The Ancients - Viking Origins: The Nordic Iron Age

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

Two thousand years ago, centuries before the Vikings, there was another Scandinavia. An Iron Age world.Tristan Hughes is joined by Dr Marianne Hem Eriksen to uncover the deep roots of the seafaring North, journeying through a forgotten world of elite halls, Roman encounters, and ancient burial rites.MOREIron Age BritainListen on AppleListen on SpotifyIron Age IrelandListen on AppleListen on SpotifyPresented by Tristan Hughes. Produced and edited by Aidan Lonergan. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Want even MORE Ancients? Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS ad-free, early access podcasts AND exclusive subscriber-only Ancients episodes. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. 2,000 years ago, centuries before the Vikings, there was another Scandinavia. An Iron Age world of shifting settlements, changing burial rights, growing hierarchy, and far-reaching contacts was already taking shape long before the long ships ever set sail. The Viking Age was still centuries away, but the societies that would give rise to it were already developing trade connections, maritime skills, and warrior ideologies that would later shape the medieval north. So how should we understand this much longer story?

What is archaeology revealing about life in Iron Age Scandinavia before the Vikings? To answer that and more, today on the ancients I'm joined by Dr. Marianne Hem Erickson, research professor of Viking studies at the National Museum of Denmark. Together, we're travelling back through the long Nordic Iron Age to explore the societies, beliefs, technologies and networks of Scandinavia's deep past, from Bronze Age legacies and Roman contact to elite drinking halls, burial customs and the deep roots of the seafaring north. Marian, it is great to have you on the podcast. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much.

Now, I'm sorry, I have to start with the word Viking. Vikings and the question, who really were the first Vikings? Interesting question. Impossible to answer, obviously. I remember when I was in undergrad, I was lucky enough to have a lecture called Neil Price. He's a quite prominent Viking archaeologist, some of you may have heard of, and is now a good friend. And I remember in one of his first lectures, he had a slide with a picture of a bunch of warriors and a Viking ship. And there was a speech bubble. And the speech bubble said,

Hurry up, lads, or we'll miss the Viking age. And it was a great intro to problematize that the terms we use for the past, right, they come from us. It's a kind of retrospective exercise. So the Vikings didn't know that they lived in the Viking age, et cetera. And that really goes for all periods. So to say who were the first Vikings is kind of an impossible exercise. size. And to just problematize further, they also didn't necessarily refer to themselves

as the Vikings. But if you want to ask me, when do I think the Viking Age started? I think the traditional narrative of, you know, the whatever June 793 with the attack of Lindisfarne is probably not accurate. And it might have been a bit before. We can get into that. 793 is a bit too modern for us on the ancients, I must admit. But can we explore If we go back into ancient times, kind of learn more about the story about how these so-called Vikings and the Viking Age came to be by exploring the archaeology, by exploring what we know about Scandinavia back,

let's say roughly some 2,000 years ago, so we can go back into ancient times. Absolutely we can. So we often call the Iron Age of Scandinavia the long Nordic Iron Age, because it is a very, very long period after the end of the Bronze Age. and started at 500 common era, CE. And at least in parts of Scandinavian archaeology, we actually include the Viking Age in the Iron Age, in the long Iron Age.

It's seen as the final period of the Iron Age, and it's seen as the final period of prehistory. And that's because in Scandinavia, we didn't have the conversion to Christianity. The Romans never made it that far north, so we didn't have writing systems except for the runes, you know, runic inscriptions are short and formulaic. So the iron age, long iron age, is actually kind of one long continuum, obviously full of transitions and change. It was not static,

but it is one kind of deep slice of prehistory and the final part of prehistory in our chronology. So how long roughly, I know you can't give exact dates, but how long roughly, what are the traditional kind of the start and endpoints that scholars put on the Iron Age in Scandinavia, how large a period of time are we talking? So about 1,500 years, I'd say. So 500 BCE until the end of the Viking Age, I'd say. So let's say 1050 CE. And when we're talking about Iron Age Scandinavia, should we be thinking the same as today, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, that area?

Excluding Finland, I think. So Finnish is a different language group. So outside of the Scandinavian sphere, but as I'd say, for, East, the modern nation states of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. And so roughly 500 BC, BC, if you say that that's kind of the point when the Iron Age roughly begins in Scandinavia, what transitions, what changes do you see in the archaeology around that time? The end of the Bronze Age famously came with this collapse in these widespread networks of bronze and bronze exchange, right? So to make bronze, you need copper and tin. I'm sure you cover this

in the previous episode on the Bronze Age, which needed to facilitate these wide networks of contact and exchange. And then something happens, the bronze networks fall, and with them also the local elites that were controlling the import of bronze to Scandinavia probably lost a lot of their prominence. From the late Bronze Age onwards, you no longer have mound burial, monumental mound burials, so in the later parts of the Bronze Age,

cremation became ubiquitous. And in that transition into the first part of the Iron Age, which we call a pre-Roman Iron Age, so 500 BCE to year zero, we have quite a shift in material culture in the sense that it's a gradual transition through the late Bronze Age, but there is no longer much monumentality in any form of material culture. So burials are, as I said, they burn the bodies, They place parts of the burnt bones into simple containers like urns or even just in little pits. There's no or very limited exterior marking of the burials and there are very few or no grave goods. So these new burial field cemeteries, they seem to be expressing more collective identities and perhaps kinship groups and household groups rather than individual prominence. So in death all seem the same.

similar things are happening with the architecture you no longer have. I'm painting with a broad brush here, but you no longer have these standout larger houses. House sizes standardize, they are quite small, and so you're kind of lacking expression of hierarchy in the archaeology. And that has been connected possibly to the introduction of iron, which was also a slow and gradual process. But unlike bronze, where you needed these large-scale networks in order to occur and create bronze, iron could be extracted locally. Took up a couple of centuries before that iron production actually really geared up. But it has been denoted as potentially a kind of greed equalizer because it was more self-sufficient in local communities could create the iron they needed rather than export this exotic and precious material. Do we think in Scandinavia there are new people,

coming in, or is it the same people? But as you say, it's just the collapse of the kind of the copper and the tin and the bronze trade. That means that they have to rethink their kind of societal structures in that time of change. And it is still the same people. We think it's largely the same people. Obviously, people have moved at all times. So if you look at genetic history, I'm not a geneticist, so I will not try to represent genetic history in any precise manner. But of course, there are always admixture events, as they would call it. But, you know, there are flows. of people coming and going, so I'm not saying it was static. But I think largely, yes, it was a continuation of the same societies and the same people as in the Bronze Age. What is happening

on the continent, though, does influence Scandinavia as well. And so what we have is a major new player in Central Europe, which are the Celts. So we start getting exotic artifacts in South Scandinavia as the pre-Roman Iron Age progresses. Like, artifacts from the Etruscan areas, for instance, end up in Denmark in particular. So there seems to be lots of cultural contact. And particularly from the Danish side of things, there's also some connections to Eastern Europe, to Poland. So it's, I guess, the conventional narrative was that this was a very dark period. You have the kind of the glory of the Bronze Age.

and then you get into this more eagulitarian and modest pre-Roman Iron Age. There was also conventionally a story about climate change that was seen as very catastrophic. And there was climate change, but it was probably not as severe as earlier narratives wanted to portray it. There was a kind of the story of this dark time of isolation. And that doesn't seem to be the case at all. We were still interconnected, but it was expressed in a different way. Let's focus on that kind of pre-Roman Iron Age. so as you say, roughly 500 BC to about zero or one, as we should say.

Overall, in Scandinavia, what should we be thinking about kind of the power structures? Should we be thinking of a lot of unity across the land or very much dispersed communal groups, each with their kind of own distinct identity, so to speak? I think probably the latter in that this is way before the nation states of Denmark, Sweden or Norway existed. So probably the region, the landscape was quite important. And of course, Scandinavia is also very varied geographically. And so, for instance, in Norway, where I come from, I'm in a region originally, the topography is extremely challenging.

You have mountain ranges that divide little valleys that naturally creates a lot of boundaries in the landscape and may have helped produce, co-produce and generate these regional kind of identities, interconnected. And I think that is broadly similar for southern Scandinavia, although less challenging topography. But I think that people were probably what dispersed in South Scandinavia, you start getting hamlets and villages. So they were dwelling more collectively. In central Scandinavia, in Norway and Sweden, you could have settlements that were kilometers apart. So they were networked. They were probably in kinship alliances and that sort of thing, but quite low population and quite isolated. And do we have any insight into kind of the power

structures of these various settlements that, as you say, could be divided, could be separated by quite a distance from each other? So the fact that they don't express hierarchy in monuments and furnished burials does, of course, not mean that no hierarchy, existed. And some have argued, kind of conversely, that they didn't need to express hierarchy in large monuments because it was understood who the rulers were, the powerful people were. I think it was probably more collective. We would traditionally say these are tribal societies, perhaps kind of petty chieftains. This is prior to any kind of kingdom. What we seem to have is a system, for instance, of what we call wandering settlements, which means that rather than

leader ideas where you own a plot of land and you build your house on that land and you rebuild and rebuild and rebuild as a kind of, this is an estate, this is a territory that is owned by this family or these people. In the pre-Roman Iron Age, the settlements are wandering in the sense that they probably stand for one generation. So it seems like people built a house to live there to have children, whatever, living their lives. But once that generation was done, they would move and build a new house. And that's been seen as possibly reflecting a kind of collective reorganization of land and that the idea of private property in landholding actually didn't exist yet. So it's difficult to know how hierarchical was this, was there a chief in charge or not. In the

last 10 or 20 years, an archaeological theory, so in the interpretive frameworks that we use, anarchism has been an anarchic theory, has been quite prominent. And there are those who will say, is it us that's kind of obsessed with seeing chieftains and power structures everywhere? And perhaps they were living in a more communal, collective way. But if there is that movement across Scandinavia, as it seems to be in the early Iron Age, Marianne, do we think that there's evidence of kind of at least roughly some sort of overarching culture, whether it be with a language or beliefs that, you know, at least generally speaking, people all across Scandinavia, you know, they could understand one another in those kind of overarching aspects.

Yeah. I'm among those who think that Scandinavia was one cultural sphere. I think archaeology as a discipline, you know, it emerged during national romanticism. And so as many of the historical disciplines. Originally it was there to serve a purpose of telling national stories and produce identities, whether it was English history or French history or Swedish history. So I think there has been a little bit of a tendency for silo thinking in archaeology conventionally speaking, where the national or even regional identity became really important in the narratives, because that was the role telling our story and the story of our identity. And I think that's created a little bit of skepticism into seeing the cross-regional period. But in my research, I often work with Scandinavia

as a whole. That means sometimes sacrificing the nuance, because of course there are regional differences, because I was just talking about how these landscapes would generate kind of different little communities. But if you accept that was the case, there is still a shared way of burying your dead, shared architecture and ways of living, shared forms of dress, presumably shared language, not without dialects and differences, but still inter-understandable. As the three Scandinavian languages are still today, we can still speak our own languages and understand each other. So I'm among those who think, yes, there was probably a kind of cultural package that was shared. Let's explore certain aspects of that now, and let's go into the settlements themselves. And we can start in the early Iron Age and then

explore if there are any kind of clear changes that we see archaeologically in the later Iron Age period, the post-Roman interactions, and we'll get to the Romans as well in a bit. But, Marian, give us a picture. What do we think from the archaeology that a typical settlement in Iron Age Scandinavia looks like? So, as I said, in the earlier parts, in the pre-Roman Iron Age, it seems that the houses were quite small and one generation of lengths. The complexity of the household was probably a little bit reduced. This is before we have lots of, lots of some mobility and travel. This is before we have outsider groups coming in as we get later in the Iron Age and possibly most famously in the Viking Age. Houses were small. They were conventionally,

we think, divided into two parts, an animal buyer where the animals lived and a dwelling buyer for the humans. So it means that humans and animals were living under the same roof. There will have been seasonal changes when the animals were out grazing, etc. But generally, a kind of intimate relationship between humans and animals that's quite foreign to many of us today who live in a time of industrial farming and quite remote

from the animals that we put on our plate in need, perhaps. So I think that had lots of consequences in terms of the sensory experience of living in these houses, the sounds and the smells. You would obviously have a household of some variation.

We don't know, really. People often just assume that the idea of marriage, for instance, existed in deeper history, we talk about marriage all the time. We don't actually know whether people would pair up for life. We don't know what their moral codes around sexuality and monogamy. And if you go to anthropology and ethnography, right, there are lots of different ways to organize family lives. So sometimes they think that we project the idea of the nuclear family a bit too easily onto the past. And it may have been more

complicated than that. Also because things like maternal mortality was presumably very high, as it is in other pre-industrial societies. So I don't think it's unlikely that some people would at least then remarry, I'm saying remarry with quotation marks here, because they would perhaps lose their first spouse or partner in childbirth or in other kinds of accidents. Life was probably harsh and quite short for the earlier parts of the Iron Age. I think we might expect It's difficult to say anything about life expectancy for the very earliest part because everyone was cremated, so you don't have this chal lethal evidence. But let's say, you know, 40 was probably quite old for many people throughout this long period, also including the Viking Age. That was probably, you know, I'm turning 41 now, so I might be looking kind of sunset in the horizon if I was living in the periods.

children will naturally have occurred, again, depending on how they organized sexual partners. That might have been just our children, or it might have been our children and your children and bonus children and the kind of more broad way of living. Here in Britain, if someone mentions a nine-age settlement and an age house, we're naturally going to think round, okay? The roundhouse. But is that the case in Scandinavia? Do we know much about these early houses that they would have lived in?

Should we be thinking round houses or something different? Something different. We do not have the round tradition at all in these areas, except I should say, just so it is mentioned that we also in the North in the Arctic, we also, of course, have Sami populations, or what are the predecessors of the Sami? And they have a rounder architecture. But since we're now focusing on the kind of the pre-Nors, Scandinavian populations, their houses were rectangular.

In the beginning of the Iron Age, more towards the, if not square, than at least quite short rectangles. And then they become the longhouses, the perhaps more famous longhouses of the later periods and then up to including the Viking Age. So they are trestle-built, the roof is carried by posts.

They have waddle and daub walls, perhaps thatched roofs or wooden roofs, or wooden roofs built entirely inorganic materials, perhaps with some stones for building foundations. So also susceptible to fires, for instance. And so in these earlier settlements of the early Iron Age, should we be imagining with these settlements, as you mentioned already, this idea of maybe one, two or three families, as you say, men, women, children in one settlement, and not anything larger than that. That could resemble anything like a proto town or anything like that.

So in southern Scandinavian Denmark, there are aggregate houses, so in Little Hamlets, where each house may have one household, but they're living more collectively, whereas, as I mentioned in other areas, there's much more dispersed settlements. When we get a bit further into the Iron Age, perhaps during the late Roman Iron Age, so let's say 4th century, AD or CE, then we get houses of such a size, The long houses are getting longer and longer and longer, that I think, I have at least argued, we are probably looking at multiple households within one house. So we're beyond a nuclear family. And do we have evidence? So you see the settlements, you see the buildings themselves getting larger, the domestic buildings. Do you have any evidence of communal buildings as well,

that sometimes we associate with our age societies, almost like a drinking hall or something similar from that time period? Drinking halls, which are probably not communal, by the way. They're probably owned and controlled by the elites. Ah, okay. They come in, I think, as quite a direct influence from the Romans. So then we're into the Roman

period. So just to answer your question first and then we can get into the drinking halls, if you wish, I think in the earlier periods, there is no communal architecture. It is very based around the domestic houses and the fields and the agricultural way of life rather than having, no, there are no inns, there are no guest houses, there are no assembly halls. There is nothing except the Longhouse, which is why I think that was quite a central institution

in Scandinavia for a really long time period. I could have mentioned, too, that the Longhouse tradition, it didn't start in the pre-Roman Iron Age, it starts in the Bronze Age. And the basic architectural form survived in Scandinavia for about 3,000 years, which I I find absolutely fascinating. Come on then, you can't leave us on, with that other part of your answer unfinished, that emergence in that later period of those bigger communal structures. I mean, I just said drinking halls because I couldn't think of any other words for it. But then you've said that actually we do have these things archaeologically,

which seem to be Iron Age drinking halls in Scandinavia. Absolutely, we do. Towards the end of the pre-Roman Iron Age, there's a new player in Europe, and that is, of course, with the emergence of the Roman Empire. And that has an influence way north of the Limus, way north of the Roman frontiers as well. So although the Romans never made it that far, the Roman Empire had a profound effect.

And one of the most tangible examples is actually the innovation of the hall building and the import of Roman drinking culture. So not to say that they didn't have alcohol, before that in Scandinavia, surely they did. People have always been interested in alcohol, I think. Some people even connect the innovation of agriculture to the Neolithic Revolution to being able to produce alcohol.

But it takes on a different form. So the encounters with the Roman Empire would have been through trade exchange, but also actually some Scandinavians serving in the Roman army, which I've always, by the way, found really fascinating, because coming from these very dispersed, quite modest societies, and then coming to somewhere like Rome, it must have been impossible to take in, and it must have been impossible to come back to Scandinavia afterwards and try to explain what you'd seen. I've often thought about them coming back into their local communities and trying to explain something like a triumph or the Roman Senate. And how do you explain that when people are living in such a different world and such a different way of life? One of the things they definitely picked up through trades, just knowledge exchange, or through living in the Roman Empire for a bit, was the drinking culture. And so they start bringing in these sets of Roman glass and

caldrons and ladles that were used for wine in the Roman Empire, presumably used for beer or maybe mead in the homelands. And that becomes a kind of distinguishing feature in some burial, so a kind of rich exotica that might mark out some people as different. And where were they drinking all this alcohol in the hall? So the halls were probably built and controlled by the elites, because we are also seeing at this time increased hierarchies and hierarchization again. And the hall buildings became a place for, in addition to perhaps being the dwelling of the leading family,

it also became a space for representation and for feasting. And that has been connected to the idea of gift exchange, that in the Mossian sense. So you may know from different cultures that to give gifts to others can be a way of creating alliances but also creating debts. And to be able to offer your warriors,

say you're a petty chief somewhere in Jutland and you are able to invite your warrior retinue, the people that you want fighting for you and on your side, to a lavish feast where they can have lots of food and lots of beer. And they can never really, pay that. So this is part of the kind of creating a loyalty bond. There's an anthropologist called

Michael Dietler who would say that feasting is a way of actually making other people literally devour the gift that you're giving. And so they're kind of internalizing that social debt into their bodies, which I think is a fascinating thought. Of course, there will have been other things like the gift exchange of weapons and other things that would tie people together, both people that were subordinate to you and perhaps also creating alliances with people that were on the same rank. So can you see, as we've also then talked about the earlier period as well, clearly in the archaeology a sense of significant cultural evolution over those centuries. You see Rome seems to be a big part in this, but throughout Scandinavia at that time, clear shifts in the cultural

and how people were living? There are absolutely clear shifts. There's also continuity. And I also like to complicate the term cultural evolution, because it evokes an image in the mind. I'm not saying you meant this, but it evokes an image in the mind of societies going from complex and primitive in this kind of unilinearal development into social complexity. Whereas what we've just seen, starting with the Bronze Age, where there were these vast global networks and elites controlling it, and then that collapsed. and then there was a more quiet, perhaps, egalitarian period, and then hierarchization starts again. And I think that's more a way of thinking is ebbs and flows. So that's how I would say that.

In terms of the transition or trajectory towards what would later become Viking raids and kingdoms and ultimately state consolidation, yes, I do think there's both changing continuity in the political and social structures that lead to that. So something I think does happen during the Roman Iron Age is that for the Germanic tribes, I'm now counting Scandinavia as part of the German tribes, they're sitting outside the Roman Empire. They have a complicated relationship with the Roman Empire. The people living closest are often in violent conflict with the Roman Empire, whereas further away,

there could be easier to do trade and exchange, etc. It fuels both domestic political upheaval and perhaps more need for power consolidation, more wish for power consolidation among the tribes. But it also leads to what we often call the migration periods where these Germanic tribes are putting lots of pressure on the Roman Empire because they are on the move. That's why it's called the migration period. You have the, you know, these groups that we know from, you know, the so-called barbaric invasions of Rome, the Franks and the Goths and the Goths and the Alps and the Alpses Al-a-Mani, and there's a whole plethora of these Germanic tribes, some coming from Central Europe and some coming from further north.

And they are keeping an eye on what's happening in the Roman Empire. They're quite opportunistic. And when there's political instability, they start pressuring the borders and they start coming in. Interestingly, a lot of these Germanic groups trace their origin, whether ideally or realistically, to Scandinavia. So from around 500, we start having written sources about them saying that they tell a narrative that they're from Scanzah, which we think is Scandinavia. A lot of the groups also trace their mythological origin to Odin or Vodon, the god. And that is absolutely both a kind of migratory movement and political pressure in a kind of small-scale way. but it's also paving the way, I think, for new ways of thinking power in Scandinavia as well. Right, well, let's go on to something else then.

In regards to burial in Scandinavia, you mentioned cremation in the Iron Age, but do we have many burials surviving from this period that give us more insights into everyday life and how people lived as we go further on? I mean, do we have a rich burial record from Iron Age Scandinavia? after the pre-Roman Ion age, when you get into the Roman age proper during the time of the Roman Empire, inhumation makes a comeback. And that means that we have more osteological information, so information from the bodies and the skeletons. So you kind of more lived life, if you will. But there is also, because probably of that increased hierarchy, there is also more furnished burials, again, with the Roman exotica or other kind of, rich artifacts. So we get in some ways a larger evidentiary basis. What's interesting in terms of mortuary practice is that it actually stays really varied from then on. Again, I'm painting with the broad brush. There are regions that look different, but broadly speaking,

cremation and inhumation will now coexist for the next thousand years, basically for the first millennium proper. In some areas, cremation is more normal. In some areas, inhumation on bird bodies is more normal. But they both coexist, which means there are lots of ways to treat a dead body. We haven't touched on it yet, but we also, of course, have from the late Bronze Age pre-Roman Iron Age onwards, the bog bodies, which we also have in Britain, etc. Shall we start with the bog bodies then at the beginning? So what do we know about the bog bodies when we get to the Iron Age in Scandinavia? We have this really rich set of material. from Northern Europe in general

of this idea of let's treat somebody's very different to whatever is the customary norm in our communities which will vary depending on where we are in time and place

and let's lower them into bogs to where they are very well preserved anyone who's seen lingo man or tallen man I think they are mesmerizing because you are absolutely

face to face in the past with the past in a way that you are rarely. Some of them using the facial features are still there. It's a really striking set of material. And the question is why were some people treated like that? And I mean, the conventional narratives would be, you know, some would say they are criminals or I'm saying this with quotes, but deviant in some way,

including sexual deviancy, would be a kind of more conventional, perhaps somewhat outdated interpretation now. Or the human sacrifice? Or, is it just another variation of burial practice? I don't think there's one monocausal explanation. Some of them have seen trauma and violence. Some of them haven't. Even the ones where there is no sign of trauma on the bodies, they're sometimes found with, particularly in Denmark, with noisus, around their necks, etc. So there seems to be symbolism of violence occurring. And from the, let's say with the bog bodies in particular, first of all, do we have evidence of men and women? and maybe even children surviving as well,

that can give us insights into kind of those aspects of society, their lives? I'm not aware of any children, bog bodies, I have to say. That doesn't mean they might not exist on the top of my hand. But yes, there are some women as well. There's also lots of other things that often kind of become a bit overlooked because the bog bodies themselves are so fascinating. So from Denmark and I believe also Northern Germany, you have braids of hair.

So a part of the body, not necessarily from a dead person, could be from a living person, but these elaborate braids of hair that have been lowered into the bogs as some sort of deposition or offering. You have butter, which may be a practical way of storing

and creating butter, but is also interesting. You have dress, but without the body itself. And you also, particularly from the Roman period onwards, weapons deposited on moss in the bogs. So I think, yes, we do get some glimpses of at least biological men and women and their health from the bog bodies, etc. But we also, through the

artifacts, we also get lots of ideas of, yes, how people dress the dyes that they use to color the textiles, food stuffs, etc. I was going to ask about that next, like kind of textiles and food, do we know much about that key aspect? That's so easy to overlook. Let's say in that earlier period of the Iron Age. The interesting thing, which I've learned from my colleagues here at the National Museum, where there's textile research is very strong, is that, for instance, in the earlier periods, there seems to be no gendered difference in dress. So it seems like men and women actually wore these same garments. There's a sheepskin cape type that they know from a couple of the bog finds that's associated both with biological men and biological women,

the garments themselves, the part of the dress seem to be identical. So that doesn't mean that gender was not important to them or biological sex wasn't important to them, but they don't seem to mark that very clearly in the pre-Romanian age in the way that people dress, which I find absolutely fascinating. And then the colours and the dyes, that comes in increasingly through the the long iron age, I believe. So I believe there's a shift towards the end of the pre-Roman iron age. Before that, it seems like most of them were quite naturally coloured, and then they start experimenting more with different kinds of colour, including some quite glaring colours to our view, perhaps. By natural colours, what do you mean, kind of like the colour of a deer hide, or

I don't know if they're using sheep as well and leather, those kind of natural browns and greys and the like. Exactly, from wall and plant fibres, etc. And then a wider repertoire comes in when they explore other kinds of plant dyes, etc. We did in documentary about the Picts last year, an iron age Scotland, and actually going back into the Stone Age as well, many thousands of years earlier. The use of iron, but not as a metal material, hematite, the blood red colour that you get from iron. Do we see them using red as well, potentially? They use red. I don't know if it's from iron. I know that they use different types of plant dyes and a quite wide repertoire of them. And they also mix some of them together to create different kinds of colours. So yeah, red is definitely, and particularly

when you get up to the Viking Age, really red and yellow are among the quite prominent colours of that time. Well, yes, I mean, let's move on to that kind of that second stage again then. So kind of the post-Roman or the Roman period onwards, you mentioned with the earlier Iron Age how there doesn't seem to be any difference in the clothing they're wearing and so on and so forth. I'm guessing when we get to this later period, is it quite different in the surviving record? In terms of a dormant of the body, yes. When we get into the late Iron Age, there seems to be a quite standardized set. I have to caveat this because, of course, we're basing this on the burial record,

and the burial record is partial. I said earlier that, you know, we say that history is written by the victors and that that can go for archaeology as well. there are some people in, when we get into like a proper hierarchized society, a quite socially stratified society as late Aryan age was, there's some people that are buried in ways that archaeologists recognize and have been interested in. And that is the monumental mounds. And that's often the high status people. So they are the ones that conventionally would also unearth the most precious artifacts, which the antiquarians were mostly interested in. So our record is a little bit biased. But for the elites, yes, we have. have an idea of how they dressed, and at least in death, not necessarily in life, but at least in death they're staged with a quite strict repertoire of dress. So women's dress, particularly for the Viking age, but also from the periods before, just with some changes, would be two sets of brooches that were attached in some way on the shoulders, perhaps, and then long dress like garments with some sort of undershirt.

between the broochers there could be strings of beads of different kinds. In earlier periods you could also have a central brooch or just one large, often exaggerated, size brooch for women's dress. So there was a, without going into too much detail, but there was clearly like a set way of presenting the female body. Men's bodies also were adorned, but perhaps a bit more with the sword and the weapon set, at least again in death, being kind of an integral part and extension of the body.

And that's been an interesting line of research talking again about, could houses have personhood, which I've argued in my research. Some people also think that swords could have personhood. This is based also on the later written sources, the sagas, etc. We're now a bit later, which are about the Viking Age and the late Iron Age, where some swords could have personhood. names, like the sharp one and the stinging one and these kinds of things. And there's a question of whether that meant that they had a name, they worked as an extension of the body. They're placed into the burial when the wearer dies. And at least in some parts of Scandinavia, including in Norway, the swords are often bent or broken at burial. And so that was seen as perhaps a kind of ritual

killing of the weapon. So the bearer, the weapon's bearer has died. The weapon is to accompany him or possibly her in some cases, into the burial, and now we break the weapon as well. The words warrior culture, people love asking, was this warrior culture with so many different places when you find lots of weapons and with burials and so on and so forth. So I'm sorry, Marianne, I have to ask the question. Do we think by the time we get to the later iron age with the surviving archaeology, can we say that these societies are warrior cultures? I'm going to say yes, and then I'm going to nuance that.

Okay. Yes, in the sense that I think particularly when we get up to the Vendal period and the Viking Age, which is perhaps slightly later than what you wanted to talk about for this show, we are talking about warrior ideology that I think permeates society. The nuance comes in where, of course, not everyone was engaged in war all of the time. Not everyone was a bearded, frenzied, male warrior. There were most people were living their lives and they were cultural. the earth and they were hunting and they were fishing and they were trying to provide.

But I do think from those, just going back a little bit again, but from those Germanic migrations, pressuring and ultimately being part of the cause of the Roman Empire, together with the Huns and other pressure points and internal instability, but also afterwards in the centuries afterwards, warrior ideology presumably became more and more important. And with that, a sense perhaps of fatalism, that a good death was to die bravely. A good death was to die in battle. And when we get to the Viking Age and the, again, the later sagas tell us that one of the most shameful things would actually be to die of old age in a sickbed. That was not a great death. That was not honorable. And so I have a colleague Ben Raffield who's looked at

childhood and children's socialization into violence and he's looked at things like toy swords, wooden swords, etc., from the late Iron Age Viking age, and makes the argument that you have this kind of warrior ideology permeating society, even if it's an ideology that not everyone partakes in, then children also would presumably be socialized into it from quite a young age. How do you normalize violence? How do you see violence as an honorable and aspirational

thing to have this kind of the craziness that it is of throwing yourself into battle in the way that they did. And that's also quite heartbreaking to think about that children were presumably trained into quite a violent mindset from an early age on. And do we think that that can step back into kind of that iron age time when the Roman at before the kind of the migration period as well, when you have those kind of, as we mentioned earlier, those inhumation burials and so on with some evidence of swords, that it might kind of, three day into that time. You also mentioned earlier how there seems to be some evidence that Scandinavian, some men did go into the Roman Empire to serve as mercenaries and fight. So with the caveat that you've already mentioned that many others were staying, the hunting and fishing in the daily life sustenance, but there was still maybe even a growing reputation that, you know, these people from Scandinavia and these societies, they were very hardy warriors kind of thing. Yes. I think there is a long trajectory there, and presumably going back even.

even further and perhaps into the Bronze Age as well. It's just that we, because of the changes in material culture and the mortuary practice, we do have a little bit of a lacuna in the pre-Roman Iron Age. But yes, I think that is fair to say. We spoke about the bog bodies and I mentioned that artifacts are also deposited in the bogs. And from the perhaps end of the pre-Roman iron age and at least from the Roman-Iron age onwards, you get these massive weapons deposits in the bogs, particularly in Denmark, where it looks like the remnants of battles, you've had a violent skirmish among two tribes or two chieftains or whatever it might be. In a quite famous example from York Spring, there seems to be a fleet

coming from the southwest coast of Norway. They've rode, presumably, to Denmark. They estimate perhaps several hundred to a thousand people or warriors. And they have tried to raid or or perhaps a more kind of territorial takeover and they presumably lost. And so their entire weapons kit, their weaponry has been, again, deposited in the bogs. And as a kind of a precursor to that idea of the sword with personhood in, you know, 800 years later,

also in this period, they seem to be after these battles, bending and breaking the weapons, sometimes also like chopping the shards. shields, etc. And then depositing them all in the wetlands as perhaps a kind of ritual vanquishment of the conquered enemy. And if I may, I'll just continue with one other find, which is fascinating, which is from the first century AD or CE, also from Denmark, where we've kind of gotten accustomed to these massive weapons deposits, which are fascinating in and by themselves. You often have runic inscriptions on some of the weapons, which may have personal names. So you can imagine

that it's the name of whoever carried that spear or whatever it might be. But then from the first century, from Jatlin, there's a site called Alkin Enya, where for the first time they didn't only have the weapons in the wetlands deposit, but they also found the human remains. And with the contemporary osteological methods, the way we can now analyze human remains, they found that presumably this was also the remnants of a violent battle in the early Roman Iron Age, where these warriors had been left on the battlefield for at least six months. They had no marks from animals and signs of weather and exposure. So they've been basically left to decompose on the battlefield. And then after six months to a year perhaps, someone has come by,

whether it's the in-group, the people from whose community they were from, or whether it's the opposing side who wanted to let them rot. They're now coming and clearing the field and they're picking up the human remains, sometimes placing them in little bundles and then depositing them into the wetlands. And there's some interesting little tidbits there, like a pelvic, a set of pelvic bones. I think it's three male pelvic bones that have been, as you would thread a needle, they've been placed onto a wooden stick. So there's a wooden stick with three pelvic bones hanging from it and then into the wetland. And I guess that's an insight into conflict between various Iron Age Scandinavian societies.

If your crops fail one year and your neighbours, crops are good. And you see that similar in Bronze Age Scotland and Ireland and Britain and so on and so forth. We've talked quite a bit about the military and warriors in that part of it, Marianne. I would like now to ask a bit about a little bit more about trade contacts and the relations they had with cultures nearby. We've talked a lot about the Roman Empire already and the contacts that it seems these Iron Age Scandinavians had. Just give a sense, in regards to the resources that went to and fro between Scandinavian, Iron Age Scandinavian societies and the Roman Empire. You mentioned how kind of drinking and feasting equipment, that goes into Scandinavia. That's a big deal.

But what were the Romans getting from Scandinavia? What was being traded the other way? What should we be thinking with these trade networks and how extensive they were? So all the way to central Europe and into the Roman Empire, we think that presumably organic materials such as furs, healths, etc. I've also heard speculation of things like women's hair. I don't think we have any archaeological evidence for that. So I'm a bit, I'm a bit skeptical of that one. But presumably, yes, for trade may have been a kind of big export. But I think lots of the trade did not happen over such great distances, but it was also lots of inter-Scanadian trades within the areas. So, for instance, in parts of Norway and Sweden, there were kind of more large-scale iron production into standardized iron bars,

for instance. And they end up in late Iron Age, Viking Age, Denmark, this free-made iron. and bars. Antlers from deer and reindeer that could be used into combing, etc. So, yeah, I think the inter-Scanadian trade is also quite prominent. And then, of course, when we get into the Viking Age, then we get into the British Isles, but also the Arabic dirhams that are, you know, the masses of silver that flow into Scandinavia from their way through the river systems of Russia and into the Arabic Caliphate. A quick question on the non-Roman trade, and you say the trade within Scandinavia in the Iron Age. You mentioned earlier, you know, you've got the predecessors of the Sami people as well in present-day Finland.

And do we see evidence of trade there between, you know, R&H Scandinavian societies and the prehistoric Sami populations? Yes. The Sami or submi is northern, the Sami territory, northern Norway, northern Sweden, Finland, parts of Russia today. Just to clarify that. And yes, there's even in the later saga stories. of the contacts between the Sami and the Norse. And the Sami were by the Norse perhaps seen as somewhat magical. Really?

And there's, yeah, ideas of Viking men marrying Sami women to also get hold of esoteric knowledge and that sort of thing. Should also say that the Sami territories were much further south in the Viking Age than they are today. So you also get Sami settlements far into central and even south Norway. in the Viking Age, which is quite interesting. So the cultural contacts there have been quite extensive. We're going to move on to one other kind of key area that we haven't covered yet, but I guess is big, especially if the word Viking is in the title, which is, of course, ships and seafaring. Now, Marian, I remember doing an episode with Johan Ling about the Nordic Bronze Age? And one part

I love was talking about the rock art that survives and including some amazing ships and hearing about how extensive the trade connections were back then to get hold of the tin and the copper from Britain and so on and so forth. So what do we know about Iron Age Scandinavian societies, those along the coast, and their interest, their quality, their expertise around shipbuilding and seafaring? It probably started quite early. You know, Yonling presumably brought up the depictions of the ships from the Bronze Age because they are fascinating. The coastal areas were extremely maritime. and they must have been good at roaming. I just mentioned that for one of these weapons deposits in Denmark, in the pre-Roman Iron Age,

presumably the incomers, the enemies came rowing from the coast of Norway to Jutland in Denmark. Slightly later, when we think about, for instance, the Angles and the Saxons, the Germanic tribes from Denmark and northern Germany that became the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, they also got to that island somehow, presumably through maritime vessels. So there was a strong maritime culture. We also see that in the contact networks that are expressed in the similarities between the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial and the helmet, the famous Suttonhoe helmet, which is very, very similar to some of the Vendel period helmets from Sweden, may have even been made in the same workshop. Those networks were presumably based on maritime connections. So the ship technology and the

sailing technology is really important. The big innovation there is the innovation of the sail. And the experts do not agree on when that happened. Some people want to put it in the kind of even six, seven centuries, that that's when the sailing ships, because there's a difference between a rowing ship and the kind of clinker-built sailing ships. The earlier concrete archaeological evidence we have might be the Salma ship, which is a Swedish ship burial from about 750 in Estonia, which probably was in either invading or trading expedition of Swedish late Iron Age slash Viking Age people, men in this case, who came to Estonia, something happened because they all died. Forty-four of them, I believe, were buried on the ship in a really interesting

matter kind of stacked the bodies. One person had a gaming piece placed in his mouth. A really interesting archaeological find, which many will see that is actually the beginning of the Viking Age. That is actually the first Viking raid we have documented around 750 CE. And that vessel may have had a mast. And in order to have a sail, you need a mast. The other interesting thing I'd like to just point out and highlight about the ship technology is that that innovation of the mast and the sail has been seen as this breakthrough. Some people would even say that's the catalyst for the later Viking phenomenon of raids and explosion along seafaring vessels. But what you also need in order to have that technology is textile technology. But because that has been

associated with women, that has been completely overlooked. Let's look at it now. So in addition to the the wonderful technical clinker-built ships, which were very narrow and agile, could go through coarse waters, could also be rowed up rivers. There were versatile quick vessels. But the sail was increasingly important, and you needed enormous amounts of labour

to just create one sail. So they've done estimates saying that you would need two full-time spinners just to spin the fibers or wall for they would need to work full-time one year in order to just spin the wall to create one sale. So it is an enormous undertaking both in terms of hard labor but also the technological finesse of doing the weaving and absolute prerequisite for that maritime technology.

You also need other beings to be part of that. So you might need sheep to get the wool and or if plant fiber based, you need to sew enormous fields of hemp or or linen in order to create the fibers for the sale. So it was an enormous undertaking that will have really influenced landscapes and landscape management and agricultural production as well as having lots and lots of workers grading the sales. And that entire narrative has gotten a little bit into the shadow of the idea of the master ship builder, etc. And when we're talking about the late Iron Viking Age, another question then is who is doing all this labour of spinning the wool and weaving, often in these little pit houses, which are quite

dark and full of smoke and it's not ideal working conditions. And the question is whether that is the enslaved populations of the Viking Age. And whether it's actually coerced labour, that is the foundation on which that ship technology stands. Is it just very much clearly later on in what we might say is the early medieval period that you see clearer evidence of the clinker-built vessel technology coming to the fore in Scandinavia? That is the consensus, I believe. But this is, as I say, for the boat and ship building maritime archaeologist, this is a

point of some contestation. I don't know if I dare go in any further into that. I think what we can say is there's clearly a long-lived tradition of building seafaring vessels and building them really well. But particularly that breaking point of when does the mast and the sail get introduced, that is sometime towards the kind of the end of the or in the Bendal period, presumably right before the Viking age. You mentioned earlier kind of, you know, the mythology part of it, Norse mythology later on and how their stories of adventurers and people who go far and wide. could it be hearkening back to a time of the like in the Iron Age earlier on if there was that popular tradition, you know, Cefang tradition and so on. Could there have been figures even then, even when it's just to deal with the rowing boats, going quite far on these kind of adventurous stories that were then remembered for many, many centuries into what ultimately becomes the Viking Age? Absolutely. I think when we talk about these ventures of this little South Norwegian army rowing for,

you know, two or three days or however long it would take to row one of those vessels into Denmark. I think, yes, and then they were totally, totally banquet. Yeah, I think that was part of the storytelling. And that might be even further back to the Bronze Age. I think for the coastal communities in particular, sea and the connection to the sea will have been really very, very important. Right. we've covered a lot, and I've wanted to focus largely on the earlier Middle Iron Age Scandinavian story,

as that is very much the ancient territory. But to wrap it all up, I'm sure that Matt and Eleanor won't mind us venturing slightly into medieval times with the so-called Viking Age Marianne. So can you give us a sense of how we go from the Western Empire declining to what is definitively the Viking Age in Scandinavia, because you've already mentioned these periods, migration period, and also the Vendal period. So can you explain what these are and how they are kind of steps to getting towards what we know as the Viking Age? Yes. So the migration period, as we have alluded to, is this time of vast mobility in Scandinavia and in central Europe at large, where we don't quite know why, but lots of people are on the move, and they will reshape the European map.

You know, we mentioned the Anglo-Saxons earlier, ultimately giving the name to England. We mentioned the Franks ultimately giving their name to France, etc. There is a really important event at the end of the migration period, which is, which we haven't touched upon yet, which is the 536 climatic event. So in 536, CE, something happens. I believe the consensus now is a volcanic eruption, but I know there have been other explanations purported as well. But something really, really dramatic happens. They can see traces of this in like the glacial ice course in Greenland and in really wide areas, possibly a kind of dust veil event after volcanic eruption, which means that the sun is basically

blocked for a really long time. And without the sun, you can't. grow food. You need sunshine and photosynthesis to grow crops. So this has been seen as a quite, particularly in Scandinavia, but as far as I understand, quite wide ranging catastrophic events that led to famine. And it came quite close in time to an outbreak of the Justinian plague, so one of the plague waves, which means that in combination, that was a period of quite stark decline, presumably. And so we can see this in the archaeological record in that we get a complete slump in settlements, in burials, presumably quite a stark population decline. And it took some time to rebuild societies after that, whatever the details of that and however it may have looked,

it will have taken some time to rebuild society after that. There were decades of little activity. Obviously not everyone perished, but enough that, you know, it really did influence society. And in those decades, maybe half century after, some people may have seen that kind of vacuum of power as a proper opportunity. And so the idea is that coming in to the Vendel period, named after an important site, Vendel in Sweden, but we can also call that, sometimes you call that period, the Merovingian period after the Merovingian dynasty in France at the same time. that that kind of 550 to 750 C.E. period is first the time of rebuilding after this massive climatic event. And then that's when we really do start to see this massive hierarchization again. The feasting halls that we talked about earlier that came in with the Romans, they continue, but they become perhaps even more centered on the elites and they actually become more royal estates. You have this exquisite metalwork. I mentioned earlier the parallels between the Sutton Hu helmet and these Vendel helmets. And they are really, really exquisitely made, perhaps even made in the same workshop, because the Germanic tribes do have a shared symbolic language in terms of some of the artifacts that are used.

You get a reprise of these amazing monumental mounds, such as the mounds of Uppsala in Sweden, which are absolutely enormous. And so clearly you are getting into a period of power consolidation. And that power consolidation may indirectly also influence the beginning of the Viking Age, because before that you had lots of these petty chieftains, tribal societies, regionally focused, sometimes at war with another, sometimes in alliance, etc. Now there are some powers that are positioning that are consolidating more and more of these into larger and larger entities. And that might create some pressure on other parts of society or other people who are aspiring power but aren't within those alliances. And so indirectly, this might be one of the many, many causes of what happens next.

Of what happens next indeed on ground that we dare not touch here on the ancients. I mean, Marian, it has been such a pleasure in particular to focus on Scandinavia's iron age story, very long iron age story and how what you can see from the archaeology, how society and how there are changes over time and

various different aspects of it. We can get obsessed with the word Viking, can't we? And want to really focus on that period. But just how important to you, how significant is it to you? Is it to bring that earlier story of Scandinavia of pre-Roman and then

Roman-aligned kind of Scandinavia Iron Age time to the wider audience, to understand that much larger, that much wider, bigger story of the Vikings and Iron Age Scandinavian societies. With some danger and trepidation, as my official title is Research Professor of Viking Studies, I think that we focus too much on the Vikings. I hope my employers don't listen to this podcast. But I understand why the Vikings hold such a fascination. It's a good story, right. It's these somewhat underdogs coming from a peripheral area of Northern Europe and like with a blast onto the global scene and getting all the way to Newfoundland and Canada into the Arabic caliphate and the Silk Roads in Asia. I mean, it is, it's a great story in many ways. But they are

so romanticized and so popular. And, I think often quite misunderstood, whereas the earlier parts of the Iron Age, both the parts that lead and feed into some sort of trajectory towards that, but also the periods that are completely different in doing their own thing is ultimately also extremely fascinating. And I get a bit worried when we need to label everything as pre-viking or whatever it might, whatever it might be, because we're letting the Viking Age be the defining period of Scandinavian deep history. Whereas actually, it's that plethora from the bog bodies

with their sacrificial meals in their bellies and their nooses surround the neck and the sacrificed braids through seeing an eternal winter where there's no sunshine in the 6th century. I mean, there's so many stories to tell that particularly that focus on the Viking warrior and that side of thing, it overshadows so many other interesting and fascinating stories we could tell about the past. Well, we have certainly covered a lot of those stories today,

going from here, there and everywhere over many, many centuries, many, many archaeological sites. It just goes to me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today. It's been a pleasure. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Marianne Hem Erickson talking all things the Nordic-Irhen Age. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much for listening. Now, if you want to learn more about Scandinavia's prehistory, well, we do have almost a prequel episode to this one,

all about the Nordic Bronze Age that we recorded last year with Professor Johann Ling. And we've also done an in-depth episode all about bog bodies, bog bodies in Scandinavia, in Britain and in Ireland. And we'll put a link to both of those episodes from last year in the show notes. Now, if you've been enjoying The Ancients, please make sure to follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps. You'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week.

You can also get early access to all of our History Hit podcast episodes plus exclusive subscriber episodes of The Ancients. simply sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.