you know, if you have a bunch of these, you know, you're going to get sick, you're going to have poor judgment and everything. They need to be able to kind of almost experiencing that in a controlled environment before you let them out into an uncontrolled environment. If you don't know before you leave the house that beers three through six are going to be your funest beers. And then you go to a party and you hit beers three through six and you're like,

this is the greatest time ever. And it's completely different now because even when I was younger, camera phones were a thing. They just weren't greeny as shit. So, I mean, there was a good chance that if someone tried to get a picture of you, it was blurry to turn out greening. You could be like, no, that's not, that's not me. Might as well have been the Zabrooter film.

Yeah, but now everybody and their fucking dog has instant access to a 4K camera that they can pull up and there's a button on the front of your phone that allows you get to it even faster and can start recording you doing, you know, whatever it is you're doing acting like NASA. And that stuff can follow you around the rest of your life. One incident can follow you around the rest of your life. So it's like I get why other generations are like,

oh, the next generation is out of control. I don't feel like they're out of control. What I feel like is they just... The limitation has brought them to a point of exploration kind of without any background knowledge. You look at like a future. generation and you're like, you know, they're obsessed with this or they're obsessed with that. It's like, yeah, because that's what, that's what draws their attention at that.

That's what, it wasn't available to us. You act like they're obsessed with something that you weren't obsessed with. It was, the simple fact is, had that been around when you were that age, you probably would have been obsessed with it. And you were probably obsessed with something. It's just different. If you're a man, I believe it was probably three things. And that was partying, girls.

In sports. In sports, yeah. So, you know, sports probably isn't going to be a bad deal. Like, if your child is just focused on sports, great deal. If your child's focused on girls, you're going to want to explain to them that abstinence may not always be possible, but protection is always possible. And the sports thing, you know, that's not exactly harmless as it is because what happens when you get around your boys? Yeah. And everything.

Guess what? One, one guy might be intelligent and be able to think to himself. hey, that's not a good idea. You get a group of guys egging on. The IQ of the group goes down. And that's when stupid shit happens. Fun shit can happen, but that is usually when stupid shit happens.

I think very seldom do you see one kid doing stupid shit just by themselves. I think it's much more likely that the stupid shit occurs when there's a larger group of numbers. That's more of a mothed drawn to the flame. Yeah. It's not necessarily everybody.

else's fault that they're stupid enough to come over there and see what's going on. That's true. That's just a nature of evolutionary. And it's probably, it's probably a situation where like someone has a stupid idea. And if there was no one there around them to be like, yeah, that's a good idea. That's actually a good idea. If you just come out and say, you're like, I don't have confirmation that this isn't a stupid idea. So I'm just going to not do it. Sometimes you're around your boys and they're like, great idea.

And all you need is that little confirmation that that's a good idea, even when it's not. And, you know, you're in. beer bongs, just everything, shotgunning a beer. You wouldn't shotgun a beer by yourself. I've probably shotgun a beer, but I have probably shotgun a beer by myself, but I don't active, that's not something that, like, that it would have been a celebratory thing or... You're not filling up to beer bong.

The Uber's getting ready to show up, and I'm trying to get one down before I get in to go over somewhere, yeah. Pre-party's different. Pre-party everything goes. But you don't, like, come home from work at, like, five, and, like, you open up the cupboards, and you're looking inside and you pull down the funnel and the hose and then you walk over to the fridge

and get a beer. No. You don't do beer balls really unless you're in like a around other people. Well, logistically, it's kind of hard to do is to pour the hold the funnel. It's just, it's not as fun. Yeah.

That's what I'm saying. It's not as fun. It's actually even sad because you're like, someone holds us and you look around and there's no one there to hold it for you. Doing dumb shit as a team is the best way to do dumb shit. Teamwork makes the dream work. So not to squash this conversation,

but you've gotten me, so used to these transitions where I've been like actively searching for the last few minutes to figure out how you're going to do this. And I think I know where you're going, but I'm not sure. If you think you know where I'm going, go there because I don't have a transition for this actually. Okay. So lead me where you think the transition was going to go. I thought we were headed to Eric the Red discovering Greenland and wanting better for his son, but also not wanting him to do the same shit that he did. Oh, that's such a good lead in. And then, Farrexen decided to do what his dad did without the murdery that got him kicked out of Iceland and went over and discovered America.

Okay, and cue the music. God damn it, dude. I was sitting there waiting for it. Like, where's the pay? No, that was a really good. Yeah. That's a really good transition. Okay.

I'm so excited to do this. This for me was like finding out a lot of the cool, like, I, like, I, you know. I guess pop-cultry stuff about Vikings wasn't really accurate or anything like that. But then finding out that the actual truth about it was in its own way as interesting or cool or if not a little bit cooler. And not to mention, it has seeped its way into almost every aspect of entertainment. The Vikings not just as a people because it was kind of like a conglomerate of people. but they're everywhere. It was almost like

I heard someone refer to it and I thought it was a really kind of cool thought they almost referred to it as the term like Vikings being like the profession that the people had. Yeah.

So. Almost like a raider, a pillager. Yeah. So I mean if you go like into more of the like popular like I guess pop culture type thing,

you see a Viking, you see a big huge blonde dude, horned helmet, carrying a giant battle axe and a shield, like, going, you know, full berserker during battle with, like, war paint and face paint on. A lot of, like, the video games, like, there's an Assassin's Creed game, Fall Hala that falls along with, like, Norse mythology and everything. I think the new god of war is almost like full north or Norse mythology. So there's a lot of things that borrow from this, but...

Well, the thief, J.R. Tolkien. The thief Oh, the thief I didn't talk about that later Okay, I was gonna say, I didn't know how to spring this on you Because I know that You can screen on me during a different episode Okay

No, no, no, we'll get into it this episode Okay Well, and then like you were talking about You find out that a lot of the things That we celebrate now as Vikings just aren't real Like in the NFL, the Vikings suck And can't dominate anybody Turns out that's a lie

because the Vikings used to dominate everybody. I know. But not their portrayal of the Vikings. Their Vikings did not have, for the most part, unless it was like ceremonial, maybe. They didn't have like the horned helmets or anything like that. Well, the horned helmets that they found, like when they did find them, it was before, like, carbon dating and things like that. So when they were finding them in old Viking villages, they didn't know that they actually dated back further than the actual, like, full reign of the Viking. Oh, okay.

So it was more like it was a genera. before they rose to prominent. So they were technically somewhere along the Viking way, but it was just more of like the people of Scandinavia had that. Okay. And so Scandinavia, do they consider, still consider those three countries to be, do they just say modern day Scandinavia, and it kind of encompasses those three countries?

It's Norway, Sweden, and Finland, right? Denmark, Finland's kind of its own little deal, but normally the Vikings were Scandinavia, Norway, Sweden, and then the Finnish people were in it, but I don't think Finland's considered like Scandinavia. Okay. By the way, do you think that there is a section of the world that produces more attractive people than Scandinavia?

No, and it's very funny because there's two schools of thought to hot women. And it's either tan skin, olive skin, like big beautiful brown eyes. It's south of the equator, kind of, or close to the equator. Or... And there's beautiful women from everywhere, but supermodels usually follow the pattern of... You got that Nordic... That Nordic blood.

Yes. Blonde hair, blue eyes. I'm not going to say that that's a good recipe for a chosen group of people. No, this gets... Well, he played... I was going to say Hitler actually played even into the Viking culture. That's how much it gets barred from... And ruined it.

Yes. Well, tried to ruin it. Yes, for the time. So essentially, kind of the people of Scandinavia... Scandinavia were Norway, Sweden, I'm just going to say Finland as part of it. Yeah. Well, and now when you think about it, Iceland too, just because it kind of is a general area. So located essentially kind of between, if you go essentially kind of north, what would it be northeast from Great Britain.

And then kind of sandwich between like Russia and England, Scotland, Ireland, that's where Norway is. When you think Norway, I think of like the fjords. Just beautiful volcanoes, hot springs, snow on the ground. For me, it's a bucket list because one of the things that I've always wanted to see is the Aurora Borealis. Just to see the cool colors and everything going on in the sky. And that's one of the best places to see it because you are so far north. And I want to say there's good parts of Scandinavia that are inside the Arctic Circle too. It may be wrong, but I know it does stretch up.

pretty far. So there were, you know, for a long time prior to the Vikings, there were people that were in this area. And essentially they kind of around what they consider the golden age or the Viking age lasted from about 793 AD to around 106680. So they had about a 300 year run. A little short than 300 years, right? Yeah, they accomplished so much. And like you were talking about, they were in the area, but it was such an inhospitable area to live in. Because your growing seasons were always really short because you were so cold. The resources weren't there. So around 793 is kind of when they had to start branching out to try to figure out more lands for people that are arable that you can farm.

Yeah, it kind of came out of necessity because from what I saw, what happened was, like you're saying, resources are kind of scarce. And so the places that have resources are going to be highly sought after. So if you have a village that is larger, has a stronger, I guess what you would consider. Not really an army. It was more of just a militia. It was like everyone from the village fought. Just groups of basically like packs of Vikings. Yeah.

And then you had another village that had resources they wanted but was weaker. Literally, they would just go over and just conquer and take over and take those resources. That's almost what made them such good warriors because they spent so long fighting against each other that by the time they got out to meet other bands of people. they weren't as battle tested. Yeah. And so you get kind of at a necessity. Some of these groups would eventually band together to establish kind of the Viking age that we all know when we kind of think about it. Vikings on the long ships with all their shields down the side.

You know, you have like the dragon on the front of the ship, you know, all of the oars out. This is when we kind of get into that time frame is at a necessity to keep from killing each other and to bring. in resources, they decided that they're going to go ahead and sail out from Scandinavia, raid these areas around Scandinavia, and bring their resources back. And just as a side plot for this whole episode, we've talked about this before, but you and I have talked about, like, wanting to find out more about where we're from and, like, the areas where our families came from and stuff like that. Obviously, I think we're both in agreement.

23 and me is only just a pre-admiral. mission of guilt to give the government your DNA in case you do something terribly wrong. And I can't promise that that'll never happen. So I'm not going to try to give them some help in my case. But I know just kind of through genealogy and stuff like that that I'm part Scottish. There's a little bit of English mixed in. Basically, everywhere where I'm from is where the Vikings had occupied. but I've never done a blood test to see if I have Viking blood in me.

Well, here's the thing that not a lot of people understand is that, like, your ancestors don't have to be essentially traceable back to Scandinavia for you to have Viking lineage. So, and we're going to cover it during this, but the sphere that they were able to go ahead and branch out to. Huge. It was, like, way, way larger than I would have imagined it. Yeah. They're into Russia. They're into Ukraine. They're...

They went into Turkey. I think they even went as far as like Iraq. They had trade routes towards the end of their legacy or towards the end of their time down into North Africa. Yeah. So they were that great at shipbuilding, traveling, the attacking that they would use through their ships was just second to none. I don't get seasick. So I'm going to go ahead and chalk that one up as to one part Viking because obviously. if I don't get seasick, they love the seas,

there's some kind of connection there. But one in four people in the Scottish Isles in northern and western Scotland have Viking blood that were in them because when they were occupied by the Vikings, they like to spread

their seed. Yeah. Well, and even places like, so like Normandy, France, I think was founded by the Vikings. So people, even like what you would consider, like, no, like my family's from France, be like, well, no, your family was technically living in France, but your family was from Scandinavia, your Viking. That's the other thing, too, is like, it explained how they built their boats. And that was kind of,

I mean, the boat, the long ship, and the Viking ability to craft like seaworthy vessels was what really set them apart from any other culture. And I think what made them so successful in essentially spreading their influence as far as they did was they had. They had. specialized boats that were just for travel between different villages. They were small. They were easily maneuvered on the river. They were easy to go, you know, to paddle upstream. And they've done, I watched them a couple specials on the ships themselves.

They would do like models of the ships. And then, you know, like when they put like a car model in like a wind tunnel to determine its aerodynamics, they basically have the same thing that they can do for boats. They put it in a little pool and then they essentially run it through the pool or they might run water. or past it. They take a look at its draft, the wake that it makes, and they're able to determine

what it's, you know, what I think they call it the draft. The draft is how far it sits below the water line and then would be able to determine what it would be able to hold up to and how easy it would be to maneuver.

And they're like, the way that the Vikings, when you look at their ships, they're a little strange. They are, but they're also brilliantly manufactured because they have what's called the double keel on them.

So you have the keel of the boat at the front of the boat, that is cutting through the water. Since they were to double keel their boats, all they would have to do to turn around would literally be just everybody turns around their seats and rows the other way. So they could drop their sail,

everybody could turn around and they could paddle the opposite direction, and instead of having to pull a U-turn, need enough room for that, they could just go the opposite direction. Which made it so easy for them to go ahead and pull up to the shore, raid, attack, run back to their ships,

and instead of having to push off, they could literally just turn seats. seat, start cranking the yours, push off a little bit, and not have to worry about that precious time when they were trying to swing the boat around and head out the other direction. Because they could just flip the sail around. Well, and if you're like if the draft brought you in, you could just drop the sail and start rowing the opposite direction to head back out to sea without having to turn around. So their maneuverability was great. And their hulls, the underneath what sits in the water, was so shallow that it made it easier to travel up rivers. So when you...

They said that even the long ships could operate like some of the long ships. And these things are huge. Yeah. Like the long ships, they're weirdly like they're kind of skinny, but the way the whole it kind of flares out. So they had a, they didn't sit above the water line like super high like you would expect a boat to, but they were like exceptionally like sturdy. Very buoyant. Yeah. And so you would have these long ships that we were able to transport like, I think they said,

between like 40 to 80 Vikings, some of them, that could operate in five feet of water. So when you're thinking about strategically placing cities, obviously most cities back in those days were around a water source because you had to have that. Not only just for survivability to gather water, but also for a food source, also because trade occurred along the waterway.

So all of the benefits that they got from being on those waterways now became with the expansion of the Vikings a liability. because you had something that didn't have to just be ocean faring and then you had to cross lands, you could damn near pull up right in the hub of their cities. And most of the time, they weren't, they attacked a lot of cities. I'm not going to say that they never attacked cities because they did, but a lot of the places that they would go to to raid and pillage would be monasteries. Yes.

Because monasteries were most of the gold was kept because obviously religions, churches wanted to be in control of those things. It was kind of like people would some, like, you would have, like, royal families, like, submitting gold and people, like, a tithing almost to, like, buy their way in. Taxing anything like that, the main hubs that they had and they knew were going to be monasteries. They also didn't expect them to be as fortified and, like, defensible because it was. I think they raided, they came upon one of the very first ones that they can trace back for, like, a Viking raid, went from, I want to say it was Southern. the one closest to England is Norway, correct? I think it was the Norwegians that came down. Okay, so it was from southern Norway, I want to say,

and they went to a monastery on the British Isles. Yeah, so... It wasn't mainland Britain. It was one of the British Isles, but it was one of, like, their main monasteries. It was right around 794. It was a Viking fleet that had attacked a place in Yarrow, which is an English town,

but it was one of the bigger monasteries that they could kind of get to first. And when they came in, they just, it was a full-on attack. They kind of underestimated it. It was kind of the first notable, big fortress that they'd attacked. They attacked some people overseas.

They'd raided some ships, but this was like the first real land attack. So they ran into the monastery, and they were basically just under fire as soon as they got in there. Their defense was a lot better than what the Vikings had expected. And all of the Viking leaders ended up dying in the monastery. But everybody else was able to raid the gold, get everything back to the ships. And as they were leaving, oh man, excuse me, they ended up docking down on a beach near a village.

And the villagers came out. And as the Vikings were weakened from the war before, just. kicked the shit out of them and very few escaped at that point and that was kind of like they pulled they pulled in a nodisius a little bit yeah except they weren't purposely trying to party and get drunk on the beach no they were just trying to get they were trying to regroup and that held them out of england for a fairly long time after that like it was a long time after that that they really stopped trying to deal with england and started to focus on more scotland and ireland well yeah because i mean if you figure your first like like imagine if you're first time doing anything

you got your ass kicked you would just assume that would your assumption be oh we must have just tried to rate a place that was really heavily fortified or would you are on the side of caution and say like oh shit is every place going to be like that so I mean they kind of lucked out that that's where the Vikings chose to try to do that because had it been someplace like the other monasteries where it was super easy for them

they went in all of the monks and you know the holy man or whoever you want to stay was there didn't have weapons or there weren't a lot of weapons and so they were easily very or very easily able to kind of raid that and take away with all the treasure well that's going to be later i guess no it's the way that i kind of broke it down and the way that i looked at it was there was eastward expansion and then there was westward expansion the westward expansion we can get to later i think it's i don't know which one's cooler because one of them is like exploring and finding new lands to inhabit and kind of growing your empire.

And it was conquering and fighting. A little less because it was more like Inuit people, it was more natives, different things like that. And people that were less just because the areas were less hospitable that they were going to, it was less of a fight and more of them just creating new lands for themselves.

Whereas everything to the east and kind of to the south was them in these battles and pushing their way into mainland Europe. and taking over these larger cities. And one thing that we'll kind of get to later, they had a, there was just a lot of bad things that had been written about them.

And you hear about the savagery, you hear that they stunk, you hear that they were dirty and all that stuff. A lot of that only got written because the people that they were attacking were the people that were writing the history. Exactly. So you're never going to give a glowing review

of somebody that just whooped your ass and occupied your town for 20, 30, 40 years. all right before we jump into that I got to pee okay some of their are expanding different directions and then they also have

kind of I guess before talking about kind of the expansion kind of put into bed some of the myths or some of the misunderstandings about Viking culture so before they start

expanding and kind of raiding and I guess pillaging is what you would consider it they were like a domesticated like rural farming type culture. Like they had agriculture down pretty well. They didn't have

a ton of like animals that they had domesticated but they had some native didn't they have some native horses that were kind of like almost mini horses. They were like a smaller stouter version. I don't really know what they domesticated.

They did play kind of a big part in bringing some of their animals down into other areas. I'm not sure about their horses, but I know they, yeah, I don't know if you can call it supernatural or what, but they seem to have an ability to, like, later on, and we'll get to them, because they might be my favorite thing that came out of the Vikings, but the berserkers, they were able to train wolves and other wild animals that they would use, like, around camps and in fights and different things like that.

to kind of be a different force that they would have. So you're saying like if they found like a wolf pup or something like that. This wasn't like a program where they were like secretly breeding like, no, but they were known, I think, to use animals like that. One of the things that was kind of cool is they used to when they started expanding into some different countries where they were opening up trade. What used to be popular in like Europe was falconry. and they used to get these falcons from Vikings. They would train falcons. So just kind of like weird little things like that.

So this was even before. So don't look at them. You know, the portrayal like you were saying is kind of based off the fact that they didn't themselves have like a super extensive written history. No, they, so much of what they passed down to just oral tradition. Yeah.

And the only real written history was in, it was the runestones or runesons. runes that they would find. And these things were like, these aren't like super descriptive information about like the whole of Viking society or anything. It would usually just depict like an event or like the like the accomplishments of a person or something. Yeah, a lot of the run stones that they would find. It wasn't a written language. It was almost just like a designation of symbols that different people would have. as far as like to designate their area or to designate what pact that they were part of like.

Because there's so many clans or different groups. It wasn't, they weren't like sentences or anything like that. It was, yeah, there was no real shared language. It was just kind of a demarcation system to say this was the area. And to go along with kind of the whole like they were different groups, their oral traditions kind of tied different people together. and to start off one of their, I would say maybe like their most epic

verbal history, all started with Ragnar Lothbrock, which was, he's a part of that show of Vikings on the history channel. Yeah, he's like, he's, the character is supposed to be like a loose historical interpretation,

but it still does try to maintain accuracy. I don't know how you would describe it, but he was based on a real, a real person that they have information of and they tried to maintain it. Of course, you've got to embellish and make it different for TV. He was marrying royalty and goddesses and all this different kind of thing. And a lot of it, I don't know what it was about maybe paganism or maybe just a lack of having a religion.

But when you get into, like the Greek gods and different things like that, there's a lot of Odin is a part of them. There's a lot of different gods that. Well, Odin is Norse. Yeah. But he's also doesn't, he should. show up in Greek mythology too? No, so... Poseidon is the...

Okay, so what it is, and this is one of my favorite parts about Viking culture, is they have such a cool, like, when people say paganism now, I don't think, I think it's one of those things where, again, it got, history got written by the victors,

and the victors weren't always the ones, weren't always the good guys. No. They were trying to push, and we'll talk about it a little bit later, where paganism had to make way for Christianity, which you're going to have to explain that to me because I don't have a real big understanding of why the Vikings would convert Christianity, but they did. More of a matter of convenience.

And like you said, we'll get to it. So paganism, essentially, in this scenario, the Norse mythology is going to be where you find your Odin, your Thor, your Loki, all that stuff everyone's really familiar with now because of the Marvel universe, you know, having those characters as some of the main characters within their universe. But these were people that were worshipping the Norse gods at the time. time. So, you know, you had your god of thunder and lightning and I'm sure there was also something that they believed who was the god of the sea or maybe they thought Odin just kind

of controlled it all. Mm-hmm. But you had, um, where was I going with this? Oh, this being part of their culture, you know, the whole, the whole berser thing, kind of what you're talking about on that was I don't know if they felt like they were you know part of their culture was the whole thing about Valhalla the afterlife and dying in dying in battle and dying a glorious warrior's death so part of that kind of

the berserkers they said were more like uncommon than than have been historically depicted and that's because kind of along the same like you were saying earlier the history of these guys a lot of it has had to be grouped together from what other countries or other cultures have written about them, the ones that were being attacked.

So you'd always have this thing. No one's going to say, like, hey, we were attacked by this very sophisticated and intelligent and well-spoken, you know, outsiders or, you know, foreigners and everything like that. They're going to make these guys were savages and brutes and they raped our women, everything like that. There probably was some of that going on. But at the same time, like, this was a very very,

sophisticated society. Well, there absolutely was, but when I look at it and I think about it, I compare it to how terrible things could they have been doing, which there is something that I can kind of understand, and I don't know if we want to get to it, but we'll have to at least touch on it called the Blood Eagle that they used to do. You've seen that? No. Oh, buddy. It was one of the most crazy torture moves that I've ever seen. We'll talk about it. If you haven't heard about it, it's something special. But how much worse could they have been than the church during the Crusades? I mean, they were slashing, they were burning, they were raping, they were pillaging.

It was just framed different because it almost came later on that it was happening. Well, but you also get, we know about that because we know about the atrocities of the church because they didn't come from the records of the church. No. They came from the records of the people that they were fighting against. Yeah. And those people didn't happen to get, you know, some of those people didn't get wiped out, and so their history survived.

The Vikings, it just kind of sucks that it was their own lack of a written language or written record keeping that kind of led to them being portrayed as these like monsters. And kind of going back to what you're saying, one of the cool things about like the berserkers, did you see the thing about like the mushrooms or the psychedelics that they would? So you would get these guys that would go into battle. and what they considered to be like the berserkers or the people that would go into these like battle rages or something like that,

they think that they were on like some psychedelics or some type of like drugs or something like that that would force them into these like rages. Yeah, we'll leave that as the teaser because I want to get into them a little later and just specifically talk about them because they, there's really no words. I mean, this is where the word berserker comes from.

And if you try to explain to something, somebody what berser means or berserk means without using the word berserk it's just not possible like it's it's one of those words where it's the perfect encapsulation of everything that they were so um kind of getting back to like what i was talking about regnar a part of their oral tradition was that ragnar created and birthed not birth but he was the father of a lot of these the raiders a lot of the viking leaders that led he was um Eric the Red's dad. There was a guy named Ivar the Boneless, who crazy name.

Apparently, he was born and his bones were very brittle in his legs. So he couldn't go out on the battlefield and fight, but he was a crack archer. He could hit anything anywhere at any time. And he would have his brothers carrying him around the battlefield. And I don't know if it was like a horse-drawn carriage or whatever. But he would just sit there and be arching and shooting people left and right with his bow. and he was one of Ragnar's kids as well and some weird way

Ragnar had met this fairy and she had told him basically like they couldn't have sex until they got married and then after they got married he's like okay let's get down to business now she's like no we can't do it it's not time yet the gods told me that if we have a kid now he's not going to have any bones so he's like I'm willing to take that risk

that my child's not going to have any bones and see what happens. So this sounds like a problem for future Ragnar. Yeah, well, and I mean, let's get down to it. His kid dies. He's going to be able to have a million others. Yeah. So that's where Ivar, the boneless, actually comes into the story,

was he was that child who didn't have any bones, even though he just had really brittle legs. Gotcha. So they had kind of tied a lot of this together and given a lot of undue credit to Ragnar and a lot of their oral traditions and histories. just the way that they did it was almost an encapsulation to try to pull all these different clans together that were out of their fight.

Try to make like an amalgamation of just like, yeah. So getting back into that now, after they had already fought through the monastery in Yarrow and realized that England was somewhere they probably shouldn't be, they moved their focus down into Ireland and Scotland, and as they would go down into there, they would start to expand so much of their influence and empire.

Because a lot of the first kind of places that they were hitting, they would hit these monasteries, they would clean them out, they would take everything back to the homeland, they would drop all that stuff off, and they would just keep coming back and pillaging them, raiding them, going through different kind of battles. And like one of two things would either happen, either one of three things. They would either finally end up taking over, they would place a king, they would. they would make their influence throughout the land as a Viking city, Viking stronghold. So they would either conquer and establish. Excuse me, yeah, either conquer and establish. People would just get so tired of being raided and attack that they would just abandon their city. They would just take off.

So the next time the Vikings came, nobody would be there. They would be able to establish their own colony. And then they'd start to move inward from the sea or from the rivers wherever they were going. And the third way would be They would just bribe the living shit Out of wherever they were So 795 after they had

Messed around with England And realized it was bad They began plundering a monastery That was along the Irish coast And by 853 Everybody just left Like they were just like You know what

We don't want to deal with this anymore Anybody that can stay Or anybody that stays can stay we're not going to protect you as a city and that's when you get the first king of Dublin who his name is Olaf he becomes the first

king of Dublin so that's kind of like their first push into Ireland that's their first outposts yeah and in between that happening they were also down

in well after that happened they'd held on to it for right around 50 years in 1902 they started getting pushed back against by everybody that was in the surrounding villages and got pushed out lost a hold of their stronghold in dublin and they ended up just leaving for like 10 years like we don't want to mess with it anymore but everybody knew that after they had signed the treaty to split that it wasn't going to last very long 10 years later they come back in with just a tour to force clean out the area reestablished a king of Dublin

and that was used as one of the biggest like slave trading ports in Western Europe and this is you and I have talked about it but obviously slavery is bad slavery is slavery unfortunately so much of the world's history

is just built on slavery it was built on the backs of other people that came before them other people that they had taken and they weren't only going into these villages and these monasteries and just killing raping, pillaging and looting everything, they were taking humans back with them too because they needed people to build these boats that they were traveling around in.

So I would assume that, obviously assuming something that happened, you know, thousands of years ago, it was more of a matter of convenience. And it was, I mean, people were currency back then.

Yeah, and I mean, they would also use these slaves. I think one thing people will probably kind of overlook when they're thinking about slavery is almost like the tactical advantage. that it gives you. So they would bring these people back as slaves, and they would then question these people,

you know, as their slaves and be like, hey, tell us more about your homeland. Tell us about everything you know about the area around. So that way, when they went to go right again, they were familiar with the area. And if you're someone who has, you know, been newly enslaved, you're probably going to go ahead and try to offer up anything you can to ingratiate yourself with your new owner.

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So, I mean, they were tactically savvy enough to know that, you know, we're not taking people just so they can, you know, help us with labor or do the menial things that we don't want to do and give us a workforce. But this also gives us an advantage. We can also learn the language, which makes us more easy to rule the populace if we go and conquer an area and we know the language and know the customs. It makes it easier for us to establish, you know, rain over these people. Yeah, it's, you're ingratiating yourself into the area. Yeah.

Yeah, that's probably just the best way to sum it up. I mean, they had slaves. Not great. Everybody in society at that point, I think, was probably in the slave trade. Because they weren't, like you say, they weren't just taking slaves to have them. They weren't taking slaves in the area. They were taking slaves to then trade off to Constantinople. They're taking slaves to trade off to other big areas of people, big.

the Byzantine Empire took their slaves. Even some of the North African people took their slaves. They were found the amount of money and riches that they had found back in Scandinavia, which luckily for like archaeologists and people that dig around in there and find all that stuff, they found minted coinage from like everywhere in that region that they were taking for their trades. And they were obviously trading people at that point. So with the way that. They were just completely clearing areas out into the 9th century.

They moved down into France and just, again, just another tour to force. They're sacking all these different areas, all these different villages. They get into Paris. They're fighting into Paris and pushing. Which sounds crazy, but just try to keep this in mind so people that are listening. So at this point, you know, Paris isn't Paris. No. It's Paris.

And I mean, there's an establishment of people. But again, all of these, a lot of these places are built. on or near rivers. And so, and not just close to the coast or anything like that. So you got to imagine what it took for these guys to raid these areas. They would be taking these long ships, getting them into the rivers from the ocean, and then having to travel up river to get to these areas,

which means rowing and just constantly traveling up river, forwarding your boats if you have to go over sections of land or things like that. That's another thing about their boats that they said, was amazing is that they were able to be ported across areas. They were so lightweight that they could carry them across expanses and hit other rivers. Okay, I'm going to do one more thing on their boats. And I think I'm going to have other boat information. So they were explaining also when they were first developing their boats,

how they were so strong as well. So instead of taking, in order to go ahead and create the boat, instead of taking a huge chunk of wood and then carving the shape they needed out of that large chunk of wood. Like a canoe type. No, no, not like that. A part of the boat. Like if they're trying to create the ribs of the boat,

like the structural support of the boat, instead of taking a huge chunk of wood and trying to carve that out of a larger piece of wood, which would have, they explained that the way the seams in the wood go, that if you carve a shape out of the wood that's counter to how the tree naturally grows, how the grain structure is.

It's weaker. And they showed it how it snapped. They're like, this was carved out of a branch that naturally had. this shape and they hit it and they're like this is much stronger because the tree and the way that the fibers and the tree grew grew into this shape. So to make these boats and you got to understand like the skeleton of a boat almost looks like a rib cage where it's got the supports, they would find

trees that had that natural shape. So they were going, you know, they had this huge, you know, type of shipbuilding industry where they had people going out and scouting all these trees to find like natural curves and these enormous trees. Looking almost for just trees that are ready made in the shape that they're going. Exactly, yeah, to allow them. And they said these boats could take like six months to a year to make. Hence the need for slaves to start making them in larger numbers. All right, but getting back to kind of Paris.

So, yeah, they were able to, just kind of give you an indication. So how far is Paris from, what's the name of the river that Paris is on? River near Paris. I want to say it's the... I'm going to recognize the name as soon as it pulls it up. The Parisian people, I don't know where they came up with their... like the naming of their kings.

Did you find it? It's still trying to pull it up. But one of the guys that is credited with saving Paris was named Charles the simple. How little faith in leadership do you have to have to name your king Charles the simple? They usually get the names after they're dead. Oh, so, like, he wasn't being called Charles.

No. Okay. They get the names, the, I don't know, the titles? The titles are usually, or the nicknames are afforded to them after, after their rule, because it's usually like, that's when you get, like, George the Cruel, or like someone the merciless is they might have those names just among the populace or something like that

but I don't think they would ever be known by that he wouldn't be introduced to the people like if someone's like writing down the history of Charles they're like hey man why do you keep putting this simple after my name they're like that's what people call you're like what I thought these people like me they didn't I'm not Charles of the smart wait like I'm easy to please right they're like yeah sure you're easy to please yeah that fable figure out circles and squares for your entire life, but we'll just go with that. So Charles is a simple. It seemed kind of them attacking.

They would go through. They'd clean out an area. They would take that gold back. They would come back attack. All sorts of things. And finally, he's just like, hey, you guys want some gold? And they said, yeah. And then they'd come back the next year.

They'd say, hey, we don't want an attack again. You guys want some gold? Vikings, like, double it. He's like, okay, that's fine. And then finally he comes back. He goes, hey, you want some gold? and they're like, yeah, we're going to need about triple the amount. He goes, okay, we'll give you the gold,

but how about we give you this stretch that later on became Normandy? And like, yeah, deal. We'll just go ahead and take that. We'll take that land. And that satiated them enough to have a strong foothold in France that they just went ahead and left Paris alone. Because that's what they want anyway. Yeah.

They just wanted the gold. And if they can say, oh, yeah, because here's their options. You can obviously tell they're intelligent in this sense, too, because the option is either fight for the gold, in which you're going to lose some of your guys, they're going to lose some of their guys, if not everybody, and then raid, pillage, and burn down the city. Then when you come back, there's nothing.

Or you can just get the gold, and then come back later and get more gold, and come back later and get more gold. It's just like a bank that you have to fistfight through in order to get inside. Instead, you'd just come in and be like, hey, we're ready for more gold now. They're like, okay, but, and also, you know,

why don't you guys have this land too? That's far away from us. Yeah. How far as Normandy were from Paris? Good amount. Man, do you, your cell, like, I don't get cell service out here. We're not that far out of town. Use the Wi-Fi.

I know, but my phone's not connected to it. Well, it doesn't take that long. Do you want to, you want to give me your password out here on the podcast? We can mute the mics for two seconds. All right, hold on. Yeah, I didn't know that you were over there struggling off a cell service. All right. I'd like to think that the studio is more technical.

I'm going to edit this out anyway, so just give me the password. beautiful all right and Wi-Fi has been joined alright we're back to it okay so here we go it just popped up and then went away okay

so which river flows near Paris okay it's the is it the C-N C-N okay I think it's C-N S-E-I-N-E sign I'm so disenfranchised I know it's pronounced a certain way in France anyway so it's the river that runs actually

right through Paris so I'm wondering check us out So about the Sea and River, it's Vikingrivercruises.com. Hell yeah. That's what the place is going. My people are still there today. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

So I'm wondering how long, how far it is. So how far is... This brings up my other point, too. Start to lend my blood back to Viking blood. They didn't like the French. I'm not a real big fan of the French myself. So I'm starting to see more patterns, anti-French, more towards the Vikings, anti-French, more towards AG. I think it's starting to come through pretty clearly.

Between that, the other thing, getting completely off topic while you're doing that, I was so bummed to find out how big Vikings actually were. Yeah, that's my other point, is that they were, the modern interpretation of the Vikings is he's huge, You know what I think people view when they think of Vikings is like the dude from like Game of Thrones, like the mountain. Yeah. If you remember the old school, whatever his name is. The old school world strongest man that used to be on at 11 or 12 o'clock on ESPN because that's the only time that it would be available. Yeah, it was, what was this?

It was Magnus Magnus Magnus Magnus Samuelson. Mm-hmm. Half Thor Bjoranson. Yep. I think half Thor Bjornson is. He is the mountain. Yeah. is the mountain guy.

But you see these like Icelandic giants, these Nordic just beasts. And what was the actual like common? Between 5-8 and 5-9. Yeah. I was 5-8-5-9 in like fourth grade. I know. But you've got to also imagine that from a biological evolutionary standpoint, you're only going to, your people, you know, the people in that region are only going to get as big as their resources. and the area allows them to be.

You just answered a question that I was about to ask without me even have to ask it. Okay. Because is that why you think that we've grown taller as countries and as nations because we've had more access to resources to be able to grow in a healthy, safe manner? I wouldn't go healthy and safe.

Well, not now, but over time. I mean, being 6'6 is definitely still above average. Oh, hands down. Yeah, I'm just wondering if, yeah, I'm willing to bet that people nowadays, just from a height perspective, are probably taller now. This is going to sound weird, but I think one of the reasons for that, too, is that I think, you know, it's weird to go ahead and have two shorter average people and have them have a kid who is freakishly big. Mm-hmm. But what you get nowadays, especially with being able to have a little bit of. a larger scope of being able to find people to like date and marry and have children with is I think

taller people are able to find other taller people a little more easily. This is going to sound stupid, but you have like colleges where people meet. So you already have a, like a centralized location that brings in people from a far larger area than you would normally have a pool to select your mate from. Larger dating pool. So you can be more selected. A larger dating pool of larger people, larger dating pool. Okay.

So, and that might kind of lean to it. So the Cien River, I'm just trying to, I keep trying to find this information. I'm trying to see where it. So, Le Hove. Let's see. It, okay, I'm not even looking, I'm not even looking for the miles. Paris is pretty centrally located in France. It is a long trek up that river.

And this river is not a straight river, man. This thing winds. every which way. It looks like there's just hairpin turns all over it. And that's where their boats are just so technologically advanced that I'm sure people in Paris did never think that they were going to be raided coming from the rivers. Mm-hmm.

They were definitely able to navigate pretty much any waterway, which was very rare at this time because, you know, you can say, yeah, well, what about in the Mediterranean, you know, and all those guys? So that's true, but we've discussed this back on the Odyssey one is a lot of the Mediterranean travel was you kept the coast in sight. Because that's where your maps led you was they were along the coast. Well, and I mean, the actual ships themselves weren't great like ocean-going ships. They weren't great in deep water.

They weren't great in big swells. And that's one of the things is these Viking ships were able to go ahead and operate just as well in, you know, open water as they were on a river. It allowed them much more opportunity to expand their empire and I mean they definitely did just that. I mean, it's not their empire, but just kind of expand their influence, but... So the

the land of Normandy, the city of Normandy is 125 miles away from Paris. So the land that... I guess that's not as far as I thought. That's pretty far. It is, but I sometimes also forget that when you're looking at Europe in comparison to what we

feel as long distance, Europe is not smaller. I know. That's why they have trains that go everywhere within Europe and that you're able to get every, like, they said there's an area, like, within Central Europe that you're able to almost get anywhere within the course of like six or seven hours. Well, then you think that the difference between, or the distance between France and England is just literally the English channel. Yeah. It's only 20, 30 miles, something like that. You can see, at a certain point, the stretch of Calais to the cliffs of Dover or something like that, you can actually see on a clear day you can see France and you can see England

from each other. So two fairly large countries whereas where we are it's 8, 10, 12 hours to Canada it's much further than that down to Mexico. You can drive in a single state for in some states like Texas

you could probably drive across to drive across Texas would take you I don't know what 15, 16 hours? Good chance and that can you can travel through how many countries in Europe. Again, And that doesn't discredit, though, that these, again, these guys are moving by foot or moving by boat up river. They were just very mobile.

So, I mean, they branched out to the east. They branched out into Russia. And that area, didn't they as well? Yeah, they had held up kind of, I think they used the term medieval Russia. They were still over there. They were over in Ukraine. They had. Didn't they find Kiev?

Yeah, Kiev is one of their places where they had ruled. Their expanse, we just keep repeating it, but it's just because it's so unbelievable. When you think of like a Ukrainian woman, what do you think of? Blonde, blue eyes. There you go. Yeah. Yeah, their blood still runs through there. So after they had really gotten their foot in with France, they decided to turn back to England.

and in 1875 or 1865 around there, Ivar the Boneless, who we were talking about, that's Lothbrock's son and one of his other sons. Damn it. Halfton? Yeah, Halfton-Ragnerson. There's so many consonants. We went from so many vowels last week with ninjas and samurai to just all continents. So those two went in and captured Northumbria.

which was kind of like the northern parts of England. And they had already had their treaty with England that they weren't going to do anything, much like the one that they had had before. And just decided to go ahead and reappear again in 947. They assumed the throne of England, and that led through a fellow name... It's either C-nut or C-Noot.

I want to say it's probably... Sunute. The C nut sounds cooler. So, Sunute the Great. Oh, I think that's just nut. No, there's a C in front of it. I know there is, but the pronunciation. Oh, you think it's just nut? Yeah. Just a silent sea.

Hold on. They usually give you the, what do they call that when you, it shows you the phonetic. Is it the, how to pronounce it? So if it's, let's see. So, yeah, of Northumbria. Yeah. He was a Norse king. Okay, so let's see. It is, oh, how does it?

It tells, of course, it tells you how to pronounce it in Old Norse and in Latin. I'm like, that doesn't help. You don't speak either of those languages? I do not have enough, yeah. All right, we're going to go with Sunut. Yeah, so Sanat. Just so you're aware, it does contain every letter of the word cunt, but. Yeah, just in a, we've jumbled it.

It's a word surge. Can you imagine had it been different? It was cunt of Northumbria. His raid lasted a really long time. kind of their disappearance at that point, their final loss that they had had in England was in 1066 and Harold Hydrola,

Hydra, I believe was his name, who was Viking, was challenged by Harold Godwinson, also Viking, but had assimilated to Christianity. Godwinson ended up taking the crown and that was sort of the conversion into Christianity was after Godwinson had taken over

and he was the new king of England he started to introduce Christianity to the Vikings. So why did they end up? Because I'm thinking like you're going, is that why it happened? Because Godwinson was already converted and because he won, he was able to then force Christianity upon the other Vikings?

Or like, how did it eventually become the primary religion there? To me, it felt more like an acceptance of just where they were and kind of an assimilation to the area. And then as the assimilation happened, it started spreading back out and then into the other groupings of Vikings back into Scandinavia. Like, they had pushed so far that they had run into Christianity, and then Christianity pushed back.

That's what it was. It says the Vikings chose Christianity during the 900s, partly because of the extensive trade networks with Christian areas, and particularly as a result of the increased political and religious pressure from the German Empire to the South. Wow. So the Germanic empires were pushing Christianity up towards them? But the Germanic, like, people had,

Vikings had a huge influence on Germanic people. And kind of going back what we talked to, so much so, in fact. that like we kind of talked about at the very beginning, one of the things, it kind of ties back to what Hitler's whole master plan about the master race was going to be. The master race, if you're thinking about it,

Arian is blonde-haired, blue eyes, just physical specimens. That's exactly what the Nordic people and Scandinavian people were known for. What the H-Man didn't really think about, though, was it just kind of, flies in the face of everything because wherever the Vikings would take

over and hold his lands, they were still procreating with all the people of those villages. So their bloodlines, they weren't choosing other people that looked like them to mate with and make children. It was more of a smorgasbord board of everybody else. How does that also

work when that's nothing like you? What do you mean? Hitler looked nothing close to Aryan. Yeah, that's very true. Brown hair, brown eyes. Yeah, but then, as a leader, you pick your master race to be something that you're not. Like, you would usually think it'd be either way of the round.

Like it's, but I guess if you did that, then people would be like, well, aren't the Jewish people just like dark brown, black hair and everything? I guess he had to try to, does that, is that why he did that? He tried to go ahead and distance the master race from the undesirables, what he considered to be undesirable. So like gypsies, the Jewish people, people that, people that, were, I mean, gay people back then and everything. Yeah, there was a likelihood that it was to try to push away, almost to try to say, hey, all these people that we are taking over. When you look at the Russians, obviously Russians aren't blonde-haired, blue-eyed people usually.

So everybody in that area that he wanted. It was to demonize people that were of that. Yeah, I do wonder, though, how far his empire would have spread into Norway and Sweden and all that if he did believe that they were the chosen master race of people. They had taken over Norway and Sweden. everything. So they was, the Atlantic wall went all the way up to Norway.

So they were, remember how we were talking about how part of, um, call back to episode operation fortitude. Mm-hmm. How we were talking about how fortitude north was trying to go ahead and let them know that part of the invasion was going to take place in Norway. That's right.

And the fjords and everything. Yeah. So part of the Atlantic wall went all the way up to Norway. Okay. Well, yeah, what's the justification there? Because you're not, you're fighting against the people that you feel like are the master race,

blonde hair, I don't know how much of a fight Norway, Sweden, and Denmark actually put up. I think that they, I'm not saying that they were on the side of the Nazis, but I don't know if they had huge standing militaries, like how, you know, it's like they battled and took over France. I think maybe they just came in and were able to occupy it and there wasn't that much of a resistance because there couldn't have been a resistance. They didn't have the capability to resist. They weren't prepared.

Had the Vikings been their shit would have been different. Oh, my God. It would have been way more fun. Oh, hell yeah. They probably would have never taken over any of that area. Well, that's the other thing, too, is there was probably still a lot of, you know, those Nordic people up there, of course. But one of, I guess, would you say the disadvantages of the expansion of the Vikings would be, and of course, they're expanding to places that are going to be easier for them to live. That's the biggest thing, is you're not just expanding to go somewhere shitty, or you're not going to be like, yeah, we're going to go from Norway up to the fucking Arctic Circle.

Like, the whole reason you're leaving is to make it easier on yourself. for like future generations. Yeah. They were looking for areas that were inhabitable, arable lands that they could grow what they needed to and they could feed their livestock. And a great segue to bring that up is this kind of ends their Eastern expansion and now we can look at the very fun Western expansion

where exactly what you said, they decided that inhospitable meant lands that they could try to take over and tame themselves and ultimately did not accomplish their goal. Um, so looking back towards that direction and looking back towards the West, um, they were used kind of back in their infancy, um, by the Byzantine Empire. So where is the Byzantine more Russia and around there? No, that's like Turkey, man. Is it? The, the Byzantine Empire, let's see.

I believe the, the Byzantine is where, um, modern day Constantinople. which is Istanbul. Okay, so I had that in the wrong part of the area. I need to know this. Okay. Okay, relating to the Byzantine now Istanbul, the Byzantine Empire, let's see, it was Eastern Roman Empire, blah, blah, blah. Its capital was Constantinople, which is today Constantinople is, what did I say, Istanbul? Istanbul, yeah.

Yeah, so I mean, they went all the way down there. What's kind of crazy, too, is unless you really, like, take a look at a map of Europe and kind of Eastern Europe as well, and down in how that relates to kind of the Middle East, is it's pretty nuts to see the, like, how you can get to a certain place. With, like, Afghanistan being closer to Europe and... Yeah, so, like, for example, there are, like... Let me see if I can get a map of up here. but there's waterways that can connect like different seas. Yeah. So like if you're looking at it, and it might be useful if you're listening to this also kind of pull it up.

So basically Norway, Sweden, Finland, if you're looking at a map straight up and down, where those are actually sitting due north of is like Poland, Italy, Greece, Romania, all that. So it's kind of centered there. Well, there are places that you can go to try to get down. So the entire Baltic Sea, that like is Lithuania and Latvia, Poland. And so you had people, Vikings moving across those lands. Like I was saying, Kiev was founded. And then from there, moving even further down and getting into the Black Sea,

then going from the Black Sea down into Lake Istanbul. That also then gave them access to the Aegean, which in turn led. to the Mediterranean, North Africa. 300 years that they had to do all this stuff. And travel was not fast. No, and they took them from, if they were right around 793 to 893 to get down there to the Byzantine, it took them 100 years, but that's a pretty good expansion for 100 years.

Yeah. And as all this is happening, like everything on the East, they really benefited from the fall of the Roman Empire because they needed somebody. It was almost like in a vacuum, they needed somebody to suck up all that land and take over. And there was an already established method of travel. Yeah. You had the entire Roman Empire's infrastructure.

So you had a pretty good ability to be able to come in and sweep through those areas because there was already almost a roadmap placed. When they went to the West, all they were doing was just trying to expand out. At that point, they almost were the Western part of the world. When they went out and they found the Faroe Islands first, they thought that that was the Western part of the world. They kept like skipping. So they would sail, and again, this is where like sailing into open ocean, open water. They didn't know about Iceland and Greenland.

No. So like they would sail out, you know, however, their directional finding and everything, they had a way to do a compass. I'm trying to remember exactly how it worked. They found, they created compasses. They created metallic compasses. So they were able to go ahead and sell and then all of a sudden they find, is it Iceland first or Greenland? They found Iceland first. So they expanded out into the Faroe Islands.

That's right. I forget Iceland is small in comparison to Greenland. Yeah. And Iceland, do you remember the thing off Mighty Ducks too? The thing I always remember about Iceland and Greenland? Greenland is full of ice and Iceland's full green? And Iceland is very nice. Okay. So Iceland is actually the one that's all green and nice.

And Greenland is the one that's like covered it thaws, but it's so cold as shit. Most of it's covered in ice. Well, that part will get to because the Vikings were fantastic salesmen. They could sell it catch a popsicle to a woman. in white gloves. They knew exactly what they were doing. So, this fella named Gramer, Combon, Camblin, whatever it was.

I struggle so hard not to do the Swedish chef voice when I read the names, just because that's as close to what you're used to hearing. If you're pronouncing it the way that the Swedish chef pronounced it, though, technically is that some type of appropriate? I don't think so, because you're just repeating what the Swedish chef said.

Yeah, okay. But he wasn't talking about Gramer. Okay. Grimer found the Farrow Islands They had moved out to the Faroe Islands And so they had expanded West a little bit It's still getting colder

But they found out that they were inhabitable That they could live, they could thrive On the way out A guy named Nadd was blown off course Trying to get to the Faroe Islands Accidentally discovers Iceland And he wanted to How do you accidentally

Can you like Just like put that in person perspective and think about that. Like, so... All it takes is a strong wind and you going the wrong direction to all of a sudden get thrown off course and you're just going to keep traveling until you see... Correct. At what point, though, are you like, shit. They only told... They told me it's supposed to take 10 days to get here and I'm 13 days

into my voyage. Do I just keep going the entire direction or like... You got no choice because it's not like... What direction are you going to turn to be able to figure out where you got blown off? Of course. Excuse me. So that was when they found Iceland and they did. didn't necessarily want a lot of folks to be headed off to Iceland. So that's why they named it Iceland. Because even though it is green and fertile and pretty decent,

calling it Iceland would lead other people that hadn't been there to believe we don't want to expand out there because all it is is ice. So once they had had Iceland, they found out that Iceland is pretty inhabitable. They could live out there. Then we get Eric the Red. who Eric the Red, also supposedly a son of Ragnar Lothroke. He was the first son of Ragnar.

And he ends up discovering Greenland after he got banished from Iceland for manslaughter. So a very cool thing about the Viking Empire and how they did things was they were very put together, I guess you could say. They understood the way that government kind of should work and how punishment phases and court and trials and things like that would happen. So Eric Threat, actually, he was the son of Thorvald Asvoldson. Was what his actual lineage was? Yeah.

Okay. I was going to say, I don't, like, Ragnar already has credit of, like, a bunch of badass, like kids and everything like that. I was going to say if he had the one that founded a different country, that would have been almost too many feathers in his cap. Well, as a mythical being sort of they can expand out and see. Like you said, there is kind of the tendency to group all of this together and be like, you know, these are the most well-known guys.

So their lineage must have been, everyone must have been from their lineage or something like that. They wanted to connect them. So old Eric ends up getting kicked out of Greenland. And the way that they would do it would be they would take them in front of a court. And a very underrated part of them is they would not. name things such just obvious names. Like, their grouping that they would have to talk about new laws or to bring people to trial,

they just called it the thing. The thing? Yeah, it was just the thing. So they would have a thing every year where everybody would show up and it would be a big party. They would serve grog and me. So everybody that had committed some crime or something like that during the year, they just have like a festivist for the trials.

But it was kind of. a party because they'd have music, they'd have food, they'd have drinks and have all that. You've got to have fun for the people that aren't on trial. They're all there to take part in it. Everybody that's there to be a part of the activities and the festivities. And if you committed a crime, they would bring

you kind of in front of like a tribunal and they would talk it over, they would kind of let you plead your case, let sort of the state plead their case. Obviously evidence is very spotty back then, but usually you could kind of snuff out what was going on. And they would banish people for a measure of time from the island

or they would execute them obviously if they did something horrible so since Eric had committed manslaughter they went ahead and banished him from Iceland for three years he ends up getting on a boat with a few of his followers and they push off from Iceland because they have nowhere to go you like jokes on you I didn't want to be here anywhere yeah let's go guys so he takes off keeps heading west and they run into Greenland.

And obviously we talked about the salesmanship of Iceland with people not wanting to be there. Eric wants to create his own area because he just got banished from Iceland. So he comes back to Iceland's like, hey, you know, I know I'm not supposed to be here. I just found this new place, though. It's called Greenland.

Everywhere's green. It's all lush. It's beautiful. In his defense, there's a large portion of it that it is green during a certain time of the year. But not. No.

No. It's so cold as balls. Yeah, you got two, three good months maybe. So him selling them on the fact that Greenland is a lush, beautiful place, I'm sure, just like Iceland is, and it's, obviously, it's still snowy and cold. It's the exact opposite. It's the exact opposite type of promotion. Yes. They didn't want people coming to Iceland, but he wanted people coming to Greenland.

Yeah, he wanted followers. He wanted groups. So then people started traveling over to Greenland. And a lot of the ways that they would keep these explorations going and be able to keep such big villages would be the trade that they would have back with Europe. And they were killing warruses and narwhals, which this was a very big surprise. I didn't know that narwhals were real. Really? I thought that it was a mythical creature.

It just doesn't make any sense to me. You thought it was like a whale unicorn? Yeah, and that's exactly what it is. It is. So did you think you've seen elf, right? Yeah. And he was like, bye, buddy. He's made a clay.

He thought that it was a magical Santa Claus related animal. Uh-huh. I thought it was a unicorn. Okay. And in true Viking thought, which may lead me to believe that I'm also a Viking again, when they would kill narwhals and they would cut off their tusk, whatever it is. It's a giant tooth. So, yeah, a giant tooth.

Yeah, tusk. They would send them back to Europe, and they would tell. tell them that they were unicorn horns. These things are huge. Have you seen a Norval's horn? Yeah, but they would cut them up and then they would send them back as unicorn horns. And that would bring them more money. And the ivory that they were getting from Walrus Tuss, the ivory that they were getting from Norwals would be set back.

It would be turned into basically anything that they could make it out of. There's, I think it's in the museum of England. There's like a fully formed and fully carved set of Chester. pieces that were made out of ivory from Greenland. Did you, so one of the big things that's also a misconception about Vikings is them is like, like dirty, like, kind of like, I don't know, basically dirty snow pirates is kind of what it is. They've like discovered, they have made the determination that they were like a very like well camped and like groomed society. Because they found like all these like combs and all of this stuff related to like hygiene. Yeah.

And everything. That's part of the facts that we'll get to after we get to the West. But just very, it's interesting how the portrayal that they always got because they were bad people as opposed to what they actually were. So when they were over in Greenland, there was a lot of natives, a lot of Inuits. And they would just constantly have these little battles. They would have little fights over land and territory. And what are the bigger battles that they think that occurred over there? and obviously you don't know for sure what's going on,

but you would get the Vikings like talking shit to the Inuits and making fun of them. And obviously I think this is just a story, but it is very funny. There was a Viking that was out in like a small boat kind of floating around and he saw an Inuit working from the shore. And he started yelling at him and trying to get his attention and some kind of communication along with,

I bet you can't hit me with your spear. And Inuit didn't take the best. the guy just kept floating out there and giving him shit. Finally, the Inuit throws his spear, ends up killing the guy in the boat. And then a year later, a big horde of Viking showed up to that Inuit's area and just wiped out the entire place. Can you imagine that? Like some of this stuff, like the spacing of timing that it takes for some like to retaliate and everything, we're so used to almost immediate retaliation for any type of activity.

kind of like you were talking about back when they first invaded, I want to say it was England. Yeah. And they leave. Oh no, it was when they actually took over part of Northumbria. So like they take over Northumbria and like 853. Then they lost control in like 1902. And then they regained power again like 12 years later.

So like you lose power and you leave and then you come back 12 years later. and the people are like, we forgot. Like, we forgot we even did this. Yeah. Like, you guys are like, they're like, oh, no, we just had to go home, wait for a while, get enough people together to come back and conquer you guys. All you guys are comfortable now. You think that we're going forever. Nope.

Can you imagine someone getting back at you for something you did like 12 years ago and come back? You're like, what the fuck was that for? And in England, they had a treaty. Like, it was, they had established that the Vikings would stay in Northumbria and they wouldn't try to come back to England, but all of a sudden, 12 years later, they show back up and you've got to think, everybody's like, God damn it, didn't we have a treaty? Why are they back? What are they doing here? They don't need anything. Everybody looks angry. Looking through the treaty, be like, does this thing expire? Like, God damn it expires exactly 12 years. The berserkers are

sitting there chewing on their shields ready to go into battle. It's like, oh, they don't bring those guys unless they have business to attend to. So was it Lee Ferrickson? So he ends up, is he born in Greenland? Yep. Okay. Leaf is born in Greenland. He has a brother and a sister. The brother travels with him. They end up deciding to depart from the western side of Greenland. They had an eastern kind of like camp and then a western camp, which again, Greenland seems really big.

So the fact that they were able to traverse that and travel all the way across. They probably went around the coast. Because they were in the more southern part of Greenland, so they probably went around the southern coast. Yeah, and they were sailing. I would imagine because during this time of expansion, everything like, that, yeah, they probably haven't stopped. They're like, okay, let's see how big this country goes until we hit open sea again, staying near the coast.

And then as soon as they found the last, the easternmost or westernmost side of it in this situation, they'd be like, let's establish a settlement. So now we can establish settlement, then go west to see what we can find, which is exactly what they did. Okay. Leaf goes to leave. Legend has it. Eric, the Red, was going to come with him and ended up,

injuring himself before the voyage, so he just left Leif and his brother to lead this party over into what they still thought. They just continue to think that when they find new things, like, okay, this is the new Western world. This is the new Western edge of our expansion. You keep going a little further. Okay, this is the new Western world. This is the new area. And they take off from that Western village and end up discovering America far before that butthole Christopher Columbus did. just to go ahead and take him out.

We celebrate him not as much anymore. He doesn't have his shit anymore. It's indigenous people today as it should be because he just wasn't a good guy. Not to say that these people were all great and angels, but there's a level of time. They weren't criminals that were forced to sail across the world. Yeah. They ended up pulling into what they discovered.

Here's the thing, too. going on Columbus, if you're going to say that, well, the Vikings only landed in, you know, what's considered Newfoundland or Newfoundland,

how do you pronounce it? I think it's Newfoundland. When they discovered it, they called it Vinland, because there were frost grapes that I guess are still up there today. And they found that as a food source. They could turn it into wine.

They could turn it into alcohol. Like Vineyardland, then, yeah. Okay. So I would assume it's, Vineland and Finland sound a lot in the fact that they probably

did come from Finland or Sweden or something Yeah You could say New Finland So Columbus didn't even I don't know how I think he mean four jeep voyages But he always ended up in the Caribbean Yeah he could never hit America

No so if you're gonna say that Well he got no he didn't get closer Or anything like that And the Vikings actually found it about 400 years Yeah before Before Columbus did Yeah well and even before that Because that was like 1492

and this was, I think, a thousand, thousand AD. So, yeah, almost 500 years beforehand. More than that. Wait, no, 1492 was 1492. Oh, that's 1492. That's 1,080. Okay, gotcha.

So, yeah, about almost 500 years. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's not really known why they didn't stick around. They've only unearthed, like, one camp that they had, and it was basically they felt, God damn, excuse me, just keep getting these hiccups.

They found, um, It was kind of built for like rebuilding ships in order to head back. Yeah. It was sort of like a port where they could pull their ships in. They could do all the necessary maintenance on whatever to get them back home. But they did expand a little bit into the area. I don't know.

It's kind of unknown if it was they had a couple run-ins with the natives and they'd had a couple run-ins with the Native American, the Inuits that were there. I think it was mostly Native Americans on that side. I actually have a theory on that. And I have to pee again because apparently, you have the bladder of a hummingbird. Okay. All right.

All right. So, okay, so I have a theory on the whole thing, why expansion stops in this kind of situation where it's not caused by like death or war or something. So I think the purpose of the expansion for civilizations like this is to, is basically to grow and establish additional resources that they don't have readily available or available in large enough amounts like in their native lands. Yeah. I think at this point being so.

far from Scandinavia at this point, they'd already had, if this would have been a situation where they had not expanded both South and East into Russia, into Europe and everything like that, and had access to resources from those countries, I think the expansion

West would have been a lot bigger and it would have been a lot more permanent. And I think you would have had people following Eric the Red and also Leith Erickson to establish places within North America like permanent settlements because they would have needed that and the resources

from those areas but because they were already pulling resources and this kind of stuff didn't Leith Erickson wasn't this kind of at the tail end of the time for the Vikings right? Because if you're saying that he discovers New Finland or Newfoundland around a thousand AD and then the kind of the

age that's been determined for the end of the Viking age is around 1066 AD. At that point, it was already like their, their, it's not, I keep on to use the term empire, but it's not.

Occupation. Not occupation. More of, I guess, just their expansion, their goals in nature, whatever you want to kind of consider it. That was already coming to an end. So you probably didn't have as many people.

I mean, you can only establish a settlement if you have people willing to go with you and continue to bring in people to go ahead and expand those settlements. At that point, where it's Leif Erickson, he's like, yeah, we're already having, you know, people came to Iceland. We had a harder time selling people on Greenland. Now I got to go ahead and not only sell them on coming to Iceland, then coming to Greenland, then coming to this new, New Finland.

I think that it was just kind of, you know, a step too far. On how much of the resources that you're getting from the homeland are going to actually make it to you after making the Faroe Island stop, the Iceland stop, and the Greenland stop. Are they going to keep going? How many people are going to keep getting off? You know what? We had a rough time on this last voyage. We're going to stay in Iceland.

He's like, okay, all of your remaining people come with us to Greenland. People have a rough go of it or anything like that. You know what? Greenland's not as nice as Iceland. Is the next place you're going to take us? It's going to be even a step down from this. We're going to stay in Greenland. Depending on the travel, too.

If it was a rough sea to get over there, If it was a longer run through more treacherous waters, it's going to be your risk reward for being spread that far may just be too high. Yeah. If it's a rough road to try to get from Greenland over to Newfoundland, which kind of makes sense why it would be called Newfoundland because it was a land that they just found. The juice may not have been worth to squeeze.

And not to mention where they landed, there was a lot of lush forward. and shipbuilding things, and then obviously the frost grapes, but you already have that back in the Scandinavian countries. You already have trees. You already have all those things. So there may not have been as many resources that they could start shipping back. It might, the benefit may not have outweighed the cost to get there. And then what are you going to do?

You're going to send everything back. You're going to make three separate voyages to send everything back. Finland to Greenland, Iceland, Iceland, Iceland to Scandinavian. I think it just came at a time when they'd already were so established in Europe. that, like you said, it just wasn't worth it to keep trying to expand westward. The cool thing that I do like about the kind of areas that they found is they're all so rough, and they were found, I'm sure, just explorers of people traveling coast and saw something that looked different. There's still so much room over there and so much growth,

because at one point, we had no idea that Lee Ferrisender made it to America. And then we found that settlement, worked it backwards, there's still camps that they could find out there to maybe start to see that there was a little bit more of a foothold that they had had in North America. But we don't know quite yet because they haven't found it. So there is still additional history out there that we could do. After they had gone back from Vinland into Greenland, Greenland had kind of fallen on some hard times. There's a lot of different theories and ideas kind of for what happened. would it be surprising if

I mean they can only determine the you know the settlement in in New Finland because there's evidence of it there but what's to say that you know and at this point where all the materials being used with the exception of like you know we're going to this more like their weaponry

and like battle axes metal and everything most of the other stuff you know the shields the ships everything was I guess biodegradable in a way. You give it in enough time, it's not going to be, you're not going to be able to determine what it is. Unless it's in a preserved state.

What I'm saying is like, how do we know that they just stopped in New Finland? That he didn't, you know, someone didn't make a trip and be like, because if you're looking at kind of their MO, it's find a place, explore that place, and then move on further down.

So wouldn't it make sense if they were like, we're going to find this place, we're not going to explore the coast, we're not going to keep going down the coast to see how far down this goes into like what would be considered like Maine and down the and then what do you do at that point do you keep going because they obviously weren't opposed to moving into warmer climates they were down in Constantinople and the Mediterranean North Africa

so what do you do at that point do you keep you know all it would take is is to say it was one ship and that one ship ended up getting down to South Carolina hurricane came in killed everyone aboard and there's no record of that, but it happened. There's actually, it's funny that you brought that up. I want to say it's Tennessee. I think it's Tennessee. It's somewhere down South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee area.

There's a run stone that they found down that far that people used to think was like a demarcation of how far the Vikings went down into the Americas. Like, hey, we're getting ready to turn around. Someone mark a sign. I want to say it's Tennessee so bad. But they've gone through and figured out that it's just bullshit that somebody had made to make fun of like a joke or like a gimmick that historians actually latched on to for a second. It was like, wait a second, do we need to go ahead and rethink what we were doing?

Did they get that far down? But I think a lot of the reason that they know that there wasn't a lot of expansion after they got here was when they looked at the other kind of tribes areas and the other Native American settlements that they found kind of in that area, there wasn't a lot of European stuff. like there weren't a lot of combs that were made out of whalebone or anything like that that they could attribute to European influence being in those um like in those other tribes so there wasn't a lot of trading back and forth between those tribes that were around them so here's the thing too so I'm looking at kind of a map of like the eastern like northeast yeah so where is in relation to like Nova Scotia if you're able to look this up on your phone because I'm looking up on mine.

New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, that area, is that New Finland, or is New Finland a little bit above that? My map isn't expanding out as large as I'd like it, too, because I'm trying to focus on this, this river here. It is right next to Quebec, it looks like. So Newfoundland is more of the island down south of Quebec. It's in something called the Gulf of Lawrence. Okay, I'm seeing it right now.

Okay, so here's my point. And this is just pure speculation. So pulling it up, I see what you're talking about. So it's like due north and kind of north east of Maine. It's not far out. No. What I'm saying is there is a river. Within that, there's that big bay there.

Yeah, Gulf of St. Lawrence. Gulf of St. Lawrence. So what feeds out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is there is a river it looks like and that river is I just had a map of it pulled up so what is this river called

it looks like there is a river that connects that to the Great Lakes God if they just gone a little bit further well what I'm saying is this so do you know why the team is the Minnesota Vikings yeah because of the Norwegian ancestry of the area isn't it correct yeah so what's to say that that's not how that

was established. Doesn't, like, does it, does it make more sense that, and I'm not saying it was established at this time, but what I'm saying is like, let's imagine that, um, I'm just trying to kind to tie, tie together some pieces. So you just happen to have the Vikings that come and not settle, but at least finder or discover in their books in New Finland. you then have access very close to New Finland to a river that takes you all the way. And I think that was probably their preferred method of travel.

Their boats were so good. Yeah. You then have that river that moves. And man, unless I'm looking at like a modern view of this river and it's been like established where there had to been like areas cut through kind of like, you know, canals and everything. I want to say that this, this does connect. It's the St. Lawrence River.

Well, the Great Lakes connects to the ocean. Okay, that's what I'm getting it. Yeah. So you get into the Great Lakes and then you just work your way that entire area, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. You know, if you have that lineage that traces its way back there,

why else would they settle there if it hadn't been previously discovered? Why pick that location that has those ties? Same climate. what you're used to. You think that's what it was? You're used to heavy snowfall.

You're used to being around water. I think that that's more of what it is. It could absolutely be that way and there might be something to that. I think as people immigrated here they were kind of looking for the same or, well, similar areas to where they'd come from. Yeah.

You get heavy snowfall there. There's a shitload of lakes. I mean, isn't Minnesota like that? Probably for the simple fact, too, that resources were very ample there because there weren't a lot of other people willing to go to that place. No.

And if you have it in your bloodlines and your lineage, you're used to being cold. Yeah, you're able to thrive in that type of environment. That makes sense to. I would think that that would be, it would be super cool if that was like where they all spread from. But I think it was just more they came over. They found kind of an area that was similar to what they were used to. Because, yeah, the breadbasket, the Midwest, all that kind of stuff.

There's very heavy influences from Scandinavia. They eat that disgusting lutefisk stuff. I don't think I'm from where they created lutefisk, but... Do you think cheese curds and that kind of stuff are a Norwegian thing? Norwegians, I think, are kind of famous for their milk and cows and that kind of thing. So, yeah, it absolutely could be something... It's where you get the stereotypical milk made. Yeah.

I also just saying that, too, I wonder if that was a lot of the reason why it is the way that it is, and it is a dairy capital because cows, they had already known how to raise and have that area be somewhere where they could bring. There's a type of Scandinavian cow that's specific to that area, and it's kind of this cool, almost looks like a brindle. Is it long-haired?

No, it's not like a yak. It's like this weird long-hair, or not, sorry, you made me think longer when you said that. No, it's this kind of brendle-colored cow, and it's just a, it's like a Icelandic cattle. Huh. So. Yeah, check that out.

We're, we're very far into the weeds. Well, no, I'm looking at it right now. It's an Icelandic cattle. Oh, is that what it's called?

Yeah. Look, it's like a kind of a brendle pattern, everything like that. That's a cool, ass-looking cow. I know. So,

I mean, they obviously had experience with, I think I even read that, that's one of the staples of there was like milk and dairy type stuff. And you can imagine not them going through that passageway the first time, but after they had already established their ways in Wisconsin, their ways in Minnesota, the easiest travel that they could bring those animals in and import

them in was probably through the Great Lakes. Because instead of bringing them over land, if they could just bring them in on ships and bring them in that way, that's how they get there. That makes a little more sense. Yeah. So if that didn't happen, which I hope it did. I hope that there's some true native blood that didn't have to immigrate here that way. after they left Vinland and headed back to Greenland

there wasn't a whole ton that they heard really anymore from Greenland like they they would do taxes and about every 10 years they said they would send ships back to the mainland and to the motherland of other taxes so things that they'd grown meat dried meats all that kind of stuff

ivory and all those other things that they would collect and bring back. Like you were talking about the resources that they didn't have at home that they would be able to find in these new places, they kind of started to realize that they just weren't there anymore. They weren't coming.

They thought, okay, what's up? These guys have paid these taxes for years and years and years. They just stopped. So around 1450, they head back out to Greenland to kind of see what's going on. Talk to some of the natives,

and the natives just said they're not here anymore. They're gone. They travel over to the western coast to that settlement and see that it's just completely abandoned. And what they think happened was there was something around that time. It was, I want to say, it was like between 900 and 1,200. There was something called Little Ice Age. And it forced temperatures to go lower.

So that meant that they had less time to grow kind of in the springtime and in the summertime. So they had less to feed their cattle with. They had less to survive on. Resources started getting worse. And since they had already pushed their way down further south into Africa and created those trade routes, ivory became a lot less expensive for them because they were getting elephant tests. They were getting a lot bigger amounts of ivory. So sending that back for any sort of trade for goods and resources wasn't going to be as beneficial because it was just cheap at that point.

interestingly enough when they found out that So do they think that that populace on Greenland just kind of gradually died out? Yeah. When they were talking about it, I thought this was really kind of fascinating was that was the theory was that it was so cold that it just shut everything down

and so that was just what we believed for a long time. Well, a few, it might have been 10, 15 years ago. They went back and looked at the research and found out that the samples that they were taking for like the temperatures that they were getting out of the ice were about 2,000 miles away from where the actual settlement was. So a major distance away from where it was.

And so they went down to where the actual village was and were taking samples. They found out that it just became really dry and erred around that time. So they couldn't grow any sort of grass or anything to feed. So it wasn't necessarily that it got too cold, it just got too dry. And their inability to be able to force water

over their farmland or anything like that became the reason that they would run food shortages. Yeah, if you don't already have an established what irrigation system, that wouldn't, you know, to me, an irrigation system doesn't really make sense in an area that stays frozen for most of the year. Uh-uh. You would just use natural, you know,

you would have your fields be irrigated by a stream maybe, but you wouldn't be able to pump it. water from anywhere else. What are you going to do? Pump in seawater to water. You can't do that. And they also kind of found out that they weren't really well adapted to a lot of how the natives and the Inuits, I keep saying Inuits, just natives probably. I don't know where they came from. But they didn't adapt to those cultures. Like they weren't wearing, they were still wearing furs, they were still wearing a lot of wool products. They hadn't got into like using seal skin or anything like that for insulation and protection. They weren't necessarily.

is privy to drilling through the ice to fish or anything like that, just because those were more things that the natives that still live there and survive were doing. They didn't have enough time to, I mean, and that's where you get into, you know, the expansion that happening all within this period of 300 years, this area of Greenland happening much later in that, so a shorter amount of time, you don't have a chance to acclimate as much to your environment and to what you need to survive in that environment. The first hardship in that situation could just wipe out.

your settlements. Yeah. And it really, like you say, it only takes one. Oh yeah. It takes one bag growing season to become malnourged.

These aren't, these aren't settlements of thousands of people and everything. These are small, you know, small settlements that are, you know, completely reliant on themselves for survival. So something happens that cuts,

you know, cuts something out with the outside world or that cuts off contact with the outside world. That's going to, that's instantly. almost going to kill you off right there. Yeah, it's just a

sad fact of life that if you don't adapt, you're probably not going to be able to survive. So that ends kind of the Western portion. Now we're just into the fun facts. The Vikings had just absolutely crazy different kinds of things about their culture that I've found that I just, I truly enjoy.

And I don't know if it's just me hoping that I am a Viking someday, or that I do find it out. But we'll dive into some of them. We're having somehow the board is. There we go. Got it. God, you're smart.

I was going to try to read sideways. Nope. Okay. So the first Viking facts. I was going to say, so we've already established that they were tremendous sailors. You know, the double-hole chips. The double-heeled chips.

Yeah, I wrote that down wrong. The holes of the bottom. It's the double-keeled ships. Civil killship, sorry, yeah. That's why they were able to go ahead and expand, not only just ocean, ocean faring, but also up rivers and everything. We get terms, starboard and port were two terms that they had used as they were sailing. There are different remnants that they found of kind of medieval compasses that they would use

in order to chart a lot of these lanes. So a lot of the terms that we get as far as like port, keel, Starbird, all that kind of stuff came from them. The second one we also kind of talked about just the fact that all the press that they were getting was coming from the people that they had already taken over and conquered. So you're never going to get any sort of good news, I guess you would say about them.

All the good news would have come from them directly and they just didn't write their shit down. Yeah. So going back to what you were talking about about their cleanliness, they were actually known to bathe about once a week. were very clean. And back then, bathing once a week was a pretty... Oh, yeah.

Abnormal thing. People would go weeks and weeks and weeks without bathing, but they did like to be clean. Like you were talking about, and a lot of the remnants that they found in the villages, they would find whalebone combs and different things to be able to keep themselves in an orderly fashion.

Oddly enough, they would actually bleach their hair. Yeah, I saw that. To look more like, the people from their homeland. So they cared enough about their appearance that they would actually bleach their hair back to lighter colors to be more like they used to be. The Viking weapon of choice, I skipped over the berserkers, we'll get to them. But the Viking weapon of choice was the Badlax. My favorite weapon, Badlax.

So again, the connections just keep flowing back and forth. I don't think I'm full Viking, but there's a lot of Viking blood in these veins. And they wouldn't carry it like it wasn't just that. So they would always usually have a knife, a sword, and a battle axe. Yep. Swords were a little bit harder to come by just because it took them a little bit longer to build. Whereas an axe, you could get a big chunk of iron. And part of the reason I think that they adapted to the use of iron so quickly was they would find them in the bogs.

They wouldn't have to do a lot of iron mining in order to get big chunks of iron. iron make things out of, so it was more readily available and they'd use it easier. But a lot of their ships, they would still use, like, wooden pins to fashion and different things as opposed to use in metal. They would just strictly use the iron that they found for a lot of their weaponry. They had a bearded axe and a double-bladed axe that they used, which, obviously, if you're going into a battle, a double-bladed axe is going to be great, because you can swing it left, hit somebody, swing it right, hit somebody. They said one of the craziest things, and the reason they would carry swords, too,

they were so adept at throwing the axes and hitting their target is that they would throw their axes, kill someone, and then they would need weapons on them as they went to go retrieve the axe to be able to fight and everything like that. And then they retrieve the axe and kind of start all over again. So also adept at archery, like you were saying. So I mean... Very good archers. A lot of the stuff that they found or that they find now really are heavily influenced. influenced with like the decorations of ruins on there.

And like you were talking about, they weren't necessarily, it wasn't like a written language, it was almost like a demarcation to say this was from this clan, this was from this person. And something that we use today that I don't think,

maybe you saw it, but there's a fellow named Harold Bluetooth who was a Viking king, which is where we, get the symbol for Bluetooth communications today. And the name. Yeah, so the actual name and then the ruin that he used is the symbol for the Bluetooth symbol today. Really?

Yeah. Hmm. So it's traveled that much further. I don't know how they named it after him or why they would have, but it is kind of cool to think that we talk about Bluetooth today and it came from a Viking king. Now, now we're getting into the berserters. So the berserkers were just, they were unhinged. They were the craziest group of warriors ever. They would all get together before battles.

And like you talked about, they would use psychedelics, which pro-psychedelic podcast. Yes. Very pro-psychedelics. They were saying psychedelics and or alcohol. They would just get themselves into a trance-like state or be totally focused on the business at hand. They would have like the, the, semi-domesticated, semi-feral wolves that they would chase around their camps. And these people were left by themselves.

Like they weren't with everybody else in the camp. They had their own designated party zone, party area. We're going to put you guys over here. Yep. And one of the things that they would do, which really tells you that they were nuts, is most of the time they would go into battle naked. And who's the last person that you want to try to have a scuffle with? A dude that's naked.

Yeah. They would throw animal pelts on themselves sometimes, and they would almost feel like when they would do that, they would take on that creature's spirit. Yeah, there was like, some of the more well-known groups were like a bear group and a wolf group, and they would wear the skins and just... And that's where also you do get a lot of these interpretations

in modern history and modern culture about these Vikings wearing these animal skins and going crazy and having their faces painted. If you've ever done mushrooms, can, like... Set and setting is a... what they always say for mushrooms. Your mindset and then the setting you're going to be in is what's going

to determine how you react during your trip. If your mindset is I'm going to go fucking kill some people with this double-bladed battle axe and your setting is a fucking battlefield. I don't even that sounds honestly like the worst trip you can ever possibly have. Oh yeah.

But if that was and you're seeing visions of Odin being like, you're going to get to Valhalla, keep killing these guys and then you see visions of Thor with this hammer. Yeah, you're loaded up on alcohol and mushrooms. You're not going to feel if you get stabbed or anything like that. You're just, you're almost like that. You're like intimidation too.

You're wearing a goddamn bearskin with the head on your head, just yelling. And then underneath, it's like a bearskin trench coat. You're naked underneath battle axe, screaming and out of your mind running at the enemy. Like, who's not going to turn and be like, let's get the fuck out of here? Well, and they were the first line that they would send in. It was always the first guys. Being across the battlefield from a bunch of guys, they said that they were so wild and feral before these battles

that they were actually chewing on their leather shield beforehand. Like eating away at their own materials just trying to get to you. There were fights that would break out between berserkers before battle where they would just end up killing each other before they could even get into the fight because they were so amped up and ready to go. And that's pound for pound, I would say, the absolute most intimidating war force that there's ever been, like in medieval battles.

That's one, we're going to do a one-on-one one time where we go through history and we create our ultimate fighting force for back then. So like travel, weaponry, soldiers, just all that. I think that would be so cool to try to put together like the best and brightest force of all medieval forces. Well, you also have the inspiration just kind of going back also, or not guys, I guess. not going back on forward to World War II. This is the example of, you know, did the berserker legend influence giving the Nazis army?

I'm trying to think, what's the crazy? This is your weekly meth reminder. Yeah, this is your weekly meth reminder. What I'm saying is what's the, the, the, Vermecht? Yeah, I think, yes, that's what they called the army. But yeah, how much of that was an influence like, oh, this Aryan, race that we want to aspire to be also has these great warriors that were on drugs

and everything. It's just savage. Let's just do the same thing to our people. Yeah. Let's just give them tanks instead. We'll give them tanks instead of weapons. We'll give them tanks instead of hand-to-hand stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it absolutely could have been an influence going forward. Like you say, we see it so much in our culture today when you look back at the Vikings that they

were just these people that would eat raw flesh off the bone. And it was a very small group. It wasn't like it was a big tribal. of them, but there was probably 60 or 70 of them that were just berserkers. Oh, yeah. And they don't know. Some of them, they think were probably more mentally delayed, but you pack enough alcohol.

But at the same time, too, these people could then, after battle, go back to being constructive members of society. No. They would literally, they said that some people, some of them would just have like heart attacks and die afterwards. Oh, seriously? All the adrenaline that they had going on. And like you say, they had their own areas of the villages where they would be.

So they would go back and sleep for days and days. and days just because so much adrenaline would be going through their bodies that there was just, the recovery time was just impossible. Oh, plus that and how many, like, if these guys aren't feeling wounds or stabs or anything like that? When it all comes

back when they sober up. Yeah. They're just all beat to hell. When did I get shot by an arrow? 45 minutes ago? Yeah, it's still sticking out of your arm. You're like, oh yeah, it didn't get shot. So we got through that's pretty good for the berserkers.

The berserkers were my favorite part of this. It's just so cool. We went through the beliefs that they were very generous as far as spreading their seed and just kind of taking over the areas not only by force, but through pure sexual aggression to create kind of their mark.

A lot of the way that you hear, like, Genghis Kong is related to like 11% of anybody that's Asian. Something like that, yeah. It's just a big swath that can be traced back to him because he was out there just creating kids left and right. Yeah, I wonder how many people, how many people have Sandanavian lineage. Moving through that, the biggest tale of the Vikings was just how they would, they started out as pillagers, then they became merchants. and then going from being merchants, they became kings.

They started out going through these villages, taking over, taking all the resources, then selling all the resources that they had just amassed, and after they would sell all those resources, they would have enough power and clout to become kings of these areas. So it was a very smart progression that they found their way to power. Yeah. So, I mean, they even say that, like,

between 24 and 27 people who are native, either Finland, Western Europe, or Great Britain show Scandinavian DNA. There's 10 million people currently in the United States who have Scandinavian ancestry. So I mean, these guys, they spread out, they got busy. And here's the thing, too, 300 years. I kind of feel like, have we hit a topic

or have we done a civilization that had a long reign? I don't think we have yet. I know we have the Romans that are on our list to do, and of course that one, the Roman Empire is going to be huge because that spanned over. you know, the course of, I'm going to have to research it, but you have other cultures like we'll probably end up doing like the Ottoman Empire and things like that, but kind of the common theme I'm finding from these civilizations is that they're short-lived, but the, you know,

what's the, what's the analogy? You don't burn long, but they burn bright. That's exactly what, yeah. So, I mean, a lot of these are just, they're quick and the scope of, you know, time that's past, but 300 years, again, for the kind of the golden age, I think they, I don't know of a culture that packed in more. There's more bang for buck than the Vikings. Yeah, they were just always constantly on the move.

They were always looking for new lands and looking for more resources. And just, they would, some areas, they would just show up and clean out, realize there wasn't anything else there. Some areas, they would say, hey, we can rule this land and continue to get what we need out of them while we're in power. Yeah. The last one that I had were just the Viking raids made them so rich, just so much money that when they go through and look at like all the old archaeological sites, they found

six times as many Anglo-Saxon coins in Scandinavia that they found in Great Britain. Hmm. So that's how much gold and silver and everything. stamped that they were finding, that they were just transporting back home, which of course, archaeologists love that stuff, because if you find a big cache of them, then you can see, like, how they were demarcated, how, where they were coming from, excuse me, if they were stamped with North African markings, if they were stamped with Germanic markings. One of the, and one of the biggest ways they've been able to find kind of these halls and find

this information about, like, you know, artifacts and things from the Vikings is that they, were one of those cultures kind of like, and this is, you know, is this tied into any of their trips to North Africa? They, or maybe this is just a worldwide cultural thing. It might be just that. But they would bury their kings.

You know, they would do funerals a couple different ways. One is they would take their ships, load them with all the treasure and all the things they're going to need on the journey to the afterlife for Devalhalla, kind of like the Egyptian pharaohs did. Yeah. And then they would bury them. And the burial mounds.

Yeah, and they would bury these things. The other way that they would do it is probably the way that people in their heads see. If you think Viking funeral, what do you think? Big ship set out to sea, cremation on the water, burning. Sometimes they would actually, do you think, so they would like, the way that you always see it is that they send the boat out and then fire the arrows. The flaming arrows. And the flaming arrows and stuff. Do you ever think?

got to a point where or in any situations, generally you always see it being on a river. They would cast down the river. They fire. They either, I'm not saying they missed, but let's say they fire a couple arrows and the fire doesn't catch and the boat just keeps going. So do you have to send a guy out there in another boat, a couple guys to be like, you got to get this thing on fire? Or is it just like, okay, I guess it's, you know, just going.

And then like miles and miles and miles down river. Or eventually someone just finds this fucking ship with a dead body full of treasure on it. a lot of the times too they said that um just a gross very weird thing but anybody that had like a position of power that had a bunch of people under them and that had like concubines and that kind of thing they called them their thralls yeah when they would die um one of them would volunteer their slaves thralls whatever they said one of them would volunteer which to me seems like a very generous word volunteer in the situation that woman would go around and have sex with every man in the village, and then they would kill her and load her onto the boat with the guy that was dying.

Now, why in the world that would be a stipulation to have sex with every dude in the village before being sent out there? I don't know. See, I heard the other one was that. So this is probably kind of late in the game, because we're almost done with this, of going through their hierarchy for power structure. But you would have the, it's spelled J-A-R-L-S, or I think it's Yarl. Yarl. Yeah. So you would have the Yarls, which were like your, like your top tier local leader.

Then underneath them would be the, I'm trying to remember. It almost sounds like Yarls, but it's, what is it? I'm just going by Skyrim knowledge at this point. I know. So you have Yarls. And then below that, you would have, I know what the one below it was. Okay, so the Yarl. And this is a Scandinavian noble ranking immediately below the king.

but there was someone underneath the Yarl and then underneath them was the thrall and thralls were basically slaves and servants what you would consider I guess peasants yeah and everything but what is what was the Viking hierarchy God I don't know why I can't remember this

so it was yarl's kings yarls carls Jesus so kings Yarls, the J, Carl's with a K, thralls. Carl with a K.

So, Carl's were like the lieutenants. And then they would have thralls and the, you know, Yarls would have thralls. But what I heard was when a Yarl died, they would kill all members of like all thralls in their house.

Yeah, that was another one too. Can you imagine that? Like you're one of like, and you're like a young slave and you'd like, so you're a young slave, you haven't been assigned to anyone yet. and then you get a sign,

like we're going to sign you to this guy and you meet that guy and he's just sick as shit and you can tell he's getting rid of dying. You're like, fuck. Is there anybody else? Can we do a trade? Yeah, like, I'm going to be in this job for like three weeks and then I'm going to get killed

because I'm one of this guy's servants. Then I have to be buried with this guy who I don't know of them really don't particularly like. That was a funny thing is whenever you'd see like volunteer to think that there was no volunteering for this. No. They were slaves. They were brought in there,

not under their own power. They're not going to be volunteer. You're not going to step up and be like, yeah, I'll be the one that goes ahead and gets humped by every dude in the village. And then you're going to kill me. I'd just be like, kill me now. I don't want to go through the rest of that. Unless you get like yourself like a young, you get a young king.

And you're like, okay, this might last a while. A young, handsome, Carl, or yarl. Who's still going to treat you like shit because you're a slave? Yep. Yeah, pretty much that's how it works. All right, man. Yeah, it's just the, I don't know, what would you consider? like Viking culture, the civilization.

Everywhere. Oh, and to get back to it, I don't want to lead off on a bad note, but I do have to get into. So there was an old Norse saga called the Volsonga, which was about a fella who, a little person, I forgot what he was, but he was like a little elf,

lived underneath a waterfall and he had a special ring that he would put on and the ring would make him rich and powerful and everybody would love him and there ended up being a fight for the ring until the ring had to be returned and it had to be destroyed and Tolkien pulled a lot of influence from that saga in order to make Lord of the Rings. A lot of the stuff that we get like the show on History Channel, Vikings. That was all just taken out of there. There's so many different things. There's even mentions of some of the like the courts that they would have in Star Wars that came from different Viking types of things that that noun thing that they would have where they would have their meeting places to discuss law and order. There's there's definitely in in Star Wars. I feel like we mentioned this at some point during every single one of these podcasts. But I think who you would. kind of would be the Vikings of Star Wars would be like the Mandalorians. Is that kind of what it would be?

So yeah, so the Mandalorians, like they wear like armor helmets at all times. They have like a code. I'm not saying Vikings did or didn't have a code. But I think just like they were a very kind of like warlike people in a sense of like conquest, I guess. But I think if you had to nail down because I think there's certain planets or species in Star Wars that are like you could assign to certain cultures or things like that and I think if you're going to assign one it would be

so I mean that just kind of goes to show you how big of the the influence they have and how much of an influence like things that they put into place or or you know I don't know what like places that they established just their influence how much it still felt Growing up, to relate it back to something that I hit almost every episode too, growing up, there was a guy that entered the Royal Rumble. He was named the berserker.

And his real name was actually John Nord. So he was from Scandinavia, and he grew up in Minnesota. But he traveled to New Japan Wrestling, all Japan wrestling. He was in the territory days and in the WWF back then. And he was dressed exactly like we would talk about. He was just in a brown skin leotard, just a little one piece. He had fur on his boots. He never had an interview where he would say any words.

He would just march around the ring and just keep making the same, uff, off, off, as he was wrestling. And he would come down to the ring in like full bearskin almost. And it was just something that I saw back then. And I thought, oh, my God, that guy, they just went and found a Viking and brought him into the ring, not knowing at that point that Kay Faye was something where they would live these like alternate lives for their characters. Yeah.

But this dude was just absolutely amazing. He was six, eight. He was always one of the biggest dudes in the ring. He would be somebody that if they were trying to propel a star up the rank, he was to give him a belt. He would be the guy that they would beat. He was just always like a big, intimidating force. And he was fantastic.

I absolutely loved him. And then knowing that he did travel the world. and he was the Nord and a couple different other wrestling federations, but just an awesome guy to watch wrestle, and it was all based on this exact same topic that we're talking about. Like, even wrestling saw him as a viable character,

saw Vikings as a viable character to bring them into the wrestling arena. Yeah. I mean, just kind of lastly, the last couple things I'll say is just some things that you might not think about, but that will make sense once you hear them. So there's been artifacts

that Vikings popularize, skiing in Europe. Not as a necessity, but sometimes they would do it for fun, but it was a way for travel to ski down the mountains and everything. I think there was also some type of influence over, it wasn't hockey per se, but they did, they did play games on Frozen Lakes. It was kind of like a football hockey type thing. Like a field hockey almost.

Like a field hockey on ice. Yes, it was like a mix of like rugby and hockey, but it was on ice. They said like injuries were just rampant. Oh, I'm sure. this game. But there's a lot of even words that we take from the Viking or Norse language that we use today. Things just as simple as...

Ericsson phones back in the day. Erickson, it was Sony Erickson, I think is what they were. So, I mean, even words like club, slaughter, ransack, cultural words. Bug, husband, loan. Like, there's a whole list of words that we still get out of Viking influence. It's just, you know, it's one of those things that you don't really learn. back on until, you know, you realize where it came from. The etymology, leading back to that, there's everything in our culture, not everything,

but a lot of influence that they still have. And I'm glad to see it because they were a very noble people in a certain sense. They were. Like you said, the bad press that they got was from situations that were just bad in general. And they got described by other cultures. But the more that we learn about them, the more it's just like they were, they were no different than any other culture would have been viewed. that were a conquesting or a traveling, you know, culture.

Absolutely. But, you know, they got a bad rap for a while, just of these bloodthirsty savages. And I think most people see them as those berserkerers. I think that's how kind of people have in their heads. But for the most part, those were the, God, I can't think of the word, those were the outliers. They only, very, very small fraction of the population even took part in that. Most of the people were just, you know, farmers and merchants.

Yep. And at the same time, happened to be exceptionally skilled warriors at the same time. When you're attacking the monasteries that had the printing presses, the next thing that's going on the printing press after you raid that place is how bad the people were. Yeah, exactly. All right, you got anything else? No, I'm just happy that I found my ancestry. I'm going to look more into this.

Not a tattoo guy, but I might have to start looking into it and see what I can get out of that new. And then hope you find out that you have no. Norse lineage. And then you're just like, fuck. Just like that last episode, or the last season of Sunny that they did when they go back to Ireland and Mac thinks that he's Irish

and finds out that he's 100% not Irish. All right, guys. Hope you guys enjoyed the episode. Again, hit us up on the socials. It'll be on after the episode. I hope you're back from you. Peace. All right, guys.

Hey, thank you so much for making it through another episode and sticking with us. If you want to kind of follow up on the next upcoming episodes, get some teasers. Adam, can they get us on the Twitter? They can get us on the Twitter. Our Twitter handle is historically high. That's historically H-I.

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Peace.