The Complete History Of The Viking Age | The Vikings | Full Series | All Out History

the sun rises over the sea straits that gave norway its name this narrow passage was the cradle of the vikings masters of the sea and the wind the last barbarians today modern archaeology and science shed new light on where they came from and how they succeeded in dominating the seas and waterways of europe [Music] from the ice fields of the north to the russian steppe these fearsome scandinavian warriors sailed the globe for three centuries spreading their net of trade and pillage they built kingdoms and empires but their origins still puzzle archaeologists and historians the world over the vikings were great explorers and sailors they exceeded all others in that area i and many people along with me understand the concept of viking as activity as a characteristic it is something that you do you are out a viking today the viking legend attracts men and women from all over the world who reenact their epic voyages and battles but many sources tell us that vikings were feared as ruthless pirates gunnar anderson is an archaeologist and curator of the stockholm national historical museum's viking exhibit there are actually some on the rune stones as well there is also confirmation on a few runestones that vikings were not only feared outside of scandinavia on the continent but there are occasional runestones that tell stories about him or her being a guard against vikings here in scandinavia as well today modern science and stunning new discoveries reveal who these scandinavian adventurers really were the swedes norwegians and danes spoke the same language and worshiped the same pagan gods but we shall see that it was their life and death relationship with the sea that defined viking culture for centuries before the viking era the scandinavian populations buried their dead in ship-shaped stone graves called ship settings such as these two on the windswept island of urland that stands side by side with meniere's as entrances to the world of the dead so it is a motif a ship motif that recurs above ground and it is supposed to be visible in that way then the burials in the big ones are in most cases only common cremations so to speak the cremation layer as it is called but then we have first and foremost from the middle of the viking era and in the late viking era great quantities of ship burials where they actually burned the boats far across the baltic sea on the island of sarima in estonia no less than 40 viking warriors were excavated in 2011. they were buried in two boat graves when the carbon dating results came back director of the history faculty at italian university yeri petes was shocked to find out that the ships dated back to 650 a.d these were pre-viking age vikings such as that makes them pre-vikings of the pre-viking age according to the estonian calendar the vandal age according to swedish chronology [Music] the bodies found in the sarimar ships had been hacked to death battle they died in must have been major if 40 men were killed and enough survivors were left to bury them we can see for sure that it was a battle burial ceremony but there was a serious battle with more than 40 victims in two ships i mean says it all the battle had to be hard we can see vicious wounds on the skeletons for example hacked hands and broken heads so it was hard and they had to bury those victims fast the men who died on sarima island were buried with full military honours riley almei is an anthropologist and was amazed at the care with which they were laid to rest i think that this burial was done with great respect because we can see separated body parts heads hands or legs but they were buried in an anatomically correct order i think that this is a very important sign that they were buried with high respect the strontium isotope readings from the enamel of the teeth of the sarimar warriors suggest they originated from sweden around lake malarin north of lake malarin lies valsierde the heart of a thriving pre-viking age scandinavian community where noble men and women were buried with rich grave goods for centuries before the first recorded viking raid as we shall see the massive lake malarine was the gateway to the baltic for communities like these here ingmar janssen found the best preserved pre-viking age burial site in this part of scandinavia the first grave of this kind dates from about 600 thus the beginning of what we call the vendel era but anyway it's just one man that's laid out like that intact all the other families they lie in simple graves you don't see them over there in a pile cremated these vendel era boat graves were rich in artifacts buried with the dead objects they believed would serve in the afterlife including magnificent helmets they give us an insight into the lives of these pre-viking adventurers and the mine lies in the middle of the boat surrounded by his weapons the vendel era was a prosperous period so they would bury three shields and there would be other things too such as drinking vessels horns and glass from france and shows how cremation and boat burial went together in the pre-viking era noble women were buried with their typical oval broaches there was a woman buried over there in a two metre high mound she was buried with glass pearls and bronze jewellery and so on but the one thing that was so special was a little dragon head that must have been made out of some kind of ivory a woman was the owner of the finest ship grave ever found it was uncovered in a burial mound at oseberg south of oslo and dates to the earliest part of the viking age the ship now stands in the oslo viking ship museum directed by jan bill [Music] during the excavation it became clear that even though there weren't two complete skeletons in the grave it did contain the remains of two distinct individuals it was also evident that they were probably female this was confirmed by the osteological examinations and they also confirmed that the remains were from an older and a younger woman archaeology confirms how ships were central to scandinavian society and how rich men and women would literally take them to the grave the powerful lady who owned the ship was in her eighties and was buried with a cart a sledge and a slave woman aged about fifty whose dna can be traced to populations living around the caspian sea the furthest east the vikings ever went dendrochronology or study of tree rings revealed the ship's place of origin it was only later when other dendrochronological examinations of two ship findings from karma in west norway were carried out that it was suddenly possible to find an exact match with the tree ring characteristics from the ozberg ship when it was possible to demonstrate that the tree ring pattern seen in the wood from the ozerberg ship was the same that was seen in the ships and the grave on carmeli then it was possible to state that the ozerberg ship must have been built in that same area of west norway the ship sailed for decades in the early 9th century before it was buried with the old lady of ozerberg it was built here on karmaya island western norway maritzva leads the excavations at arvald's nes the seat of the first kings of the northmen the nova norway is named after a sea lane and this northway started here when people in the olden days came sailing past the open yaya coast just when they turned north kamsund outside here is like a road of water so this is where the north way started this is where the story of the first viking raiders of the west started the homeland of the terrifying predators of the sea [Music] the story of the vikings starts many centuries before the first recorded attack the sea was the lifeblood of the nordic communities that lived along these rocky shores of kharmoya island in modern day norway the vikings here lived and died by their ships the ship grave on its own is a manifestation a communication with the gods in a way it's almost like a theatrical play where you are connecting with the gods and it wasn't like they made these graves in a couple of days there were a lot of rituals and they stood open several months we can see that on the logs that we found in the graves the sagas written in iceland two centuries after the end of the viking era record stories passed on orally by norse poets from one generation to the next and they tell of the first kings of orwalzness the last saga from oval's ancestry was the king at avalnis he traveled all the way to siberia which the norse people called biamaland there he met a mongolian princess of siberian ancestry and to ensure the whale hunt trade he married her and brought her back to avaldness and so there was a dark-skinned queen here on avaldnis although for hundreds of kilometers northwards norwegian geography offers nothing but mountains and deep fjords perfect for sheltering ships from the atlantic gales but hopeless for farming here local chieftains found a profitable way of exploiting the rocky coastline by extorting a tong from rich merchants passing through they sent their ships out to control the sea traffic and it is this channel outside avalnis that created our wildness and turned our wildness into a center of power for 3000 years one has to be clear about the fact that voyages down to the continent from sweden and scandinavia were something that had been going on many years before the period that we call the viking era in that way the vikings only followed an already well-worn path we know that the contacts between the continent and sweden and scandinavia were comprehensive and extensive already during the early irony evidence of ancient trade links with the east along russia's rivers were found here on the shores of lake malarin in sweden where archaeologists found this bronze buddha dating back to 750 a.d [Music] yes the little buddha statue was found in the 1950s in a settlement on an island outside of stockholm named helio it was found in a house there we know that it was made in today's pakistan in the swat valley and that it dates to about four hundred years after christ helio and birker were trading emporia on lake malarin near stockholm here on adelson island on the other side of the lake from birker the local chiefs taxed and extorted protection money from traders and industrialists creating easily disposable wealth that they could spread among their followers there was a long house a port and reception halls as the seat of political power it was built at a healthy distance from the industrial town where traders and craftsmen labored in grimy and filthy conditions the layers of waste are so thick and there is so much garbage that lies inside these places you must also remember that many of these places first and foremost birka had no natural surrounding areas out on the farms they removed the waste they used as manure for the fields and things like that but in these places that space was missing other trading towns grew and faded away in norway all that is left of cow pine on the shore of oslo fjord are a few mounds dating back to the earliest years of the viking age as at birker here a powerful military elite taxed trade in exchange for protection what we can see in the whole of europe is that when these early cities rise they have connections to kings and the powerful the connection can be indirect cities need protection they need military protection because trade is not a barbaric thing it's a peaceful thing and tradesmen are mostly engaged in other things than war they want protection kaopang on the edge of norway's oslo fjord actually revealed surprising cultural influences from the south and the first self-proclaimed king of denmark and in kaopang we look south because if we look at the scandinavian jewelry in the graves in kaupan culturally it's a connection to the south and what was there of powerful kings in the south of scandinavia around the 800s king gottfried king gottfried was little more than a warlord based in northern denmark competing with others to control farmland and trade he founded the trading towns of haiderby and ribe on the very edges of the lands he controlled taxing all those who traded in his realm it was a violent way of life where workers toiled in miserable conditions and traders risked their lives on the high seas suffering attacks but also pillaging themselves where they could armed to the teeth and ready for anything [Music] so we don't have clear traces of plunder there but at the same time they did plunder other places that's obvious and we have some indirect traces we've got pieces of ecclesiastic inventory from the british isles where they had been broken off and robbed and made into the jewelry that we found lying in the graves the most ancient power center found in denmark was a chieftains camp at leiden close to the modern city of roskilde on the island of zealand the ancient burial grounds and the royal halls here date back to the late iron age and viking age [Music] scholars believe this is the place that inspired the old english epic poem about beowulf proving an ancient tie between the two lands tom christensen has excavated here for decades and explains the ancient ties with england what happens in england is that the romans leave the island and then the german immigration begins together with danish tribes we know that people from jutland settled in kent for example so there must have been cultural and perhaps also personal contact between the head of clans between denmark and england the legendary era kings here in denmark were known as the scholdings descendants of odin the ancestral pagan gods legitimized the rule of the kings here committing them to defending the old religion as long as they could was the son of odin so he was the son of god it was quite common that the royal families created connections to the gods as a baby schooled was sent on a ship to the country of the danes so a ship arrived from nowhere with this baby on board relations with the gods were necessary to be able to call yourself king you had to have a godly descendant and afterwards we have got these stories the purana sagas about the genealogy of the kings that were here [Music] if the origins of viking culture have been lost in the mists of time today archaeologists and scholars are shedding new light on the dark ages in scandinavia today we know very little about early scandinavian culture but the extraordinary viking sagas written down 200 years after the end of the viking age did record the legendary feats of vikings as repeated in poems handed down orally generation after generation by court poets the old norse [Music] the old norse sagas the ancient nordic sources are from a later date they are written down several years after the viking era and they are also written down by chroniclers in scandinavia who were christians and who lived in a christian context and who wrote from their own christian conception of the world so to speak runic inscriptions show a common language between the inhabitants of norway sweden and denmark this non-standardized 16-letter runor alphabet used sound values inscribed on stone or wood by scandinavians then there are the runic inscriptions first and foremost in this part of scandinavia and they are contemporary but they have their own special problems because the messages are often very short and concise really they tell us nothing about society at that time the runestones used a standard layout of scandinavian iconography mainly to commemorate the dead and sometimes for magic carl dahlberg is a modern day runestone carver who lives on adelson island this ornament shows a flying dragon and is maybe the most beautiful i've seen on a runestone unfortunately the stone once fell so half the dragon's nose has broken but we see the eye and the neck goes down here and a beautiful wing here then the paw is here with two claws and the tail goes down in a circle here and another circle here with some artistic license the tail is turned into a foot with two claws and a small thumb the rune stones were usually red starting with the head of the dragon but this one was different well and here he writes your girl and fast gear and eric had this stone painted after their father voger then there is an addition f r e h n their father something very special even after the vikings had become christians the dragon remained a key feature of their culture and figured on runestones for centuries the dragon painted on these rune stones is generally tied in some way either there is a leash between the neck and the tail that binds the two together or the leash is interwoven here it is interwoven and therefore it is a sort of rule that if you follow this tail for example it goes over next time under the leash over under over under over under and it has to be like that all the way so if the dragon tries to flee it just gets tangled up unlike parchment or paper carving a rune stone left no margin for error then he cuts the runic inscription that is ordered he cuts runes after runes and at the end he writes his father he forgot the r he must of course have an r so the solution is that either he must cut an r here below or he must place it inside the sentence he then chooses to place it inside and i know being a rune carver myself that when he discovered that he forgot the r then he got so angry it really bugs him he pulled his hair how could i do that and the whole day is ruined outside the scandinavian world churchmen wrote about the pagan vikings as a scourge of god threatening centuries of work building new christian kingdoms to protect and propagate the faith the pan-scandinavian culture that was so threatening to the christian world was cruel but effective only warriors who died in battle made it to the mythical paradise of valhalla to fight during the day and feast by night here the one-eyed god odin ruled this warrior paradise with the aid of a raven and the valkyries dead vikings played board games that simulated battle the fine game pieces found in the sarima ships were carved with dragons there were about 325 gaming pieces some were fragmented but still it's a huge number and there were a few dice made from tusk and in general there are two types of gaming pieces the game was called nefertaffel and was very popular in pre-viking and viking times so this is a swedish king who is the main character nefertaful means the king's table so it is the king who is being attacked by the muskets the enemies the gods were not necessarily good the viking chief buried on sarima island possessed a luxurious jewel encrusted sword the representation of the canine god fendrir tells us a lot about the early viking beliefs the dog's father loki was a famous trickster revered by pirates now here we have a very nice sword handle detail and it's a bit different from the others we can see a very nice symbol in the form of a two-faced animal it is possible that it was the mythical hunter the son of loki called fendry with a human face and animal hands odin and his brother thor whose hammer amulets are present in every viking excavation had killed the previous god emir and made the world out of his body odin's family was vast and if loki was destined to betray his brothers cousin freya had quite a different role it was freyja who was both the goddess of war and of love and when there had been a battle freya was the first to come to the battlefield with her wagon drawn by big cats and it was freya who first got to pick out her half of the men who had fallen those that she didn't want went to odin in valhalla women played a vital role in religion here at the lyra land of legends experimental center in denmark a priestess shows how the gods and spirits would be summoned there were female priests they had the same status they were volvas for example volvas that could see the future and the past and it is said in the volus pass saga that odin himself goes to a vulva and asks her to tell him about the past and the future of most of pre-christian viking religious worship took place outdoors in open spaces and sacred groves no temples remain though the german cleric adam of bremen described one at old uppsala in modern-day sweden as a large feasting hall ahmud al-fatlan was a 10th century arab traveler along the vonga river in modern-day russia al-fatlan tells us the russian vikings worshipped in open places often in woodland or by springs he describes an elaborate viking funeral rite with the sacrifice of a slave girl and a ship burning there were two forms of sacrifice known as plot one in which animals objects and at times humans were sacrificed to a god and the remains would be thrown into peaked bogs or springs such as this one recreated here at the experimental settlement at lyra in denmark in another form of sacrifice the participants ate the meat of the sacrificed animal in company in a common all you building here is based on archaeological findings for example the horses have been recreated after we found a horse skull the hoofs and the bones of the lower leg in a danish bog the rest was not found so this is our interpretation what may have happened is a feast to the gods where the horse meat was eaten and then they hung up the skin on a support with the hoofs dangling at some point the horse pelt and the support decomposed and the remains fell down into the bog the idea that a man or woman might be sacrificed to the gods to propitiate some divine intervention went back to the earliest times of scandinavian history we have the talent man with a rope around his neck and a belt around his waist the whole drama is a woman with all her clothes and equipment like combs that have been carefully laid down in the bog the tolland man was hanged to death in sacrifice and found in the peat bog of silkeborg in southern denmark the remains date back to the 4th century bc vikings 2 through valuable objects and the bodies of sacrificial victims into bogs and springs like these two four-year-old boys found in a well at trelleborg it was an ancient pagan tradition three christian clerics described human sacrifices among them tietmar of maesborg wrote that every nine years humans and animals were sacrificed by the dozen at lyra when titmar describes the terrible and cruel things taking place in laere blood sacrifices and the like then you have to remember that this is a christian's point of view of pagan traditions besides this titmar was of noble family and some of his relatives had been taken hostage by the danish king so he was personally involved and may not have been completely neutral in his presentation adam from bremen relates what the danish king sven estridson has told him and here we are already in about the year one thousand so there is a big difference in time here but there is also the fact that we know that different parts of scandinavia performed different ceremonies first and foremost regarding funerals and events like that how extensive human sacrifice was is incredibly difficult to say because then we must be able to define how these people came to line the grave so to speak the norsemen spread westwards to the british isles and iceland taking with them their ancient pagan culture which clashed with the christian empires power and religion went hand in hand in the merciless struggle that lasted 300 years in europe the pagan viking culture clashed violently with the expanding christian world but in iceland the settlers kept their traditions for centuries to come sacrifices were held in a room at the end of the larger longhouses that served as a shrine and the banqueting hall was the place where the members of the community came to eat the flesh of the sacrificed animal the icelandic law books tell us that the richest farmer the most powerful man in any one area would also be the priest the priests were also the speakers at the assembly of all free men here at the thin villa where icelanders exercised their right to debate public issues making iceland the earliest modern democracy in the world the typical scandinavian home was called a longhouse the northernmost of the shetland isles unst has the highest concentration of longhouses in all of britain and was a hub of scandinavian expansion into the atlantic shetland and unst in particular is right in the middle of the viking seaways so it's the obvious place if you're going from norway across to pharaoh iceland greenland or even america or even up and around going sort of north about and then down to ireland and man and that direction shetland's right in the middle here at jarl's half in the shetland isles there is evidence that the early scandinavian settlers reused the houses built by the original pictish people who inhabited the islands before they arrived initially people came here trading and that would have been the first contact and the first contact would certainly have have been on that level and they would have been finding out what it was like in shetland as a result of of that we do know that in the end the pictish people kind of completely their their way of life was subsumed completely by the vikings viking society was based on family allegiances and laws there was a three-tier class system split into a small ruling elite or yals free farmers known as bondi and slaves as prosperity increased the scandinavian birth rate grew and family leaders had to find more land and ever greater opportunities for their offspring independence while the rise of the warlords left little space for the more independent-minded petty chieftains it seems that prosperity rather than starvation drove the first raids ships were expensive to build and required social cohesion [Music] armor and weapons too took organization and taking men away from farming during the summer months meant that someone else was looking after the crops the role of women therefore was key to keeping the community functioning it was the women who ruled the farm and as a symbol of that they had keys and they kept those keys with the rest of their valuables and since the men travelled out a lot they were counting on the women to keep order back home [Music] women enjoyed greater political and economic rights than in the christian world too as the lady of ozerberg demonstrates with her rich funeral goods and fine trading ship when they held a meeting the people went to those meetings when they gathered in the small villages the women also had the right to join that means they had the right to vote in 793 calamity struck the english kingdom of northumbria raiders of unknown origin attacked the undefended monastery of lindisfarne and took away everything of value these men would soon be known as the vikings considered by christians to be a scourge of god but the vikings had been raiding and dominating key points on trade routes as far away as russia long before they officially entered the history books [Music] we found seven male skeletons in the first ship in sao may and they were not buried systematically they were located in different places and in the second ship we found 33 or 34 human skeletons and fragments and now we know that 10 of these have blade wounds and six have multiple injuries the ship graves puzzled the archaeologists the battle wounds of the 40 men buried here show that the relationship with the local inhabitants was probably violent yet the rich grave goods show that there was a lot more to this expedition than pure pillage these people were killed in battle because we have evidence of that on their remains especially on hands and legs for example we have an upper arm that was hacked in four different places also we have injuries from swords on other arms like someone was defending himself with the upper arm also we have skulls with obvious injuries i don't know what those people were doing there they might even have been a wedding delegation peaceful visitors but we really don't know for sure what was the main reason for their being here and it is very strange that there are so many luxury items swords gaming pieces dogs birds and so on not typical battle ammunition the vikings penetrated the baltic coastline and traded and raided deep into the east european plane the routes passed through staria ladoga north russia where fines of scandinavian amulets and runic inscriptions on wood show that the vikings were trading with if not ruling this strategic place on the volkov river by the mid-8th century the finns slavs and eventually the militarily dominant scandinavians traded here for centuries before the vikings are mentioned in written chronicles they founded the trading town of novgorod just as on the other side of europe other vikings were plundering paris warfare excalibur the question is why does it escalate why this sudden rush the factors that have contributed to it first and foremost are the fact that people then as well as now are opportunistic in the sense that some areas where the situation was unstable we must remember that for example the frankish empire was in dissolution and not to mention the british isles there were lots of conflicts in that area as well the great frankish empire to the south was ruled by charlemagne who aggressively expanded his realm in the late 8th century he began a 30-year campaign to forcibly convert the saxons the southern neighbours of the danes to christianity pressing north toward the fiercely pagan scandinavian world spilled just as much blood as the vikings so maybe the viking raid started out as a military operation but after a while people discovered that there is money to be earned here and then it developed into ordinary plunder here at orwell's nest harald fairhair gathered around him a military force that was able to hold together most of norway a great battle at hayjard's fjort brought in final victory over the petty kings and pirates of westfald and caused an exodus to iceland indeed it was during the upheavals of the war to unify norway under harald feyer that we see the greatest viking emigration between 846 and 865 the vikings attacked both england and france often taking advantage of the chaos that afflicted the great empire of charlemagne the norwegian vikings went the furthest of all people in their time and they went as explorers not as bandits to rob but as explorers and tradesmen all of that comes down to the ship technology they developed it was a case of life or death [Music] the baltic and north seas facilitated the sense of pan-scandinavian community ships traveled swiftly along the coast or across the sea while land travel was slow and dangerous it is no surprise therefore that expansion into the rich plains of russia or raiding up the rivers of prosperous england and france was an easier option than cutting the forests and farming the land of inland sweden and norway while early scandinavian society became more organized and benefited from trade between the far north and the far south its appetite for wealth earned or stolen grew its ability to organize a predatory economy grew with it although they instilled terror in their victims the vikings were just the more aggressive face of a fast evolving scandinavian society whose influence spread from modern day canada to the caspian sea the secret of their success lay in their nautical technology and unique social cohesion which together were a formidable weapon for these empire builders they plundered lands from central asia to north america and defeated the armies of the greatest empires they spread the lore of the sword while trading and raiding from the arctic circle to the mediterranean sea their tactics and weapons were the most advanced of their time [Music] a castle now stands to defend this holy island of lindisfarne in north england but nothing bad the way of the very first recorded viking raid on the 8th of june 793 in which the monks were murdered and the abbey pillaged the attack is considered today as the first of the viking era but as we shall see the vikings plundered other parts of europe for centuries beforehand the vikings were fighting machines they moved swiftly over the sea in speedy lightweight ships they invested in the best weapons money could buy and the finest armor slashing their way into the history books but today science and archaeology reveal who they really were and why they were so effective in war vikings lived in a time of blood a violent time and they weren't better or worse than other people at that time there would perhaps not have been any viking age if it weren't for the viking ships this is a real most dangerous viking helmet as its armor it's made from a thick hide that you stitch together and this was the early stage of our in short as a word bulletproof vest the vikings went into battle equipped to kill spears swords and axes to attack armor shields and helmets to protect their bodies their secret weapon was the ship which carried nordic warriors all the way from their scandinavian homes to lands of conquest from modern-day russia to the north atlantic islands and the americas the same viking weapons were buried in graves as distant from each other as repton in england and salme on salima island in estonia here 40 viking warrior skeletons were excavated in two viking ships in 2011. a find that turned the story of the vikings on its head these light and shallow keeled warships were being used for raiding at least a hundred years before the first recorded viking attack the goxstad and ozerberg ships were between 50 and 100 years younger they were engineered to bend with the sea and withstand rough rapids yet were light enough to be hauled onto a beach and carried over land maritvia is the lead archaeologist at the orwald's nest excavation on kamuya island western norway and an accomplished skipper herself when the vikings came they used ships viking ships were light and flexible and it was said that they moved like an animal in the waves they attacked suddenly using the surprise tactic you see and the advantage of that was they could pull back quickly wherever there was a waterway viking raiders and traders could go there traveling from the farthest reaches of their world across the wide open oceans and into the depths of the forests and plains of modern-day poland ukraine and russia the best preserved viking ship is here in oslo norway thousands of visitors come every year to visit the viking ship museum the ozerberg ship was found by a farmer who dug into a mound looking for gold it took archaeologists 20 years to excavate restore and prepare it for exhibition jan bill is the viking ship museum curator and one of the world's foremost viking ship experts the ozerberg ship is unique it is the best preserved ship we have from the viking age almost everything is present the ozerberg ship is the oldest and best preserved viking ship and as we shall see tells us the most about the early viking way of life miraculously the blue clay of the mound similar to these at por haugen had hermetically sealed the burial leaving wood leather metal and even textiles intact the other interesting fact about the ozerberg ship is that it is the oldest sail ship known from scandinavia which has been preserved we have older pictures of sail ships from the 700s but this is the first example of a ship where the technical construction of mast and rigging has been preserved archaeologists were stunned to find two women were buried in the ship one around 80 years old and another about 50. intricate decorations showing animals and viking scenes had been carved into a cart a sled an ornate bed combs chests and dozens of other sacred items buried with them tree ring dating confirms that the great viking ship of ozerberg was built in approximately 820 on the west coast of norway and is the oldest surviving combined sailing and rowing ship a crew of 30 men plus a helmsman and a lookout propelled the ship using 15 oars aside the ship is 22 meters long and each ore hole is equipped with a shield holder one of the world's leading viking shipbuilders is vibeka bischoff she is the head builder at the roskilde ship museum in denmark and built this scale model of the ozerberg vessel before proceeding to design the life-size replica the viking ships are built to be very light and very strong they are built out of mirror-cut oak that is they are split out of whole trunks the planks are split in such a way that the wood grain is completely even down through the length of the plank and this means that it's possible to reduce the dimensions oak is a heavy and very hard wood but very strong and flexible when wet which is why the ships are built out of fresh timber which is mirror cut bischoff and a team of viking ship experts set out to build a replica of the ozerberg ship after several setbacks including one replica sinking she started the project again and in 2010 artisans and scholars began using ancient methods and local materials to make the planks and reconstruct the saga auseburg over the course of two years using the same wood carving tools and techniques the vikings employed to build the ozerberg ship a thousand years before the team rebuilding the ozerberg ship in norway worked feverishly through two winters to finish the new replica ship in the spring of 2012 the finishing touches were put on the saga oseberg finally in june of the same year an inauguration celebration was held before the entire ternsberg community and norwegian royalty and the replica was launched with great fanfare from its building site at turnsburg harbour promenade as we shall see the ship represented more than just a unique naval technology [Music] the viking predators of the seas sailed in amazingly light wooden ships and a group of experts and enthusiasts have built a faithful replica of the oldest surviving example in turnsburg norway the crew and artisans who have worked so hard to build the replica saga oseberg have come to take her out for a sale in the oslo fjord [Music] i think they had the drawings in their minds they felt the ship and knew how the ship would turn out they knew what trees to look for when they went out in the woods and let the tree help form the boat they had a lot of experience and long traditions they were artists who knew their jobs and did it properly [Music] the ship's captain illustrates some of the incredible features copied from the original which show how each ship became home to its crew all of whom left their individual mark the owner of the ship was a revered lady according to recent forensic investigations at we are also able to see from the cranium that the woman suffered from an advanced stage of a disease that is not genetically transmitted and which means that the frontal bone thickens on the inside this creates a pressure on the brain that alters the body's hormone production the ozerberg viking lady mystified her followers her hormonal problem may have contributed to her growing a beard and other gender abnormalities which some believed gave her magical abilities they carved her image on the ship we believe it to be the owner of the boat there were two women's corpses in the grave one of them was a woman aged 80 1.5 metres long with a hunchback so she was probably about 1 meter 10 long walking she had an illness that gave her a lot of facial hair and a deep voice on the other side of the straits between norway and denmark is the roskinder ship museum which holds the largest collection of viking ships ever found in a single archaeological area the five ships salvaged from the bottom of the rescinder field at school de lev included not only a trading vessel but also long ships another nine ships were uncovered while the museum was being built including the largest warship ever found at 36 metres long the danish ships here are built from oak and the ozerberg ship is built exclusively out of oak some norwegian archaeological finds are built from pine but in between you may find other wood species like birch alder and ash we have a few examples of beech not a very good material for shipbuilding but when we build to the full scale reconstructions then we do it as precisely as we can so because the vikings did not use saws every piece of wood was cut using axes taking special care to work with the natural grain remarkably large vessels could be built using traditional clinker construction techniques dragon ships carrying 100 warriors were not uncommon using iron rivets to lay one plank over the one below they would build a flexible ship from the bottom up the internal ribbing was made of oak using natural curves and forks in the branches for extra strength the planks and the ribs were lashed together using blue whale baleens maybe the strongest natural fiber ropes on the ship were made of seal skin the viking ship rode the waves as a single flexible object not as a mass of separate rigid parts all of the rivets like this are made by our own smith just as the tools are they are long pins that go in with a square shaped head sticking out on the other side and then they hold it steady and pound it until it's fastened the viking ships were clinker built which means that the hull planks are placed one on top of another with an overlap in between these overlaps there is a thin woolen thread with tar to make it watertight the planks lie tight on their own but as it is all hand made the wool and the tar help to ensure that it is watertight they are then fastened with iron rivets which are then secured on the inside so that they squeeze the planks tight together this helps to make the hull very stiff in its lengthwise direction and therefore the ship very strong and completely watertight viking ships sails weighed over 100 kilos they were made of a special wall daubed in greece to make it more waterproof they were woven by the viking women who operated the large royal farms back in scandinavia the sail was worth more than a ship in the viking age since it took such an amount of time making a sale so in the law of gulating it said that during winter time when the sale is not in use it should be stored in the church the saga oseberg when we look at the grave material from the norwegian ships that we have we can see that they are pretty wide and robust and they're used to sail the norwegian ships have got a length to beam ratio of one to four if we look at the grave material and that has got to do with the sale which is not supposed to go outside of the site [Music] for example the first image of a sail on a viking ship is this from the swedish island of gotland and dates back to about 700 a.d but although the swedes claim the patent not everyone agrees as a danish professor said it was the norwegians more than other scandinavians that dared to go out on the wide grey ocean without knowing what was to come if they didn't have good ships well they died what we know about the scandinavian warrior whether a pirate or a member of invading armies is that he or she or a few simple but effective weapons and blended into a well-organized team when a big battle loomed but they also had women and children with them in the battle and when you've got women and children in a battle you've got a lot more to fight for and they used what we call guerrilla tactics they hid and then attacked the sources tell us that they used a tactic called the hog snout and that was something they had learned from odin believe it or not these vikings of the yomsviking association are training in the use of sword and shield the key to effective single combat was balance taking advantage of the opponent's inability to react to speedy sword thrusts or slashers the weight of the sword and the shield tired the arms of the warrior so the strongest and fastest regularly one individual fights that could not last more than an hour when forced into a full-scale battle the vikings adopted the shield wall in which each warrior was defended by the man standing next to him and the shields overlapped to provide continuous protection all along the line it was a defensive array that most warrior armies of the day adopted but the vikings used the hogs snout tactic to break through their adversary's defensive wall attacking a small part of it in arrowhead formation in order to break through and cause panic of course surrounding the enemy and attacking from behind was the preferred tactic if made possible by the terrain or by enemy error once the enemy line was broken by thrusting spears the swords came into play slashing the enemy from the side and back and spreading terror one never knew where they might turn up they were heathens and this in itself instilled terror sources tell us that they used scare tactics to spread fear and panic and we hear from british sources that the vikings were considered a punishment from god and it's obvious that you get pretty helpless under those circumstances two great battles that took place in 1066 marked the climax of viking era tactics at the battle of stamford bridge in england the saxon army defeated the invading vikings when they broke through the shield wall of the scandinavian force which had left its armor on its ships only three weeks later the same saxon army was defeated by the normans at hastings a battle described in detail on the bayer tapestry held in france this time the saxon shield wall broke when they believed mistakenly that the attacking normans were in retreat safety lay in a disciplined defensive array in volin modern day vikings from all over the world meet to take part in re-enactments of viking battles and buy weapons and armor that have been faithfully reproduced on the basis of grave finds which means that they are probably better equipped than most warriors of the viking age every scandinavian soldier was required to have a spear and a shield eventually the most basic survival tool the axe also became a formidable weapon of war spearheads found in graves were of many different kinds the spear could be used as a throwing and as a thrusting weapon volin was probably the site of ancient yonsborg the military base of the elite viking mercenary unit by all accounts they were a well-equipped and trained military force a private army for hire they were staunchly pagan this runestone on the island of urland off the swedish coast commemorates a yonz viking who died in battle it is the only one to mention the pagan god odin wojciech philippiovec is the director of the volin excavations the written source says that yomsburg was a huge city on the south baltic sea at that time and describes the events in this place at that time so when we discover archaeological evidence of that kind of a big city dating to the early medieval period finding lots of artifacts of trade export crafts etc well we have no doubts that this is that place in fact the archaeological and written evidence shows volin was much more likely a multicultural cosmopolitan city where religious and ethnic diversity was not a point of conflict factity in our culture now the popular image of the vikings is unfortunate with horned helmets who were cruel people who only attacked others but the truth is they were not only pirates they were also tradesmen colonizers and they were in every trade hub in the north of europe here as well probably whether this was the legendary johnsburg or not volin was just one of the gateways into the immense riches of the central european plane via the wide rivers that cut from the baltic to the black sea where fearless adventurers could make their fortune and leave their cultural mark the vikings raided and traded all along the baltic coast for centuries before they attacked england and the viking ships of salme on sarima island in estonia tell a tale of war and death riley almei is an anthropologist who worked on the sarema skeletons all gathered together in little grey boxes her job is to work out how they died i think that during battle he fell down he was attacked from the from behind and maybe he fall down he was fighting probably because the cuts are in the in his right upper arm but in my opinion this upper arm or the hand was somehow fixed because you cannot make the strokes like this that they are in the same angle more or less and finally i found this calcaneus one of the bones in the foot i show you which also means that he should have been lying or something because the heat is somewhere here and of course the final has been this decapitation in my opinion most of what we found were weapons especially swords there were two types the first was double edged which was the most advanced technology for that period they were made using damask steel so the center part of the sword was damask plate and the outer part was welded to it soft iron and strong steel and then the blade was twisted so that it became very flexible and strong on this viking skeletons were buried with the finest ceremonial swords a characteristic of the viking graves for centuries to come only the richest weapons accompanied the warrior to valhalla now here we have a very nice sword handle detail and it's a bit different from the others we can see a very nice symbol in the form of a two-faced animal it is possible that it was the mythical hunter the son of loki called fendria with a human face and animal hands these characteristic grave goods reveal just how far the vikings had penetrated the baltic coastline and the plains of russia and poland when a new motorway was being built here in central poland archaeologists made an unparalleled discovery in post-war polish archaeology a viking age cemetery with 50 human remains dated to the late 10th century with chamber-like graves at borgia a place of strategic importance for the first recorded polish state professor andrei booger excavated the site this is a completely untraditional cemetery there is nothing like this cemetery in poland or in the whole of europe nor is it a very big cemetery because it consists of just 50 graves they are concentrated in a small space every grave is rich there is no poor grave this is the cemetery of upper-class people the central figure was this young warrior buried with his sword he had been badly wounded with part of his jaw chopped off and a deep head wound he was buried sitting upright with his sword so it's important to distinguish the young soldier's grave he had complex wounds to his skull and mouth this soldier is extremely interesting because he held a ceremonial sword this sword is positioned as though the soldier was sitting and he was holding it and the body had fallen over and we found him with the sword in front of his eyes the grave goods coins jewelry and weapons strongly suggest scandinavian and kiev russ roots to confirm his suspicions professor buchwa had genetic testing done on the skeletons the results show the father's side of the warrior's genes appear to have come from scandinavia he was not the only man buried with his weapon in this grave which we excavated there were four items of warrior equipment these were characteristic because they related to different territories in one grave we have a vikings landsax dated to the end of the 10th century and the beginning of the 11th century and the next one we dug up was connected with the scandinavian community and warriors from the north and west parts of europe the deep wounds on the warriors head and jaw show he died young and in battle and like the sarimar warriors he was buried with the finest grave goods [Music] the two-edged sword with a half-moon-shaped pommel is also known as a frankish sword as it was based on the design of weapons carried by soldiers of the most powerful empire of the time it was made of steel today experts have discovered how these swords were made to be so strong the basic block of steel that was used to make a sword can be seen here in the elp long museum which holds many of the finds that professor marek jagodzinski excavated from the site of the viking age trade town of trusa it's true we discovered lots of military things in truso i mean arrowheads spearheads and mainly pieces of swords they probably produced swords in true [Music] these blocks of steel were the basic starting point for a viking sword the iron ore was melted with carbon either from charcoal coal or even burned bones the ingots would then move on down the production line to the swordsmith where they were heated and beaten into shape they became like these swords held in the stockholm cultural history museum strong and often elaborately decorated at times carved with individual names truso was an important place of trade and craftsmanship workshop remains were discovered including smithery jewelry glacier amber and horne workshops [Music] swords made here were prized and often those buried with warriors were deliberately bent out of shape to dissuade grave robbers this ullbert sword in the novgorod museum in russia shows just how far travelled the rich viking warriors were it was made in the heart of the frankish empire in germany the vikings sought the best swords on the market even if sending a sword to a viking was a capital offense in the empire dozens of frankish swords have been found in viking graves this sword is short and one-handed which was common in the early middle ages it's a very good weapon very solid and very effective everybody wanted to have it because swords were very rare and there were not many in that time because they were expensive swords were made of iron and steel the sword had a very high impact force because when the tip of the sword hits the back of the enemy head it imparted a weight of 1.5 to 2 tons per square centimetre these axe heads were found in viking graves they were powerful weapons and the weight of the blade could penetrate a steel helmet the way they were used is shown by these warriors from the permanent viking museum of volin in poland was a very popular weapon because it does not have a lot of metal so many warriors could afford this kind of axe it was more effective also because it could pull back the shield of the opponent let me show you but no matter how strong the sword acts or knife it was worthless if its blade was not sharp one of the most precious items often found in boat burials with vikings were wet stones used for sharpening their tombs the important thing was to have good weapons sharp tools like knives and scythes to cut the grass everything that had a blade had to be sharp otherwise it was a poor tool the whetstone was important especially for the vikings who used a sword and knives using quartzite found only here in the telemark region the vikings industrialized the production of whetstones trading them out of the country as ballast in their ships and returning with other goods we know that the vikings used the whetstones with other tools they hung from the belt and we've got examples of it the whetstones were used and hung in the belt together with weapons in special sheaths leather sheaths and skin sheaths so that they always were ready to sharpen their weapons make the weapons very few items of viking armor have survived the funerals of the warriors chainmaille was costly to make each ring forged and closed around another by hand and one by one it was also heavy to wear weighing kilos at least for a foam coat plate armor was even heavier as we see it was very hard and also very expensive and very rare this breastplate doesn't protect arms and it is short the horberg which my friend has is long and protects arms so a greater part of the body but mainly on the chest was very good also however the plate breastplate was lighter than the holberg so it allowed men to move faster many viking warriors would not have been able to afford armor and would have relied on heavily padded leather jackets instead they would all have had a shield the shield was made of wood with an iron boss in the center covering the handle many of these remain and are on display in museums throughout scandinavia such as here in the oslo cultural history museum armor shield and helmet defended the viking from enemy blows but as we shall see still gave the warrior only partial protection the vikings were equipped to kill and dressed to survive a vital piece of defensive weaponry was the helmet probably the most common form was the conical type with noseguard some were particularly elaborate these helmets of the pre-viking vendel period found in a grave close to the gamla uppsala site in sweden show how much work went into making beautiful headgear for a rich warrior they were buried with the man when he died however only one viking era helmet has been found in a scandinavian grave at ringarika in norway the elaborate wendell era headgear seems to have been ceremonial only while the sarima vikings were wearing no head protection whatsoever this is actually what classic wound coming from this direction the second one is here and if you turn the skull upside down you can see there is a very clean cut on the left side of temporal bone this also means that maybe this is decapitation at this moment then when they attacked this man they definitely didn't use helmets as you see as the viking warriors of today prepare for their next battle the sheer cost of a viking expedition becomes evident the cohesion of viking raiders and armies as a team was an effective weapon as the early plundering parties became invading armies their leaders could count on hundreds of determined and fearless warriors attracted by loot but mounting such an expedition was costly a ship or several ships had to be bought or made and each soldier had to be promised sufficient loot to make the weeks away from the farm profitable vikings could become rich enough not only to buy their own weapons and armor but also even to mount their own raids when the raids became invasions the english and frankish states found that simply paying off the vikings with land or money was easier than fighting them in 845 the vikings sailed up the seine and attacked paris while on the other side of europe they founded the first russian kingdom twenty years later they invaded england and began settling with york as their capital in 885 they besieged paris and in 9 11 were given france's western coastline to rule over on the other side of europe they controlled the rivers of russia and captured constantinople by carrying their ships over land the investment in military technology paid off now massive profits from the south flowed into scandinavia while new power bases were established in the west the arab chronicler ahmed al-fatlan encountered the vikings of the vulgar known as rus in the 10th century and described their pagan rituals and another frightening aspect of their culture they were tattooed from head to foot tattooing is very very very tight connected to spirituality we know from the viking age that the runes had a lot of meaning you know every single room had a lot of meaning and i'm pretty sure that the vikings had tattoos that included roons who were supposed to provide them with protection in battle you know give them strengths connect them to their filger or power animal and stuff like that kai uther faust is a viking tattoo artist from copenhagen he uses ancient viking techniques bone needles and traditional tools to decorate the skin of his clients with viking themes at viking festivals the tattoos are done just like they were in the viking age they ornament everything so like the door is not just a door a door is room for decoration a knife handle is not just a knife handle it's room for decoration and so is the body a typical viking tattoo i think what what i have here is what i'm pretty convinced is very close to how it actually looked back in the days the same with with my leg here so again you know when we go for example to the scythians or all traditional tattoos it's always pretty tough black work while tattoos protected the vikings from the evil spirits they could not fight in the open the weapons they bore gave them physical supremacy in the real world the viking conquests from russia to england reached their climax with the last great raid by descendants of these scandinavian warriors william duke of normandy and later king of england was a direct descendant of the north men who conquered half of france when he invaded england in 1066 his army was larger and more powerful than most at the time so yes actually the duke of normandy had a very powerful army which consisted of normans but also french and we can see that the word frankie is written on the tapestry i'd say in black and white so he had a large army about eight thousand men was a celebration of the norman invasion which represented the ultimate stage of development of the viking raid details of the scenes of preparation for the invasion are meticulously recorded on this tapestry the investment in troops and equipment matched the prize that william and his lords were pursuing the lords who followed william to england made donations and of course in return they expected booty and gifts of land that had been conquered [Music] the bayer tapestry is a remarkable representation of late viking age ships weapons and war the battle construct we see ships the way vikings built them that's to say ships with shallow hulls propelled using oars and that have a sail that can be raised on the high seas we also see weapons that were inherited from the vikings which are also shown on the tapestry they are long axes a danish tradition which are handled by the anglo-saxons as seen on the bayou tapestry parlor were the driving force behind the viking raids for nearly 300 years war was a way of life for these predators of the north who left their mark across europe from the farthest steps of russia to the northernmost tip of the british isles they came out of nowhere to plunder and murder from the shores of scotland to the caspian sea modern archaeology and science reveal for the first time the real driving forces behind the viking raids from the russian plains to the north atlantic [Music] while viking enthusiasts of today live the life of the scandinavian warriors and fight set peace battles at the festival of volin scientists and archaeologists from all over europe are making groundbreaking discoveries recent research shows the vikings from a new perspective and in the brutal social context of their time spotlighting their incredible ability to plan and execute their expeditions for maximum profit and psychological effect at the time when the vikings attacked there was starvation in england there were dragons in the sky when the vikings came it was like a part of the punishment from god are good stuff for them they'd been pushed into the top of a ditch and they'd been very seriously traumatized at death their bodies were very hacked about legs arms missing the vertebral second vertebral bloody body indicates decapitation marks as you see there's a clean cut through a cervical spine to here the story of the vikings takes us to sarima island in estonia here a team of archaeologists from tallinn excavated an amazing cache of viking artifacts that turned the history of these scandinavian pirates on its head yuri pates excavated one of the most impressive viking burial sites known to experts today the remains of more than 40 human skeletons in two boat graves were unearthed in 2011 during road construction [Music] and that there was a sort of big battle i mean 40 bodies in two ships that says it all the battle had to be hard we can see vicious wounds on the skeletons some for example have hacked hands and broken skulls so it was hard and they had to bury those victims faster researcher riley almei is studying bones of the sarimar warriors and how they died the skeletons all showed signs of violent deaths and multiple battle wounds the upper arm is cut into four pieces there are more than four cuts into the bone the hand position or upper arm position could have been some like that because some of the strokes are in the same direction in the same angle and then the position has changed when the team from tallinn applied modern dating techniques to the skeletons they were [Music] analysis of the items we found including the skeletons and the organic material shows they go back to pre-viking times [Music] incredibly the ships and the bodies date back to at least 100 years before the first recorded viking raid yet the weapons the shape of the ship and artifacts buried with them prove that the men found in the two boat graves came from scandinavia these 40 bodies show that vikings were raiding at least a century earlier than scholars previously believed we can be sure that these men were scandinavian sailors who somehow met their death at salme as we shall see the viking age was one of incredible brutality and the ferocious battle that raged on the beach of sarima must have been major if 40 warriors were hacked to pieces and then respectfully buried by their comrades i think that during battle he fell down he was attacked from the from behind and maybe he fall down he was fighting probably because the cuts are in his right upper arm but in my opinion this upper arm or the hand was somehow fixed because you cannot make the strokes like this that they are in the same angle more or less and finally i found this calcaneus one of the bones in the foot i show you which also means that he should have been lying or something because the heat is somewhere here and of course the final has been this decapitation in my opinion archaeological evidence in russia confirms that vikings raided but also traded along the great rivers of eastern europe at least as early as the mid 8th century adrian salin is a researcher in early russian history at st petersburg university russia no one knew what was in ancient russia everyone knew that somewhere around the caspian sea they were minting silver coins and that they could be exported to the rest of europe in unimaginable quantities and it was this area between the baltic and the caspian seas along the volga river that was the first to be colonized by scandinavians here at stadia ladaga on the shores of the volkov river tree ring dating of wooden objects such as this stick carved with letters of the viking alphabet called runes shows that scandinavian traders and warriors appeared here long before any mention of vikings in the written chronicles with regards to staria ladoga we can see that scandinavian artifacts dating back to before the viking age have been found in the oldest of all the sites in the area of the ancient chronicles known as sagas and runic inscriptions in scandinavia have given a name to these men whose exploits went unrecorded for centuries before they slashed their way into the history books they were the vikings they were men and women who left the safety of their homes to explore and plunder distant lands from modern day poland ukraine and russia to the islands of the north atlantic and as far as america the vikings spread not only terror but also a web of trade the mystery of where the vikings came from and why they attacked has now been revealed scandinavian warriors had begun plundering coastlines of the baltic sea and atlantic ocean early in the 7th century by the end of the 8th century they had occupied the northernmost of the british isles plundered scotland and dispossessed the indigenous population the picts whose monuments still stand on orkney today well i'm sure initially people came here trading and that would have been the first contact and the first contact would certainly have have been on that level and they would have been finding out what it was like in shetland as a result of of that however and you get objects appearing in the pictish context showing that kind of link the degree to which it did or didn't become aggressive we don't really know [Music] here at yale's yalshoff on shetland the way the vikings reused pictish dwellings is clearly visible what happened to the locals remains a mystery sometime in the 8th century warriors from norway came here and the pictish culture disappeared the term viking really only applies to the very first settlers who came who were in that initial uh exploratory possibly raiding phase which maybe in shetland perhaps only lasted as much as a generation i don't think it's as black and white as either you were a raider and a pirate or you were a farmer and had your own industry or soapstone industry or whatever it was that you did i'm sure that all these roles were mixed up together and it's not clear-cut the vikings probably used hit-and-run tactics to raid coastal and riverside communities in scotland and ireland for decades before they attacked a monastery in northern england where they found more gold than they could imagine but they did not come for plunder alone a titanic struggle was underway pitting the christian empire of charlemagne against the last pagans of europe the holy island of lindisfarne is cut off from land during high tides today tourists flock here for the seabirds monks first came here because it was isolated in the distance the northumbrian castle of bambara was close enough for the holy men to exert religious influence and receive protection no one expected the vicious attack of the aids of june 793. chronicler alchin of york commented behold the church of saint cuspert spattered with the blood of the priests of god despoiled of all its ornaments a place more venerable than all in britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples alcoin of york however was far away in argen the capital city of the greatest empire of europe ruled by charlemagne champion of the christians charlemagne's drive northwards and the 30-year long forcible conversion of the saxons to christianity brought his empire to the very edges of pagan denmark inevitably christian chroniclers were the sworn enemies of the pagan vikings but according to maritzvia the lead archaeologist at the royal palace at orvaldsness norway the pagans may have been reacting to christian atrocities at that time charlemagne was conquering territory after territory in europe and charlemagne's war well his culture minister was al quinn he had been to lindisfarne monastery for instance the first attack known to us was at lindisfarne monastery so one theory is that the raid was a response to charlemagne's aggression we shall see that viking raids became invasions when politics in scandinavia and in the great kingdoms of europe created opportunities for attack the raids were planned to strike when the enemy was weakest and the potential for plunder the greatest [Music] charlemagne died in 815 a.d and 30 years later his grandsons began a civil war that set three frankish armies against each other the opportunity to attack and pillage into the heart of the empire was too great to be missed the great river seine flows into the english channel and leads all the way to paris in 841 danish viking azkier sailed up it with 13 ships less than a thousand men and burned down the city of ruan he went on up the river to the magnificent monastery of jumiej where he ransomed the monks the vikings stayed for the winter and ravaged the countryside the next year too in 845 the city of paris itself was looted by a certain ragnar the viking raids continued for the next 30 years the vikings avoided facing the franks in battle but more often they were paid either to leave or to fight each other or serve as mercenaries they were also given land in the northern netherlands and in the rhine estuary in exchange for their military services for pandey we can't ignore the shock and the violence but nor can we see the relations between the scandinavians and the franks and other peoples as only this there were also other types of relationship including trade relations as well as other relations such as discussions negotiations exchanges [Music] when they found resistance in france the vikings turned to england which was little more than a patchwork of weak kingdoms bambara was the seat of one of the northumbrian kings and northumbria was just one of four kingdoms in england at the time northumbria stretched from the scottish border to the humber river just south of york it was divided into two sub-kingdoms constantly at war with each other while the middle of england was occupied by mercia the kingdoms of east anglia and wessex occupied the east and west of the country divided and mutually hostile they were unable to put up resistance to what initially was little more than a viking nuisance the part-time warriors of the english kingdoms were no match for the determined viking [Music] predators in 865 the four leaders of the great heathen army iva hauftan abba and guthrum landed in east anglia and began a 20-year reign of terror they captured york on all saints day when both rival kings of northumbria were celebrating the christian festivity they practiced the blood eagle torture on one of the kings after killing the other in battle and marched on to conquer the rest of england york became a viking capital for a century but what the history books tell us isn't always backed up by archaeology says peter connolly the director of the excavations in the hungate quarter of the city we talk about the archaeology of york as being anglo-scandinavian so you have the anglo-saxon aspect in that scandinavian aspect and it's very difficult to tease those apart so it already looks like we're dealing with a more cosmopolitan population than say historical records would lead us to believe the jorvik center at coppergate in york holds significant artifacts of scandinavian origin such as combs which were a typical male adornment but also this saxon helmet was found in a well while these boards from a saxon ship were found as walls in a viking storehouse in the hungary area after terrorizing the rest of northern england iva captured repton an important religious and political center in murcia this pond at the back of repton school and below the churchyard is what is left of the tine river dock at the viking fortress here in the churchyard 250 skeletons mostly male were found gathered around a central grave dated to 873 by a saxon coin it was the year either died nearby at heath wood hundreds of small tumuli suggest that this was the viking military cemetery in the same year one of the other viking leaders halfton raided into scotland but left some of his warriors to build farms the vikings were here to stay but despite what the christian chroniclers wrote the impact on the tiny population of england was relatively imperceptible we're not talking a massive population hundreds of thousands um say for the the north of england into scotland but i'd be very surprised if anybody estimated upwards of a million alfred king of wessex the only saxon kingdom to survive the scandinavian onslaught defeated a second invading viking army at ashdown but the campaigns continued for nearly 20 years with the vikings drawing on help from ireland where ivar's sons had settled the great heathen army campaigned tirelessly and almost successfully until the last surviving leader guthrum was defeated by alfred in 878 and signed a pact to be baptized a vast area of england that came to be known as danelaw would be ruled by vikings in york the peace did not last however as viking bands from france and ireland also joined in the fray in the following years as we shall see events in norway and denmark continued to influence the patterns of raiding alfred's military reforms left wessex better equipped to fight the raiders he instituted the first standing army in england and a series of fortress towns known as burs where the rural population could seek refuge when under attack england's renewed administrative efficiency assured the loyalty of the local population the many sort of glances across to the to anglo-saxon england is because of its a well-advanced taxation system um and um there are ways of levering um people um out of the land and and that obviously comes with the fact that um you get this trickle-down effect from the the the central power um king um to the way that land is given out that benefaction and buys loyalty scotland too continued to be subject to attacks by viking bands in 871 iva joined a viking army from ireland to capture dumbarton castle an isolated british settlement in the heart of pictish scotland the population was enslaved and sent to ireland on the east coast of scotland the vikings attacked donata castle 2 just over the border with northumbria in the year 900 when the pictish king donna was killed although the great heathen army had disappeared the raids by other leaders especially from scotland and ireland continued creating new states such as the new kingdom of strathclyde famous for its stone carving school in denmark and norway the territorial expansion of new ruling dynasties pushed nobles who refused to be subdued to seek their fortunes abroad the richer the plunder the more they invested in ships and men to mount ever larger attacks each norwegian valley had its own king until the ruler of this strategic strait along norway's coastline used his financial power to subdue those lords in 870 harold fairhair began building the first kingdom of norway from here at aurvaldness on kamoy island what is certain is that all of harald fairhair's royal estates were located in rogueland and hoarderland and even though all other places were ruled on harald fairhair's behalf he himself only had the full control in these two counties what was happening in the viking heartland affected the extent of the viking raids in the east and west [Music] the viking onslaught against england and the frankish lands was driven by politics as well as by lust for plunder opponents to harold those who saw no profit in paying tribute to him and serving as soldiers in his army may have taken to raiding and exploring the north atlantic instead the hundreds of fjords were perfect places to hide and plundering the rich coastlines of england and the frankish empire or sailing to iceland must have seemed more attractive than serving this upstart danish chieftains served as mercenaries for the warring frankish kings and were invited to occupy frisia opening the way to attacks further down the continental coastline they brought home not only plunder but also ambitions to rule as kings in their own homelands in 947 politics in norway led to strife in england defeated by his english educated brother harold fairhead's son eric bloodaxe found refuge among the scandinavians of york the nobles of northumbria rebelled against their new saxon king hadred and elected eric king in his place at ripon cathedral edred reacted mercilessly and ordered the cathedral burned terrifying the rebellious nobles into surrender the norwegian viking was killed in battle after a second attempt to gain the throne so if we think about eric blood axe he is disposed um of the the the king of the area in 954 a.d and it's around about 960 into the 970s that we see a whole new suite of development in hungary the area hungate is is in jorvik now it really is expanding past it and that then continues right through into the 11th century we have to bear in mind how scandinavian societies developed they themselves were the result of interaction with outside societies but this too is subject to debate because we can't imagine that all the stimulus for evolution comes from outside as has been said but there were developments within scandinavian society too swedish raiders dominated the baltic sea from lake malaran and the islands of gotland and ireland these two large islands with their vast coastlines were perfect bases for raiders into central and eastern europe and a halfway house for the markets of hedeby and birka the market towns filmed with goods plundered from the plains of eastern europe and stolen from the cities of the west a large number of treasures found on the islands of urland and gotland now on exhibition in the stockholm museum show how profitable trade and plunder was and how even from the earliest times the vikings sought the most transportable wealth available at the time bronze silver and gold they sold or stole furs walrus ivory amber and slaves the vikings had been raiding and trading along the rivers of central and eastern europe for centuries before their first raid was recorded in the west as far as i know today the widespread belief is that the appearance of the vikings in eastern europe is linked to their interest in silver that goes back to the 9th century between the 800s and 900s so in the 9th century several million silver dirhams were exported from the caspian sea area we visited there were no distinctions between raiders and traders one day they were plundering farmsteads and churches the next selling those same goods at markets one such trader was a certain norwegian seafarer orthera who disclosed to king alfred of england what the trade routes of the viking explorers and warriors were he described a trip to the very north of norway and round into the arctic sea and down again in search of walrus tusks and seal skins he described the market town of cowpang in norway and the trade routes into the baltic sea another explorer wuthstan of haidabi reported where the vikings exchanged their goods for such wealth the travels of wolfstan proved the extent of the viking web of trade between west and east among the places wolfstein visited was the great city of truso whose remains marek yagazynski found 20 years ago while riding his bike home as i said truso was set up by the scandinavian newcomers on the frontier with baltic peoples and slavs the objects which we found in truso are mainly scandinavian but we have ceramics i mean clay pots from western slavs and also pots made by baltic people i mean proust people the viking warlords dominated this baltic trading place turning it into a military base to supply traders and warriors on their expeditions deep into eastern and southern europe alongside articles of daily use marek jagodzinski found a large quantity of swords truso was a hub of the viking web of trade and pillage globalization in my opinion we see a sort of globalization we find the same crafts the same arab coins the same weights everywhere from britain to north russia so there was some kind of unification and this local craftsmen worked amber made cones swords jewelry tools and weights slaves worked in production processes and as labour in the port the trading emporia stretched all along the baltic coast from present-day rostock to the neva river where saint petersburg stands today the slavic peoples who inhabited this vast area lived in simple villages and used slash and burn agricultural techniques they were easily dominated by the predatory vikings on the other hand there is a widespread belief that the largest portion of goods exported from eastern europe to the caspian sea with the aid of the scandinavians were slaves it is even said that in the 10th century the arabian slave markets were full of slaves from eastern europe the vikings turned their military outposts into market towns where traders paid them for protection the scandinavians forged new trade links between east and west in 841 while in france the north men were burning down ruang a scandinavian warrior rurik and his two brothers founded the kingdom of novgorod they were invited by the slavic tribes of present-day russia to give them peace and protection the fines here at rurikova gareth just upstream from novgorod show a significant scandinavian presence the viking artifacts that have been found in the novgorod area are connected both to trade and warfare we find not only weapons but also scales and silver in the scandinavian graves which suggests that the dead person was a trader the impressive rivers and lakes of northern russia were the heart of the early viking conquests lake ladoga is still a shipping thoroughfare and the volkov river flows into it rising at lake illman 200 kilometers further south the sphere river in northern russia is one of the waterways that still today connects the caspian and baltic seas weapons such as axes and swords from novgorod and stadia ladoga show that these were not only thriving trading centers but also military bases we have to say that very few scandinavian weapons have been found in the novgorod area while objects to do with trade and everyday life have been found in great quantities we should also say that russia is crossed by many rivers travel was by river mainly and the scandinavians were traders 50 years after the first recorded raid against lindisfarne vikings had penetrated the eastern european river system as far as the black sea rurik's successor aliek moved his headquarters down the diniper and seized the town of kiev in 907 he captured constantinople by dragging his ships around the sea defenses in 9 11 in the same year the vikings gained normandy as their new home in france aliek struck a trade deal with the byzantine empire turning kiev into the capital city of the great ruling dynasty part of the deal was to provide mercenaries to the emperor as his own personal bodyguard known as the varangian guard by now half of england and much of france was ruled by the vikings but this was not the end of the viking raids iceland sits halfway across the north atlantic ocean the most dangerous sea for vikings to cross and yet by accident or by design scandinavians landed here already in 840 a.d later political upheaval at home led to an exodus of refugees who opposed the rule of harald fairhair [Music] the vikings who left norway for iceland found a completely virgin land and brought their social structures with them the owners of the largest farms were also the high priests of the community and called gothier forty gothia held an all thing or parliament here at the all things stone every year here more than anywhere else the early viking way of life was preserved from here the viking ships plowed the seas westward to greenland where two settlements were established from there they traveled as far as the american continent for the first time around the year one thousand the travels to the land known as veenland was recorded by a monk sailed with the explorer leith ericsson america the sagas tell us about the viking trips to america they are covered by the saga literature we have to assume that there were many more voyages than described in the sagas we have also found traces of viking settlements in america and there are also american indian stories about these blue-eyed people that they met the settlements on the american continent lasted only a few years while the mini ice age of the 13th century onwards led to the decline of the greenland settlements too in europe the violent viking age was reaching its climax in europe the viking invaders struck fear even more than a century after the great raids the first millennium a.d was a time of widespread violence in 2012 18 skeletons were found in the grounds of saint john's college oxford scholars immediately associated the find with the 1002 sint bryce's day massacre when the king of england ordered all of the danes in his kingdom murdered the task of identifying who these men were fell to mark pollard of the forensic archaeology department we first a selection of them and for various reasons the radiocarbon age wasn't exactly what we would have expected to be a thousand and two ad but there are reasons that that might be the case so we then began to look at the carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the bone collagen which is an indicator of diet and we also looked at the strontium and oxygen isotopes in the dental enamel from the teeth because that gives you some indication of where those individuals grew up the skeletons from oxford suffered a similar fate to another group found near the seaside town of weymouth were they vikings yeah we matched them with the the vikings that had been recovered from weymouth they're roughly contemporary from the radiocarbon dates and um other people had done strontium and oxygen in their teeth and they found the same pattern that we found not from the south of england and actually on the diagram they're moving in a direction which suggests both an older geology which is consistent with possibly scandinavia and also a colder climate which is also consistent with scandinavia while strontium isotope techniques suggested the victims were not from the south of england possibly from danelore therefore other marx hinted at their true identity several of the skeletons showed healed wounds which may plausibly have come from blade wounds and so i think you know in a group of 16 to 25 year old males if they're carrying um healed blade wounds then the chances are they've been in combat conflict um before so i think they're that you know they're not sort of a group of people who were farmers and and just sort of happen to be passing by i think they are either professionals mercenaries or or raiders of some description the beginning of the 11th century was a violent time and national identities were less important than local and family ties it's quite complicated to understand what identity would have meant at that time i think you know we tend to use these titles of these danes and those wrangler saxons but all of this identity is a sort of a created identity whether they are when we say they're danes whether they're people who come from denmark or whether they might be second or third generation people born in britain but of originally danish stock and perhaps uh holding to danish customs and practices possibly dressing more like danes than anglo-saxons it's very difficult to know far to the north in york another victim of murder was found buried under the coppergate streets this skeleton shows multiple blade wounds but knowing why this young man died is almost impossible why was the person killed obviously we will never know it was it looks like it was violent um and you can tell that through the osteology but if you were to try and pinpoint me down to see why can we bring that to an event i i honestly can't say we we can but what we need to bear in mind is that what this person represents is a bloody and violent end to somebody's life still in an area in an era sorry when a lot of this is going on although the legend of the violent viking lives on the true nature of their society may be different from what scholars have written for centuries what archaeology is very good at is breaking down this idea that the vikings are compartmentalized the anglo-saxon world is compartmentalized they the the pics and the celts are compartmentalized and actually we start to bring that bleeding of the edges together and we start to see a lot more complex society and where people can define themselves people obviously go to war about definition and power but at the same time we get that that input of continental imported goods we see goods from britain going abroad and it just brings together i think we make it a rich tapestry perhaps the most daring of all raids left sweden for the furthest eastern edge of the viking world around 10 40 a.d ingvar the far travelled and a small army of a thousand men left central sweden for russia and then on to present-day georgia then under arab influence where they won a decisive battle the land ruled by saracens was known as sarkland they may have crossed the caspian sea and reached tashkent but only one of the many ships returned home 26 runestones in sweden commemorate the men who traveled with inva but most touching of all is this one now standing in the grounds of grip's home castle on lake malaram it tells the tale of inghvar's brother tala had this stone raised in memory of her son harolder invas brother they traveled valiantly far for gold and in the east gave food to the eagle they died in the south in sirkland [Music] inva may have been of royal blood and his family were among the leaders of the international viking elite who still led their warriors into battle 250 years after the raid on lindisfarne the most persistent myth about the vikings is that they were thieves they were pirates they were great warriors they always won all the battles they were brave they didn't fear death and so on but the truth is that they weren't better or worse than others at that time they did live in a violent time the year 1000 was a turning point in the story of the vikings the era of the early raids was over and viking expansion had reached its high tide mark but it was also the beginning of a century of even more bloodshed the free booting viking chieftains faded away and in their place great viking overlords kings of whole countries who unleashed the power of viking armies against england and against each other spilt more blood than at any time in the preceding centuries rich professional mercenary forces dominated eastern and western europe their leaders learned the craft of kingship from their enemies and built states that are still with us today the viking states grew out of the most extensive military expansion the world had ever seen since roman times scandinavian warriors took their thirst for conquest from the heart of the viking homeland to the very edges of europe along the way they laid the foundations of states that are still with us today [Music] archaeologists from moscow russia are washing out the remains of viking age tombs near novgorod on the great volkov river discoveries here and elsewhere in europe are revealing an unknown quality of these scandinavian adventurers the merciless pagans built enduring kingdoms and empires all over europe so first they came here to build a state then they saw that they had opportunities to become rich above all they were adventurers or people who made a living in this way such as the clan of rurik who brought with them their own drujina or band of warriors who were nothing more than hired mercenaries what archaeology is very good at is breaking down this idea that the vikings are compartmentalized the anglo-saxon world is compartmentalized they the the picks and the celts are compartmentalized and actually we start to bring that bleeding of the edges together the 8th of june 793 a.d marks the opening of the viking age a handful of pirates attacked the holy island of lindisfarne and left within a few hours seventy years later four viking warriors landed with an army [Music] halfthan iva wrote their names in blood as in 865 their band of raiders known as the great heathen army made its way to york in northern england the city was one of two capitals of the deeply divided kingdom of northumbria the amazing viking military machine swept away england's part-time armies and pillaged the countryside mainly churches either one of the viking leaders of the great heathen army captured the capital of mercia here at repton central england and made it into his base mass grave found here is dated to 873 a.d by an english penny found among the skeletons spread around a central grave of a tall male warrior possibly either himself nearby dozens of viking tumuli found at heath wood suggest that this was their military cemetery in the same year the followers of another of the viking leaders halftone began farming the land of northumbria to sustain themselves during the long winter it was the beginning of the scandinavian settlement of england over the next two centuries huge swathes of the british isles became part of a vast viking empire the vikings made york their capital in england peter connelly is the lead archaeologist on the hungate excavation site in modern-day york in england once the capital of the viking kingdom york is the dominant urban place in the north of england at that time and has a population for sacred argument ten thousand and so extrapolating out into that when you start to talk about small farmsteads um and small village hamlets communities other small seaside towns or on rivers i mean we're not talking a massive population hundreds of thousands um say for the the north of england into scotland but i'd be very surprised if anybody estimated upwards of a million in england alfred king of wessex was the last saxon king to resist the viking onslaught his response was to reform his state he set up a standing army and navy and fortified the towns of southern england the increased efficiency of alfred's wessex not only stopped the viking conquest but served as a model for the invaders too the treaty between alfred and the last surviving leader of the great heathen army guthrum left a large part of england under viking control an area that came to be known as danelore but gusram became a christian raiders from ireland and scandinavia continued to view york as the capital of a great viking realm but alfred's successors repeatedly repulsed the attacks and in 920 a.d even the city of york recognized king edward the elder as the sole king of england the vikings raided scotland too capturing the castle at donata on the east coast and dumbarton on the river clyde mercilessly taking hundreds of slaves to ireland the new kingdom of strathclyde now in the heart of glasgow grew out of the ashes of dumbarton its religious center was governed an early medieval religious site um and is within the kingdom of strathclyde and there has been um the movement of the the royal power base from the barton rock undoubtedly influenced by the vikings themselves um in further up the clyde over time the north humbrian and scottish vikings were converted to christianity and the local and scandinavian cultures merged [Music] you have quite a complex kingdom set up with the the picks and the scots and the gales and the strathclyde and the the northumbrian sort of anglo-saxon population as well so you know you're getting quite a hot pot of different cultures coming through the hogsback tombs of govan were the work of a school of sculptors evidence of an efficient and prosperous new kingdom there are obvious um connections um in the belief systems of the the mixture of strathclyde and viking age culture and that you see on the west coast of scotland and you're seeing say on the east coast of england hogsback tombs in govan and here in bolton north yorkshire represent typical scandinavian longhouses with bears at either end they show how the viking motifs continue to be used well after the scandinavian invaders have been converted to christianity evidence of the dominant scandinavian culture in york can be seen at the jorvik center built to house the findings of the coppergate excavation site the comb was an ornament no viking man would do without and they were made here from deer antlers while viking jewelry and bronze work show scandinavian patterns the vikings of york had a lot of fish and oysters and this coprolite fossilized feces tells us more about what they ate diet is very interesting because we have coprolites and which gives us some insights into um the diet and so fruit seeds surviving what we think of as plums and damsons there are huge amounts of animal bone thrown out into waste pits and we're talking about a high consumption of beef and to a lesser extent pig but we get all the major domesticates the viking raids against the great empire of charlemagne in 799 turned into invasions 40 years later when his grandsons began a bloody civil war leaving the empire's coastline undefended [Music] an average viking raid of course much depends on the period but we're talking about several dozens of warriors and the larger raids several hundred that's the average in 841 thirteen ships sailed up the river sen and the vikings burned ruin took the monks of zhumyej hostage and an 845 even plundered paris in 885 thousands of vikings besieged paris again and although the raiding forces were still unable to take on the might of the empire's armies they used every opportunity to strike where the defenders were weakest there were already interactions with the frankish elites so there was a range of relationships from political to trade understandings and even at times alliances because it happened that frankish leaders asked the scandinavians to work for them as mercenaries in 911 the king of france charles de simple handed over to the vikings the western seaboard of what is modern-day france in exchange for their protection against further raids their leader rodlo became a christian and gained the administrative tools to build a great kingdom [Music] one of the conditions was loyalty to the king and conversion the baptism of the scandinavian chiefs in rolos court so that seems indispensable if they wanted to settle towns like dieppe whose name derives from deep in danish thrived with new trade routes to the north the vikings adopted the local language and merged with the local population forging a new and powerful state [Music] even if peace had come to england and france the politics of the rising kingdoms of norway and denmark continued to be played out on the english stage and the viking era was far from over [Music] the rise of two aggressive and mutually hostile royal dynasties in norway and denmark heavily influenced events in modern day france and england in the 870s king harald fairhair used his control of the strategic straits on norway's western shoreline on kamoye island to build a new state provoking an exodus of warriors forced into a life of a viking a word that came to mean adventurer maritzva is the lead archaeologist at the orwell's nest excavation on kamoy island the last battle was in havesfjord around year 870 and when harald fairhair won this battle he made avadnis into his most important royal estate because this was where he could control the shipping traffic on the norwegian coast the best events in norway impacted politics in england too in 920 harald fairhair died and his son eric bloodaxe took his place but he was defeated and exiled by his english educated brother harkon the good the fragile peace that had settled on england norway and denmark was about to be shattered in 847 the restless nobles of northumbria in england invited the pagan exile eric to rule over them they elected him king here at ripon cathedral and began minting coins in his name the saxon reaction was devastating king edward had ripon cathedral burned to the ground and the terrified northumbrians withdrew their support of eric who was killed in battle after a second attempt to win the throne of york as we shall see his danish wife and a brood of dispossessed children thirsted for vengeance during these upheavals york continued to thrive and saxons and scandinavians mostly lived in peace the city of york grew and the scandinavian and saxon populations merged in the most surprising way even building materials showed curious interaction between communities the very first building that we excavated in hungary the preservation was very good we think of these buildings as a big rectangular hole dug into the ground to stop those earthen sites collapsing you need to line them and with wood and posts and as our wood technology experts start to remove the boards or clean them up and look at them he realized that they were all parts of the hull of a ship these were boards from a viking ship they were actually from an anglo-saxon boat the building techniques show how society changed over the decades after the fall of eric bloodaxe and a more peaceful period began when we start to see um say the sun can feature buildings develop in the latter half of the 10th century they fit with a sequence of archaeology that we see in places like oxford um and london and chester and we're probably seeing a post blood acts um confirmation of a stronger anglo-saxon culture starting to move up through the country itself the danes in england continued to maintain a separate ethnic identity well into the 11th century as we shall see one especially violent incident in an already violent age precipitated a full-scale invasion by the viking king of denmark in an early example of ethnic cleansing king ethelred ordered the murder of all danes in england onsen price's day 1002 possible evidence of this was found in saint john's college oxford when a car park was being built behind new student accommodation mark pollard is the forensic archaeologist appointed to examine the skeletons the ditch was outside the city walls so one assumes that the people were marched out if they were in the city were taken out and executed and then just pushed in the ditch the most advanced scientific techniques were used to identify who they were and why they died we first radiocarbonated a selection of them we then began to look at the carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the bone collagen which is an indicator of diet and we also looked at the strontium and oxygen isotopes in the dental enamel from the teeth because that gives you some indication of where those individuals grew up dating the bodies was complicated by the probability that the victims had a high marine protein diet if people have a large proportion of marine protein in the diet then this can actually show up in the radiocarbon date as uh making it earlier than we would expect so when we dated the saint john's college skeletons we we found that the radiocarbon ages were up to a hundred years earlier than a thousand and two a d however strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of their tooth enamel gave some indication as to where they grew up it's difficult to say where they did come from but it's i think it's reasonably confidently we can say that they weren't brought up in the south of england were these viking raiders or innocent danish traders caught in the city on the day of collective saxon paranoia could the skeletons found in saint john's college have been victims of the saint bryce's day massacre and how did their fate tie into the spread of a wider scandinavian empire for the saint john's skeletons we don't think they came from the south of england they have a a young demography 16 to 25 in general they're all male some of them are carrying healed battle wounds so that to me suggests that what you've got is a raiding party whether or not these men were victims of the saxon massacre they represent a new and vital clue in showing the violent social tensions that were rife in english society in the viking age the saint price's day massacre sent shockwaves through scandinavia the new king of denmark sven forkbeard attacked england with a mighty army this was not a band of raiders sven's army was a formidable military machine shield war clashed with shield wall in a war of conquest that left sven king of england in 1014 his dominions stretched from poland to england and norway and his son knute inherited the first viking empire zven forkbeard's wife came from poland whose waterways were a vital part of the viking trade network stretching to the black sea professor chieslov skrock believes all the evidence points to direct viking control it was very quick because it was a small group about 500 people they drove in here like a corporation like the mafia and they built their own place clues pointing to the origins of the polish nation were found close to the river vistula one of the viking thoroughfares from the baltic to the black sea here at bozza close to the viking hub of voklovic a multi-ethnic cemetery seems to prove this was one of the centers of trade between east and west professor andrei booker excavated the site there were four objects of warriors equipment in these graves which we searched they were characteristic because they related to different territories in one grave we have a vikings landsax dated to the end of the 10th century and the beginning of the 11th and what we excavated there was connected with the scandinavian community and warriors from northern and western parts of europe beaujola was a truly cosmopolitan cemetery showing how viking society was based on trade as much as pillage the fine frankish amulet honda and byzantine coins found alongside the central scandinavian burial show that many cultural influences were at play here we found artifacts that come from northern western southern and eastern europe so we can say that in one place we found objects from the whole of europe that are concentrated in less than 50 square meters when sven forkbeard chose the daughter of the first polish king mieshka as his wife he was forging an alliance with one of the gatekeepers of the eastern plains chislov skrock believes mieshka was a viking [Music] the important thing about the sister of bharashwav choubri i mean the daughter of mieshko the first zetas was that she had a super career she was the mother of kings canute and harold they say she was a slavic woman but she couldn't have been she had to be from a scandinavian family a very important class yelling central denmark was the heart of sven forkbeard's viking kingdom this runestone was erected by harold bluetooth sven's father and commemorates the last pagan king of denmark and founder of the dynasty that still reigns over the country today king harold paid these memorials to be made after gorm his father and sierra his mother the harold who won the whole of denmark and norway and turned the danes to christianity gorn the old laid claim to the kingdom of norway and controlled the southern coastline of norway and sweden his daughter was married to eric bloodaxe and when the norwegian viking was killed in england she sent her children to fight their and met the then ruling king of norway hakon the good in a bloody battle up on these old bronze age barrows on the blood heath it was a bloody fight and that is why it got its name the blood heath the blood was flowing here at the blood heights in view of har khan's court at orwell ness three of eric's sons perished in battle against their uncle in 953 but harken was fatally wounded shortly afterwards and two surviving nephews shared the throne the wars between viking warlords in norway sweden and denmark sent shockwaves throughout western and eastern europe and consolidated the power of the great viking monarchs modern archaeology throughout europe is building a completely new picture of who the vikings really were work carried out in laboratories as far away from each other as novgorod poznan and oxford show how a scandinavian commonwealth stretched across europe and generated great empires one of the most lovely little beads and that we recovered from hungary and small glass bead highly decorated um was made in the eastern mediterranean and probably made in egypt um turns up in uh i think first half of the 10th century context it's come from the eastern mediterranean all the way traded through a network probably a very advanced network as well to end up in viking jorvik a snapshot of the scandinavian empires of the mid 11th century shows the stunning success of viking nation building the viking military machine was effective in conquest but costly to build only the richest leaders could afford ships and soldiers to take abroad on raiding expeditions the return on investment had to be substantial for the raid or trading expedition to be worthwhile the most profitable trade route was eastward the shallow keeled viking ships sailed up the wide rivers that sliced through the russian planes here slaves furs and amber were abundant by 750 a.d the scandinavians controlled the ancient finnish and slavic trading place at staria ladakha and in 841 the same year danes were attacking paris other vikings established their first kingdom here near novgorod olesia rudy is the curator of the museum exhibition here which holds some of the most significant viking artifacts in russia the written chronicles and archaeology tell us that this village was founded by rurik one of the scandinavian lords that were called rules he arrived in this area together with his drews a band of varangians they had been invited by the elders of the slavic clans who lived around novgorod in order to create a power center let's say to create a stronger administrative center the viking warriors pushed on up the river system and found a fortress on a bend in the river dnappa it became a new capital city kiev only a few years later they were attacking constantinople itself here the vikings were known as varangians or rus adrian salin is a researcher at st petersburg university and an expert on viking russia i think that today the majority of researchers believe that the word rus derives from the word rwatsi rowers undoubtedly when we refer back to ancient russian traditions the common name rus with the small r referred not to a people but to a social group the first chronicle of viking russia was written here in kiev in the monastery of the caves by a christian monk by the name of nestor his mummified body still lies exposed for all to see his chronicle recounts the rise of the house of rurik and modern archaeology confirms that the first russian state was varangian or viking the excavations here in rurikova have produced hundreds of scandinavian artifacts that confirmed the story told by nestor in his first chronicle of russian history the blue bead of a viking woman's necklace is a common find here showing that for centuries this remained a scandinavian outpost one particularly important artifact is this sword one of the few branded swords made in europe it was an extremely valuable object [Music] [Music] the sword in our collection is interesting mainly because of where it comes from and its shape it is broken and bent it comes from a scandinavian grave the sword was made in western europe which is clear from the brand of a famous swordsmith of the rhine valley engraved on the blade albert who made many swords for export and many made their way to the east side on the other hand there is a theory whereby a large portion of the goods exported from eastern europe to the caspian sea by scandinavians were slaves it is said that the arab slave markets in the 10th century were full of slaves from eastern europe rurik's successor aliyek who governed the kingdom as regent during the infancy of rurik's son igor is buried in this mound at staria ladakha in 907 aliak led an army of russ to attack constantinople and captured the city by carrying the light ships around the sea defenses the trade agreement they extracted legitimized the line of rurik as kings of kiev and novgorod every year great convoys of viking ships descended the river de nieper hauled their goods over land around the great rapids on the waterway and gathered here at hresson on the black sea still a busy port today to carry their wares to the imperial capital however we don't see permanent conflict in the 9th and 10th centuries probably because the population in some areas were slavs and in others finns and the scandinavians occupied certain market niches there is no indication of trade of furs for silver outside scandinavian culture a beyond cerebral [Music] the great muslim empire of baghdad also traded with russian vikings and suffered their attacks writing in the early 10th century describes the vikings as still barbaric by the civilized standards of the arabs they were covered in tattoos washed once a week and held bizarre pagan rites and elaborate funerals that included human sacrifice and ship burnings the descendants of rurik continued to rule in kiev until his grandson zvyatislav was killed by roving pecheneg warriors during a trade expedition the kingdom was plunged into civil war vladimir his natural son defeated the legitimate heirs and became king and in 988 converted to christianity and married the sister of the byzantine emperor further legitimizing the house of rurik as rulers by god's will vladimir and his successor yaroslav continued to foster their bonds with scandinavia and drew on the viking homeland for warriors and goods to trade along the rivers of a vast viking empire that stretched from the atlantic to the caspian sea the final drama of the viking epic played out along the waterways of northern and eastern europe the story takes us back to the frozen north where the sons of eric bloodaxe ruled after a long drawn-out civil war with their uncle the kingdoms of the scandinavian north and east suffered years of civil war that threw up some of the greatest leaders of the whole viking epic [Music] legend has it that astrid daughter-in-law of harold fairhair fled from the wrath of the sons of eric bloodaxe with her three-year-old son olaf trigvasson to join her brother in kiev but fell prey to pirates and little olaf was made a slave six years later he was freed by his uncle who raised him in novgorod he served king vladimir as a soldier but gained most of his prestige and wealth as a mercenary fighting for the holy roman empire against the danish king harold bluetooth and his puppet king of norway the mercenary olaf also married a polish princess who died young and after years of raiding scotland and ireland and a second marriage to an irish queen olaf was converted to christianity he returned to norway and won back his rightful place on the throne as a direct descendant of harald fairhair he forcibly converted norway to christianity and ruled from 997 for three years until defeated and killed in a naval battle against an alliance of his old enemies in an expedition to present day poland his life is marked by legendary events had to battle with heathen powers here at avalnis several times he was here with his men i think there were 300 of them and then a ship came into arvadness with sears and other sorcerers and they came to curse the king they threw out a magical black mist was saved by his christian beliefs and the black cloud was thrown back at the sears however his reaction was less than forgiving and when the sea got higher the saucer is drowned and it was a slow death of course the sworn enemy of olaf was the aggressive harald bluetooth forced to convert to christianity on his defeat by the german emperors in the early viking age kings in denmark wielded far less power than in the christian empires and kingdoms where the church provided key administrative services tom christensen has excavated the ancient danish chieftains camp at lyre for the past 20 years it is not that the danes turned their backs on europe but they were a germanic tribal society which had its traditions and were tied to them i think that the power was divided between clan chiefs there might have been a sort of king but not an autocratic king as power was mainly based on alliances between the various clans these enormous mounds at yelling are at the center of the largest ship setting in scandinavia and must have represented an important pagan shrine evidence that harold actually did control the whole of denmark are these fortresses called trelleborgs spread around his realm that stretched into modern day sweden each fort was circular with four doors and longhouses in each quarter although bluetooth was nominally christian here in trelleborg the remains of two children thrown into a well at the age of four show that human sacrifice continued far into his reign harald bluetooth claimed the thrones of norway and even sweden and drew on the services of the finest pagan mercenary force of the time the yons vikings one of whom is commemorated on this runestone on the swedish island of urland based in present day berlin they remained bluetooth's allies till the end well after he was deposed by his own son zven forkbeard in 1998 he is buried in ruskin the first christian parish in denmark the first danish bishop was an englishman but the germans wanted denmark as a church province so when adam of bremen later on wrote about the conditions in denmark he portrayed harald bluetooth as a positive leader for the germans and stated that his burial took place in roskilde the swedish danish and norwegian kings looked eastwards to the great plains of poland and russia for their wealth and sent men and goods down the great rivers to constantinople where they traded with the great empire and served as mercenaries in the imperial varangian guard nearly three centuries after the first recorded viking raid in england the epic of the norsemen reached its climax this rune stone in the churchyard of tumble sweden commemorates a viking warrior who died in the service of the greek emperor another near uppsala commemorates a great captain across scandinavia memorial stones like this bear testament to viking soldiers who fought in the mediterranean the elite varangian guard fought along the empire's frontiers and in italy clashed with descendants of other norsemen who had built a home in france the palace of the normans in palermo is a monument to the audacious norman mercenaries who became kings of southern italy two brothers from normandy descendants of the viking invaders came with their men to fight the greeks in 1014 and stayed they emerged the final victors after a series of long drawn-out wars in southern italy in the early 11th century count robert of hauteville finally pushed out the arabs from sicily to become king he was crowned here in the palace of the normans by the powerful bishop of palermo the norman rule over sicily was famous for its tolerance and openness to trade with the arab world even farther east in the bustling metropolis of constantinople a norwegian mercenary commanded the imperial guard known as the varangian guard harold hadrada was an heir to the norwegian throne but working for hire in constantinople with regards to harald hadrada's trips to constantinople and to africa which are also recorded in the sagas as well as in international contemporary sources we find small traces of the vikings for example in constantinople where a viking has written graffiti in a beautiful church in 1046 harold hadrada turned his sights back to the homeland of norway where his nephew magnus the good had been elected king following the viking river passages through russia and up across the baltic hadrada made his way back to scandinavia where he attacked denmark and cut a deal with magnus to rule jointly when magnus died hadrada became the sole king harald's reign in norway and denmark was one of peace and prosperity with the emergence of churches towns and thriving trade and minted money hadrada's ambition was to recreate canute's north atlantic empire he claimed the danish throne and then was invited by the exiled half-brother of the english king to take the english throne as well in 1066 harold set sail from norway other powerful kings had their eyes on the english throne in normandy duke william had been promised the throne and now was preparing to take it by force in williams view king harold godwinson of england was a usurper the bayer tapestries supports williams claim to the english throne and describes how he went about winning it for himself the duke of normandy could count on important allies in his bid on the 12th of august 1066 williams fleet sailed up the coast of france and stopped in the ports of normandy as it collected soldiers from the viking settlements the norman armada landed at pevensie on the 28th of september and made its way to hastings as william and harold hadrada bore down toward england the english king harold godwinson rushed north with his army harold hadrada defeated the english at fulford on the outskirts of york but when the might of the english army met the viking hordes at stamford bridge hadrada was killed in battle the exhausted english army marched south again to face william of normandy at hastings just 19 days later the norman cavalry fled in front of the saxon shield wall and william was given up for dead the saxons broke ranks to pursue the normans but when william showed his face to his men the normans rallied and harold was killed william was crowned king of england on christmas day 1066 william a descendant of the north men was now king of england viking kingdoms would flourish stabilize and become christian in denmark norway sweden southern italy england scotland and ireland but the largest kingdoms took root in the far-flung steps and forests of poland and russia where rurik's descendants ruled for another 400 years they sold furs and slaves down the great rivers of eastern europe to constantinople and baghdad they brought back silk spices and silver which they hoarded in treasure troves in their homeland they captured the world's largest city and founded the first russian states they were the varangians the rus the vikings [Music] istanbul turkey once constantinople the greatest city of the ancient world heart of a thousand-year-old empire to the vikings and still today it is the gateway to the east first the scandinavian warriors came here to plunder then in a daring raid they penetrated its massive defenses and extracted a privileged trade deal she today it is believed as far as i know that the appearance of the vikings here in eastern europe in the 9th century is closely connected with their desire for silver interior obviously the eastern world was most interested in slaves and furs the vikings had plundered the vast plains of central europe for centuries before they pushed up the river systems to the black sea and attacked constantinople dozens of runestones like these in modern day sweden tellers of the fearless scandinavian warriors who died in far away greece and turkey runestones sagas and the first russian chronicle tell us the story of the vikings of eastern europe but before anything was written vikings were plundering the shoreline of the baltic sea two amazing viking ships found on the estonian island of sarema and excavated in 2011 proved that the vikings were here far earlier than ever recorded when yuri petes of the history faculty of tallinn sent bones and organic artifacts for radiocarbon dating the [Music] the warriors who died here were a class of professional fighters or vikings as they are known at today we weren't quite sure where these men came from judging from some of the items and other marks it was more or less clear we were dealing with scandinavian sailors two sites in poland also proved that the vikings colonized the estuaries of the great rivers of central europe to control access to the plains of modern-day russia poland and ukraine rich in furs and slaves marek jagodzinski has excavated the site of truso near elplang for the past 20 years the fines here show a vibrant industrial town dominated by a viking military elite a base for the trafficking of people and goods all the way to the black sea [Music] first of all what we found was that the size of the settlement was about 20 hectares with regular buildings the division of the harbour area from the center area and evidence of crafts and trade activity around the harbour you know on the western edge of today's poland near the estuary of the oda river lies volin another viking trading post where local baltic populations mixed with the viking traders philippe heads the excavations here written sources tell us that people of many ethnic origins settled here in wallin we know about saxons but we can't find any archaeological traces of them and the rus also and we know that arabs came here because of the amber and other objects of trade [Music] every year hundreds of modern day vikings come here to participate in mock battles and lived the life of the scandinavian raiders the oda was one of their entry points to the great central european plains the rivers that flow into the baltic sea were the thoroughfares for trade with the south far to the east lay the most profitable route of them all lake ladoga europe's largest lake and russia's northernmost expanse of fresh water one of its tributaries is the great river volkov the waterway leading to the industrial complexes of volkov city and kirishi for thousands of years this lake and river system was the gateway to the depths of the russian steppe and beyond it to the civilizations of the eastern mediterranean for the vikings it was just one of the entry points in their aggressive penetration of the eastern european land mass a few kilometers south of the volkov estuary into lake ladoga lies staria laloga here archaeological excavations have exposed the birthplace of russia the typical runic inscriptions and scandinavian amulets that date back to 753 show that the vikings had come to dominate this strategic point on the river almost half a century before the first recorded raids against western europe this is where for certain we have found scandinavian artifacts dating to before the viking age this is the story of how the great eastern empire of the vikings developed out of a small band of ruthless pagan traders and warriors drawn to the incredible riches of the eastern mediterranean it starts here instaria ladoga an ancient trading place on the volkov river in northern russia the most important artifacts relating to the vikings go back to ancient times mainly the 9th and 10th centuries their ships plowed the seas and rivers of the north and penetrated into the land mass of today's russia ukraine and poland in search of the legendary wealth of the south here they captured slaves plundered furs and took them to the cities of baghdad and constantinople where they exchanged them for silver coins some of which found their way back to the viking homeland today as far as i know most researchers believe that the scandinavians exported silver from the caspian sea and imported furs taken from eastern europe but here there is some divergence in opinion on the origins of certain goods furs were objects of prestige not very practical but of prestige the vikings or varangians as they were known here founded an enduring empire based on the immense wealth gained from trafficking precious goods and slaves with the great empires of byzantium and baghdad early in the 8th century a.d the vikings conquered trading places along the rivers of russia a hundred kilometers south of staria ladoga archaeology students from moscow are washing mud from viking age graves at rurikova garadiste on the banks of the volkov river opposite the city of novgorod russia's first capital they find a blue bead which once belonged to a viking woman's necklace the day before they found an axe head confirming that these tombs were the final resting place of the earliest viking warriors who came to dominate the area the fines from this site are sent to the museum's restoration laboratories here a laboratory technician is cleaning and preserving wooden objects from the many sites around the city of novgorod the wood is preserved using glycol that replaces water in the wood cells the excess is frozen dry alessia rudy is the curator of novgorod's viking exhibition and has been following the results of the rurikova garadische excavations for years according to the chronicles confirmed by archaeological finds this village was founded by one of the scandinavian princes rus as they were called prince rorick he came here in our lands with his drujina orbando varangians the arrival of the vikings or varangians is dated to approximately 840 a.d the finnish name for them was rowatsi corrupted to the word rus the name the new military elite came to be known by for centuries there are no finds that directly refer to rurik however we have found artifacts dating back to the early middle ages the 9th century that are connected to scandinavian culture and were found at rurikovo garadeshe today we link the word russ with the finnish word ruozzi there is no doubt about that however in ancient rust tradition it is possible that the word rus referred initially not to a country or a people but to a social group the dynasty of rurik ruled russia for hundreds of years chapters of history told here on this monument in novgorod his son or igor was a child when he died and rurik's faithful companion arjek reigned until he came of age polish professor chislov skrock has passionately studied the viking kingdoms of europe was raised by oleg the leading noble he had a catastrophe on his hands rurik had allowed friendly scandinavians to sail down the nipper and set up a new settlement their leaders were ascold and deer the city of kiev stands on a bend in the river diniper rurik's followers ascold and deer captured the town and turned it into their base for a new push down the river system towards the black sea in 860 the city of constantinople witnessed the arrival of a flotilla of viking ships the emperor was away fighting the arabs and the vikings although dissuaded from attacking the city by its massive walls attacked the coastline instead the city's religious leaders had taken refuge on the so-called princes islands which the vikings mercilessly pillaged for the first time the vikings contemplated the wealth of the imperial capital with their own eyes they would come back for oleg was more that asgold and deer had gained such power that they wanted to be yales or even more they had power because when they were in kiev they attacked byzantium the greatest power in the world at the time they were so brave that they pillaged constantinople so it's historical fact that oleg murdered asgold and dear constantinople uh captured kiev and murdered asgold and dear whose tombs lie under this church on the riverbank outside the city next he moved on constantinople known to the vikings as mikhail garde in 907ad once again the viking fleet appeared on the bosphorus sacking coastal villages and christian monasteries in a famous surprise attack alliec had wheels put on his ships carried them across land crossed the golden horn and entered the city unable to hold the prize of all prizes alec the pagan settled for a privileged trade agreement and strategic alliance with the imperial city the heart of the christian world which turned the kingdom of kiev and novgorod into the most powerful state in eastern europe which also supplied mercenaries for the emperor's bodyguard it was a lucrative business as the varangian guardsmen were paid 40 gold pieces a year plus food lodging and special bonuses the golden era of the vikings in the east was about to begin the sun rises on the viking mounds of staria ladoga this burial mound once held the remains of rurik's successor alec whose attack on constantinople is the high point of the viking eastern saga thrusting these fearless barbarians into the history books of the great city the primary source of our knowledge of the viking origins of russia is the chronicle written by a christian orthodox monk called nestor who is buried here in kiev in the monastery of the caves the very first built on the river dneper nestor recounts the development of the first russian state but makes no mention of what happened to ascold and dear's followers according to chislov skrock they fled westwards to modern-day poland there was no military opposition here the population was sedentary and calm there was no one to stop them to the north was the baltic sea with access via wallin kobreg trusso and elblon there were the swamps of nautic so they had security on the west i mean protection from kiev and novgorod there were swamps of the poles and to the east the slavs of the elbe and older however when we talk of scandinavians who settled in the land of future ancient russia i don't think we can talk of great global migration of peoples who move freely between normandy and york for example and iceland and kiev global the rise of poland as a place of passage of the cosmopolitan viking elites of the time is highlighted by the remarkable archaeological find at borgia near the vistula river andrei pujo excavated the site that turns polish history on its head this is a completely untraditional cemetery because there's nothing like this cemetery in the whole of europe every grave is rich there is no poor grave it's a cemetery for the social the elite excavating borgia found a number of graves from different epochs and different cultures the multi-ethnic community controlled a key point on the river vistula let's take bodger there we have traders we find equipment that shows that these people engaged in trade there were also warriors with their families people who controlled this thoroughfare the thoroughfare of the vistula is very important because it connects the north sea baltic sea via the vestula via the riverbook to the black sea and byzantium so controlling this route was the best way to become rich the central figure was a young male warrior killed in battle his jaw hacked off he was buried with two women possibly slaves and with his weapons and armor professor buco called in experts in strontium isotopes and dna to identify where the skeletons came from we have found many graves or cemeteries along this river that have produced scandinavian artifacts in most of them we have only these artifacts to prove the connection while in bodger we also did strontium isotope and dna analysis proving that these were indeed foreign the coins from germany and england found in the graves are key in dating the cemetery to the late 10th and early 11th century the period of the rise of the very first polish kingdom founded by king mieshka of the piazz dynasty in poland the viking remains seemed to indicate that scandinavians had more influence on local politics than was thought before my opinion in my opinion vikings i mean vikings from kiev ruskiev the ones who built viking russia came down the vistula and book to mazorge and vilcapolska where poland began we owe them the origins of the polish nation i don't mean they built it but they sparked it off their impact was key they brought the know-how and sowed the seed of our country in these territories in the 10th century the tribe of the palms which inhabited central poland began expanding at the expense of other slavic groups the dynasty of the piazza say polish sources began with a simple trader but the first king mieshka a pagan united all the slavs of central poland under his rule however his daughter married the danish viking king sven forkbeard and his granddaughter zvatobolk son of voldemort or vladimir of kiev understanding this coincidence is at the heart of the debate about viking influence in the founding of poland we find more and more sites for example for me swatopelk was buried in bhoja russian swatopelk who was married with the daughter of bolisvav choubri i'm sure that the objects which were found there and the way the grave was organized show that it was a scandinavian norman burial with a little influence of the west coast we gain more information by analysis of other finds he had a warrior's belt and at the end of it was the so-called bident with a cross the bident is the sign of rurik's line and the cross means that there was some connection with vietnak called the accust who was the son-in-law of our king polysav choubri cruella movement of peoples up and down the rivers of central and eastern europe proves that the vikings were not constantly at war with their neighbors and may even have provided just the military element of this multicultural society we made several interesting discoveries which show that people from these territories had contacts with step peoples mainly the kazaars in the second and third rows we find burial chambers with characteristic niches they are not regular as in the first row but they have this kind of niche these graves with niches are characteristic of the step people very often we find this kind of grave in khazar culture key artifacts of the excavation at trusso are exhibited in the small museum in alplanc the scales are particularly significant as the vikings valued their goods in weights of hack silver coins jewels or other objects that could be re-smelted into ingots combs were a favorite scandinavian ornament and women wore necklaces made from glass beads imported from constantinople other artifacts that confirmed the prevalent scandinavian culture in trusso were the amulets especially this valkyrie a protector of viking warriors amber was in the third place of the most desired things just after slaves and swords so amber was very popular in that time amber was exported in trade networks which vikings created in the baltic scene amber was abundant along these shores and there was a strong market in the south for this precious resin it was worked and made into jewelry here however there was an even richer item to trade the river systems of russia and poland sliced through land inhabited by slavic peoples the rusts of kiev vikings plundered the land for slaves and sold them to the great empires of the south and west these were the single most profitable trade and one witnessed by many a chronicler a written source from ibrahim he was a spanish traveler from seville he mentioned that varangian's normans came to prague with slaves where were they from from kiev and krakow it is even said that in the 10th century arab slave markets were full of slaves from eastern europe several million dirhams were exported from the caspian sea towards europe slaves furs amber and walrus ivory flowed into the markets of the mediterranean and central europe down the rivers of russia and poland the kings in kiev had almost exclusive access to the richest cities in the world the kiev vikings known here as roos raided and traded down this river whose dangerous rapids earned a fearsome reputation they were navigable only with the high water in the summer months cargo had to be carried around them making traders vulnerable to attack from fierce nomadic tribes such as the casas bulgars and petr necks as far as i know today we do not believe there was a great difference between merchants and warriors in scandinavian culture [Music] still we can only say that in the 10th century when there was almost no centralized power in most of the land it was impossible not to be a warrior often in the scandinavian graves we find for example not only weapons but also scales and some silver to allow this person to be a trader so it's hard to say whether they should be defined as simply scandinavians or vikings in the space of 20 years the viking warriors and traders had penetrated deep into the russian plains and forests building camps and trading posts along the rivers and reached the black sea after they struck a trade deal with constantinople they gathered yearly convoys of ships here at kherson still thriving black sea port and sailed to the great city none of this would have been possible without the viking ships such as the ones uncovered on sarimar island they were light shallow keeled and fast good for attack and for trade jan biel is the curator of the viking ship museum in oslo and the foremost expert on viking ships meetings in mobility the viking ships gave the scandinavians a mobility that was unique at the time [Music] the fact that the ships were built so light that they were so fast and so seaworthy made it possible to conduct a type of warfare that was very difficult for the european kingdoms to handle [Music] modern replicas suggest viking ships could reach top speeds of 20 to 25 knots though on longer trips it is expected they moved more slowly at about the three to six knot range the vikings built many kinds of ship both for war and for transport but having said that there are also many myths about the viking ships and their use and one of the hardest myths to defeat is that the vikings traveled with their ships up the russian rivers all the way down to the black sea and the caspian sea we have no evidence that this happened on the other hand we do have historical and archaeological evidence that they used to change their means of transport underway into something suitable for the area and landscape that they were traveling through the great trade expeditions from kiev to hesson and beyond involved a complex network of bases with high water the ships could withstand the rapids while with low water the traders carried their goods on horses and reloaded boats downstream for their onward transport to hesson where seagoing ships would await them for the journey to constantinople normans have first welcomed all been skilled once they arrived at the water systems leading down to the black sea or the caspian sea then they would start sailing again and we have a fantastic byzantine source that describes how the scandinavians did this [Music] successor igor or rurik's son led unsuccessful attacks against byzantium and the arab empire and was killed on a punitive raid his son syatislav made an alliance with constantinople and succeeded in destroying the kazaa empire he too was killed during a trade expedition by pechnagnomads during a land portage around the dinipa rapids all the gains that rurik's descendants had made over the century were squandered in a devastating civil war that brought about a radical change in the nature of the viking russian state this did not stop them trading up and down the rivers of russia however where the arab diplomat eben al-fatlan found them on the volga river he described the bizarre pagan funeral rites of viking warriors which included the sacrifice of slave girls the men he described was still very barbaric according to arab standards they were tattooed from head to toe and rarely took baths the civil war between rurik's offspring left valdemar or vladimir as sole ruler he expanded the kingdom of novgorod and kiev into poland and eastwards and boldly demanded the hand of princess anna sister of the emperor of constantinople in exchange for his military support in quelling a rebellion vladimir chose to become an orthodox christian after famously considering all the monotheistic religions of the time and seems to have embraced slavs in his court vladimir's illegitimate son zvyatopolk married into the polish royal dynasty when he was exiled from kiev on the succession of yaroslav the wise maybe the greatest viking king of russia the fates of the royal dynasties of denmark norway and sweden passed through the plains of russia and poland slowly over time although the first christian viking king of russia vladimir and his successors continued to draw on scandinavia for military manpower the cities became more multicultural however we don't see permanent conflict in the 9th and 10th century it is probable that the local population was slavic in certain areas and finnish in others and the scandinavians occupied certain niches there is no indication that the traffic and trade of silver and furs occurred outside scandinavian [Music] later the vikings and the scandinavians were assimilated into the local population so as time goes by their influence becomes imperceptible they become the local population as much as the slavs they get married and have children and are no longer distinguished from the local population this also involves the ruling class at rurikovo garadeshe where we find artifacts dating to as late as the 15th century however scandinavian remains go back to the 11th century at the latest the good sport in these and other territories found their way to the great scandinavian market towns of kaupang near oslo in norway haidabi in denmark and birka in sweden here in kaupang the archaeological remains show a flourishing trade between the farthest northern seas and the two capitals of the mediterranean world baghdad and constantinople in 2004 the shores of what was once constantinople revealed a whole port with sunken ships of the time the vikings were trading there the goods brought back from the greek world were not only silver but also silk fine beads and jewels the flat-bottomed viking ships would have been docked alongside these typical mediterranean craft as traders mingled in the markets of the empire's capital before the scandinavians undertook the long and perilous journey northwards as the market towns grew so did the wealth of the chieftains who controlled them they enhanced profit through trade by the exertion of military might striking local alliances where necessary even through marriage to ensure the flow of goods to their own markets in some cases we know that objects which were not typical of slavic culture were produced here so we know that glass beads or some kind of decoration on the monuments were probably 100 percent produced in this place is believed to have been the base of the so-called yomsburg vikings and was one of the richest towns in the scandinavian sphere of interest although firmly in the slavonic ethnic area we must think about this as a whole the written sources say that yomsburg was a huge city on the south baltic coastline and they tell us about events in this place at that time so when we discover archaeologically this kind of big city dating back to medieval times and we find lots of artifacts for trade and export and crafts and so forth we have no doubts that this is that place this rune stone that stands on holland commemorates the greatest battle of the yom's vikings when their commander attempted to win the throne of sweden on the plane of uppsala it invokes odin and his daughter a rare mention of pagan gods on a runestone according to the ancient sagas written down centuries after the events by icelandic scribes the yom's vikings were mercenaries who often fought as allies of the danish king harald bluetooth some may well have also been of slavic origin fighting for a king for plunder and for money was an honorable activity and for hundreds of viking men fortunes were to be made and lost in the plains of poland and russia their political influence on slavic tribes however is the subject of heated debate we have two periods in which scandinavians come to polish territories in the late 9th century and early 10th they were settlers people who live in houses as part of a local community and here we find equipment which is typical for people who do not take part in wars they haven't got swords but if we talk about the second part of the 10th century and beginning of the 11th when the vikings moved and developed as a group we do find swords engraved moravian influences in building the polish state were also strong king mieshkar the first of poland married his daughter to the danish king zvein forkbeard to ensure that the scandinavians continued to exert their power in this area possibly to counter the spread of the germanic empire eastwards through his marriage to the polish princess zven forkbeard's empire stretched from poland to the british isles and the taxes he could raise from trade along the whole baltic coastline turned him into the most powerful viking king however he was not the only viking monarch whose fortune was tied to the east olaf trickvasson worked as a mercenary for vladimir before leaving russia for the north where he eventually married an irish queen and became the first christian king of norway and died fighting his danish rival in the year 1000 but the greatest viking of them all was the commander of the imperial varangian guard harald hadrada he made a fortune as a mercenary but never forgot his descent from the norwegian royal line as commander of the varangian guard harald hadrada played a key role in the politics of the great empire and learned how to rule as a christian king from the most powerful emperors of the time in 1040 he left the heady imperial court for the north and travelled the rivers of russia back to his homeland in norway conquering the throne there before attacking england it was the year 1066 and the sun was setting on the viking era the valiant viking won the first battle against the saxon king here at fulford near york but died a heroic death in the battle of stamford bridge now a quiet yorkshire village famous only for the last victory of the anglo-saxons during the scandinavian transition to the middle ages at the end of the viking age we also see that the ship becomes a measure for various things there are examples of tax systems based on land being divided into ships crews it sort of becomes a metaphor for society some metaphor for for some or see harald left behind him hundreds of scandinavian varangians who still spoke and wrote in the nordic language the palace at constantinople overlooked the straits between europe and asia and so occupied perhaps the most strategic place in the ancient world close by the great church of justinian the hagia soviet was the largest church in the christian world inside in one of the top galleries a varangian guardsman left his mark in runic writing his name halftan is clearly visible but the hagia sofia is not the only popular tourist spot today where one can find runic inscriptions where they are least expected here at the arsenale in venice stand two famous lion statues which once gathered the harbour in piraeus the port of athens the carvings tell of horsey a good warrior cut down in battle after winning much gold this rune stone is in the churchyard in tumble sweden it commemorates a scandinavian warrior who died in the service of the emperor the greece runestones are the most common among these commemorative monuments in sweden ingmar the far traveled was the most famous free-booting viking of the east he served at the court of yaroslav and then as a mercenary for the byzantine empire winning a famous battle at sasireti in georgia that the vikings called sirkland the land of the saracens only one of the many ships that sailed with him from sweden returned and 26 runestones commemorate men who died in the expedition tala had this stone raised in memory of her son harald ingwa's brother they travelled valiantly far for gold and in the east gave food to the eagle and died in the south in sirkland harald was ingvar's brother and left from sweden to make his fortune he found his death instead at the end of the 11th century the scandinavian states became christian trade became more peaceful the empty space of europe filled up with new states and opportunities for pillage all but disappeared the last great tragic massacre of the varangian guard at mansakert by the turks marked the beginning of the end of the byzantine empire the ethnic origins of the first kings of poland and russia remain a mystery if we consider that the very description of a viking is still shrouded in uncertainty scandinavian warriors colonized plundered traded and had families throughout the central and eastern plains of europe their dna eventually mingled with the local populations and they adopted the local languages but their contribution to building these new states is recorded forever in the chronicles or carved on stone and it lurks at the very roots of russian and polish history

Channel: All Out History - Premium History Documentaries

Views: 575,652

Keywords: The Vikings, vikings valhalla, vikings valhalla season 2, vikings valhalla trailer, History, history documentary, history documentary bbc, history documentary national geographic, Viking, Ukraine, Poland, Russia, UK, Scandinavia, All Out History, AlloutHistory, Allouthistory, allouthistory, AllOutHistory

Id: Q8WO6dU2MLk

Length: 222min 18sec (13338 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022