What Made Viking Weaponry So Effective? | Vikings | Absolute History

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 mostly dangerous viking helmet as his armor it's made from a thick hide that you stitch together and this was the early stage of uh in the 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 sarima 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 kilned warships were being used for raiding at least 100 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 orvaldsness excavation on karmia 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 [Music] 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 ozenberg 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 so erdogan 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 miraculous 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 ozerberg 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 turnsburg 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 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 tv auto 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 meters long with a hunchback so she was probably about one meter 10 long walking she had an illness that gave her a lot of facial hair and a deep voice oh the deep stemmer 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 raskilda fiord 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 beach 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 actually 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 balloons maybe the strongest natural fiber ropes on the ship were made of sealskin 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 handmade 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 ship 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 sale 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 ozerberg sale took 1 800 hours to weave 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 used a 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 sail which is not supposed to go outside of the sides [Music] for example somebody 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 bore 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 yom's viking 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 won 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 by weapons and armor that have been faithfully reproduced on the basis of grave fines 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 jonsborg 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 of 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 voline 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 [Music] 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 they were a great people 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 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 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 bucher 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 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 rose 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 warrior's head and jaw show he died young and in battle and like the sarimar warriors he was buried with the finest grave goods 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 alp 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 truso 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 jewellery glacier amber and horn workshops [Music] swords made here were prized and often those buried with warriors were deliberately bent out of shape to dissuade grave robbers this ulbert 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 centimeter 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 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 15 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 whole book 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 absala 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 vendel 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 ruse 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 rune had a lot of meaning and i'm pretty sure that the vikings had tattoos that included roons who 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 8 000 men crossed the channel the bayer tapestry 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 tapestries 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

Channel: Absolute History

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Keywords: history documentaries, absolute history, world history, ridiculous history, quirky history

Id: Q0-BGZA8LGw

Length: 43min 51sec (2631 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 23 2021