Unseen Viking Underground | Cities of the Underworld (S2, E4) | Full Episode | History

over thousands of years dublin ireland has  been a brutal combat zone a bullseye for   raiding tribes and powerful empires but the same  forces that repeatedly sacked the city also made   it the city it is today from an underground  viking waterway we must travel now because the   water levels is going to rise and mysterious  tombs older than both the pyramids of egypt   and stonehenge if you're claustrophobic this is  the worst imaginable to a deep dark cave that was   the site of a viking slaughter all the older men  had jumped off or assaulted straight to the heart   and a grisly crypt preserving the secrets of these  ancient mummies this is a whole other body look   at the teeth the skull is just right under there  and even a link to the legendary knights templar   but his ties are crossed and that is  the way they used to bury crusaders   just beneath dublin's busy streets and  pubs are the scars of its violent past we're peeling back the layers of  time on cities of the underworld viking underground with 1.1 million residents dublin is the  largest city in ireland and its median age   of 34 is the youngest in europe but there are  pubs here older than the united states and if   you go below the streets you go even further  back in time to an age of mystery and terror i'm don wildman i'm in dublin ireland  it's an ancient city filled with a young   and sometimes raucous crowd but as the locals  here take to the streets and pubs above   the remains of this city's savage and bloody past  are hidden just below their feet viking slaughters   ancient warrior tombs pagan worship and the scars  of brutal warfare are still here underground like   in most old cities dublin's modern structures have  all but swallowed up their ancient sites but if   you can find the entrances to this subterranean  world you can discover dublin's dark secrets   in the 8th century bc the vikings exploded onto  the world theme they terrified people throughout   europe the middle east and even reached america's  shores 500 years before columbus the viking age   began with a bang in 793 when the pirates of  norway pillaged a peaceful abbey in northern   england the monks there were killed thrown  into the sea or carried away as slaves along   with the church's treasures word of the brutal  assault shocked all of europe and the vikings   were instantly and forever demonized the vikings  sacked paris destroyed london with a fleet of 350   ships and in 830 a.d they landed in ireland  sailing into dublin bay and up the liffey river   it's the largest river in the area flowing 72  miles upstream so from the liffey the vikings   could raid and plunder villages throughout the  countryside once they had dominated the liffey   their military base in dublin grew quickly into  a big city fueled by the slave trade and looted   treasure today that ancient viking stronghold  and its strategic waterways are long gone   but how did an entire waterway the  backbone of the viking conquest disappear   a thousand years ago dubliners could dip a bucket  in the river and pull out drinking water but today   to set foot in the pottle river you need special  permission from the city of dublin and a guide   like david green from the drainage department  it's a dangerous area you have to be careful   when you're traveling because of the toilets  you can get cardio just like people traveling   the caves at sea right so the toys are in  the favor and also the sky is in our favor   all right i must give you your gear and your  protective gear that you need on the journey   this here don is your private oxygen supply  it's about 20 minutes of oxygen it's a good   thing to have it in your possession okay  because you're traveling underground   so don will you hold the ladder and uh i'll  get down to make sure everything is okay   it's a it's a lot deeper than i thought  it was going to be and much more water   i mean there's a real river down  there here we go down under dublin just below this street is something  most lifelong dubliners have never seen   the river that gave birth to their city but it  was also ground zero for a viking reign of terror   the launch point for hundreds of bloody raids  on the irish countryside this is the old   dublin okay so now this is river water coming  from where this is pure river water and this   is the drinking water that the people of dublin  okay used to drink back through the centuries   the river that was once the lifeline for the  vikings is now just a bricked over culvert   and crouched under these low ceilings it's hard  to believe viking ships once sailed through here   so tell me how the vikings attacked the city first   well they came up and the river liffey  from dublin bay and their ships and the   ships not only themselves was equipped with  armor but the ships told people be aware   this is a concurrent situation the viking  longship was a devastating marine assault vessel   with a simple design perfected over hundreds of  years it took about 80 trees to produce one boat   these 100 foot long ships could sail at  full speed in only three feet of water   at its height dublin received 140 shiploads  of warriors a year the vikings sailed their   longships up the liffey and found this the river  puddle the spit of land between the two rivers   was the perfect location for a fortress with  stone barricades on the sides facing the rivers   the natural pool where the two rivers met was 39  feet deep and 72 feet wide and they called it dark   pool or dublin from dublin they used the pottle  river as a highway to plunder silver lumber and   slaves slavery was a big business by 9 50 a.d 10  percent of the european population was enslaved   many of them victims of viking raiders and it all  began right here 10 feet below today's streets   in the subterranean channel that snakes along  for almost four miles under modern dublin   but how did such an important river  and the viking settlement around it   get pushed 10 feet under a busy city the answer  can be found in the poddle's erratic and sometimes   deadly torrents there's not too much water down  here today but normally i mean on a rainy day this   would be quite a torrent i would think yeah on  heavy rain this would fill up like a milk bottle   the puddle still intersects with the uncovered  liffey river and during heavy rainstorms the   liffey will rise as much as 14 feet when the  liffey goes up so does the puddle back in the   9th century when it was an open river it often  flooded the viking longhouses along the banks when   the normans defeated the vikings and conquered  ireland in the 12th century they channeled the   river into a moat around dublin castle as the  pottle river was tamed medieval residents began   using it as an open sewer over time the sewer  was covered and modern dublin was built on top   to keep the city from collapsing into this  underground river medieval builders reinforced   the sewer with brick archways and barrel vaulted  ceilings the brickwork here is structurally   it seems like this is pretty old to  be holding up modern day dublin right   yeah i mean this is 400 year old this is it these  are these are the foundation stone off the upper   grounds off the castle does that make you feel  a little uh a little shaky maybe yeah twilliams   in fact dave and his co-workers now follow  the exact path of the ancient viking raiders   trudging through the guts of the city to  keep it safe from collapse we must travel   now because the water levels is going to  rise okay and i want to get you out safely   it's up to river lippy john that's amazing so  we have just how far have we walked here i'd   say about two miles two miles underneath  of dublin underneath the heart of dublin   an amazing opportunity you know to walk two miles  underneath of modern day dublin up there it's it's   coffee shops cafes down here it's antiquity  you know right under the surface of the streets   the countryside around dublin is peaceful now  but back in the 9th century swift vicious viking   raids rocked the small farming villages out in  these open fields there was no place to hide   the community needed a subterranean refuge a  medieval bunker so they began to dig a tunnel   into a nearby hill but as they were digging  the locals found something unbelievable   they ran into a massive tomb a prehistoric  lair built thousands of years earlier just north of dublin so psyched i'm gonna see a   archaeology site that's more than four thousand  years old this isn't even history it's prehistory   in 2500 bc the inhabitants here literally  changed the landscape building towering   burial mounds like this it's older than  both the pyramids in giza and stonehenge   but who are the people who built it and why did  they put themselves through such back-breaking   labor was this tomb their portal to the afterlife  an ancient observatory or something else professor   anabol killfeather met me just an hour outside  of dublin at a place called douth a 60-foot high   4500 year old mound a mysterious earthwork of  a prehistoric cult so from this side you can   really see the shape of the mound and how steep  it is and the immensity of it i mean it's so much   work went into building this absolutely how many  people would it have taken to make this happen   communities from all over the valley came together  to build them out so it's like the the amish in   the states raising a barn this is a mound raising  it would have taken you know hundreds of people   years maybe a generation to build up something  this big because it looked like a natural hill   no one discovered what lay beneath the mound  for centuries this is the way in follow me the   inner chambers of the mound are off limits  to the public but we had special permission   to go inside squeeze to see things hidden from  most human eyes for centuries not free at all if you're claustrophobic this is the worst the man-made hill actually contains  two structures built over 3 000 years apart   the original 4 500 year old passage tomb  lies closer to the center of the mound   but off to the side is a much newer  construction a 9th century warren   of small chambers and a narrow tunnel  that leads back into the ancient tomb   all right okay here we are this  is one of two beehive chambers   so what do they use this space for and they seem  to have been used uh for storage for valuables and   also possibly for refuge now as you can see the  passage we came it's very it's very difficult to   get down right it's kind of restrictive it's  difficult to get into a thousand years ago   villagers burrowed into this 4 500 year old hill  retrofitting the tomb into a medieval bunker in   which to hide their valuables or themselves when  vikings stormed the village above were there   battles wars fought in this area well there's  a reference in the ninth century to the vikings   attacking doubt if they're in danger of attack  from the vikings they would have needed somewhere   to store their valuables hidden presumably  the whole village could have come down here   if they could take that these watertight chambers  dug down beside the much older tomb protected the   medieval villagers and their goods from bad  weather as well as from marauding vikings   no mortar was used in a cobalt structure like  this a ring of stones was laid out and sometimes a   wooden pillar or mound of earth was set up inside  as a guide and a support each new layer was then   set closer to the center the stones all tilted  slightly downward so that the rainwater could   run off when they neared the top the medieval  peasant builders removed the center guide and   the chamber was completed it was hard work but at  a time when viking raiders could burn and pillage   a town in just a few minutes it was absolutely  essential as remarkable as this piece of viking   era engineering is there's another structure  within the mound that's far more impressive   and 3 500 years older just 27 feet away from the  9th century beehive rooms down a narrow passageway   is the central chamber of the neolithic tomb  11 feet high built out of massive boulders   and about 500 years older than stonehenge yeah  look at this this definitely has a feeling of   an entryway into a tomb i mean it's a little  eerie huh and very very prehistoric oh here we go very little is known about the people who  built this tomb how they constructed it   or exactly what pagan rituals were performed here  it was built probably around 2500 bc so it's about   four and a half thousand years old about 500 years  older than stonehenge it's older than the pyramids   some of the pillars of stonehenge have  toppled over ravaged by the centuries   but the north tomb of dalf is perfectly preserved  just as its builders left it about 4 500 years   ago unlike stonehenge douth was used for  burying cremated remains of the elite   but douth is more than just a simple tomb  because it was such a monumental task to build it   there's speculation that a vital and long  forgotten ritual took place down here   it's believed that these neolithic people  worship their ancestors a tradition carried   on by the celts with sauhan the festival of the  dead a right that mutated into today's halloween   on samhain offerings of food and drink are left  out for the ancestors but if the dead feel they   haven't been properly honored they'll drag their  own descendants back with them into the cold dark   afterworld such offerings were left in this very  room but no one knows if they were meant to help   the dead on their journey or keep them away from  the living it has a very ceremonial feeling in   here i mean these these monolithic stones as  you enter into this central space are really   impressive right absolutely i mean this is just  one giant boulder huge piece that's a huge piece   of stone even imagine how they moved it much  less set it into place for 4 000 years some   speculate that the massive rocks of stonehenge  were moved with rollers and manpower alone   this structure could have been built the same way  thousands of years before cranes and bulldozers   look at the stability of this it's just insane how  this has lasted so long and it you have another   gigantic rock right above it and there's no  mortar these are just rocks sitting on rocks   how they move these enormous monolithic stones  will remain a mystery but this neolithic cult   may have left behind a clue to their secret pagan  rituals and if you look down here there's some   artwork oh yeah we call megalithic art to the  modern eye that looks like a sunburst since we   know that the the passages seem to be orientated  either on the moon or sun events i think this is   quite likely to be maybe a representation  of the sun coming down into the tomb   just as one massive block of stonehenge was  aligned perfectly with the rising sun on   the summer solstice the neolithic monuments of  ireland seemed linked to the heavens as well a   passage tomb one mile away from douth was designed  so that on the morning of the winter solstice   a beam of light enters the  chamber through a roof box   hitting a rock at the end of the passageway  and lighting up a carved orthostat the   southern passage in darf may have been similarly  designed to light up at sunset on the solstice   like the formation of stones at stonehenge  the positioning of this tomb may have kept   track of the seasons predicted eclipses or  been part of a pagan ritual honoring the sun   these megalithic stones weigh several tons   and like the building of stonehenge no one  quite knows how this tomb was constructed the   tomb and its builders remain one of the greatest  mysteries in a land filled with myths and legends in the 9th century bloody viking raids spread out  from dublin and into the countryside because their   longships were lightning fast and their weapons  were deadly the attacks were swift and brutal   most villages had no refuge and in the  end the only place for locals to escape   the viking slaughter was a deep dark  cave a place they thought of as hell this area is famous for its massive limestone  caves in ancient times the people who lived   in this region thought of them as entrances into  hell they wouldn't go near them but recently some   spelunkers made a series of gruesome discoveries  in a nearby cave that may change the story they   found one thousand-year-old human bones that meant  at one point in time the locals did in fact enter   the caves now if they were so afraid what could  possibly drive them to literally go into hell   well according to an old irish legend there's only  one thing more terrifying than hell the vikings my guide michael keough has lived in this  area all his life he's explored the caves   extensively over the years so don you can see the  entrances here yeah a very spectacular entrance   well i'll say it's huge this is naturally formed  it happened over three thousand years ago when the   little field up above here where we're standing  fell right in and all the material in that field   fell down and formed the big long slope that you  see in front of us here the collapse created this   enormous natural amphitheater 65 feet deep over  400 steps lead down to the farthest reaches of the   cave it's a thousand-year-old crime scene stained  with the bloody fingerprints of the vikings well you can really feel it getting colder  down here huh yeah just like that now down   we're at the lowest part of the cave which  is about 180 feet below the ground here   well going back i suppose a couple of thousand  years ago people were dead scared of coming in   here it was regarded as the lair of a giant  monster probably because when you're coming   down into the mouth of the cave you see all  the unusual looking static tides hanging out   from the ceiling and they could look like the  teeth of a big monster with his mouth open okay   so this was a no-go territory the bizarre rock  formations that terrified locals were formed over   thousands of years as rainwater leeched calcite  deposits into the top of the cave leaving behind   stalactites then 3000 years ago a huge section  of the roof collapsed revealing the gaping mouth   of dunmore cave 39 feet wide and 20 feet high  today rainwater is still working away at the rock   the chamber we're in is only held up by two slabs  of rock nearly 100 feet apart so this limestone   ceiling is only supported along the back wall over  there and also the little triangle behind us here   man so this entire slab of limestone countless  tons of stone is only being held up by two places   far apart from each other that's right yeah so  it makes sense to me that this entire thing is   going to come down someday at some point in fact  50 000 years ago a section of the ceiling gave way   and these enormous boulders crashed down blocking  this part of the tunnel and creating the only   hiding place for terrified villagers but when  an archaeologist was exploring the site in 1973   he uncovered evidence that the villager's refuge  was really a death trap hello welcome back in   the year 928 a.d the vikings from dublin came  here and killed a thousand people in this cave   roughly under where we're standing now we  found the bones of 44 women and children   including two small babies 44 people underneath  here in this chamber underneath that's right   and you were able to date these bones the carbon  dating confirms the date early medieval the time   we're talking about all right so these were the  people who were massacred that's correct locals   had feared this cave for centuries believing it  was the gate to hell and the lair of monsters   and that turned out to be true for the villagers  who sought refuge here from the vikings in 9 28.   so you could imagine the vikings coming down to  attack you could imagine the women and children   running in and getting you to  hide through all the older men   my age and older maybe head chopped off or a  sword straight to the heart yeah the teenage   boys probably brought off to dublin sold as slaves  dublin was a major slave trading port at the time   and then in this big area behind us here under  our feet maybe one of the babies starts to cry   there's some noise the vikings lit some fires  to try to smoke the people out and of course   the fires used up all the oxygen and those  people slowly suffocated to death so all   44 women and children underneath this rock right  where they laid a thousand years ago that's right at first vikings targeted monasteries plundering  the church's gold and silver but they soon turned   to a more lucrative business the slave trade  farm communities near a major river like this   one became prime targets the viking slave  trade developed into an elaborate network   they captured huge numbers of defenseless farmers  from rural areas in the british isles central   europe and especially the slavic plains to the  east in fact the word slave referred to the slavic   people because so many of them were enslaved by  the vikings the slave trade made the vikings rich   each slave fetching about the same price as  a head of cattle the slaves would be gathered   in major ports to be shipped to the palaces and  estates of the persian and eastern roman empires   oftentimes males were castrated and along with  young female slaves were sold to harems in north   spain and north africa it's impossible to  say where in the world slaves taken from   this cave would have ended up but one thing's  for sure many of them never made it out at all   i'll be careful the bones found here were removed  and reburied in 1973 but today climbing down this   slippery cliff is the only way to see the spot  where the unlucky villagers died at the hands   of the vikings there we go that looks like a  doorway there some kind of opening down here oh here we go look at this well you can imagine  what this was like almost the whole village is   hiding in the dark with brutal warriors coming to  get them so the men are killed and they find them   underneath here a thousand years later lying  right where they lied the day they were killed in addition to the bones coins and jewelry  from across the ancient world were found   deep inside the cave fueling even more  speculation most vikings brought their   coins and other belongings with them everywhere  even into battle to keep their hands free at   all times they press the coins into the  hair of their chests or armpits with wax   but during vicious hand-to-hand combat or  slaughters like this one their body heat sometimes   melted the wax and the coins were lost another  more recent find suggests a different story   vikings may have used this cave to hide their  treasures in 1999 one of the guides he reached   in at the back wall there behind us the pick  up silver bracelet followed by silver jewelry   silver coins belt buckles he found a whole  package silver ingots we can only assume that   the vikings were still raiding somewhere stole  their goods and hid them here with the intention   of coming back for them so there could be  a lot more stuff quite easily it could be   today dublin is the engine behind  europe's fastest growing economy   but at the turn of the 18th century after  generations of hard-handed british rule   living conditions in dublin were awful famine and  utter poverty were on every street corner to deal   with the problem the aristocracy built a massive  poor house for beggars and vagrants and in time   thousands of sick and dying children were stuck  in an overcrowded dark and dingy basement because   it was underground the british believed the  problem had been swept under the rug but little   did they know the seeds of violent revolution had  already been planted deep in dublin's underworld   st james hospital is in the kilmannon district of  dublin 300 years ago it was the site of a hospital   for homeless children then became the south union  poor house a shelter where the destitute toiled   in exchange for a place to live but no matter  what they called it it was less of a refuge   and more like a prison all of this dark history  was buried in danger of being forgotten until   recently lindsay when archaeologist lindsey  simpson made the discovery of a lifetime   so this is a brand new building yeah it's about  five years old so you come in at the early point   yes before before it's actually built and we come  in as part of the site investigations this was a   car park so that's when i discovered the building  you discovered yeah down below that's right today   lindsay's discovery is accessible through a plane  door in an ordinary hallway i'm going to show you   the magic door right now this is it here but just  15 feet down dublin's dark past comes to life wow you just went from uh modern to 21st century  exactly back 300 years so this is the original   foundation of the foundling hospital this is the  actual basement of it so this would have been   inhabited and lived in okay three centuries ago  these rooms witnessed horrible inhumane squalor   with hundreds of homeless children crammed into  these filthy cold and dark quarters so this would   have been one room yeah with hundreds of beds  in here i guess yes it's probably a kind way of   describing it okay well platforms to sleep on yeah  it's really quite a picture in your head isn't it   cold and and dark and dank and a lot of unhappy  children yeah some of them dying we know the   three-quarters of the babies that came in were  didn't survive three quarters of the children   of the children died british rulers in ireland had  created the orphanage but were reluctant to waste   too much money on the lowest of the low abandoned  illegitimate children underfunded and understaffed   the hospital couldn't even dole out meager daily  rations to the children who were brought here   so hundreds of babies and toddlers were farmed  out to wet nurses who were paid to care for the   children but these women were poor living in the  slums of dublin so for them this was a business   to keep track of the children the hospital branded  each of them on the arm the branding was a way   of identifying children that had come through the  workhouse in other words if a wet nurse came and   she said i would take three children there was  no mechanism for the founding hospital to keep   a track on where whose kids were where when she  would come for her monthly payment she would   bring the children with her and the branding was  a means of identifying those particular children   a wet nurse could present a branded child to  the hospital and receive a small monthly payment   the brands were supposed to eliminate fraud women  trying to claim their own children as hospital   foundlings for a few extra dollars there was a  lot of fraudulent behavior and we know that they   that in one incident in 1737 that  that about 15 or 16 children were   found dumped in a quarry they were all branded  they were all very small infants so obviously a   group of people that got together taking these  children and then murdered them gotten their   payments and then murdered the children yeah the  inhumane treatment of children in these rooms and   the discontent of british rule throughout dublin  exploded in a revolt known as the easter rising   on april 24th 1916 1 000 armed irish men  and women declared all-out war on britain   and resistance fighters chose  this spot as a stronghold   i'm sure they selected the site quite carefully  it was a very important institution there was   some sort of i think poetic justice attached  to the fact that they were fighting here right   on the site where so many people had arrived  here in such miserable conditions outnumbered 2   000 to 1. the irish were quickly beaten down  but when the british executed the leaders of   the rebellion the outraged people of ireland  finally mobilized against their british enemy   fury and revolution spread across the country  and in 1921 ireland won its freedom from britain eventually the poor house where the easter rising  erupted was shut down and abandoned the building   above was torn down sealing up the spaces below  until the year 2000 when lindsay was called in for   a routine look at the foundation this is a very  unusual situation right old original building   and then a brand new building  designed to sit on top of it   yes it was a very innovative way of dealing with  it because these are piles big piling machines   had to come in and it was very difficult actually  to do what we're doing without damaging the walls   the original plans had to be completely  scrapped engineers devised a method to   balance the massive 32 000 square foot  building over this ancient hole instead of   laying the concrete walls of the new hospital  directly onto the crumbling structure below   the engineers drove concrete piles almost 100 feet  into dublin's bedrock all of the weight of the   structure above is transferred directly into the  ground below thanks to this ingenious engineering   this piece of ireland's dark past is now preserved  so this is a triumph as far as you're concerned   yeah no it is it is a triumph we're doing  this for the for future generations good work all over ireland stories of legendary  warriors have been passed down for centuries   like celtic armies fighting off viking invaders   or knights templar battling pagan tribes  but there's one mysterious place in dublin   where these are more than just stories  where legendary warriors refuse to die on the north side of the liffey river  is the 400 year old saint miken's church   but deep inside this medieval church is a  thousand-year-old [ __ ] where the mystery of its   ancient mummies defies both logic and science i  met with pat liddy a guide to dublin and lifelong   north sider who got me access to some dark  places where even the parishioners aren't allowed   way down under so this is not the original  church no they the other most part is the 1680s   but underneath we probably have the crypt area  which dates from about a thousand years ago   the crypt beneath the church holds clues to  the mystery behind the eerily well-preserved   remains of its thousand-year-old parishioners  this is our entrance into the underworld   and it's made so that those inside can't get  out and makes it difficult for us to get in   big heavy iron doors here we go  and as you go in next door just   it's very low steps uneven so be very  careful very dark thousand years back so look it's nice what do you think of this yeah  it is a it's an authentic medieval space huh   have a look at what we have here oh that is really  creepy it's not a place for the unwary so how old   are these these coffins um the coffins range here  from a mere 100 years to go back maybe 400 years   so there's a whole mess of a mess i mean coffins  all over that's right it's like if we just   discovered them there's a rat just ran across here  too only the most durable coffins can withstand   more than a few decades before dry rot sets  in and most corpses rot away in under a decade   after a few centuries even skeletons turn to  dust but in this crypt lie the remains of rich   men and women who defy the laws of nature  in death look his feet are right down here   i've never seen he's lying in there i've never  seen something like this before look this is   a whole nother body here that is yeah yeah look  at the teeth the skull is just right under there okay that's gross it's an excellent  argument for cremation don't you think   tangled skulls and bones around the  tomb have been untouched for centuries   and even though they weren't properly mummified  they're almost perfectly preserved oh wow   look at this almost perfectly preserved bodies so  how is this so well preserved well uh partly due   to the dry atmosphere created from the release of  the magnesium salts from this limestone the walls   themselves are releasing uh they're releasing salt  which is absorbing any dampness that might occur   here plus a release of the gas in methane type  gas coming from the forest bed which used to be   here underneath us unlike the ritual mummification  of egypt ireland's mummies are caused by accident   the famous bog people were iron age corpses found  buried in the western peat marshes and were some   of the oldest and most well-preserved corpses  in the world but mummification caused by the   combination of dry air and methane gas found  in the crypt of st mikans is absolutely unique   it all began over 5 000 years ago when the ancient  forest that covered this region was cut down and   cleared for farming eventually the modern city  paved over the forest bed which began to decompose   methane gases were trapped beneath as methane  is slowly released into the crypt it displaces   the oxygen atmospheres low in oxygen slow the  decomposition of corpses the limestone used in   the construction of the crypt also helps absorb  excess moisture that would otherwise dissolve   the calcium in the bones leaving behind  these mummies and preserving their stories it really results in a person is still  there not us this is a person yeah   and we know a little something about everybody  this gentleman here a bit of a question perhaps   400 years old or thereabouts and he's had a  couple of indignities done to him his feet   have been cut off from above the ankles because  coffins in those days were made to a standard size   they couldn't fit him in without cutting off his  feet he's missing his right hand oh yeah no his   right hand could have been lost in battle yeah it  could have been lost as a punishment or it could   have been disease uh most likely it was battle a  sword thrust or something off went the hand now   this is another well very damaged body here he he  is the the big shot oh yeah yeah he's the vip here   he could be six to seven hundred years old really  in fact they call him the crusader why is that   well first of all he's nearly seven feet  tall in real life really they've had to again   to break his legs to fit him into the the coffin  okay but his thighs are crossed and that is the   way they used to bury crusaders so he's a warrior  he's a warrior i mean the irish have always been a   warlike nation we've had to be because of all the  invasions we've had down the thousands of years   but the man they called the crusader was buried  a hundred years after the crusades ended in 1272   could he be linked to the famous and  secretive society of the knights templar   the knights were some of the greatest warriors  of the crusades but their mysterious initiation   rights and immense wealth and power threatened  the rulers of europe so in 1312 the pope had them   arrested tortured and many of them were executed  the order apparently disbanded many fled to   ireland's neighbor scotland and around that time  this irish warrior was interred in the crypt other   templar graves have been found with leg bones  removed and crossed not unlike the mysterious   crusader of dublin lying 10 feet under this  historical church this is a very exclusive thing   and i'm going to offer it to you now it apparently  gives you really great luck if you very gently   shake his hand this is a real thing and it's  it's a it's a strong belief i have never done   something like this before think good of him wish  him well in his afterlife and the luck will come who knows he could be an ancestor of yours if the  old dna was checked out there's irish in there   yeah there you are but i  mean i'm gonna be like this   and i'm going to be like that we're all going to  be like that there is no exceptions to this rule the violence that ripped through dublin during  its 4 000 year history is beginning to fade   away and a population once crippled by grinding  poverty now enjoys life in a modern metropolis   but the irish will never forget their dark past  of viking slaughters mysterious pagan tombs   and bloody battles for independence  it's still here just beneath the streets you

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 824,621

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, cities of the underworld, history cities of the underworld, cities of the underworld show, cities of the underworld full episodes, cities of the underworld clips, full episodes, Cities of the Underworld s2 e4, Cities of the Underworld se2, Cities of the Underworld season 2 episode 4, Cities of the Underworld se2 ep4, Cities of the Underworld 2X4, Episode 4, Season 2, Viking Underground, Unseen Viking Underground

Id: UT769OP2OUo

Length: 42min 37sec (2557 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021