Age of the Vikings // Evolution of the Viking Longship #2 (750-975)

[Music] Portland Southern Wessex the Year 789 a sale is spotted upon the horizon it actually means little to the local population some no doubt making a living from fishing and other Seabourn pursuits others from the fertile land further from the shore after a while the crew of the vessel make landfall unopposed apparently they or people very much like them had traveled to the West Saxon port innumerable times before either to sell their wares or barter for a small slice of the wealth of Wessex currently under the hegemony of the Great King offer of Mercia yet still a powerful and wealthy state in its own right long profiting from the lucrative continent spanning trade network of the Franks their northern clients in freesia those newcomers however had come from lands further to the north outside of the traditional trade network of the last century and more though their tongue was unmistakably foreign curiously with a little effort it could be understood by the locals hinting at a common heritage in the Germanic paths of the migration period a few centuries before nevertheless almost immediately it became apparent that these men at least at the present moment were no traders perhaps the serpent headed prow of their vessel gave them away perhaps it was the weapons they carried and Mail adorning their bodies these men came not as traders but as pirates what happened next isn't exactly clear the anglo-saxon Chronicle being tantalizingly tight lips as usual though by day's end the local Shire Reeve who would come down to the shore either to discuss terms with the Pirates or barter with them lay dead on the beach sliced down where he stood the Pirates meanwhile embarked on a vicious rampage around Portland sacking and stealing before making off with the wares that they and their kinsmen would previously have bartered for those sailors of course were Scandinavians possibly Norse man perhaps Danes we can't be sure but within just a handful of years they were men like them were back this time in the far north of the anglo-saxon kingdoms sacking the famous monastery at Lindisfarne the cultural heart of the christianity of the north racking away the monks they found there into slavery and seizing anything of worth they could lay their hands on to the abject horror of Christians from the Orkneys to Aquitaine these newcomers will Pagan not only do they show absolute disregard for the sanctity of Christian sites a given for almost 200 years but as time would tell and as they realized just how lucrative such sites could be they would actively target them for the anonymous scribes of the anglo-saxon Chronicle perhaps writing with the power of hindsight the Lindisfarne raid had been preceded by the darkest of portents immense whirl winds over the North Sea flashes of lightning famine and great dragons circling overhead [Music] the long-forgotten cousins of the anglo-saxons had returned and they sense weakness the attacks of the late eighth century were just harbingers of events to come it would be at least 300 years until the floodgates were closed off again and after they were the world had been transformed like never before [Music] [Music] even before the raid on Lindisfarne the Great King offer second in power only to Charlemagne amongst the Christian monarchs of Western Europe a set up river defenses to ward off against piratical attacks likewise the Emperor Charlemagne made similar moves setting up intricate Coast Guard stations on his southern and northern river mouths to defend against increasingly daring Arab and Scandinavian pirates in truth by the late 700s few in western europe would have predicted the impending storm coming their way Charlemagne's vassal lords in Aquitaine even succeeded in defeating their first ban of northern invaders in 799 executing several shiploads of pirates on the sea front as a warning to others who might try their luck for the most part by this time the wants fragmentary tribes that had taken over the lands of the Western Roman Empire during the migration period has settled down adopted the religion of the Romans and even coalesced to a degree in two large blocks of loosely unified States a Carolingian Empire on the mainland and a mercy and hegemony in southern Britain from around 675 great leaps forward had been made in Europe in terms of prosperity with increased levels of centralization and economic growth by 800 the continent had arguably for the most part recovered from the collapse of the Western Roman Empire with rulers such as Charlemagne ultimately laying the foundations for the medieval European system that would follow some 200 years later by the early 8th century the barter system that had held swag since the fall of Rome had gradually evolved into a fully-fledged currency trade network with goods and merchants traveling the entirety of Europe once more for the first time since the fall of Rome on the mainland and in Britain peasants and Lords alike now wholeheartedly embraced the Christian faith of the Romans even modeling their churches and public buildings are still very visible ruins of the old world some at least had forgotten their own roots as a result as before during the Germanic past the sea was still a sacred ancient place half remembered from the time of the old gods though now those who had once venerated it were more often than not simply afraid germanic sea deities now having transformed to become judeo-christian spirits and demons one place were the old ways had never truly been forgotten was freesia conquered fully by the Franks only in the early 8th century and still possessing many enclaves of pagans within its dense marshes and waterways during the Carolingian restoration of the eighth century these Friesians living on the edge of Christendom had acted as the main intermediaries between Scandinavia and Europe ultimately becoming the beneficiaries of the burgeoning trade between north and south those regions were cousins of the Danes they didn't have the same millennia old shipbuilding tradition as the Scandinavians instead they utilized Hulk's for sea journeys and cogs for their river systems rather than clinker built long boats whilst effective enough these boats were nowhere near as advanced as those of the north and consequently couldn't traverse the North Sea anywhere near as easily by the time of the raid on Portland in 789 the most important trading center in northern Europe was the Frisian town of dorestad sitting on the crossroads of the old ways and the new [Music] close ties existed between doris tat and the english port of ham which in Wessex modern-day Southampton and at cuenta vich in Flanders as the decades went on these centres not located particularly close to military bases of power of course became tempting targets unlike their southern neighbors who for the most part simply didn't need ships to get around Scandinavians had always been at home on the water and as a wealth of archaeological linguistic and literary evidence shows they were obsessed with it the inhabitants of Frankia and Britain alike were about to find out just how problematic it could be to be prosperous three hundred years before their own ancestors had once harassed the Roman world ultimately destroying it and building again in their own image now faced with their own barbarians from the north the double-edged sword of prosperity that would haunt humans from the earliest civilizations to the present had turned against them this was a trade network worth stealing from and as the years would show the northerners now had the means to do it ultimately as always tended to happen during the early Middle Ages the loose balance of power achieved by the Carolingians and to a lesser extent the mercy ins in the eighth century remained fragile and upon the deaths of the two great rulers these states almost immediately began to fall apart even before they collapsed however out of the North Sea arrived a terrifying new adversary an unwelcome throwback to their own less-than-perfect pasts [Music] for now at least however the larger states were generally seen as too difficult targets instead softer ones would be chosen by the late 700 s the orkney and shetland islands were hit being turned into regular pirate basis in 795 the first attack on Ireland was directed at Lambie Island these targets made sense and seemed to be the result of a sort of intelligence network gathered over many years probably by traders these were places of relative anarchy where regional clan chiefs and innumerable high kings held sway in short it was a situation that could be perfectly exploited [Music] at the same time half a world away on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea similar bands of opportunists spurred on like their Western counterparts by a mixture of overpopulation climate change in Scandinavia searchers had happened numerous times before and an increasing centralization of power leading to less opportunities at home they began to venture ever further into the river systems of Eastern Europe ranging far and wide in the pursuit of wealth and power and setting up the important trading town of Styria ladoga situated on the Volga River ladoga acted as a nexus of commerce seeing ambitious and daring Swedes head all the way down the river into the Caspian Sea to make their fortunes utilising long boats these men were able to move up the rivers carrying their boats over impassable rapids to make it all the way through the river systems of Eastern Europe and towards the richest the Islamic world as time went on other ports began to develop along the Baltic such as at home gaurd later known as Novgorod the wealth accumulated at these ports then filtered back into Sweden with tens of thousands of Islamic coins being discovered on Gotland and around lake mälaren these Swedish merchant princes perhaps inheritors of the vandal culture of the previous centuries became especially accustomed to dealing with the various step Khan's living along the Volga River who often acted as intermediaries between them and the Islamic world the Volga bogus and the khazar khaganate both having a long history of commercial activity with the great Islamic cities across the Caspian Sea such as Hamid an in modern-day around and even Baghdad the once mighty capital the abbasid caliphate in Ireland and Eastern Europe alike one of the primary sources of income was the sale of slaves more often than not to Islamic bias be it the emirate of Cordoba in Spain or the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad though the eastern Vikings who plied the Volga had originated mostly in modern-day Sweden in the archaeological record they are near indiscernible from their Western compatriots in Denmark and Norway little did they know it at the time but those settlers and Raiders from Dublin to the Black Sea were founding the first outposts of a brand-new trade network never before seen in Europe which would bring goods from as far afield as Central Asia into Scandinavia and beyond it was a system that would eventually not only incorporate the Carolingian trade network of the mainland would supersede it centers such as Dublin and Hedeby fast becoming important trading centers to rival any set up by the Franks or anglo-saxons one facet of life and one series of technological innovations United these man the ships that they put to see in the long ships to those whom anthem these were living breathing animals an ancient gift from the spirit world masterfully developed over millennia or successive generations of shipwrights curiously little evidence of a sale exists before the 8th century Scandinavians instead rowing into the open sea on vessels such as the nigh damn ship with little more than brute strength and faith in the gods to guide them though when a sail was added likely as a result of contacts with the Franks and Friesians on their southern flank it would change everything the earliest evidence of a sail on a Scandinavian ship comes from the tank very stone on Gotland dating to around 690 what had once been exceptionally well built rowing boats capable of sea travel though dangerous at the best of times were now arguably the greatest warships the world had ever seen completely mobile capable of beating anywhere due to their low and thin bodies and absolutely unique to the fjords and archipelagos they sprung from this is as much the story of those Scandinavian settlers Raiders and traders as it is of the ships that made their extraordinary expansion possible by the early 20th century the allure of the Viking past was very much in full swing archaeological discoveries in Scandinavia such as the guard ship in 1881 had inspired an entire new generation of researchers and amateur enthusiasts alike to look for their own finds in 1904 not far from the location of the guard vessel at sloggin in Westfold another discovery was made [Music] whilst the discovery of the GOx dad ship dating from around 900 AD electrified audiences from San Francisco to Paris upon its discovery in 1881 it was the excavation of this new site in 1904 that would contribute the most to our understanding of the longship and in time would have the greatest impact upon the modern world we know it is the Osterberg ship and crucially for our story it is the earliest intact vessel ever found probably having been constructed around a century before the GOC dad unlike other sites the Osterberg mound had not traditionally been associated with the burial of ancient kings though as soon as it's intricately carved stone posts emerged out of its tomb of a thousand years it became obvious that this site will change everything [Music] almost immediately comparisons were made with existing examples of Viking art from smaller archaeological finds rune stones and even later carvings on church doors in the post Viking Age quite simply these carvings are incredible made by master craftsmen they perfectly exemplify the coalescing of the animal art style which once held sway over all of northern Europe and the Eurasian steppe and long lasting Scandinavian shipbuilding traditions coming together to create something truly special [Music] radiocarbon dating has shown that the Aussie Burke ship was buried in around 834 though it was probably built around 30 years earlier meaning it was on ships not too dissimilar to the Osterberg vessel 100 years before the time of the GOx tide ship that Viking sailors first set out from Scandinavia to raid the shores of Western and Eastern Europe quite remarkably the ship remained mostly intact during its long incarceration underground being shattered at some point by the earth above it but not destroyed grave robbers seem to have got to the tomb at some points - though thankfully much of the hall interred with the ship remains intact these finds themselves arguably provide more information about the Viking Age than any other ship find in history these ornately carved pieces of art hint at the way of life of these people and the extreme power and wealth of the individual buried this was certainly the tomb of royalty yet this was not the grave of a king the grave houses two female bodies one younger and one older it has been surmised that the younger might have been a slave girl ritually sacrificed alongside her master thus bearing similarities with the 10th century Arab travel writer urban lands account of a boat burial along the Volga during the 10th century whilst the identity of the elder woman remains a mystery many have suggested due to the sheer amount of wealth and the ornately carved ship itself that she may have been a member of the prestigious England dynasty who ruled over the region during the early Viking Age potentially being a sir the grandmother of Norway's first unifying King Harald fairhair by 1926 using cutting-edge new preservation techniques a reconstructed complete ship was finished leading experts to surmise that the ASSA Berg ship rather than a functioning war vessel may have originally been a royal yacht intended for prestige voyages along the shore in recent years however this has been taken into question with new research suggesting the ship had originally been made slightly differently to the reconstruction and thus could have been seaworthy it was on vessels not too dissimilar to these at Norseman and dames first arrived in western europe unlikely sweets first traversed the river systems of the east [Music] as the years went by and other discoveries began to be made it was realized that the Osterberg vessel was part of a long tradition of shipbuilding developing into ships like the GOx dad and the tooth unearthed in asphalt in 1867 and dated to around 900 unlike ships from the Mediterranean and even from the Celtic Northwest clinker built Scandinavian ships rode the waves going with the storm rather than against it the ship would Bend with the water the tree it was built from coal King yet holding fast those who sailed it put their faith in its builders the shell construction used in the calm seas of the Mediterranean simply would have broken up in the waves of the north [Music] each boat required one tree preferably oak for the keel and anywhere between 10 and 50 trunks for the rest of the ship green young timber rather than old was preferred in order to retain the natural strength and flexibility of the wood the work was done quickly by experts and didn't require a huge amount of manpower like ships from the Mediterranean during construction each man focused on his small part of the whole working on information passed down from generation to generation the oldest complete vessel ever found in Norway dates to around 690 the kaval son ship found in 1920 bears all the same hallmarks as the later vessels though it remains unclear whether it had a sail at some point during the eighth century Norwegian ships had adopted the keel a backbone for a ship ships like the Osterberg look like the cobblestones but are more intricately made and with a keel and a sail this technology was acquired by trial-and-error life and death over many generations if a ship went out with a certain type of kale and didn't come back they would try it a different way next time a hundred years later the design had been perfected so much that it would lead to conquests all over Europe after that distinct models of ships remained large cargo vessels to take traders and explorers to the edge of the known world and beyond to North America and eventually two centuries after their ancestors first set out at the turn of the eighth century they would form the largest state in Europe in the east and in the West they would conquer England by the middle of the ninth century the once-mighty Carolingian Empire had fragmented into a number of feuding states to the north in equally war-torn Britain Scandinavians now held sway in the islands of the far north they infested the river systems of Ireland just as they did in Frankie and now they even threatened the anglo-saxon kingdoms once held by the great mercy and King offer now divided once more though with a new Kingdom in the driver's seat Wessex though they hailed from disparate lands the Scandinavian newcomers were all united by one facet of life the sea by the 800s after millennia of innovation simply no one else in Europe could compete with their ships they were cheap to make relatively easy to build for those who knew how and didn't require vast resources and manpower like the far larger shell constructed ships of the Mediterranean quite simply by the midnight century Scandinavians had absolute control over the northern sea ways being able to traverse any coast of Europe and most of its river systems Viking fleets could move three or four times faster than any force on land almost always meaning that they had the element of surprise this was an advantage they would continue to wield until the mid 12th century by the ain´t 50s as wealth and rumor of more from both the east and the west poured into Scandinavia the small squadrons of ships previously seen began to give way to impressive fleets of close to 100 vessels led by increasingly legendary sea kings wielding just as much power as their lead laws at home the age of the Vikings had well and truly begun [Music] daring raids such as those conducted by Bjorn Ironside and Hostin went as far afield as the Mediterranean both Paris and London were attacked unsuccessfully dorestad and ham which weren't so lucky the former in particular being decimated year after year and in the east Swedish Vikings now having built trading settlements and fortresses along the Volga and the Dnieper rivers subjugating and incorporating the local Slavs into their vast economic network in the process raided as far south as the Eastern Roman capital of Constantinople trying their luck in 860 against a weekly defendant northern part of the great city but ultimately being driven back by a ninth century weapon of mass destruction developed during the Byzantines apocalyptic struggle with the Caliphate during the previous centuries Greek fire this was one of the most effective C powers with the Scandinavians had ever come up against ultimately sparking off a centuries-long obsession with the metropolis they knew as Mick Lagarde this was an obsession which would eventually see the Vikings of the east and their increasingly important Slavic subjects incorporated into the cultural sphere of the Eastern Romans as the years went by more and more Swedes often known as varangians would shift their operations from the trade route along the Volga into the Caspian Sea and look towards the collection of waterways that eventually fed into the Dnieper and on into the Black Sea the ever-present allure the great city of Constantinople as the century progressed the East provide an entirely different set of challenges to those encountered in the West here lay a land of winding river systems and impassable rapids rather than storm ridden open seas like Ireland in the Far West Roman rule and the urban institutions that came with it had never extended into the river ways of Eastern Europe meaning like the Irish the Slavic people's that these Swedish Vikings came into contact with though just as effective in war individually were less socially and economically developed with the Franks the anglo-saxons who could organize themselves into substantial armies and to a certain extent had begun to see themselves as successors to Rome's Imperial legacy though no literary tradition existed to the north of the Black Sea as was inherited from the Romans in the West Scandinavian impact on these lands was just as great and in time during the Age of Oleg the Swedish Vikings now known as the laid the foundations for a centralized state feat never accomplished in Ireland whose nor settlers remains divided into numerous economically powerful yet politically fragile city-states despite the great differences in geography and society within the far-flung lands claimed by Scandinavians during this time the ships that they traveled on to trade and to raid were not too dissimilar during these early years perhaps being multipurpose vessels somewhere between the Osterberg and starships other good examples being in a lad b and Hedeby in denmark these were boats built by regional the isles to assert their own power to transport their people and to serve any purpose they needed them to by the end of the century ambitious regional man utilising vessels such as the dock starship at conquered vast swathe of western european land the likes of Ivar the boneless half-down of the wide embrace Herbert the Duke of the Friesians Guthrum king of East Anglia and Rollo the walker becoming kings in their own rights in the newly conquered lands the anglo-saxon kingdoms had been brought to the verge of oblivion with only Wessex and fragments of the others cleanly long in Frankia practically the entire northern coastline had been claimed and in the east with the capture of the important town of kiev the disparate trading towns of the swedish slaver princess it began to develop into a large centralized state that of the ruse many of these sea kings and slaver princes had initially left their homelands in order to escape the growing power of centralizing monarchs and in the wake of their absence the power of Kings grew the first of these unifying monarchs was from Norway a member of the prestigious England dynasty hailing from the same lands that produced the Gokstad and Osterberg ships Harald fairhair power rested on the fact that he was relatively lenient towards regional powers effectively ruling as the first amongst equals to the south however in Denmark when a strong centralizing dynasty arose a generation later no quarter would be given to ambitious Vikings by the early 10th century and the rise of Gorm the old the age of independent sea kings in Denmark was coming to a close ambitious Viking chieftains sailing on ships such as the Gokstad and the tune while successful abroad were a threat at home to Gordon's own ambitions to curb the power of local elites the jelling dynasty had grown rich over the decades having gained control over Hedeby the most important market town of the north and thus gaining a stranglehold over the riches that came flooding in from the east and the West similar trading centres existed at Oslo and lake mälaren respectively providing similar power to Norse and Swedish kings partly as a result of this cracking down on local chieftains and because of the lucrative trade network now flourishing in Northern Europe the old multipurpose ships would eventually give way to at least two kinds of vessel rather than all-purpose ships these were either one of two types either becoming longer for war or becoming wider for trade [Music] centralizing dynasties such as the jelling in Denmark the England in Norway no longer needed ships to do both as far as later Icelandic writers such as Snorri Sturluson were concerned writing in the early 13th century it was the cracking down of these powerful monarchs that would lead his ancestors to emigrate to Iceland perhaps some of the earliest settlers in the late 9th century arrived on similar vessels to the GOx tide ship though as time went on a new wider stouter ship began to be used we know it as a canal and though examples of it exist from the late 10th century at sites such as class start and ask a car it was almost certainly used before this time perhaps developing in parallel to the more famous warships canals would be used for hundreds of years to come as the primary trading vessel of the new scandinavian trading system [Music] of course not all Scandinavians were Vikings the majority will probably trade us farmers and settlers and by the tenth century as a result of their cutting-edge maritime technology coupled with their usurpation of the pre-existing European trade system they could move cargo in a way that no one else could and travel to new lands never before seen significantly expanding their world in the process for the most part the ships they used with these canals like their warlike cousins they were much more efficient and wide-reaching and the frisian boats that had come before them and capable of carrying as much as 40 tons of cargo as the years went by and bishops sailors on canals utilizing time-honored navigation techniques handed down from father to son over the long generations discovered new lands never before seen by Europeans using landmarks birds and even the stars to find their way to vast new lands were discovered in the ICC's of the northern Atlantic both seeing colonization attempts by Hardy settlers initially at least these lands were only opened to Scandinavians though as time went on usually as the result of a merger of culture such as in Normandy and in the Danelaw other residents of Europe soshe's the Franks and anglo-saxons would eventually adopt the longship and in time gained access to the new scandinavian trade system if you can't beat them join them where once Dora stat ham which and Quinta vich had held sway now a century later had to be Dublin Rouen and your Vic were the new powerhouses and as time went on as evidenced by the head of e3 ship dating from around 10:25 these canals became larger and larger following a silver shortage within the increasingly fragmented abbasid caliphate during the 10th century along with another ultimately unsuccessful roofs attack on Constantinople in 945 this time led by a ruler named Igor of course claiming descent from the semi legendary founder of roofs power Rorick a new trade agreement was made with the Byzantine Empire one that would see once and for all Varangian focus shift away from the Middle East and definitively towards the Eastern Orthodox world of the Byzantines over the next 50 years Bruce society would begin a remarkable transformation from a coalition of loosely aligned chieftains to the largest state in Europe it remains unclear though probable as evidenced by Byzantine and Islamic sources that by this time the roofs were still using long boats in the east [Music] unlike in the West where the Catholic Christianity of Rome gradually began to take hold with the first successful missionaries being adopted in the early ninth century in the East it was Orthodox Christianity and East and Roman institutions that will be adopted other changes were taking place - ones that reflect the multi ethnic makeup of the roof state unlike the trade agreement with Constantinople arranged in the previous century by Oleg a large number of the roofs signatories in 945 has Slavic names just like Scandinavians would eventually do in Ireland and had already done in Normandy they were going native of course roofs ties with Scandinavia remained strong with ambitious warriors still coming down from the north to pledge their allegiance to the Roose Prince's in the search of riches and glory an occasional Roose Prince's heading north to seek refuge at the courts of distant relatives as well as to bolster their own armies for a return home though ever gradually Slavic steppe nomads and Byzantine influences began to seep in superseding or amalgamating with Scandinavian ones changes were happening in the West - as Scandinavians also gradually began to adopt Christianity hundreds of thousands of silver coins from England and France taken as Dane gelt or simply stolen during this time reflect the great changes the trade routes had wrought on the lands the merchants and the Vikings had first sprung from transforming Scandinavia and the adjacent territories into rich and prosperous lands and arguably for the first time in history the focal point of northern Europe though for the most part Scandinavians weren't yet literate employing foreign scribes to write for them urban institutions and societal development gradually began to take hold particularly around leading royal families of course the creation of warships didn't stop if anything by the 10th century they became more effective specializing above all else in battle quite understandably the earliest finds of vessels made purely for war and likely state-sponsored come from the kingdom that would be the most powerful and the one closest to the other European powers Denmark these were no longer vessels for colonization and trade as well as war they were purely troop transports employed by Kings times had also changed in Frankia at the end of the ninth century as the Carolingian dynasty of Charlemagne desperately clung on to its last shreds of land in West Frankia to the east a new power was rising a power that would inadvertently kick-start Denmark's rice to centralized power house newly invigorated but Christian fervor coupled with the military pedigree of their ancestors a Saxon dynasty had arisen to power in the easternmost Carolinian lands and by the 930 s these recent converts to Christianity had their northern cousins on their minds in 9:34 hot off the heels of recent victories against the nomadic Magyars who came sweeping into his lands from the east the first native German king of East Frankia Henry the Fowler riding at the head of his new elite cavalry force raised in order to combat the Magyar threat crossed over the Dane Burke to ravage Jutland the various regional kings and chieftains who held sway they're faced with overwhelming odds pledged homage to the German king accepting his demands to convert to Christianity and pay him tribute this time Denmark still largely fragmented might have become yet another province in the gradually growing German Reich instead a feared seeking arrived on the mainland from the Danish Islands to force his will upon region claiming descent from the legendary kings of the migration period Gorm the old was a devout pagan and a fearsome warrior Lord utilizing the fear and uncertainty aroused by Henry's campaign gone was able to fairly quickly forge together the Danish people into one expelled the incoming German priests back over the Dane verk and perhaps most importantly for the longevity of his dynasty seized control over the important trading hub of Hedeby over the next 40 years gone and ultimately his son and heir harald bluetooth would mold denmark into the most powerful scandinavian kingdom of them all though of course the independent sea kings didn't go down without a fight in 1935 a farmer on the Danish island of funnin began digging into a large mound on his property the site previously thought to be little more than a natural hill overlooking the sea turned out to be so much more a great man had been buried there more than a thousand years before and after two years of excavations an abundance of grave Goods were found in the mound scores of dogs horses and votive offerings along with the impression of a fully intact longboat interred by royal retainers to carry their Lord to Valhalla this was the burial of a powerful local king yet curiously only a few fragments of bones were found within the tomb the rest having been hastily taken out of the site not long after it was initially buried [Music] while the boat itself very much in the same style as the AUSA burg and gouged out vessels provides us with evidence with the same shipbuilding traditions of Norway were evident here too for many researchers it also marks the end of the age of independent sea kings in Denmark a number of different interpretations exist to explain what happened at the lad B mound but almost all of them involve the new paramount rulers of Denmark times have changed since this great man died in this very visible symbol of the power he and no doubt his descendants wielded over the region didn't survive intact for long his bones being removed from the site in the 10th century by removing the deceased and chopping up all of his grave goats into hundreds of pieces the attackers dealt a great blow to the prestige of his heirs an alternative explanation is that the man's remains were moved to a Christian grave site as Harold would do with Gorm's remains after his death in the late 90s [Music] times had changed during the ninth and early 10th centuries the Scandinavians in the East and the West increasingly adapting to the geopolitical systems they found themselves embroiled in though see Kings still held sway in many areas throughout the Viking world especially in Norway where pedigree for kingship still meant that one had to have a successful career as a Viking unto his belt in Sweden for example still being almost entirely pagan and would be for at least a century to come the kings of Denmark and the princes of the roofs at Empire on their minds the new Prince of the roofs fatty Slav still resolutely a pagan and according to Byzantine sources looking more like a steppe calm than a Viking warlord ravaged his way through the world of the East decimating the trading centres of the previously all-powerful khazar khaganate before finally being stopped by an imperial army led by the Emperor John's his whiskey's in Denmark now increasingly influenced for the atonium Germans to the south Gong sound Harald Bluetooth sought to extend his rule to Norway and along the Baltic coasts utilizing his stranglehold over trade in the region to construct huge fortifications and a navy of warships svetislav successor meanwhile Prince Vladimir still enjoying firm links and military support from Scandinavia notably from Haqqani all the de facto ruler of Norway in the wake of renewed Danish power returned to Kiev to stake his own claims to power within a decade in return for a marriage alliance with the Byzantines he converted to Christianity from this point on though the trade system along the Volga remained relatively influential in the region the Abbasid Caliphate had already somewhat collapsed and with it went the slave trade even before this time ruse warriors had been serving in the Byzantine army as swords for hire during the Emperor Nicholas focuses reconquest of Crete in the 1960s for example ruse Mariners were the first to make landfall charging off their boats to attack the waiting Arabs on the shore we don't know whether these were long boats but it remains entirely possible eventually during the time of vladimir men such as these would form the first detachments of the Varangian guard stalwart defenders of constantinople until well into the 15th century [Music] by nine seventy five strong independent Scandinavian kingdoms had been born and in Denmark at least the once independent minded Vikings would attempt to become an empire harald bluetooth had been a great king utilizing the groundwork slayed by his father to forge a powerhouse of a realm yet even Harold's achievements paled in comparison to those of his son Sven Forkbeard and again by his son Knut the great this was the time of kings an era of Scandinavian supremacy over the Atlantic sea waves a time of conquest and of the great northern sea Empire the age of the dragon boats [Music] you

Channel: History Time

Views: 526,765

Keywords: iMovie, vikings, rus, kievan rus, sviatoslav, vladimir, hakon jarl, harald bluetooth, ottonians, east francia, henry the fowler, otto I, sweyn forkbeard, cnut, cnut the great, canute, denmark, danish history, early medieval denmark, norway, harald finehair, harald fairhair, early medieval norway, varangians, byzantines, volga vikings

Id: zfGRuWTV_rg

Length: 53min 7sec (3187 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 12 2018