Stuff You Should Know - Who were the Vikings?

Episode Date: March 18, 2010

Vikings were fierce, plundering Scandinavian warriors; and even today, their reputation precedes them. Josh and Chuck investigate what the Vikings were really like in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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launch, use offer code SYSK to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Hey and welcome to the super weird podcast. This is a weird podcast, not necessarily for you guys, but it is for Chuck and I. Yes. I'm Josh Clark. That's Chuck Bright. Let's get back to why this is a weird podcast. Yes.

To explain, our studio is being renovated, drum roll, which is awesome. It's going to be super fancy and like a real studio, but right now we are actually recording in some odd office that has windows. This is really weird. This is the first time we've recorded a show outside the regular studio and it might sound a little different. Jerry has explained that there's something called room tone and it's different from room to room.

Jerry just made that up, Chuck. Did she? Yeah. I bought it. Plus it looks like the walls are closing in on us. Yeah. We're actually a lot closer than we usually are. We're a little cramped.

This is just odd. So if we seem a little angrier than usual, it's because of the stupid room. Right. So I think we're going to call this, what did we determine? I voted for the reconstruction tapes or the reconstruction era. And I made the joke saying that we should call it the eponymous era because that was a much better album. But that was just a greatest hits collection by R.E.M.

No, it wasn't. Yeah, it was. I don't know. That's why it was so good. All right. So what's your witty intro or is this all just out the door? It's way out the door, buddy. Okay.

You see it? Yes. Leaving? Chuck. Josh. Have you ever met a Viking? No. I haven't.

Well, you're on the football team, right? Minnesota Vikings? Yeah, yeah. I've seen them. You can tell they're Hillman a mile away because they have those horns on the side. Yeah. Which are very Viking-esque, right? True.

No. Not true. That is a myth. Yes, it is. It turns out a bunch of archeologists were digging around the north, the Nordic area, Scandinavia. Yes. Which includes what? Sweden, Denmark.

Finland. The Netherlands. And yeah, I think Finland. Norway? Yeah, Norway too. Okay. Can you forget the Norwegians? Yes.

And they found an ancient helmet with some horns on it. And this was before we had reliable carbon-dating technology, and they said, well, it's a Viking. But it turns out that it was probably from the pre-Viking era. Right. Like an opera, maybe? Right. Well, that's when it was popularized in the 18th and 19th centuries. Right.

And the enormous woman would come out with her bosom, very prominent, and a helmet with horns or wings, and it turns out they wouldn't have worn this because these guys were dedicated to battling as efficiently and as brutally as any group that's ever sprung up on the global map. Yes. They were very good at what they do. And I just want to point out this is a listener request, a very recent one, actually, that piqued our interest.

And this is from David D. from Waterloo. He said, can you do something on Vikings since you've covered Ninja, and what else did we cover? Pirates. And he said, I hear Vikings used to have warriors called berserkers who would eat magic mushrooms before sending them into battle, and we're going to talk about that. So stay tuned. That's a teaser.

So Chuck, there does seem to be a lot of misconception around Vikings, but one of the things I took from this article by the Grabster, Ed Grabbinowski, he writes good stuff, he does, was that there's also a lot of accuracy in the history associated with Vikings. They were extremely brutal. They would indiscriminately kill men, women, children. So let's peel this apart. Let's separate fact from fiction as it were. Okay.

When were they around? Josh, the Vikings were prominent in Europe in the 9th through the 11th centuries, commonly known as the age of the Viking. Right. And you tend to think of Vikings as Nordic. They were. Sure. They were from Scandinavia, which are the countries we listed off earlier.

But these weren't communities of Vikings. Vikings were like a job. Yeah. It was a profession. Basically, you were a professional conqueror. Yeah. Because Scandinavians are also farmers and did many other things, weavers, and they weren't just Vikings.

It's not interchangeable. Viking and Scandinavians, not interchangeable. Weaving's never really been a lucrative job, you know? No, it's not. Not even back then. But yeah. So there was a group that were dedicated to moving out of the North Lamb, downward into Europe.

Because Scandinavia wasn't a very hospitable place. I imagine it still isn't. You know, lots of ice, lots of winter, snow. Not that much land. And the land that is available isn't all arable. Yeah. So they needed stuff. They went out and got things.

Yeah. They went and took it, you know? Like broad water. There was also evidence that population pressure led to Viking plundering. Yeah. Because they started to grow, and then obviously as they grew, they needed more things. And this is before they started spreading out, because eventually they would do that. But at first they would just go plunder and then return home to Viking land in Scandinavia.

Right. You said that they were around from the 9th to the 11th century, right? So there were Scandinavian cultures before the 9th century. There were Scandinavian cultures after the 9th century. So for 200 years, basically this population explosion forced this group out to go get more resources, to conquer more land. And then the end point at the 11th century actually generally represents the adoption of Christianity.

Yeah. And then all the fun was over. Which the Vikings did readily. Yeah. Once you convert, it's like you can't plunder any longer. No, at least not, you know, only plundering in the name of God. And Vikings were pagans, pre-Christianity. Right.

And which also means that they worshipped a pantheon of God, their religion was actually highly personalized. There was no central church in any of the Scandinavian cultures. And their religion was actually highly personal. It evolved in relative isolation without a central church in any of these Scandinavian cultures. But there was a pantheon of gods that were recognizable across these cultures generally. Sure.

Right? Two groups. Should we talk about them real quick? Yeah. The Assir and the Vanir were the two groups of gods. Right. And the Assir were very war-like. Right.

That's Odin and Thor. Oh, yeah. And then the Assir were kind of like hippies, like fertility goddesses and gods. Sure. They lived, the gods lived in Asgard. And it was a kingdom connected to mortal earth by a rainbow bridge, which I didn't know. Which is, you think, oh, okay. So Scandinavian pre-Christian pagan religion is pretty sweet.

They've got hippies. Right. They have rainbow bridges. Right. They had evil giants and dark elves. Yeah. Here's where it gets dark. And dwarves.

And apparently the gods were destined to fight against these giants and evil forces in a battle known as Ragnarok. Right. And they were also predicted to lose. Which would plunge mortal earth and Asgard into chaos, darkness, disorder. Right. Which I mean, think about that, Chuck. All of our religions today are pretty hopeful.

Like even if there isn't end of the world, if you adhere to that religion, you're going to be saved. Yeah. You won't be around for like the torment, right? Right. But this religion, as loose as it was, predicted like, no, our gods are going to lose and we're all going to be in really big trouble, right? But if you were a noble, awesome warrior and you died in battle, you would go to Valhalla,

which was warrior heaven. And you would be transported there by the Valkyrie, which were little warrior angels. At the command of Robert Duvall. Right. And what happened was in heaven, you would fight alongside Odin and feast and die in battle every day. Right. And you would get up alive the next day and do it all over again.

Right. That was their idea of heaven. It was. It was. Pretty funny. Yeah. So that battle part is really significant because in Scandinavia and many of the Scandinavian cultures, a young man proved himself by going eye viking.

Yeah. I love that. I'm going to get a t-shirt made that says eye viking. Right. And just see how many people know what that means. I like the verb of what Vikings did, leaving your homeland, going down, butchering, raping, pillaging, setting churches on fire. Churches were actually a big target of theirs.

Oh, yeah. Because the churches are where most of the gold was stored, livestock, spices, jewels, whatever. Sure. So they would target churches and kill everybody or else they would take them as thralls, slaves, which I looked up the etymology of enthralled and that's where it comes from. So when you're telling somebody you're enthralled by them, you're saying that you're enslaved by their, by how interesting they are.

Interesting. And you know that actually you enthralled? I am enthralled. The church thing is kind of key too because that's how the, that's like the only written history about the Vikings where it was written by the hand of the church that was plundered. So that's one reason because the Vikings only told oral, oral stories, folklore. Right. By scrawls?

By scrawls, which told sagas. Right. That's where all these words come from. And, but the, the church was the ones who actually wrote down stuff. So that's why a lot of the written history of the Vikings is so brutal because they were the people that were just, you know, had someone went eye Viking on them. Right, Chuck. And they also attribute the word Viking to Europeans who were conquered.

Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of different theories there on the word. There are, most of them do either the Norse adopted a word that was, that they were called by the Europeans. Right. Like an old English word, Vic, W-I-C, means port, a port of trade, which is where the Vikings like to attack. Sure.

Another theory is that it came from the Norse word Vic, big difference, but this one's V-I-K, meaning Bayer body of water, or there's another word that sounds similar. That means to turn away or to leave on a journey, which is, as we said, what going eye Viking began with. And then there's the, the last one, which makes a lot of sense is called, it's an old Norse word called vikinger, which means pirate. That's my guess. Right.

But they think that they picked that up from the Europeans. They conquered. Okay. Sure. They were named by Europeans. They were named by Europeans. They were just going to get some food and gold, sheep, thralls. Yes.

Right? Uh-huh. How'd they do this though? Should we talk about that? Yeah. Eye Viking. Yeah. They were famous for being experienced seamen.

They were built awesome boats and built boats that traveled really fast through the water. So when the, when the Christian, you know, let's say a monastery would see the Viking ships approaching and dragon ships. Yeah. Dragon boats. They didn't have much time because they would get there really, really fast because they were very experienced fishermen. And I guess since we're on the boats, we should talk about that for a sec.

Yeah. They had pretty particular boats as, you know, I think anybody could pick one out. They had a double sided hole, which I thought was pretty cool because you can go forward or backward without having to turn around. Sure. You just pick up your butt and turn around and start rowing the other way. Right. Or just switch the sail around.

Yeah. Yeah. They had a keel. They had riveted wood construction. Yeah. And then they had a single mast and this mast could be as much as, or the, the sail that, that was attached to the mast could be like 330 square feet of double sided wool. Yeah.

All hand sewn, usually painted red to symbolize the blood that it was about to be spilled by the people who saw it approaching. Right. And then you see pictures of Viking ships with like the little circles along the side. Yeah. Yeah. And most Viking ships had mounts where somebody could put their shield up as extra protection right to, to protect the guys who were rowing.

Of course. Makes good sense. It took about a 70 foot Viking long ship. Josh would have required about 11 trees to make it about three feet in diameter each and then one really tall tree to make the keel. So I guess it was all one piece. Yeah. And these things could haul, but through the water apparently because they're real narrow.

Right. And then they used a wind power and manpower. Right. Viking manpower was, that was something. So what happened when you saw a dragon boat, Chuck? You saw a dragon boat, it docks and all of a sudden this horde of Vikings just come streaming off at you. You poop your pants.

Right. It's the first thing you do. I would have rolled around the ground crying like a baby and offering up my cattle to be spared, but you might not be spared. They generally would not leave much, anything wooden was burned. They would just burn the town of the ground, kill people, take women if they wanted or kill them, take children if they wanted or kill them, take the cattle. Probably wouldn't kill the cattle.

Now they wanted the cattle. They were more useful in humans generally. Yeah. And you would also see these guys coming at you with the axe, which as everybody knows is my weapon of choice for a zombie apocalypse. Right. You would go eye Viking on zombies. Sure.

As far as their battle gear, like you said, the sword was huge, the axe was huge. The swords were about as long as the man's arm. Right. They also had bows and lances and javelins. Right. And they wore, like you would think, they wore big heavy iron helmets with the little nose piece that came down. A lot of times they wore iron on their breastplate unless they had some dough and they could

afford chain mail. But this kind of indicates how strong these dudes were. Do you know what, like an iron Viking helmet would weigh? A lot. A lot. And actually Vikings, well not Vikings, but Scandinavians, I should say, Scandinavian cultures were really, really adept at doing whatever they wanted to with iron because they'd been pulling it from bogs very easily without any need for mining for many, many

centuries. So they were kind of ahead of the curve as far as the iron age goes. Yeah. Big time. Yeah. They wore a Viking that had some successful raids, garnered some power, some money. The concept of a Viking funeral, you know, being put on a ship and set a fire and pushed out to sea, that's actually accurate.

Yeah. That's one way they did it. They also, yeah, the other way would be that they entombed you in an earthen barrow, which is like a mound. It was called mounding. Right. So the thing is, if you were a thrall, let's say you had been captured in battle and taken back to Scandinavia and you were a servant to this guy, especially a particularly useful

servant, you would probably be murdered and entombed in the thrall or in the barrow. Yeah. The deal there was they believed in a life after death, whether it was like an eternal life they don't really know or just like a temporary life until you get to your old life, but they definitely believed that you did not just die. So that's why they would send you along with maybe your favorite slave or your possessions and they were your cat. They would bury you with your clothes on and maybe with your, your acts and they would

send you along with these things that they think you would need in the following life to go iViking. Right. You know, there was another stratified class almost in Viking warrior culture. And there was this little subgroup that the guy who called for this podcast mentioned, Berserkers. Yes. So these guys, right?

You want to talk about Berserkers? Yeah. If you've seen the movie Clerks, did you see Clerks? Yeah. Remember Silent Bob's cousin Olaf from Russia. He sang a metal, he was in a Russian metal band and he had a song called Berserker. I don't remember that. That was the first time I'd heard Berserker and we can't say the lyrics because they're

really filthy. Are they? No. Okay. Well, what he was talking about were this, this group of warriors that were, they think that they grew out of a bear cult, like these people worship bears. They were nuts. They, during battle especially they would go nuts.

They would, it was told in the sagas that they would take on, they would either become a bear or a wolf or something like that, they would shape ship or else they would take on the qualities of a bear like they would go into battle naked or shirtless or at the very least armorless. They would cut five people's heads off at once with one swing of an axe. They couldn't feel pain supposedly. They would scream a lot, their eyes were kind of glazed over. Part of the problem was is they would get into such a war frenzy, a battle frenzy that

if you were near them, even if you were on their side, they'd kill you just as soon as they would kill somebody else. And as the guy said, they do think that this bear cult that went Berserk, the Berserkers, were on mushrooms during battle. That may be the case. Can you imagine that? So you would take this regular already super badass warrior viking, then jack him up on magic mushrooms and give him an axe, give him an axe and tell him to like take his clothes

off and wear like a bear skin and it was, that was it, it was all over. I've read a little bit more about them and what's weird is these same guys, they also think it's possible that this cult was largely made up of the mentally ill or else maybe a little slow. Wow. Yeah. The same guys would also go Berserk during like physical labor sometimes too. Oh, really?

You just didn't want to hang out with the Berserkers basically, you wanted to be in battle with them, but like 50 meters to the left or the right, nowhere near them. Yeah, I would go in way behind there. I would drag up the rear behind the Berserkers. I'm right behind you. Also saw another theory that they weren't in fact on magic mushrooms, but they drank heavily and got wasted basically on me before battle too. Huh.

Wouldn't that slow you down though? I would think so, but it would also kind of make you somewhat impervious to pain and not care as much and yeah, I've gone Berserker on a Friday night. Yeah. Yeah. I subscribe to the mushroom theory for two reasons. One, it's awesome. Two, ritual use of mushrooms in certain Scandinavian cults is known for a fact, so it's entirely

possible these guys were shrooming. So David D from Waterloo. That's what initially piqued my interest and that's why we did this podcast. So yeah, Josh says yes, okay, Chuck. These guys weren't all Berserk, right? No, the Vikings and the Scandinavian cultures that came from actually were pretty good at democracy. Yeah.

Supposedly the common farmer would have just as much say in matters viking as the higher ups. Right. They had assemblies. I don't know if they were annual or more frequent, but they had scheduled assemblies where everybody got together, talked about matters of the day, divided land, and they called them things because I think they just couldn't think of the word every time, right? Maybe they were a little slow.

And there was a guy, I love this part, there was a guy who was in charge of running the meetings. He was an impartial judge and they called him the lawmaker. Right. So he was the lawmaker of the thing, pretty generic stuff, primitive democracy you could call it. Yes. And they actually extended this downward to lands that they conquered.

These guys made it a lot further south than I realized. Did you know all this? No, I didn't. As far as going through Europe? Yeah. And the Vikings conquered a town called Ulster, a Danish Viking did in 839 and crowned himself king and founded what is now the town of Dublin. Did you know that?

I did not know that until I read this. They said they actually laid siege to Paris at some point. They controlled part of England, half of England from the late 19th century to the 11th century, Danish Vikings. And they struck a deal with France. With Frederick the Simple. Yeah. Charles the Simple.

Charles the Simple. You don't want your king to be called the Simple. No. Especially when the Viking leader was named Rallo. So they were causing a lot of problems with the Franks and so Charles the Simple, poor thing, sat down with Rallo and struck a deal and said, hey, why don't you guys leave us alone and convert to Christianity and I'll give you Normandy. And they said okay.

They said yeah. Sure. And Frederick the Simple went, that was easy. Charles the Simple. Yeah. He's a Simple guy. Yeah. And like we said, the Vikings were, they readily converted to Christianity.

These lands that they conquered and held for centuries and they, especially in Ireland and England, the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons would defeat the Vikings and then more Vikings would come in and defeat whoever. So it changed hands pretty much constantly. And through this interaction, even though it was fighting, Vikings eventually became absorbed into these local areas. They brought their customs but took on new customs and the whole Melange or the whole area of Ireland, England, France is a Melange actually of Nordic culture and Southern European

culture. Yeah. I didn't know that. I had no idea. I learned a lot with this one. And they actually had trading routes all the way down in North Africa. Really? Yeah, they did.

And Chuck, we've talked about this before. You know that they settled North America. Well, of course, Leif Erickson, Eric the Red. Right. Eric the Red, he was exiled for murder. Yeah. This is another thing that they probably did at the things. They tried people.

Eric the Red was accused of murder. He was convicted so they exiled him. He took a bunch of guys with him and went from Iceland over to Greenland. Right. His son was born there, Leif Erickson, son of Eric, right? Yeah. And you know, I'm going to travel even further west and he ended up in Newfoundland. This is just part of the oral tradition until the 1960s when an archaeologist discovered

the traces of this, of Leif Erickson's Viking settlement in Newfoundland. He found a horned helmet. Right. He's like, oh, it's a Viking. Right, of course. Right. So, yeah, they were all over the place. Yes.

And if they sound like all they did was rape and pillage and plunder, they did a lot of that, but not so much any more than anyone else at the time. That was just kind of the action of the time, but they were just so much better at it than anyone else. They got this rep. But they also, Josh, had entertainment. Did you know that? I did not.

Chuck Lay it on me. They did. They socialized and when they socialized, it was generally competitions because they were clearly big on competing or there was cutting someone's head off. Improving themselves. Yeah. So, they would compete in friendly games like running and wrestling and horseback riding. They had acrobats and entertainers and poem tellers and tall tail tellers and they actually

ice skated. What? They did. They made ice skates out of animal bones and played a game on the ice skates similar to hurling, which I looked at hurling or curling, hurling, hurling is sort of like the best I can say is it looks sort of like a cross between rugby and field hockey on ice. I think it was on ice because you had a stick and you hit in a ball toward a net. So maybe it was the first ice hockey or highlight.

No, nothing to do with hotline. Okay. Yeah. So, they were into all sorts of games. They actually had a game called Kingie bat, which was like ping pong, except they use shields. What? So, they would use a shield to hit like a ball back and forth over, I don't know if

it was a net or just back and forth on some surface. But they potentially invented ice hockey and ping pong. Wow. How about that? That is something. Speaking of Viking culture, Chuck, Vikings made it into our culture, popular culture. Big time. Quite a bit.

Obviously, you got Thor, the Marvel superhero. Yeah. One of my favorites of all time. Soon to be a movie next year. Yeah. Plus, you already made at least one appearance in Adventures in babysitting. Oh, I didn't see that movie. Hey, played the mechanic.

Oh, really? Very interesting. Yeah. Kenneth Branagh was making that movie, Anthony Hopkins plays Odin and some Australian guy plays Thor. Okay. He didn't look very thorny though when I looked at the pictures. No.

I'm sure they're going to deck him out and give him long blonde hair. Oh, actually, I meant to mention that. Apparently, some of them used to bleach their hair blonde because I guess it was more intimidating. So that is not a myth. So where else popular culture? Led Zeppelin? Can we, we can't not talk about Led Zeppelin. You go ahead.

Well, anyone's ever seen song remains the same, obviously, or listened to some Zeppelin songs knows that they were big on aside from Lord of the Rings, Valhalla, Valkyrie, that kind of thing. Hammer of the Gods. Hammer of the Gods was the name of their biography. Did you ever read that? No. Crazy.

And the immigrant song is the most clear example after the famous whale at the beginning. You'll hear lyrics like, we come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow. Hammer of the Gods will drive our ships to land. To fight the horde, singing cry, Valhalla, I am coming. So I always thought that song is about Appalachians. No. That is Vikings.

Huh. Yeah. Robert Plant was big into that. And Spike TV, have you heard of the show Deadliest Warriors? I have, actually. It's pretty cool. They pit like warriors against each other. Right.

And the Vikings actually in their scenario lost to the samurai. I could see that. Barely, though. So are these Shaolin monks, Samurais, Shaolin monks in there? But I know they said the samurai won in a squeaker because they were a little bit more disciplined in the crazy eye Viking action. I wonder if they took mushrooms for that show. I don't know.

Huh. And I think that's it. Oh, actually I got a couple of more myths, if you want to hear them. I do. Vikings were not dirty. They have the reputation of being dirty, filthy people. They actually bathed once a week, which was a lot for back then. Yeah, it definitely is.

And they wash their face every day, apparently. Wow. So you were just saying before the podcast, you're the cleanest person that we know. Right. You were the Vikings. I'm cleaner than a Viking, for sure. Well, sure. And they did not drink from the skulls of the conquered.

That was a mistranslation, apparently, into Latin. And they apparently would drink mead from a horn occasionally as like a ritual. But ordinarily they would just drink from a mug. That's it for the Vikings, Chuck, for real. Nice additional research. Appreciate that. And if you want to learn a little more, see some cool picks, including some actual swords, which I thought was pretty cool.

What about you, Chuck? Loved it. You could type Vikings into the handysearchbar at howstuffworks.com, which leads us to listener mail. Not quite yet, Josh. You always do that. I'm teasing. Actually, I'm not teasing.

We just want to plug, we did a little interview with the dude named Wayne in Omaha, Nebraska. Yes, Worlds of Wayne. Worlds of Wayne podcast, which he interviews artists and musicians and cool people. So I don't know why he called us, but he did. And it's actually already up. So if you want to hear a pretty fun interview with us, you can go to worldsofwayne.libsyn.com or Josh said you can just Google Worlds of Wayne and that's the first thing that comes up.

So apparently there's no store called Worlds of Wayne, which is good. And it's episode 113 and you'll see our big logo there and click on it. It's kind of a cool, fun little interview. Ta-da. Now listener mail, right? Yes. Okay. So Josh, I'm going to call this another list of firsts from Patrick.

Okay. Is our super fan Patrick compiles his list of firsts in our show, which I think are kind of cool. Oh yeah. Because I wouldn't take that guy. He is. The first podcast, of course, was how grass and lean works. And was that you and Paulette?

Yeah. And is that accurate? I don't remember. Okay. That was like 200 episodes ago. I know. Well, we're close to that actually. The first podcast with Candice Gibson was now Candice Keener was how altruism works.

First podcast with me. Remember, does gum stay in your stomach? I thought it was orange juice toothpaste. That was it. It was one of those two. Patrick, we might have to take issue with your sets, buddy. First mention of fight or flight response was how hysterical strength works. That was a great one.

First podcast with three people, how contagious yawning works. First time Josh mentions being born in Ohio, how the eye of the tornado works. No. That's what he says. Wow. First bleeped out swear word. First of many. How swearing works, obviously.

Awesome. First mention of Josh and Chuck's pets are dogs the shark's favorite meal. First podcast over 10 minutes. How can a cat scuba dive? Remember scuba cat, sure. First over 20 is quitting smoking contagious. First over 30, how lobotomies work and recently the first over 40, how witchcraft works. And then just a couple of more.

Our first listener mail was issued in how Einstein's brain works. And the first podcast that Patrick listened to is the world going to end in 2012. Awesome. I love the first. Those are some great stats. This is the first one in the new room. Yeah, make a note, Patrick. And then we'll have the first in the awesome studio.

I don't like this room at all. Yeah. Like my neck feels weird. I'm on the opposite side. Everything's wrong. I know. I'm very out of sorts. Well, if you have a story about going berserk, we would love to hear it.

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