Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Ivar The Boneless

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Was Ivar the Boneless a real Viking warrior? Probably. Did he really have no bones? Probably not. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Go to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is short stuff, just the two of us with the Viking hordes. We've taken a bunch of mushrooms and we're entering Berserker mode now. Yeah, man. This, I remember that was one of the early, early, early stuff you should know. The first episode was our episode on Vikings.

That was one of the great facts of the podcast in the early days. Berserker and the mushrooms. Yeah. Can you imagine seeing a Viking with the battle axe on mushrooms coming at you going crazy? Yeah, and I know I think I mentioned it recently, but the guy who did The Lighthouse, his next movie is a Viking movie. That's a good reason to build a time machine, so we don't have to wait around for that.

Yeah, Robert Eggers, boy, that's going to be good. Yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait. Crazy. Yeah, I can't wait. Because the Vikings were crazy, and if you watch the History Channel show, Vikings. I have not. I haven't either, but it was pretty popular.

It ran for about six seasons, but there was a character in their name, Ivar the Boneless, and on the show, he was a ruthless guy. He was sort of the leader on the battlefield, and he had a medical condition on the show that made his legs useless, basically, so he would crawl around, and he would ride on chariots and stuff, and he had crutches, but he led what was known as the Great Heathen Army on that show, and he was actually a real person, but there's a lot more mystery about who he was and whether or not he even had this condition in real life. Yeah, so Ivar the Boneless, one of the great all-time nicknames ever, but he does pop up

here or there in historic documents that chronicle the Vikings, and we're working from a House Stuff Works article that I think makes a great point, or one of the historians that they interviewed, very cautious historians in this article, which is great. But this historian makes a really great point that, first off, let's kind of get across that the Vikings, and everything we understand about the Vikings, were written by our historic or cultural ancestors here in the States and in the U.S. or the U.K. and Australia and Canada, who were the enemy and the sufferers at the hands of the Vikings, so they didn't paint the most flattering portrait of the Vikings around, and you can make a really

good case that the Vikings were no more violent or terrifying than anybody else during the medieval age. It was a violent time, like we're not saying they were just super chill dudes who had just hang around and drink beer, but it was just a violent time, like everybody was killing everybody. Charlemagne, they point out in this article, ordered the beheading of 4,500 Saxons in one day. Yeah, and he was the Holy Roman Emperor at the time, too, not a Viking.

Yeah, so there were plenty of violent cultures at the time, and this whole image of these barbarians that we get, you're right, it's because it was written by people who were their victims, and I'm sure they were pretty scared by them. Right, exactly. And again, rightfully so, it's not that the Vikings weren't violent, it's just that everybody was violent. And I feel like that was such a mind-blowing, paradigm-altering part, Chuck, that we should take a break real quick.

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Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, late ninth century, ninth, I said that weirdly, something came out called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was this sort of a history book. It was a collection of records about English history, and it was updated over the next couple of hundred years. And in that book, we do find a notation for the Great Heathen Army, or the Great Army, which were these Scandinavian invaders in this big Viking army, basically, that hit

the British Isles in 865 CE. Right. So this is like the Viking horde that you think of, and apparently this Great Heathen Army, which again, they call it the Great Army too, but I'm not gonna call it anything but the Great Heathen Army because it just sounds so much cooler. This was a number of different armies from different Scandinavian lands that kind of all worked together, but over the course of more than a decade of invasions and conquerings and all that, they were just this kind of fluid group that collectively were called

the Great Heathen Army. And it wasn't just one single solitary mass of the same people over 13 years who invaded England. Right. So they are mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and Ivar himself, as mentioned, I believe in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as well, right? Yeah, I think so. It was, well, at least the brother of Ivar was mentioned with two Rs, which would have

been the Norse spelling of it. So if the brother of Ivar is mentioned, therefore Ivar is mentioned. Right. And it actually makes Ivar seem that much more important if you're saying that somebody's a brother of somebody else, you know what I'm saying? Right. Otherwise, who cares? So I guess that's the only time that he pops up in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.

It's more that he's associated as a leader of the Great Heathen Army in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. We have a contemporary piece of writing that basically chronicles, at least in part, the Great Heathen Army coming from the north and messing stuff up pretty bad. And Ivar is in there, okay? Right. And he's also mentioned in some Irish records the annals of Ulster. Really cool, great read.

And they reveal a Viking by the name of Ivar or Imar who was the king of the Northmen and all Britain and Ireland when he died in 873. And the thing here is we just don't know 100% if that is the same person, but chances are it probably was. Yeah. I think most historians of that period in that region tend to think that this is the same Ivar. I think the timing potentially works out, and yeah, it's possible there's more than

one Ivar, but if he was a leader of the Heathen Army in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and the leader of all the Great Army in the Ulster annals or the annals of Ulster, why not? It could be the same guy. Does it really matter if it's not at this point? No, it really does. So yeah, they think that the same, you know, it's England and Ireland. They're close enough to where he was probably just conquering everywhere he went, but none of this has anything to do with his boneless nickname that we hear on the TV show.

So now we need to talk about the Icelandic sagas, which were transcribed in the 13th and 14th centuries. These are prose narratives. These aren't history books. These are novels, basically. Yeah, and they were written by the descendants of these same Viking conquerors who would have revered and looked up to and probably exaggerated the legends of these guys. But it's apparently in the Icelandic sagas, and they've been compared to like historic

novels, like definitely based on real things, but just maybe a little more overblown. So you got to take them a bit with a grain of salt. But apparently it was in the Icelandic sagas that Ivar gets his boneless nickname, I guess. That's right. Boneless is just... Because all I can think of is chicken. Sure. Yeah, boneless wing is awesome.

So this is where it could have been some transcription problem, like boneless could have meant legless maybe, which that would make sense if you've watched the TV show. He wasn't legless, but he at least didn't have the use of his leg, so they may have called someone with that disability legless at the time. And Chuck, there's another potential transcription error that makes the history channel interpretation really unique or singular, I guess you could say. Okay. Let's hear it.

So there's two Latin words that medieval transcriptionists may have mistaken. One is exos, which means boneless. One is exosus, which means detestable. So it's possible that Ivar's nickname really was Ivar the detestable or Ivar the hated and that some medieval monk got it wrong and he became Ivar the boneless. And then centuries after that, some executive producers for history channel decided to actually take that literally and create this character, Ivar the boneless, who did not have the use of his legs.

I think that's probably the likely story. I think so too. Is this great conqueror probably did not have no use of his legs would be my guess, which makes it kind of funny in a TV way. Right. But from what the historians are saying, it just doesn't jive with the Viking culture. That's just probably not the case. Although they do say it's possible the history channel's interpretation is correct, it seems

to be doubtful. You never know. You never know. This is when we need the way back machine, but it's in the shop right now, unfortunately. Yeah. We should do a GoFundMe to pay that bill. We should, although I think we might be convicted of fraud if we actually collect any of those funds.

I think so. You got anything else? I got nothing else. Short stuff, everybody is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.