Top Medieval Historian Rates Viking Scenes in Movies

catapult here absolutely no evidence of a catapult oh okay we're shooting the locals randomly see blonde it's meant to be red-haired that's true as well we know we have the written records of that really brilliant CGI go on there I'm not a cat German I'm an archaeologist specializing in the Viking age and I'm the host of the podcast gone medieval today I'm going to be reviewing portrayals Vikings on film Thor oh so now we're in Norwin the 10th Century that's nice big Viking Town nearby there so that's perfect they were not alone in this universe some worlds but man believed to be I do believe that they knew all these different worlds the Viking or Scandinavian cosmos had nine worlds in Total so humans were at one in midgard and then there were all these different good and bad so yeah Frost Giants we do have Frost Giants they actually lived underneath the world tree so we've got igb Brazil the world tree and the frost giants live underneath in one of the roots this threat alone foreign [Music] this idea in the cosmology of the fight between the good gods and the bad Giants that's happening the whole time not sure about how they represented here we didn't really know what they looked like our armies drove the frost Giants back into the heart of their own world so there's no sense of this being different planets at all in the actual Norse mythology it's all really part of the same thing [Music] this I think necessary but I like the idea that is it's very otherworldly this is sort of what we would think of as a completely different Universe would look like this wouldn't it silence we've got Odin here so Odin the sort of all father father of the Gods your boy sought this out and these must be the yotens or the frost Giants or some of the the sort of nasty Gods here yeah we call them Giants but actually they weren't necessarily all really large that idea comes in a bit later on okay so this must be Odin's hall or something here we go here he is so I like he's sort of shown as an older wise man isn't he and he sort of has he got his eye lost yeah so it's one-eyed he lost one of his eyes he gave it up to to gain wisdom he had to give it up and uh throw it into a well speeches while that's gone four you had a vein greedy call A boy is he blonde it's meant to be redhead and he does have a beard I suppose he's meant to have Brushy eyebrows as well red bushy eyebrows you've opened these peaceful Realms and innocent lives to the horror and desolation of War okay so he's gonna take away his past not quite sure what this thing's meant to be he does have gloves and a belt of his three weapons that his powers are are in it's this Hammer Milner and then he's got this very powerful belt and his iron gloves that he has to use the whole time so if those are taken away from him that's oh yeah there we go Hammer's gone [Music] that's not good without them it's always pretty much nothing so what's going to happen with a hammer I don't know we know there's various stories about him losing his hammer and it's being stolen by other people so that does happen I quite like this idea that they've got constantly fighting among themselves because this wasn't really a very nice and peaceful relationship they weren't just all sort of peace and Harmony fighting evil they had their own personalities and characters and they did really naughty things they were horrible to each other sometimes and you see that reflected in this as well so that's really taken from the mythology this this idea of actually quite fickle and difficult gods that are actually quite difficult to deal with it's all such an interesting character isn't it really because he's just become this hugely popular going into Hollywood into all the different Comics but he was also one of the most popular Gods back in the Viking age so his hammer is one of the the more common amulets that we find in archaeological record I think it's maybe because he was so powerful and one sense he was essentially his job was to protect the other gods and at the same time he was he's kind of very human because he gets really angry he gets frustrated so even though he has all this strength he can't always control it he's got all these little weaknesses as well as being super powerful and strong so I think there's something about that that sort of that combination of being a brilliant God but actually also really quite flawed and very almost human-like that that people really really quite like the Vikings [Applause] storming of a castle here again weapons she's I guess they got Shields and they've got uh a sort of yeah catapult here absolutely no evidence of a catapult in in a thundering Castle but you know obviously quite convenient we know that they use things to sort of attack places but I really don't think you'd have a battering ram that size with wheels so this is the northumbrian castle we do know that there are castles bambora Castle uh as as dating from this period it did not look like that at that time I can I can to say that for certain this is more like a much later medieval castle [Music] [Applause] quite like the fact that they use timber ladders and things quite likely but so these are then the Vikings attacking oh more rocks being chucked around [Music] and we've got an eagle on a helmet is that an eagle definitely not anything the Vikings would do that are my sort of decorative isn't it looks quite nice but I don't think it's very helpful [Music] okay so this looks more like a sort of Roman Turtle formation to me than what what the Vikings would have done but again we don't quite know [Music] there's lots of archery going on and actually in this period don't really think that archery was that common foreign I guess you would have the leader the king would probably be there although we have other sources where the king is a big part of the battle he wants to be seen he doesn't want to hide away the sort of Honor element of being part of a battle or an attack was quite important both among the the Saxons and the Vikings this is going to be the end of Ragnar Lothbrok I suppose this is about to be thrown into a big pit which is Scott what looks like starving wolves so interestingly in the actual Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok he dies by being thrown into a pit not with Wolves but with snakes so that is in the legend that is how he dies so that must be how they've taken it so these must be the northumbrians and so they're now discussing how to throw him in how he's going to kill this man is is going to have the honor of pushing him into their pits what's going on what he's wearing he's got this looks like a Justice armor chain mail thing going on there it's got sort of it's got big leg wear but I wonder if that's the Lost book the sort of furry breeches it's meant to be his his nickname I wonder if that's what that's about okay so he's asking to actually be cut loose so that he can die in honorable death because if he's just killed or he just dies by being eaten then he will be deprived of going to Valhalla this idea that you only go to Valhalla if you die on the battlefield or in some kind of fight I'm not sure if just being cut loose and thrown into a pit just counts as being in battle so that's probably a bit of a loose interpretation of that idea so this is interesting as well though it's a sort of idea of Viking honor is he going to be true to his word is he going to be actually just jumping off and killing them all that would definitely get him to Valhalla so we don't really know [Laughter] in the actual Saga he then recites this whole poem and he says laughing shall I die so that's I suppose where that comes from so this was clearly not filmed at a 9th century Castle this is actually from a much later medieval site in Brittany so really not accurate at all but the story is set in the last sort of half of the 9th century and it's following this sort of legendary great Army and Ragnar Lothbrok attacking the northumbrians we know that they did do this in the 9th century we know that there was this Viking attack we'd know that there are fortified or at least sort of castle-like settlements as bambra for example we know that the city of York is is one that was attacked as well as a part of that so I suppose that bit is quite accurate we seem to be lots of battles between these Viking leaders and northumbrian Kings so elements of reality where they're Ragnar love brick was even a real character we don't actually know that he's just legendary we have no real sources of his life so it's kind of taking evidence from the sagas and really taking a much later medieval spin on it as well but I suppose there are some some evidence uh that it's based on that's vaguely accurate Ragnar Lothbrok is really interesting uh we in reality we don't know if he was real or not everything that's written down about him comes from later sargus so there's no contemporary sources at all that mention him there's some of his alleged children are mentioned in the sources so there are names that are associated with him but he seems to be one of these characters who sort of possibly gone from someone real into the legendary and then we have these great stories which are again picking up a bit of truth about the great Army things that we can prove I hate having to be the person to do this actually because I know people love him and people really want him to be real but I hate sort of bursting bubbles unfortunately we just don't know if he was ever a real person or not The 13th Warrior quit tunnel replaced I quite like this it's based on an actual real account even for dad was a real person who wrote this account of traveling among the rusty sort of possible Vikings um Eastern on the Volga River so he's an Arab he's a he's a sort of missionary really and then he encounters these Northerners [Music] I really like the fact that they've got a translator because they can't talk to each other but they've got a translator to to sort of help interact that's true as well we know we have the written records of that this is a selection for some reason they're going to have 13 warriors there's no real basis for that 13 wasn't really a particularly important number in in the Viking world nine was but not 13. so we've got this woman who's the sort of some kind of Shaman or something and that again is in that record so we've got this Angel of Death who does does various things I was wild they've got they're wearing different costumes from some of it is sort of Elizabethan I think and and some of it is more broken but they're speaking different languages I quite like that you've got this this the elements of different cultures because actually that's what the Vikings did they did travel east and west Pandora tent or something that's again from that account of Eben fidlan's travels we know that they had these temporary 10 setups along the river so I suppose that's quite quite accurate this is the bit before battle we've got another sort of bear outfit here don't know is that meant to be a Berserker as well perhaps [Music] low down do I see my father [Music] hello there do I see my mother and my sisters see my father I see my mother so that interestingly is actually taking from Eben fidlan's account not from a battle scene but from a funeral scene where this slave girl is being sacrified is lifted up and these are the words that she says and this is a contemporary account so that's probably the closest we're ever going to get to a sort of wording of a prayer that is exactly in this place and time in the halls of Valhalla hey lift so they talk about going to Valhalla as well to this idea that you're getting ready for the battle and you may well die but at least you're gonna die in an honorable way I quite like the fact that we've got this interaction between the Vikings or the ruse or whoever they are meant to be here and and Arabs are somebody from the Islamic world because actually we have so much evidence now that there is all this contact we know it from Eastern Europe we know it from all these settlements and sites there we know that there's lots of trade going in we even know that some of the Vikings went all the way to Baghdad and they traded there and then we have all these objects and artifacts so we have Dirhams Islamic coins jewelry with Arabic inscriptions ending up in Scandinavia in really large numbers and in England so that connection was was pretty real even Furlan and his travel account give us some really quite unique details about these roofs or the Vikings and he's the one who talks about them actually having tattoos so he talks about them having paintings I think he actually does a green on their bodies all the way up to their heads and he talks about a lot about how they keep clean or actually how they don't he so they're quite dirty but he also says they're really tall and really beautiful and explain some of their rituals he describes a funeral which we don't have any other records of that really so it's given us a really unique insights into both what they look like and how they behaved Valhalla Rising so I think this is where they are somewhere in the North Atlantic possibly North America or Canada or Greenland because it's clearly come to this place I'm looking to see what's what's here I don't know what it is but there's one eye presumably that's a reference to Odin oh okay so here we go these are the the native populations the presumably the native either Native Americans or perhaps the Inuit in Greenland so we do actually interestingly have records of these Vikings who or the North as we often call them in that part of the world encountering the the native populations they call them the squarlings in the Saugus and they actually have quite a difficult relationship they attack each other and they they're quite vicious and in some of the stories they do manage to to really keep them back some of the arcules showing that they actually they seem to have treated they seem to have worked quite peacefully with each other so who knows but I can imagine the first time they turn up like this they're it's not necessarily their their most likely to go well quite like how they're represented we don't know what they would have looked like or what they would have worn they've got lots of shoes and undercuts and things they've got their weapons some really brilliant CGI going on there you actually know that the Vikings made it to North America it's in the Saugus but we never quite know if the sagas are real or not so in them they do go to this place called Vineland which is somewhere there in the West and then archaeological evidence has basically proven it so we've got there's one site called Lancer Meadows in Newfoundland which is now dated to the early 11th century we've got some really nice accurate dates it's a small settlement so we do know they definitely went there probably came there from Greenland which was a known settlement and then moving it's actually quite a short hop across so it's not surprising and it's likely they would have encountered the local native population we don't know what the relationship between them was we know that the Vikings didn't actually last very long there the settlement was really short-lived so for whatever reason they didn't quite make it but they were there we know that we have the evidence the real archeology to back up those sagas How to Train Your Dragon this is Burke it's 12 days north of hopeless and a few degrees south of France okay love this Village so real so realistic but it's in a sort of difficult and slightly inhospitable place and we do definitely have settlements in the Vikings that are in Rocky and tricky places view of the sun sets the only problems are the passes you see most places have mice sheep hugely hugely important part of the Viking economy um and how are the dragons unfortunately no real evidence of dragons in the Viking world but in the mythology and in the sort of culture the dragons are hugely important they're on their ships they are in Legends and stories and this idea of killing dragons the Dragon Slayers are really really actually a really key part what is he doing out again what are you doing now get inside that's stoic the vast chief of the tribe they say that okay and then we we have the horned helmets obviously so I don't know if we even have to do this but no evidence of horned helmets in the Viking age in fact we have very few helmets all together but definitely not with horns they would have been so inconvenienced because they're just getting away wouldn't they [Music] me no come on I'm way too muscular for their taste they would know what to do with oh so quite like the fact that he's uh he's being trained here in blacksmithing and so he's being trained to to to learn this craft which again we know you know these things would have gone in families we moved to the lower defenses we'll come to the tank with the catapults see Old Village lots and lots of new houses oh and that's fish legs you know with all these Timber houses Viking houses normally most parts of the Viking world made out of Timber it's quite like a bucket that actually looks like a real Viking bucket that we've got from some of these Graves back up looks like you and me are taking a little vacation forever oh man okay so here we've got Astrid coming into the picture so she's uh clearly training here to be a warrior or something especially you talking about are you trying training I didn't it better not involve this I I know this she's a very sort of strong-willed independent young girl slash woman isn't she and I I do quite like that I'm not sure it was always like that I think there's all sorts of different ideas of how Independent Women could be in the Viking age but there's definitely evidence that they had really important roles oh man in relationships as well you know they weren't just completely passive but they could choose quite a lot in marriage they could get divorced they had lots of Rights in marriage in kind of in society really even though technically I suppose it's a sort of male dominated Society I do love this idea that we have this Viking world full of dragons and that you can tame them and all of that so we do know that these beasts and these creatures were a big part of the the sort of mindset uh really so we have things like dragons we have giant serpents we have Fenris the big wolf that features quite heavily in the mythology as well so so clearly this Viking world was was filled not just with a real animals and beasts that you see around you but also these imaginary ones and they make it into art they make it into their long ships and they're clearly part of the imagination and I quite like that and the thing I think this particular film shows is just how popular the Vikings are in our imagination making it into every you know all sorts of comics and and and for TV for children as well these are children's stories the fact like that there's something about the Viking age all these features the the beasts and the creatures the fighting that the sort of personal relationships that that come from from the sagas from these brilliant medieval tales and and from the archaeological evidence that that just still today captures our imagination and I don't know any other historical cultures that have quite such an impact on us today as the Vikings do the northmen right so now we're getting to the land of the roost so Eastern Europe the rivers what becomes Russia Ukraine later on here we go that was quite nice nicely built ship they're rowing it which is good they haven't got a masked up or the Mast has been put down which is perfect that's what they would do got the shields on the side that's actually a really nice and accurate description of a ship it's quite a small boat which is probably what you would have on Rivers like this [Music] yeah it's very empty I don't know all this stuff is they would have had things they would have had food and with some weapons although they do have their chests so each of them is sitting on a chest that would have had their personal belongings in them that's absolutely perfect that's what we know they did oh okay we're shooting the locals randomly um I don't actually think they would do that but who knows [Music] here we've got then the ritual before a battle so we've got some kind of shaming person I don't know about the horns that's a bit of a creative interpretation now they've got a fire lots of people around we do know that there are characters called the circus that wore probably bare Skins are they doing a bit of a dance here and singing and chanting and shouting actually some experts do describe them as a sort of like the Hawker dance that you get before a rugby match that they're sort of egging themselves up for fighting so there's lots of questions of whether using drugs as well to actually get themselves into that state we just don't know it seems quite likely doesn't it they do some a little bit drugged up I think okay so this must be the rage so we've got a village here which has got a sort of palisaded fence around it might have done a space and they're still wearing their bare skins into battle I don't know if they really did that [Music] oh okay so we've got a spear Throne from the village and he catches it that actually comes from one of the sagas that little idea of a scene there that somebody an enemy throws a spear and it's been caught and they Advance the other direction I don't think this is very realistic surely they'd get some of them they'd push them down throw something this is the sort of fantasy isn't it more than anything it's quite like the village but would they really be that unprotected okay so here come the rest so that was just the advanced party that's the reason was they've got the sort of shock uh tactic I suppose and the rest of them come in I think actually they would be trying to take people as slaves as well I don't convince that they would just absolutely murder everyone I'm not sure I really think that this is a very realistic I think this is a bit of a sort of 21st century Viking fantasy isn't it this is really great to see that they're in the land of the Russo what later becomes Russia and Ukraine because in this period in the late 9th century we know now that that was a really key part of the Viking world even if it's not necessarily the first part of it that people might think of we know that Eastern West was really well connected and people would travel from Scandinavia all the way down those River routes and that became a really really crucial part of of even of the raiding Nativity going west we know that has links to the east as well so seeing that in a film and such an important part of it that's brilliant the berserk is a really interesting there's a lot of myths and legends surrounding them the reality is we know very little and they've got this idea in the popular imagination of being these sort of super brilliant bloodthirsty Warriors we don't even know what the name really means we don't really even know if they wore bare skins seems to be be quite a likely interpretation but actually a lot of the evidence suggest they're not necessarily that sort of violent Raiders but maybe they're more sort of egging people on and spurring them on having some sort of sort of I don't know encouraging function rather than actually being the brutal Warriors but this this sort of image of them that we see here is is kind of that popular imagined version of the Berserkers but unfortunately yeah we don't quite have the evidence to really back that up this whole story is based around the character of ambulance which actually is also the inspiration for Hamlet which again draws its inspiration from stories written down by saxo grammaticus who was this Danish medieval 13th century Monk and historian and writer so it really has a very old little Revenge story that the film is based on has both a sort of reasonably modern and a medieval origin which is which is quite fun to see all those different representations of the same story if you enjoyed this please also check out the podcast God medieval where we're covering lots of Viking topics it's available from history heads

Channel: History Hit

Views: 427,908

Keywords: history hit, history hit youtube, historian reacts, expert reviews movie scenes, movie review, medieval movies, expert review, expert reviews battle scenes, historical movies, movie reviews, viking expert, historian reviews, expert reviews movie, viking movies, films about vikings, movies related to vikings, history hit medieval, history hit documentary, history hits youtube, history hit movie scenes, history hit movies, history hit movie review, cat jarman

Id: N6AK-wGWSQ8

Length: 32min 24sec (1944 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 27 2023