Short History Of... - The Vikings

Episode Date: April 3, 2022

Viking exploration changed the course of history in the northern hemisphere. As raiders and pirates, they dominated the seas of northern Europe for centuries. Their fearless and brutal reputations struck fear into hearts from Constantinople to Canada, while their folklore and mythology continues to inspire to this day. But who were the mortal men and women behind the immortal legends of the Norsemen? This is a Short History Of the Vikings. Written by Jo Furniss. With thanks to Lars Brownworth, author of Sea Wolves, A History of the Vikings, and to William Fitzhugh, author of Vikings, The North Atlantic Saga. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's June the 8th, in the year 793 AD. A monk walks along the beach of Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast of England. This is Holy Island, the spiritual heart of the Kingdom of Northumbria. The air is thick with fog and his woollen robe grows damp and heavy. It's been a strange year, full of ill omens. The brothers have witnessed whirlwinds, lightning storms, and the shapes of dragons in the clouds. Some believe it's a sign of God's wrath. Something makes the monk pause.

He thinks he can hear voices in the mist. He squints into the gloom that shrouds the North Sea, and there it is again. Cries and shouts in a strange tone. Bott turns and Guillemot shrieks overhead, modelling the sounds. His eyes are dim from working on manuscripts, but there's something out there. The rhythmic thunder of drums. Then the fog swirls and a monster appears. A fearsome head, a serpent or a dragon with bared teeth. The monk cannot move for fear.

The monk cannot move for fear. The beast tears through the veil of mist, and he sees it's not a monster, but the carved prow of a ship. Moving faster than any fishing boat he's ever seen, it has a square sail painted with a raven, the symbol of Wodin. Between the shields that line the hull, dozens of oars protrude. They move in unison like the legs of a terrible insect clawing at the water. Two more ships emerge from the haze, each one as swift and shocking as the first. Men pile out into the shallows, wearing glinting helmets and leather tunics covered with animal skins.

Their bearded faces are painted red and blue and black. The boats grind onto the beach. The invaders beat axes against immense wooden shields as they march inland to the stone buildings of the monastery. The bell is ringing. The brothers know they are under attack. But at high tide, the island is cut off from the mainland. The monk watches unhelpless as the robed figures of his brothers emerge from their sanctuary, only to be met by axes. No help is coming. The sounds of slaughter drift up to where the old man kneels, praying hard on the beach. When he opens his eyes, he sees the invaders returning to their boats, laden with plunder. They heave everything from gold relics and jewels from the chapel to the order's precious stores of food.

Even the leather manuscripts he spent years decorating with precious stones and rare paints are ransacked. And then they move on to the boys. A novice monk barely out of childhood screams in terror as he's slung over the shoulder of a warrior, carried into the waves and dumped into a ship. As another savage comes by, the old monk tries to grab the child he's carrying, but the invader flashes his sword and the brother falls, blood pouring from his chest. As he lies dying on the beach, the monk watches his young brothers carried into slavery. Maybe the doom mongers were right and this is the end of days. The Norsemen have come. For the island of Lindisfarne, for the seven

kingdoms of England and the lands all around, everything is about to change. The raid on Lindisfarne signals the start of the Viking era and shocks the whole of Europe. As the ruined abbey smoulders, news spreads across Christendom. No one is safe from these pagans. But is there a more sophisticated side to the Vikings? As pioneers, they changed the course of history in France and England and the Baltic states. They established the cities of Dublin and Reykjavik. As storytellers and musicians, they preserved the folklore and legends of the north.

The mythology of their religion, tales of Freyja, Thor and Loki, continue to be told today. Viking raiders and traders travelled huge distances in all directions, as far as Russia, Newfoundland, Baghdad and Greenland. In the words of Odin the Allfather, death may come, but reputations stay. So who were the mortal men and women behind the immortal legends of the Norsemen. I'm Paul McGann, and this is a short history of the Vikings. In the medieval Scandinavian language, a vikingur is a pirate or someone who goes Viking or raiding. But those Norsemen who boarded their longboats to go Viking in Lindisfarne in 793 were not the first to venture

across the water to England. Four years earlier, three strange ships are spotted off the Isle of Portland, on what is now Dorset on England's south coast. The visitors are assumed to be traders, and word is sent to an official named Bodehurd. He jumps on his horse and rides to the southernmost lookout. But before he can welcome the strangers, he is struck dead by a volley of arrows from the boats. Bodehurt goes down in history with the dubious and fatal honor of having the first contact between Anglo-Saxons and Vikings.

For the next decade, the Norsemen use their seafaring advantage to plunder settlements on the coastline of Britain and its neighbours. They target monasteries like Lindisfarne, which are poorly defended and rich with treasure. In 795, they ransack abbeys in the Hebrides and Northern Ireland. Before the century is out, they hit continental Europe for the first time, raiding the Ile de Noirmoutier in western France. But these 8th century marauders never called themselves Vikings. raiding the Ile de Noirmoutier in western France.

But these 8th century marauders never called themselves Vikings. They are not a united group or tribe, but rather come from all over Scandinavia. And the Sea Pirates who go Viking are a tiny minority of these diverse peoples. Most stay home and farm, a peaceful but punishing life in a difficult climate. After all, about a third of Norway lies above the Arctic Circle. We don't know why the Vikings start their hit-and-run raids. Are they seeking new land, women, riches, an easier climate, or glory? Lars Brownworth is the Norwegian author of Sea Wolves, A History of the Vikings. We don't really have a clear picture of what life was like before the Viking Age started.

I mean, archaeology can help a lot with this, but we don't have obviously any written sources to tell us what it was like. I think the most likely explanation of why the Viking Age starts is a nautical invention, which is the keel. They develop the keel, and because the keels are relatively shallow and the ships are clinker built, which means they're flexible, they can actually be lifted by as few as 10 men. So they can sail then up rivers as well as across oceans. And they do it at truly frightening speed. They could cover about 50 miles in a day, and even a cavalry using a good Roman road could do about 30. I think the most telling example of this is for the first two centuries of the Viking Age, so roughly 800 to 1000 AD,

there is no naval battle in Northern Europe except between Viking fleets. So they just have complete dominance of the city. News of the Lindisfarne raid travels to a monk in continental Europe named Alcuin. He lives 650 miles away in Aachen, modern day Germany. In his Spartan cell, the thought of pagans murdering his Northumbrian brothers moves him to tears. He writes to commiserate with the Bishop of Lindisfarne, in the minuscule cursive Latin script he has been taught by the Frankish scholars.

The heathens desecrate God's sanctuaries, Alcuin writes, and trample the bodies of saints like dung in the street. The Viking side of the story vanishes in time. Simple Viking information like the names of peoples and places is written in their runic language on marker stones. There is Viking graffiti on stone monuments and prehistoric tombs used as shelter during raids on the Scottish Isles. But unlike the Christians of the 8th century, the Norsemen do not have monks dedicated to recording their histories. What we know of them is mostly from histories written by the people they conquer.

Those records tell us how their diaspora spreads. William Fitzhugh is director of the Arctic Studies Center at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and the author of Vikings, the North Atlantic Saga. William Fitzhugh, Director of the Arctic Studies Center, North Atlantic Saga They spread in two directions. They spread into the Baltic and eventually, you know, through the Russian river systems. The East Vikings, that's a story that is still very little researched and not very well known. The Western expansion is very well known because of the writings of the friars and monks who ended up being the four characters that the Vikings met and fought with and so forth. So first to the Shetlands and then into northwest England,

and then eventually they expanded to Iceland and Greenland and North America. Destinations were always quite uncertain because you never knew exactly which way the wind would blow. The ships were very good downwind and broad sailing, but couldn't sail upwind very much. So they often were blown off course, and it's likely that the discovery of Iceland was a result of an accidental voyage in that direction. The Norse legends are first written down centuries after the Viking period. The Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson compiles the myths in an early textbook, known the Prose Edda in the early 13th century, giving us a rich aftertaste of the Viking culture. But much of the authentic flavor of individual lives is lost to time.

But one thing is certain. The Vikings show little fear in the face of danger. They sail their ships into treacherous oceans and run into combat. Some say their pagan beliefs fuel a fatalistic fighting spirit. According to the Prose Edda, warriors who die gloriously in battle are the chosen ones whose souls may go to Valhalla, the Hall of the Gods. There they feast and fight alongside Odin and other war heroes. The only chance at somewhat of an afterlife that's happy is going to Valhalla, being taken by a Valkyrie if you show this conspicuous bravery.

But I think religion probably did make them a little more formidable. If you were an aristocrat, you probably worshipped Odin. If you were a farmer or a sailor, you probably worshiped Thor or Tyr. But there seems to have been not one god that was worshipped. There was no priesthood. There was no holy scriptures or anything. It was somewhat decentralized. There's a famous story of a Swedish Viking being asked, who do you worship? And he says, I worship my strengths. The only religion I know of that has an ending, you know, like Ragnarok was the end,

like the wolves chasing the sun and moon would one day catch it. And then all the world would be plunged into eternal darkness and the gods would die. And it's incredibly pessimistic. The most fearsome of all Vikings are warriors known as berserkers. They go into battle under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or hallucinogenic mushrooms. They fight without armor, half naked, so rabid they sometimes attack other Vikings.

It's from these savage fighters that we get the concept of going berserk. these savage fighters that we get the concept of going berserk. Odin was the god of madness as well as, you know, the god of poetry and magic, etc. And these berserkers were dedicated to Odin and they would apparently chew these things and drink these things that would, it was almost like having a seizure where they would seem to feel no pain and they would fight with their teeth and with their fingernails and everything when their swords were broken. You could lop off an pain and they would fight with their teeth and with their fingernails and everything when their swords were broken. You could lop off an arm and they would keep coming. They were absolutely terrifying and they seemed to be out of their head, the berserk, literally berserk.

Within a few years, the violent reputation of the Vikings has spread. The bedtime prayers of every Christian child now includes a plea for protection from the heathen invaders from the north. Names of shadowy heroes, like the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok, fearless marauder and killer of giant snakes, strike fear into people's hearts. But although the Vikings are terrifying, they're also fascinating and charismatic. At a time when most Europeans live under the strict rule of the church or monarch, the Vikings run wild and free, independent of any conformity. It's hardly surprising that coastal communities in England and France quickly strengthen their defenses. surprising that coastal communities in England and France quickly strengthened their defences.

Some political leaders even work with the Vikings, hiring the warriors as mercenaries to resolve their own conflicts. In 845 AD, a Viking army lays siege to Paris. The Carolingian king, Charles the Bald, sees that his people cannot fend off the invaders. Instead of fighting to the death, Charles raises taxes and pays the Vikings to go away. This tribute costs the city 7,000 pieces of silver. What seems like a practical and peaceful solution quickly runs into two problems. First, the move is unpopular. As one bishop furiously writes, The payment brings Paris ad ruinam et ad interitum,

ad confusionem et ignominium, ruin and destruction, ignominy and shame. Secondly, the tribute gives the invaders an idea, why not frighten other towns into paying them off. A new campaign of organized crime means the Vikings are now being bankrolled by the kingdoms of England and France. In the year 991, Vikings beat the English at the Battle of Malden, and King Athelred pays them 3,000 kilograms of silver. Later, he buys two more years of peace with four times that amount. But a couple of decades later, the Vikings are back.

They murder the Archbishop of Canterbury, and demand a further 18,000 kilograms. It is said that the Vikings' protection racket earns 100 tons of silver. Archaeological evidence supports this claim, six times as many Anglo-Saxon coins have been unearthed in Scandinavia as in Britain. This system becomes known as Danegeld, or Danish yield. Lasting for centuries, it evolves from simple blackmail into an organized land tax. By now the Vikings are the dominant force in Northern Europe, and their influence is spreading.

Fifty years after Lindisfarne, a horde of maybe two thousand Vikings arrive in East Anglia. It is already nearly winter by the time they pull their ships onto the beaches. But these men are what the Anglo-Saxon monks called the Great Heathen Army, led by Ivar the Boneless, one of the sons of the fabled Ragnar Lothbrok. They're not bothered by the cold. The men unload the boats and march north. On the 1st of November 866 they arrive at Jorvik, a town in the north of England now known as York. Jorvik is the capital of Northumbria,

once a Roman city. It's home to around 10,000 Anglo-Saxons, but Ivar can see that the only defenses are the relics of those ancient stone walls. Now Jorvik is ruled by King Aela, the man who is said to have murdered Ivar's father. Some say Aela threw the Viking to his death in a pit of poisonous snakes. Today Ivar wants revenge, and the only thing that will settle this blood debt is Aela's kingdom. The Vikings enter the outskirts of Jorvik, many of them on horseback. The streets are deserted.

Today is a holy day. The warriors move past shut-up homes and market stalls. Ivar sniffs the foul air. The place is pitiful, full of small, stinking homes. Where do these people even wash? Vikings wash every day. Suddenly the door of a hovel flies open and a small boy jumps out holding a wooden sword. He must be five years old but he snarls at the intruders. Some of the men laugh but Ivar shushes them. It's said that a good Viking father lays a sword in his son's cot at night and prays that his boy will fight for everything he has.

This boy shows a Viking spirit. Ivar reaches into his pack to give the child a gift. He finds the serrated edge of a comb made of bone. Perfect. The boy can think of his new king while dealing with his head lice. Ivar throws down the gift and moves on. One of the men laughs that Ivar is going soft. But Ivar the boneless is not soft. He chose to attack Jorvik on a holy day for good reason. Everyone is already at the cathedral, so it saves having to round them up.

He will kill them in the pews. Ivar leads his army up to the doors of the church, and raises a fist for them to await his command. Behind the heavy wooden entrance, voices soar to a crescendo, a hymn to their strange god. He dismounts, weapon at the ready. Like most Vikings, he favors the axe. The congregation falls silent as he pounds the door, but when he wrenches it open, they start to scream. Ivar swings his axe even as he steps onto holy ground. Vikings swarm

past him into the church where they cut down the townsfolk as easily as farmers scything hay. The great heathen army capture York that day. Three months later, Ivor finds and kills King Aela, using the barbaric Blood Eagle execution, which is mentioned in the sagas as being reserved for the Vikings' very worst enemies. Jorvik is the capital of a new Viking colony. They pave the streets, build a river crossing over the oouse that opens trade to the north. They mint coins and raise families of English Vikings. And they look to expand. In the 9th century, England is dominated by four major kingdoms.

Mighty Wessex in the south, East Anglia and Mercia in the center, and the vast northern territory of Northumbria. About a century after the Viking raids had begun, they switch from raiding to, first they just settle in winter quarters to be closer to their victims, and then they begin to start settling. And when Ivar the Boneless arrives, the Vikings destroy the Northern Three, essentially, and East Anglia, and they leave just Wessex. They can't quite take Wessex. The Vikings who settled there marry with the native population, and you get this Dane law. And it's recognized as part of the peace treaty when

Alfred successfully defended Wessex was a recognition of this part of England has its own laws, its own traditions, you know, this is the Dane law, etc. That really starts with Ivar the Boneless's invasion. In the pact signed between Alfred the Great of Wessex and the Vikings in 878, and the Vikings in 878, England is sliced in two. A diagonal line runs from London in the south, all the way up to Chester in the northwest, where what is now Wales meets England. The name for the Viking colony on the east side of the line,

Danelaw, reflects the fact that it is mostly Danish Vikings who come to England. Around the same time, Swedish Vikings are heading in the opposite direction, eastwards into the Baltic. So the Swedish story to the east is very similar to the Viking stories in the other directions. A guy by the name of Rorik, or Erik the Red, Rorik the Rus, goes and founds this place in what is now Kiev, founds the first centralized state in what is now Russia, and is therefore kind of the spiritual ancestor in a way of three countries, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. But he forms a stable state, which actually contacts, goes all the way to Azerbaijan and then Constantinople. And they get very influenced by the Byzantines. Over time, the Slavic influences overcome the Viking influences. And I think the importance of the Viking presence in the East is not only

creating, I mean, the reason it's called Russia is because of Rurik the Rus, which means red. Although the Vikings fail to seize Constantinople, which is around ten times the size of London in the 9th century, their prowess is noted by the Byzantine emperors. The marauding warriors are offered jobs as mercenaries, and become known as the Varangian Guard. The Swedish Vikings are physically intimidating, but also politically neutral, so they offer total loyalty as an elite imperial force. They assimilate to Byzantine culture, combining Viking armor and distinctive two-handed axe

weapons with lavish and colorful silk costumes. Word of their handsome remuneration makes its way back home and thousands of Norsemen travel east from Europe to seek their fortune Identifiable by long hair, dragons embroidered on their chainmail shirts and the signature rubies adoring their left ears the unit served the Byzantines as personal bodyguards for 500 years The most famous guardsman is Harald Sigurdsson. A warrior from the age of 15, Harald joins the Varangians and is soon leading maritime battles, making good use of his Viking specialities of seafaring and warmongering.

After making a fortune as a mercenary, Harald marries the daughter of the Emperor of Kiev, and returns to Europe with even greater ambitions. Soon he will earn the name Harald Hardrada, or Hard Ruler. From relatively lowly origins, Harald Hardrada doesn't stop until he is King of Norway. It's the kind of rags to riches tale that makes him the quintessential Viking. To Sicily, to North Africa, Asia Minor, he goes to Jerusalem, he takes a bath in one of the fountains of Jerusalem.

He then sails west and supposedly sees Greenland. He's baptized in Rouen, and then he dies attempting to invade England, and he's the king of Norway and little chunks of other countries as well. This is the Viking story in a nutshell. And sadly, it's the end. He's kind of the last Viking, but I think it does nicely sum up this incredible Viking world. Harold Hodrada will be present in England in 1066,

a year of seismic change for English and Viking history. But there is another branch of the Viking world tree to explore first. As the Swedish Vikings go east through the Baltics and down to the Middle East, the Norwegians are going west to the Scottish Isles and beyond. Middle East, the Norwegians are going west to the Scottish Isles and beyond. It's a short sea voyage around the east coast to Ireland. In the mid-800s, Vikings found major trading posts around the coast at Dublin, Waterford and Limerick. Sometime around 870, a man named Nadod sets off to the Faroes, remote scraps of islands scattered in the North Atlantic. After days of shivering in the bitter cold and high seas, Nadod desperately scans the

sky for signs of land. A cloud of starlings, perhaps, or seals coming to feed in shallow waters. There is nothing but ill omens. Falling stars in the night, a dead whale floating, an amulet dropped overboard. Nadod accepts the truth. His boat has blown off course. He fears a terrible death at sea, but luck is on his side. terrible death at sea, but luck is on his side. After several more days, Nadod sees dolphins and then, the best sight of all, a raven. Soon the boat lands on an undiscovered new island, so vast that he and his men cannot comprehend its scale. It's a dramatic landscape, with pools of steaming water that well up from the earth.

Náðord and his men warm their bones in a hot spring. This place has a harsh beauty that prompts them to name it Iceland. They will later say it's so hospitable that butter drips from blades of grass. With no indigenous people to contend with, the Icelandic settlements are purely Viking in influence, an extension of the homeland where Norse culture flourishes. Of course, the building of a new community means that these Vikings include as many women as men. Well, this was a punishing climate. So, you know, hospitality was obviously a very important thing.

And women usually had greater rights than in the rest of medieval Europe because they were largely in charge of making sure there was enough food for the winter. And this is obviously a job that lives depend on. One of the most prominent Viking women is Aude the Deep-Minded. Born around 830 AD, Aude marries Olaf the White, King of Dublin, and they have a son called Thorstein. When both Olaf and Thorstein are killed, the young widow commissions the building of her own ship, a boat called a Nór, like

those used for Atlantic voyages. Aude sails from Orkney in Scotland with a crew of twenty enslaved men, whom she releases when they arrive in Iceland. Aude is credited with introducing Christianity to the colony. She goes on to rule as a clan chief, a matriarch, and the only known woman with a social rank high enough to warrant a Viking ship burial. There's another saying of Odin that, you know, men die, but names live forever. And so a Viking ceremony in a ship being kind of sent off to the afterlife in a ship would indicate her extremely high status. She was the head of her household, not her husband's wife,

but she was the head of the household. She made the decisions. She owned the land. She could bestow gifts. There were Vikings who followed her. She was essentially a sea king, which is what that funeral indicates, this incredibly high level of prestige in society. that funeral indicates, this incredibly high level of prestige in society.

The society itself develops sophisticated structures, not least the concept of organized gatherings to discuss important matters. Known as a thing, the first of these conferences is held in 930 AD, in a field near Reykjavik. It develops into the oldest surviving parliament in the world. Today the Icelandic parliament, known as the Alting, is the site of important civic discussions, albeit in more comfortable surroundings. A Viking named Erik the Red arrives in Iceland in the year 950, at just ten months old. His father had been banished from Norway for killing a man. Erik the Red grows up in Iceland, earning his nickname both from the color of his hair

and his hot temper. Proving that the apple does not fall far from the tree, Eric is also involved in a murder and exiled. Forced to leave his homeland, he sets out on a sea voyage around 982 to explore land that has previously been sighted to the northwest. The place he finds is vast and barren, but Erik the Red is a natural salesman. He calls the new settlement Greenland, which sounds notably more hospitable and tempting than Iceland. The ploy must work, because when Erik returns to Iceland, he persuades 25 boatloads of colonisers to sail with him back to Greenland. But only 14 ships survive the crossing of the treacherous North Atlantic. The others presumably get lost in the vast expanse of ocean and perish.

There's been a lot of discussion about whether they had sun crystals that would allow them to navigate using some kind of visual sightings through fog. Of course, the North Atlantic is a pretty foggy place, and so your visual navigation sometimes isn't possible quite frequently, especially when you get over to the Greenland and North American areas. There's been a couple of archeological finds

that suggest maybe there was something like this, or that they used instruments, kind of like a compass or something. But so far, archaeologically, there's no real definitive evidence. And everything we know about Viking navigation is that they were acute observers of their environment. They knew what the patterns of the winds were. They recognized signs like birds coming from different directions and probably indicating in the Iceland case approaching land. So just very smart seamen who had a strong streak of courage to allow them to travel,

particularly in open ocean conditions in boats that were really not suitable because they were open, there was really no shelter. The settlers who travel with Eric the Red establish a community in Greenland that survives for the next 400 years. And the new colony proves to be a stepping stone to a further discovery. It's summer, in the dying years of the first millennium AD.

A band of Vikings are riding horses to the port on the western side of Greenland, where a Norse ship is waiting. This boat is a veteran of the North Atlantic. In 985 it survived a crossing during which the Greenlanders spotted a coastline to the west. Today a man named Leif Erikson is on a mission to find that territory. He will sail in the same ship for luck. Exploration runs in the family. Leif's father is Eriks the Red, the man who settled Greenland. Eriks is supposed to lead the expedition today.

A crew of some thirty-five sailors follow him and his son, Leif, to the gnaw. There's a festive atmosphere. A boy plays a drum, a girl sings a saga in a lilting voice. The wives and mothers of the sailors tuck last-minute parcels of dried shark meat into their pockets. Leif checks and rechecks that he's wearing this silver amulet on a leather cord around sailors tuck last-minute parcels of dried shark meat into their pockets. Leif checks and rechecks that he's wearing this silver amulet on a leather cord around his throat.

It's a tiny version of the great hammer called Mjolnir, the symbol of Thor, god of the sea. But then, up ahead, there's a sudden commotion as Le's father horse slips on the algae-covered rocks. A hush descends. The boy stops banging his drum. The girl goes quiet. Their headman lies winded on the ground, blood coming from his head. Leaf races to his father's side. As he holds out a hand to pull him up,

Eric the Red shakes his head once, and he speaks quietly so that his son is the only one to hear. You must lead the crew, Eric says. Leif understands. This crossing is too dangerous for an injured man. Plus, an accident is an ill omen. Leif doesn't want that sort of luck to follow them into the North Atlantic. So the ship sets sail with Leaf Erickson at the helm. They sail for days, through waves that seem as high and as hard as mountains, until Leaf makes out landmarks he was given by his fellow Greenlander.

A pattern of currents, an island of flat rocks, strange-smelling winds. After two more days of sailing, just as the sun is coming up, the spotter gives a cry. A seagull. Soon land appears. Now the men cheer and slap each other's backs before they man the oars and race to the beach. It's not just land, but a white beach fringed with a blue-green curtain of forest. Trees mean timber, and timber means fire and ships and longhouses. Trees mean life. Leif pulls his silver hammer from his shirt.

He kisses it to thank Thor. And then he presses his hands together and thanks Jesus too. He has found the realm to the west. A spirit of adventure drives Leif Erikson to establish Viking settlements on the islands and coasts of Canada and North America. But he also has a practical motivation – the trade in walrus ivory. Northern waters around Greenland, Baffin and Labrador were teeming with walrus during these years in the northern part of Greenland. But most of the ivory that they may have acquired might have come from trade with the local Inuit people.

We can track Viking artifacts into Inuit settlements where pieces of iron and ship's sailcloth and many other artifacts have been found in some of the Inuit sites in Canada, including a beautiful little carving of what looks like it might have been a Norseman wooden carving found in an Inuit site in Baffin Island. Further south, we have a Norse penny that dates to the 1070s or 80s that was minted in Scandinavia that was found in an Indian site on the coast of Maine. While Leif Erikson is credited as being the first European to set foot in North America, the Icelandic sagas tell us

that he's not the only child of Erik the Red to make his mark there. His sister, Freydis Eriksdóttir, is one of the first white women to reach Canada, joining a ship to Newfoundland around the year 1010 in search of riches and glory. Freydis reaches dry land safely, despite possibly being pregnant on the arduous journey. She arrives in Vinland, a settlement named for the numerous wine berries or grapes that grow wild there,

which the Vikings are able to brew. But Freydis finds little to celebrate in Newfoundland. Unlike Iceland, there are indigenous peoples here who object to Viking plans to expand and plunder the natural resources. She was very much her father's child, very hot-tempered and wild and exploratory and manipulative and so forth. There was one colorful incident, an attack that was being made on the settlement by a group of Native people. And a lot of the Vikings were kind of running and looking for their weapons and wondering what to do. and looking for their weapons and wondering what to do.

And she burst out from the house with a sword and tore off her blouse and beat her breast with a sword to rally the rest of her crew to confront native people. So she is definitely a character. Around the same time that the descendants of Eric the Red are exploring what becomes known to many as the New World, the Vikings are reaching the peak of their powers on the European side of the Atlantic. In 1017, a Danish prince leads an entourage towards St. Paul's in London. His name is Canute, and he is here to be crowned king,

the first Viking to rule the United Kingdoms of England. As the procession approaches the church, his guard raise their standards which are painted with the black raven. The Londoners who turned out to witness the coronation see the prince in his finery. An exceptionally tall man, even for a Viking, Canute is handsome with a powerful nose and keen eyes. But the reception for the foreign king is muted. He knows he needs to earn their trust, and they certainly have their reasons for their misgivings. It's taken him years to get where he is.

On his first attempt to conquer England in 1013, he was forced to retreat by King Æthelred the Unready. 1013, he was forced to retreat by King Æthelred the Unready. Returning in 1016 with reinforcements, he fought a long campaign against Æthelred's son, Edmund Ironside. The two men eventually agreed to divide England between them, but within a month Ironside was dead. Today, Cnut will become the first Viking to hold all of England. He enters the cool air of the stone chapel where the Archbishop of Canterbury is waiting to crown him. There was a time, Cnut knows, when a wooden church stood on this site. That sacred building was ransacked by his fellow Norsemen. Vikings destroyed the previous church on the holy site too.

Enough is enough. The days of plunder are over. As the new king, his priority will be politics and the prevention of further Viking raids. Cnut, after all, is descended from a prestigious royal line, son of Svein Forkbeard, King of Denmark. His grandfather, King Harald Bluetooth, is credited with uniting the warring tribes of Denmark and Norway. His reputation for bringing people together is such that a thousand years later, telecommunications

company Ericsson names its device-connecting technology after him. Today, the Bluetooth logo is a Norse rune, showing the initials HB for Harold Bluetooth. After taking the English crown, Canute becomes king of Denmark when his brother Harald dies. By 1028, he rules Norway and parts of Sweden too. For the next seven years, Canute presides over the North Sea Empire, the most powerful block outside the Holy Roman Empire. He's ruling over an empire which is so much more diverse than any other Viking has had

to deal with. I mean, even just in the Viking homelands, I mean, the Norwegians are half wilds, you know, the Danes have been settled for a little longer and the Swedes are somewhere in between, and they don't particularly like each other. And he's got to balance all that out, plus the Danes who have settled in the Dane law in England, plus the Anglo-Saxons. He's got to manage all these things. He can't be too much of one thing. And so I think that's part of his chameleon nature, which makes him hard to love, I suppose. He does not behave like a Viking, but he's never really accepted either. He's too Christian for the Vikings and too Viking for the Christians. King Canute dies in England in 1035 and is buried in Winchester, although his bones are

disturbed a few decades later when construction starts on the new cathedral. He is remembered as a wise and noble king, a legacy that owes much to his investment in the repair of churches and monasteries damaged during earlier Viking raids. When it comes to the monks who write the history chronicles, Cnut makes sure that he is literally in their good books. In the new millennium, almost 300 years after those first Viking raids, the world is a more complicated place. In part, the Vikings were successful because the kingdoms of Europe were divided,

but now the Vikings have united them they are able to fight back. The year 1066 is a tumultuous time for English history, and it also signals the end of the Viking era. It is now that Harald Hardrada has his last hurrah. It is now that Harold Hardrada has his last hurrah. Twenty years after his return from serving with distinction in the Varangian Guard, Hardrada has his sights set on ruling England. Seeing a power vacuum, Hardrada invades in September 1066. He raids the east coast, burning down the town of Scarborough and sailing up the river Humber.

He defeats an English army and seizes the town of Jorvik. Five days later, Harald Hardrada faces another Harald, King Harald Godwinson, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. But this time, the Vikings are defeated, and Hardrada is killed. The life of the quintessential Viking ends on the battlefield, securing his glorious place in Valhalla at Odin's side. The Viking era dies with him in 1066. Except, Viking blood still runs through the veins of the great ruling houses of Europe.

After his victory against the Vikings, Harold Godwinson marches south to face another threat. This time, it's from France. William of Normandy has landed on the south coast of England. It's 300 miles from York to Hastings where the Norman army is waiting to engage. Arriving exhausted and in disarray, Harold's troops face William's cavalry and archers on the 14th of October 1066. The battle lasts all day, but William's tactics and weaponry prove superior, and the invader kills Harold. It's unlikely that he dies of an arrow in the eye,

as depicted on the famous Bayeux Tapestry, but that is how history remembers him. On Christmas Day 1066, William is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey. But who is William of Normandy? The clue is in the title. Normandy means Land of the Northmen or Norsemen, the area of France settled by Vikings. Although his family assimilated and gave William a French name, he is an ancestor of the Norse chieftain Rollo, who sacked Paris almost two centuries previously and became the first Viking ruler of Normandy.

So when William the Conqueror wears the English crown in 1066, both Norman and Viking blood prevails. The Viking presence is still there. It's there in place names, it's there in the concept of law, it's there nautical terms, days of the week, etc. All these, I think the Viking impact definitely lives on. And William, whatever frankified version of the Vikings he represents, I think the Viking strain, the Viking impact does continue. The Viking legacy remains in the land and language of England.

What we call the Queen's English is just as likely to be the Vikings' English. Every time we put something in the diary on a Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, we invoke the names of the Norse gods Wodin, Thor or Freyja. In lore, the concept of trial by jury is Viking in origin. Their sailors gave us nautical terms such as port and starboard, a contraction of steering board, which is always on the right side of a Viking ship. There is a strong Viking influence in family names. Any surname ending in son like Thompson or Ericsson goes back to the Viking convention

of naming a child after the father. Scottish and Irish names such as Magan also have Viking roots, as the prefix Mac is the Gaelic version of Sonov. A recent DNA study found that a quarter of residents of the Scottish Isles have Viking genes. Perhaps the most conspicuous Viking legacy is in our continued fascination with the Norse culture. The legends live on as we are drawn back again and again to the ancient myths.

Stories of Viking pioneers, mavericks, free spirits, men and women brave enough to strike out across dangerous oceans and lands in search of a better life. Warriors who would rather live by the sword and stand at Odin's side in the afterlife than turn from certain death on the battlefield. As it says in the Old Norse saga of Volsunga, it is better to fight and fall than to live without hope. I think there's something really romantic about the Vikings. I mean, they're so alien in these ways. It's a world that is lost, and I think it's more and more interesting to kind of live

vicariously through these stories. They're almost unbelievable, these stories of the gore and of the cunning. I think in some ways these are the great rags-to-riches stories of medieval Europe. Going to war without any prospects and no land and no money and no hope, and then ending life as a king, like as a literal king, wealthy, et cetera. That's not really possible before or after for many years. And so there's something inspiring about these people as well. They're so pragmatic and they are so strong

that I think people are drawn to that. It probably represents something we're missing maybe a little bit in the modern world. Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of the Titanic. Certainly amongst the passengers, there was this idea that they were on this extremely safe and, in their minds, unsinkable ship. So you can only imagine what it's like for them when maybe they've gone to bed for the night and there's a knock at the door by one of the stewards saying, do you see this unsinkable ship that you've been sold a ticket on? Well, it's sinking

and you need to get off. And a sense of disbelief that this can't possibly be happening. You know, we're not going to sink. This is the Titanic. It's the biggest ship in the world. There's no way it's going to sink. That's next time on Short History Of.