The Pagan Kingdoms Built By Viking Clans | Vikings | Absolute History

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 it's 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 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 guthrum and ubba 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 murcia here at repton central england and made it into his base a 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 halfton 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 connolly 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 sick argument ten thousand and so extrapolating out into that and 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 um 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 guthrum 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 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 northumbrian 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 um 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 continued to be used well after the scandinavian invaders had 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 at 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 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 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 an expedition 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 13 ships sailed up the river seine and the vikings burned ruin took the monks of jumiege hostage and in 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 9 11 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 ron lo 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 marit veya is the lead archaeologist at the orwald'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 edred 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 sides collapsing you need to line them um 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 weren't 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 bloodax 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 um they fit with a sequence of archaeology that we see in places like oxford and london and chester and we're probably seeing a post blood acts 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 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 on saint price's day 1002. possible evidence of this was found in st 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 uh skeletons we 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 sint 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 canute 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 berger close to the viking hub of voklovic a multi-ethnic cemetery seems to prove this was one of the centres 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 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 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 borussia i mean the daughter of mieshko the first zyetez 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 clan 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 uncle on kamoy island here on the [Music] 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 hakan's court at orvaldness 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 [Music] 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 small glass bead highly decorated um was made in the eastern mediterranean probably made in egypt um turns up in our 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 plains here slaves furs and amber were abundant by 750 a.d the scandinavians controlled the ancient finnish and slavic trading place at staria ladaga 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 drewsina 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 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 garadische 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 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 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 [Music] 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 rus 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 conflict 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 [Music] the great muslim empire of baghdad also traded with russian vikings and suffered their attacks ahmud al-fatlan 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 1988 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 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 [Music] had to battle with heathen powers here at avaldness 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 and the black cloud was thrown back at the sears however his reaction was less than forgiving and this is the way they died they were to be put out at the scrater rock 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 long houses 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 yon's vikings one of whom is commemorated on this rune stone on the swedish island of urlan 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 i did 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 norseman reached its climax this rune stone in the churchyard of toombo 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 for example 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 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 harold'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 pevensey 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 steppes and forests of poland and russia where rurik's descendants ruled for another 400 years

Channel: Absolute History

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Keywords: history documentaries, absolute history, world history, ridiculous history, quirky history, the vikings, viking religion, viking history, norse mythology, history documentary

Id: ptxILnVNgeQ

Length: 44min 25sec (2665 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021