The Real Björn Ironside // Vikings in Spain & the Mediterranean

this video is sponsored by the great courses plus a subscription on-demand video learning service we could enjoy lectures from the very best professors from all over the world but more on that at the end of the video by the summer of 859 a new Dark Age had descended upon much of Western Europe from the South Arab pirates crossed over the Mediterranean Sea ways to raid and pillage from the east magyar horse riders made near annual raiding expeditions far and wide throughout the peninsula [Music] and of course fleets of ambitious Scandinavians permeated the Seas and river systems from the Boeing to the Volga earthers made new lives for themselves along those rivers and seas and in the remote islands of the windswept Atlantic a few no doubt greedily gazed out at the rich and fragile anglo-saxon kingdoms perhaps awaiting the next great conquest along with the inevitable land and Glory that came with it in modern day Spain however the situation was different just like in the rest of the continent small groups of Norse man known as Matthew of fire worshippers by the Andalusians making no exception between them and Persians our Austrians in the contemporary literature had made a few occasional forays into the peninsula perhaps scouting out the land for larger expeditions to come though for the most part these attacks seem to have been few and far between with easier pickings existing much closer to home unlike any other lands that Vikings launched raids upon barring a few exceptions such as the great city of Constantinople the Iberian Peninsula was ready for war unlike the Carolingian rulers of Frankia to the north of the pyrenees and the various rulers of britain and ireland beyond the emirate of cordoba ruled over by the exiled remnants of a dynasty that at once held sway over an empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean had a professional standing army at their disposal unlike in Frankia and britain were no search long-standing institutions existed and armies were made up almost entirely a freed man called up by their Liege Lords to fight during times of war and thus took time and efforts to be raised and even more in keeping them mobilized for an extended period of time in a land aloof a standing army of slave soldiers known as Mamluks mostly hailing from the wild forest lands of Eastern Europe stood ever at the ready to defend the realm against potential foes of which there were many in the northwest of the peninsula nestled between wild Highlands and valleys lay a patchwork of Christian States grizzled veterans of a thousand battles against the ever encroaching spread of Islam from the south for the most part these were the last survivors from the visigothic kingdom that had once held sway in Iberia after the fall of Rome in the 5th century AD though some were much older the Basques having held on to their unique culture even during the long years of Roman occupation by the mid-nineteen damaja story us Galicia and Navarre had long acted as the front line of defense for the other Christian realms to the north this was a titanic war of opposing ideologies that even in the very midst of the worst of the Viking invasions was generally perceived to be of much greater importance than the threat from the pagan Northman and as a result of the near yearly attacks from al-andalus Asturias Galicia and Navarre were perpetually ready for war yet of course a few particularly ambitious vikings did try their luck in 844 a great fleet of over a hundred ships flush from recent successes in brittany and ireland headed all the way down the atlantic seaboard to launch a surprise attack on the christian kingdoms of the north as well as the emirate of cordoba culminating in a vast swath of destruction and a week's long battle for the city of seville that did more damage to Al Andalus than the previous century of war with the Christian kingdoms by the end of the year barely a third of the fleet made it back to friendly territory though these veterans were by then weighed down by the incredible amounts of plunder they carried and tales of more to be found it was clear from the survivors of the raid that al-andalus was a truly fearsome opponent but it was also clear due to the Andalusian inclusion in the vast mediterranean spanning trade network of the Islamic world that it was rich beyond their wildest dreams of course it was only a matter of time before the Vikings returned and in the early summer of 859 another vast raiding fleet of long boats set out from their pirate bases along frankly as lawar valley to again devastate the entirety of mainland Europe Atlantic coast and arrived in Andalusia and waters yet this expedition described as a great sea voyage in the Frankish sources was even more ambitious than the one that came before it times had changed in the fifteen year period since the 844 raid and now according to later chroniclers such as William of Jimmy Ashe the ambition of its leaders was not only to enter the Mediterranean Sea a theater of operations previously closed off to Scandinavians but to sack the very city of Rome itself a shadow of its former self during the ninth century yet still the spiritual center of the Roman Catholic faith [Music] over the next three years the fleet ravaged its way across the shores of this great southern ocean making those warriors some of the first Scandinavians to raid not only the unbelievably rich Iberian state of al-andalus but also the soft underbelly of Frankia mainland Italy and beyond whilst the leaders of the 844 expedition no doubt great and renowned warriors of their day remain entirely unknown the leaders thought by many to have led the second expedition are still remembered today as two of the greatest of all Vikings in history the elder of the two hostin was a grizzled tactician a born survivor who may have launched a sustained attack on the anglo-saxon kingdoms later in his life the other according to the latest saga traditions as well as a few scraps of near contemporary evidence was a son of the famed sea King Ragnar lothbrok his name was Bjorn Ironside together the two men were about to cement their places in history and legend [Music] our story begins two centuries earlier in the first decades of the eighth century a small hardened force of berber horsemen crossed over the Straits of Gibraltar from northern Africa to enter the Iberian Peninsula the first Muslims to make the crossing in a state of war in just a handful of years the visigothic kingdom was stamped out of existence turning much of Iberia into the latest province in the ever-growing Umayyad Caliphate the largest and arguably the most militaristic of the Arabic Islamic empires ever to exist launching campaign after campaign in all directions from their power base of Damascus since seizing power in 661 only in the contagion mountains of the northwest the Christians hold out rallying around a few ousted Visigothic nobles and using the region's obscurity to retain their own autonomy the Umayyad conquest was quickly followed by large-scale immigration of Berbers from north and africa a population shift that changed the culture of the peninsula forever and 750 however a brutal empire-wide originating in Persia led to the deaths of practically every member of the Umayyad dynasty and the establishment of a new more tolerant state in the form of the Abbasids based at the newly founded city of Baghdad one Umayyad prince by the name of Abdul Rahman did escape however and seized the chaos of the Revolution to make his way to the far western extremity of the Islamic world to found a breakaway state there centered on the old Roman metropolis of Cordoba luckily for Abdul Rahman the establishment of Abbasid Power was also accompanied by a gradual shift in focus away from the Mediterranean and the Christian West and towards the more lucrative trade routes to India China and the East thus Andalusia was given the breathing room needed to establish itself as an entirely independent realm there on the frontier of the wild Atlantic Abdul Rahman found a similar enough climate to his homeland of Syria importing flora and fauna to remind him of home and began the establishment of Andalusia as a prosperous realm in time developing many of the largest cities in Western Europe with the greatest of them all Cordoba likely surpassing a population of 200,000 people [Music] throughout its entire 250 year existence the unified Muslim state based at Cordoba engaged in perennial war with the kingdoms of the north though by itself the army of the emirate was perhaps the most powerful in Western Europe at the time as a frontline of holy war jihadis flocked to the peninsula from all over the Islamic world bolstering their numbers still further unlike the other lands of Western Europe where only the richest and best fighters could gain access to decent armor and weapons the rest fighting with anything from farming equipment to hunting bows practically the entire Andalusia an army infantry and cavalry alike were equipped with iron helmets and scale armor and of course faced with this biomass of an army Galicia Asturias and Navarre remained always ready for war [Music] though the raid of 8:44 is generally seen as the first Scandinavian incursion into Iberia the 13th century historian eben Alafia describes a force of Alma juice that came to the aid of the king of Galicia Alphonse the second fifty years earlier in 795 this coincides with the Carolingian chronicle and not curse accounts of long ships carrying southern Aquitaine during the last years of the Great King Charlemagne's reign and another confirmed raid there in 799 other hints of Scandinavian activity in the basque country exist in the following decades - for the most part Scandinavians didn't discriminate between targets Christians and Muslims being raided with equal ferocity nor did political borders mean much to them by the time the great expedition reached Iberia in 844 it had already ravaged its way through southern Frankia then in a state of civil war between King Charles the bold and the rebellious ruler of a curtained Pepin who may have actually invited the Vikings to aid him in his independence struggle when they got to Iberia however the situation was different unlike Frankia the Christian kingdoms they're led in battle by King Ramiro the first inflicted a heavy defeat upon them at the city La Coruna Aidid a calling to the annals of Saint Bataan a great missile throwing war machines technology perhaps borrowed from al-andalus to the south seventy of the Viking ships were said to have been captured on the beach and burned with still more of the force then being lost in a storm though the remnants of the fleet pushed on to try their luck further south finally achieving success across the border at Lisbon on the 20th of August the Andalusian chronicler al-razi explains that at this point they still had a hundred and eight ships fifty for larger and fifty for smaller meaning that when the fleet set out from the lower it may have consisted of more than two hundred vessels for the next few weeks the raids were extraordinarily successful the emirate had been taken completely by surprise allowing for the sack of Cadiz Medina Sidonia and al Jericho's as well as the city of asila on the northern coast of Africa at the time still held by the distant Abbasid caliph of baghdad half a world away in Mesopotamia in early October the fleet turned inland along the Guadalquivir River Valley to the Fertile heart of the Emirates taking advantage of the same ability of their longships to easily navigate shallow waters as they had done in the San and aloha on the 3rd of October they reached the city of Seville perhaps the second largest city in Iberia at the time lacking defensive walls for the next two weeks the city remained in viking house just as they tended to do in Frankia and in ireland they based themselves at a defensible island the island mine or from where they launched attacks far and wide throughout the entire region gathering captives by the thousands and plunder by the boatload despite the apparent battle readiness of his army the attack seems to have completely taken the ameer by surprise few offensive attacks had ever been launched on his realm and for the time being he had no response finally after several weeks of chaos and potentially when Cordoba itself was threatened Abdul Rahman personally took to the field to defeat the invaders in a number of sweeping victories the far superior Andalusia an army made light work of the relatively spread out Vikings killing a thousand of them on one occasion and destroying 30 of their ships many of the long ships were destroyed by Greek fire a secretive military technology potentially hurled from great catapults at the same time this same technology was also becoming known to the Swedish and Slovak Vikings then making forays against the great city of Constantinople another bottleneck between Islam and Christianity [Music] in the aftermath more than 400 captives were hanged from palm trees in the capital whereas the heads of the unnamed leader of the force and 200 of his retainers were sent to the berber Emir in Tangier a few survivors perhaps bereft of their ships may have converted to Islam and remained near Seville the bulk of the fleet however were eventually allowed to limp home in return for ransomed prisoners and plunder less than a quarter of those who left Frankia in 844 returned home alive yet they returned rich man but who were the vikings of the 844 expedition and what effects did the attack have on the emirate in the immediate aftermath of the attack a court poet by the name of Yaya Hakam al-jilani was sent north as an envoy to the Mathews sometimes known as al gazelle he had previously completed a mission to the Byzantine Court of Emperor theof Eilis and we can thus ascertain that this was a very important mission it remains unclear exactly where the embassy traveled to or just exactly what was agreed the 12th century Spanish scholar even dr however called it a large island in the ocean with running water and gardens between it and the mainland is a journey of three days innumerable of the al majus live on this island close to it are many other islands large and small all the inhabitants are majus and the closest mainland also belongs to them several days journey away they were formally majus but now follow the Christian religion since they have abandoned the worship of fire and the religion they followed previously and converted to Christianity [Music] this description could apply to Ireland or Denmark with the leading candidates of each being the North Sea King Turk easiest of Dublin or the Danish King horik on the Danish islands of course with danger comes opportunity and surely there was an underlying economic reason for the Embassy perhaps to foster trade between the two regions Roger Collins one of the leading scholars of early medieval Spain has suggested Scandinavians as a potential source of the slave trade operating during this time there was a strong demand in the amorous and in the Moorish states of North Africa for Frankish Slavic English and Irish slaves al-andalus being one of the main suppliers of eunuchs to the Islamic world and scholars such as Collins tend to think that many of these unfortunate enough people some ending up as far away as the borders of India would have been supplied directly or indirectly through middlemen by Scandinavian slave traders potentially from the eight 40s onwards though the slave trade leaves next to no trace in the archaeological record there are several towns in Iberia such as La de Manos in Leon and la de Manos in Galicia that bear the name Northman leading some to suggest these as trading centers for slavers of course trade wasn't the only repercussion of the raid the immediate response of the emir in the latter eight 40s was to build a new fleet of heavy warships known as draman's complete with catapults carrying greek fire he also drilled an army of sailors a chain of lookout posts along the Atlantic and an Arsenal at Saville unlike in Frankia however the flood gates remained firmly closed with no attacks coming between 844 and 859 besides a few rogue vessels such as two captured off Lisbon in 854 in 859 however another pair of long ships was captured though on this occasion the large amounts of plunder filling the decks to the brim might have given the coastguard pause for thoughts lo and behold within weeks a second great army arrived and the deeds of this one would far eclipsed the last by the mid-80s at least three major groups of Scandinavians had taken up residence in fortified encampments along the frankish river systems in particular the lawar the sand and the psalm rivers by the mid 850 s the situation was very bad with endemic raids being further exasperated by King Charles the Baals rebellious family members and Nobles the chronicler Amenti us of namur ta laments the situation the number of ships increases the endless flood of Vikings never ceases to grow bigger everywhere Christ's people are the victims of Massacre burning and plunder the Vikings overrun all that lies before them and none can withstand them then follows a roll call of Frankish cities and towns that were repeatedly plundered including Paris all ER and practically every other population center in the country amidst this carnage one of those groups centered on the defensible island of the Iselle on the sand was led by Bjorn Ironside like his father Ragnar lothbrok before him likely the instigator of one of the earliest and most successful attacks on Paris in truth Bjorn is better known to legend than history though like his father a few scant contemporary references do suggest a genuine historical figure said to have been a powerful chieftain and naval commander in his own right according to a number of later writers Bjorn is said to have initially been a captain under the warlord Hostin a close associate of Ragnar who had already been active in the river networks of Frankia for decades it's likely that a large proportion of the Warriors who made up the great heathen army had originated in pirate bases along the rivers of Frankia before they came to Britain in 865 Paston had probably been active on the coasts of Frankia since the mid 830 s where he is associated with raids on the island of naman ta before establishing himself as a regional power in the disunited and chaotic interior of modern-day france by the mid 850 s both the awn and Hostin had risen to become the joint leaders of a substantial force of Vikings large enough to be a concern to the king in 857 the our selves I Kings were besieged by King Charles the bold who sought to get rid of them entirely yet as so often happened during this time a group of independent minded Nobles invited Charles's brother Louis the German to lay claim to West Frankish territories and Charles had to go and stop him [Music] eventually Charles opted to fight fire with fire and utilized another band of Scandinavians under a leader named Weiland to drive out the our selves I Kings paying them a vast hoard of silver for the privilege rather than fight however Weiland simply accepted another vast payment of silver to let their selves I Kings leave Frankia entirely for better or for worse they were leaving the river systems and they had plans if later chroniclers such as dieudo of st. contain are to be taken even a little at face value these were audacious plans though theirs was a plan formulated in order to attain great wealth it was also no doubt a conscious quest for fame and glory both central qualities in the Nordic heroic ideal the contemporary sources suggest a fleet numbering somewhere between 62 and 100 ships meaning it was potentially not as large as the previous expedition just like the last raid however the expedition did not get off to the best of starts becoming admired in Iberia's northern kingdoms and eventually driven off from the wealthy pilgrimage center of santiago de compostela after an unsuccessful attack carrying gone to the south they attempted to emulate the actions of their predecessors by again entering the Guadalquivir River perhaps even led there by veterans from the last expedition this time however they found their way blocked by formidable defenses and the army of the new Amir Muhammad the first several long ships were burned in the conflict by the terrible Greek fire of Mohammed strohman times had changed since 844 and a decision was made to leave the region entirely continuing the strategy of pushing ever onwards to try their luck elsewhere knowing that eventually they would find somewhere off guard the fleet pushed on through the Straits of Gibraltar encountering little to no resistance making them the first known Vikings to enter the Mediterranean here they found much more success plundering and burning the cities of Cadiz and Algeria caps next they raided the north african coast descending upon the small emirate of knee caught sacking it and holding it for a week whilst seizing two women from the Royal harem who were only released after a hefty ransom was paid by Mohammed they also seemed to have captured some black Africans during this time described as Blom and in near contemporary sources these unfortunate figures had likely been brought to North Africa by Arab slave traders and just like the Europeans sold to Arab bias they would end up a world away from their homeland the Vikings found them so intriguing and exotic that they kept some of them for the entire duration of the expedition eventually seeing a number of them end up in Ireland the Vikings carried on north attacking Valencia and the Balearic Islands before finally arriving in the south of Frankia and entering the Rhone River in a lightning strike they sacked the city of Navarre before setting up camp in the karma queue for the winter a marshy region at the mouth of the Rome with a defensible island that protected them from the franks and gave them an escape route if necessary the following spring they headed deep upriver to sack Nimes and isles for the franks now harassed on all sides it seemed as if this group might become yet another permanent fixture in their political landscape just like in the rivers of the north at valence however they found grim determination and were pushed back by the local count gerard from there they decided to make for italy instead [Applause] those Scandinavians were strangers to the Mediterranean the sea had seen its fair share of other pirates over the centuries most recently in the form of Arabs from northern Africa and the Levant who would continue to launch periodical raids until well into the 11th century recently they had taken the islands of Crete and Sicily though the most jarring attack of all came in 846 when Rome itself was sacked whether born or Hostin were aware of this or not they apparently sought to do the same with ships so filled with plunder that they sat low in the water at last the force reached Italy here the tail leaves the realms of historicity and enters legend with the only accounts being written at least a century later by Norman chroniclers intent on demonstrating the deeds of their ancestors according to dudo of Saint Quintin upon reaching the city that they believed to be Rome Paston concocted an elaborate plan where he had first contacted the locals in order to feign a conversion to Christianity before pretending to die and requesting a Christian funeral inside the city once inside however he lept out of the coffin to launch into a vicious sack of the city the issue with this story is that very similar ones are later attributed by figures such as the Norman adventurer Robert east cart and the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada meaning it may have been a simple literary trope of the tongue but what we do know is that the city sacked was not Rome at all but Luna nonetheless the force pushed on up the river arno to attack the cities of Pisa and fear so before re-entering the open sea after this the whereabouts of the expedition remain relatively unknown it seems that an attack on Rome was not in fact attempted with some hints offered in contemporary sources that they instead entered the Byzantine sphere of influence in the eastern Mediterranean later Arabic and Spanish sources claimed that Vikings raided Greece and Alexandria during this time and if they did it may have been born and hastens fleet that did it the next we hear of the expedition is in 861 when they attempted to slip back through the Straits of Gibraltar on their way home unluckily for them a fleet of battle readied Romans waited for them The Straits of Gibraltar are only nine miles wide so the chances of them getting through unnoticed was slim and besides Mohammed had had two years to get ready for their inevitable return bjorn and Hostin were likely unaware for strong currents flowing into the Mediterranean from the Atlantic and with us slowed down to a crawl rowing as hard as they could through the Straits as fire rained down upon them from the awaiting Dromund in the carnage that ensued two-thirds of the fleet was destroyed no doubt seeing an obscene amount of wealth plunder and captives descend to the bottom of the ocean amidst the terrible firestorm nonetheless Paston your twenty ships made it through finally turning north to the noir and home as they passed along the Christian kingdoms of the north however the two leaders couldn't help but launch into one final attack pausing at Navarre they headed inland little did they know it but they were about to pull off the greatest feat of the whole journey attacking the city of Pamplona to defeat and capture the local king Garcia before successfully ransoming him back for a vast sum of 70,000 gold pieces when they finally got back to the lawar a few weeks later they were rich beyond their wildest dreams like the earlier expedition 8:44 probably little more than a quarter of those who set out returned in 862 compared to Frankia where success was far more likely the raid had been devastating though naturally the voyage seems to have taken on a truly epic quality in the minds of succeeding generations no doubt as the survivors tales grew in the telling spawning a multitude of sagas and stories that followed [Music] after the expedition the two leaders parted ways Hostin remained in Frankia whereas Bjorn headed north in the direction of Denmark perhaps like so many other sea kings before him and after to utilize his newfound wealth in order to make a bid for power at home though some later traditions tend to suggest that your made it dying there a wealthy man potentially having founded a royal dynasty in Sweden another tradition however and one favored by historians such as John Heywood is that he never made it dying in freesia after losing everything in a shipwreck whilst Bjorn and Hostin had been away their old rival Weyland had briefly become a new powerhouse in Frankia though he sought even more a lieing himself with Charles the bold and converting to Christianity only to be killed in a jeweled by one of his pagan followers it would be a long time yet before integration between mainland European and Scandinavian and many more wars were still to be fought by the time beyond supposed brothers Ivar half Dan and Ober arrived in East Anglia a couple of years later in 865 some of those present had no doubt already waged war across the entire Mediterranean by 889 just as Hostin or potentially a younger warlord bearing his name prepared to launch yet another attack upon the last anglo-saxon kingdom of Wessex a Viking force again returned to Iberia this one got as far as Seville before being heavily defeated and limping back home another expedition to Al Andalus was defeated in 912 and from then onwards a different strategy would be tried in the early 10th century political developments in the rest of the Islamic world namely the rise of a rival caliphate - the abbasids in the form of the shiite Fatimids of northern africa LED cordoba to declare itself as a caliphate to becoming a focal point for neighboring Muslim states and even more powerful than before from then onwards when Vikings traveled to Iberia to raid their attacks remained very much focused on the northern kingdoms in 966 an overflow of Danish mercenaries sent to help Duke Richard the first in the newly founded Franco Scandinavian state of Normandy continued on their rampage eventually establishing themselves and overwintering in Iberia for the very first time for the next five years under a warlord named Granada they continued to maintain a presence in the region a generation later in the early 11th century the norwegian prince olav harrelson arrived on a similar raiding campaign described in great detail by Olaf's court poets Akhtar the black and cig VAT the campaign was later emitted by the 12th century icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson when he wrote olaf saga the scandinavian world by then being staunchly christian and unable to square itself with olaf the patron saint of Norway massacring fellow Christians in a Viking campaign by Olaf's time the days of the Vikings were already numbered with the raiding of Christian lands increasingly frowned upon attacks continued nonetheless right up until 1066 but by then a new age for Dawn's the next time long ships sailed past Iberia raiding and pillaging as they went their destination they far to the east in the Holy Land for they were Crusaders [Music] [Laughter] this video was sponsored by the great courses plus quite simply one of the greatest learning resources in the world you can find more than 11,000 lectures on practically any subject you can think of in video and audio format by the leading experts in the world you can access all of it seamlessly on your phone your tablet and your computer this is a university level education at a fraction of the price over the past year the great courses plus has become one of my go-to sources for information one course in particular that have absolutely loved has been professor Kenneth halls definitive series on the Vikings I keep going back to this course and every time I do I learn something new whether you're an expert or a complete beginner these courses are for you you can help me out and get yourself some free knowledge by signing up today to a free trial of the great courses plus by clicking on the link in the description below or by going to the great courses plus.com forward slash history time Oh

Channel: History Time

Views: 1,084,536

Keywords: iMovie, vikings, spain, vikings mediterranean, bjorn ironside, hastein, ragnar lothbrok, vikings documentary, viking

Id: UgKQJ3WGJBk

Length: 42min 52sec (2572 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 15 2019