0:00

Today's show is part two of a two-part

0:02

series on the spread of Christianity

0:04

to the far north of Europe and the

0:06

last holdouts who still believe in

0:09

the ancient pagan Germanic gods

0:12

of the Norse sagas, the Odins

0:14

and the Thors and people like that. If you didn't

0:16

happen to hear part one, you might want to catch that

0:18

before you hear this show. Both shows

0:21

are actually a continuation of

0:23

our 2012 series called Thor's

0:25

Angels, and if you want that, that's available

0:27

for a nominal fee from our website.

0:29

One last thing, stay tuned at the end of today's

0:32

show for some announcements of live

0:34

appearances I might be making in a town near

0:36

you.

0:37

So without further ado, let's kick off

0:40

today's ending of

0:42

our two-part series here with

0:44

Twilight of the Isaiah, part two. December

0:48

7th, 1941. It's history. The

0:54

events. The

0:57

figures.

1:07

I take pride

1:09

in the words, the drama.

1:26

Mr. Gorbachev, tear

1:29

down this wall. The

1:35

deep questions.

1:37

I

1:41

welcome this kind of examination because

1:43

people have got to know whether or not their presence

1:46

is corrupt. Well, I'm not a crook. If

1:48

we dig deep in our history and our doctrine and

1:51

remember that we are not descended

1:53

from fearful men. Hardcore

1:55

history. Get on the

1:56

field, Cop. Parallel

2:03

universes, simulation

2:06

theory, infinite

2:09

world hypotheses,

2:12

other dimensions. I'm

2:15

not smart enough to understand these concepts,

2:18

but I have been fascinated by

2:20

them ever since I was first exposed

2:23

to the ideas. Obviously

2:26

these are concepts that people

2:28

like physicists study. Another

2:30

reason I wouldn't understand them.

2:33

Could never understand the math where you just take it to face

2:35

value. But I've often wondered if such

2:37

concepts

2:39

couldn't explain or put

2:42

some sort of a scientific sort

2:44

of patina or as they would say in

2:46

the UK patina on

2:49

top of some of the ancient

2:51

beliefs that earlier people had

2:54

that they talked about

2:56

in ways that have come

2:59

down to us as fairy

3:02

stories or myths or legends

3:04

or folklore that

3:06

would be much more easy for us to

3:09

grasp and accept if

3:11

some physicist explained it to us as

3:14

you know something that was a part

3:16

of another dimensional realm or a

3:19

parallel universe or

3:21

something connected to a physicist

3:24

type theory that sounds a

3:26

lot more logical and acceptable than

3:28

talking about the existence of something like

3:31

elves

3:33

or trolls

3:35

or of course

3:36

magic.

3:39

Sometimes I wonder if earlier

3:42

peoples couldn't understand

3:44

those higher concepts. How would they explain

3:46

things in their world that they saw or thought

3:48

they saw or believed in? As

3:51

we've said before if a lot of people

3:53

believe in something like magic fervently,

3:56

doesn't that create a reality all its own?

3:59

There's

4:00

something known as the Tinker Bell Effect. Maybe

4:02

you've heard of it. If

4:04

you remember the Walt

4:06

Disney production of Peter Pan, there's

4:08

this moment where you have to believe in Tinker Bell

4:10

or Tinker Bell is gonna die. If

4:13

you go look up the definition of it, it

4:15

describes the phenomenon of thinking

4:18

something exists because people

4:20

believe it exists, right?

4:22

Magic, sorcery, elves,

4:24

dwarves, trolls, Valkyries, Norns.

4:27

These are Viking belief

4:30

system things that they believed in. Wouldn't

4:32

it be interesting if it turned out someday that

4:35

these were their representations of things

4:37

that a physicist could explain in scientific

4:39

terms? One

4:41

of my favorite parts of any

4:44

Shakespeare play, and I'm not alone in this,

4:46

is the earliest part

4:48

of Hamlet where you have

4:50

this moment where the Night

4:53

Watch comes and tells Hamlet

4:55

and Horatio, his somewhat skeptical,

4:57

we would call him today more of a scientific,

5:00

you know, terra firma kind

5:02

of guy, and the Night Watch

5:05

tells Hamlet that the ghost of his father

5:07

has just appeared. So Hamlet

5:09

and Horatio run up to the battlements and sure enough

5:11

the ghost appears. And Horatio,

5:14

in his wonderfully skeptical

5:16

but can't deny what he's seeing in front of him

5:19

sort of way, is stunned.

5:21

Doesn't believe in ghosts and says, oh day

5:24

and night but this is wondrous strange.

5:27

And Hamlet replies with that wonderful line that

5:29

I feel covers a lot of what we just

5:31

said. He says there are more things in heaven and earth

5:34

Horatio than are dreamt of

5:36

in your philosophy, suggesting

5:39

of course that the human imagination is limited

5:41

and there are many things we don't know,

5:43

things that haven't been discovered

5:45

and in fact things we haven't

5:47

even dreamt of. As

5:50

we've said about magic before, what happens if

5:52

lots of people believe in it and act on

5:55

it? Magic might not be real but the effects are.

5:57

If some king goes

6:00

to the oracle at Delphi in the ancient

6:02

world and ask the you

6:04

know the prophetess on the oracle's

6:07

seat you know should I go and attack

6:09

this rival kingdom and the prophetess

6:12

says yes you should go attack this kingdom

6:14

and he does well that

6:17

may be a bunch of bunk but he acted

6:19

on it and people died and kingdoms rose or

6:21

fell because of it How real does that make

6:23

the magic? Why? If

6:27

you believe yourself to be cursed

6:29

and then things start going wrong Does

6:32

that double down on this belief that you're cursed

6:34

and does your mind start working on against

6:36

you? I mean there's a lot of things here where the

6:38

human mind can interact with belief

6:40

in a way that manifests a kind

6:42

of reality That even

6:44

if it is a phantom

6:47

sort of reality at its core manifests

6:50

in real world consequences

6:54

Maybe the effect of the

6:57

human mind and

6:59

positive or negative thinking is

7:02

just as much of a

7:05

physicist's undiscovered country

7:07

as parallel universes simulation

7:09

theory infinite world hypotheses

7:12

or other dimensions But

7:15

when you talk about what the people in

7:17

the viking world believed in they

7:20

believed in elves

7:23

And dwarves and trolls and valkyries

7:25

and norns They

7:28

also believed in beings like

7:31

giants Who they believed

7:33

were an integral part of the creation

7:36

of the universe and may not have been these Overly

7:39

large beings that we normally associate

7:41

with the term Just like

7:43

their view of dwarves may not

7:45

have involved beings who were

7:47

smaller than human in stature But

7:50

many of these beings constituted what

7:52

historian neoprice in his book the viking

7:55

way refers to as the

7:57

invisible population And

8:00

he says that to many in the Viking

8:02

world, the invisible population

8:05

of things like elves may have been more important

8:07

to their daily life than the gods themselves.

8:11

Because in a polytheistic religion, the

8:13

gods had their own problems, and

8:16

people were just one of the things that they

8:18

may have been concerned with. This

8:22

is difficult for those of us raised

8:24

in an environment of monotheism to

8:26

understand, just like trying

8:29

to get your mind around a belief

8:31

system that may not have been orthodox

8:33

and may not have been learned and may not have been understood

8:36

by everyone similarly, right? They

8:38

didn't all read the Bible and learn in Sunday

8:40

school how things were. People

8:43

just had an innate understanding, and it could

8:45

differ person to person in the Viking way.

8:48

Neil Price writes, quote, In the

8:50

same spirit as Philip Velikot's description

8:52

of the gods of classical Greece, the

8:55

worship, in air quotes, required

8:57

by the Norse pantheon, was

8:59

not adoration or gratitude

9:01

or even unreserved approval, and

9:04

was thus utterly unlike the Christian

9:06

relationship to the divine. The

9:08

religion of the Aysir and the Vanir demanded

9:11

only a recognition that they existed

9:13

as an integral and immutable part

9:15

of human nature and society and

9:17

of the natural world, and that as

9:20

such they possessed an inherent rightness,

9:23

perhaps even a kind of beauty. If

9:25

one wished to avoid disaster, it was

9:27

necessary to come to terms with the gods,

9:30

and the terms would be theirs, not those

9:32

of their followers. This is an important

9:35

point in relation to the interpretations, he

9:37

writes, that I will develop in the following

9:39

chapters, because a refusal to

9:41

acknowledge the gods in this way could

9:43

have dire consequences. It

9:46

would also involve a contradiction, as such

9:48

an act would be a denial of the undeniable.

9:51

The question of believing in the

9:53

Norse gods was probably

9:55

irrelevant.

9:57

End quote.

10:00

Price also points out that

10:02

there wasn't the sort of orthodoxy

10:04

of belief that we are accustomed to in the

10:06

more monotheistic religions, no

10:09

Sunday school, no singular text

10:11

that everyone could study and be on the same page

10:14

with. There

10:16

might be quite a bit of variation

10:18

in the belief systems. Also

10:23

unlike the religions of

10:25

the book, you could not automatically

10:28

assume that the deities were

10:31

on your side because

10:33

they had their own problems, their own

10:35

goals, and their own issues

10:38

that they were involved with. You

10:41

might be a secondary or

10:43

even lower on the list concern.

10:47

Odin, who is sometimes considered to be

10:49

the chief of the gods, but maybe not.

10:51

Odin is the perfect example, right?

10:55

It is said that you have to be careful

10:57

because Odin can be tricky. He might

10:59

sleep with a man's wife or he

11:02

might sleep with the wife's husband. These

11:06

are not the sort of things one

11:09

in the religions of the book need

11:11

to worry about. Odin

11:15

is a fantastically interesting figure

11:17

that when you contrast it with

11:20

the monotheistic religions shows

11:23

many of the various differences. I mean famously

11:26

the God of the Bible is supposed to know

11:29

when any sparrow falls from

11:31

a tree. Odin doesn't.

11:35

Odin has a couple of ravens

11:37

that he keeps for reconnaissance purposes.

11:40

One is named Mind

11:43

the Other Memory. Sometimes

11:47

you'll hear one is named Thought Two. You'll run

11:49

into that. Neil Price says Mind and Memory

11:51

are the translations that he would ascribe

11:53

to and these ravens go out in

11:55

the world and report back to Odin so

11:58

that he can know when some sparrow falls. Pharaoh falls

12:00

if he even cares about something like

12:02

that. Odin also

12:05

has powers and magic that he can

12:07

use to gain further information. Again,

12:11

one would assume that the God of the Bible

12:13

has this information. Odin needs to search

12:16

for things like wisdom. He

12:18

gave up an eye in his pursuit of wisdom.

12:20

That's why he only has one. He

12:23

is known by perhaps hundreds

12:25

of different names. And

12:27

one of the powers that he has and uses

12:30

all the time is he talks to

12:32

dead people. He

12:34

goes up to the bodies that are hanging

12:37

on the gallows after someone is hanged

12:40

and he talks to them. He

12:42

raises the dead so that he

12:44

can question them. He

12:47

has the decapitated

12:50

head of another God that he has preserved and keeps with him

12:53

so that he can ask it questions. It

12:57

reminds me a little of like a very gory version

12:59

of a Harry Potter painting where

13:02

you can ask the figures in the painting for information.

13:04

Odin talks to the head. There

13:08

is no clear separation of powers

13:11

and authorities and responsibilities amongst

13:15

the gods. There's overlap. For example, Odin

13:19

and Thor, Thor is Odin's son. And you

13:21

know, from the comic books

13:23

and movies and stuff, Thor is very famous, but

13:25

Thor, the God of thunder and weather also

13:28

rules a part of military

13:30

affairs, war, the actual brute strength

13:32

of fighting. Whereas his father Odin is the strategist

13:35

and the God of that also apparently the God

13:37

of berserk kind of fanaticism.

13:41

Odin also gets slammed

13:44

sometimes for using things like magic because

13:46

in the Norse religious

13:49

beliefs and society, magic

13:51

is where the women shine.

13:53

It's a female thing to do. And there is

13:56

in one of the Norse sagas, Loki,

13:59

who is Thought to be

14:01

the son of a god and a giant

14:04

or giantus, Loki sort

14:06

of takes a slam at Odin by saying

14:09

the fact that he practices magic is perverted

14:11

and makes him feminine. But

14:15

this is part of what makes women

14:17

so both respected and in

14:20

some cases feared. They

14:22

are spell weavers and

14:25

shaman and sorceresses,

14:28

the three women who supposedly

14:31

weave the destinies of human beings,

14:33

the Norns fall into this category.

14:36

And there are some who think that there are

14:38

similarities between many of the different

14:40

European pre-Christian

14:43

mythologies because there are figures

14:46

in Greek mythology, for example, the famous fates.

14:49

And the names are similar, the three women. One

14:51

is named something akin to a version

14:54

that means the past. Another

14:57

is named with a version that

14:59

means something like the present. And

15:02

another is named with a version that means something

15:04

like the future. It's sort of like Ebenezer

15:06

Scrooge is a Christmas carols ghosts,

15:09

ghost of Christmas past, Christmas present, Christmas

15:11

future. The Norns are somewhat

15:14

more terrifying. And some of

15:16

the mythology suggests that they weave

15:18

the fate of mankind on a loom

15:20

with the entrails

15:23

or bloody body parts

15:26

of human beings. I've also heard that ascribed

15:29

to Valkyries. And Valkyries

15:32

also have been completely distorted

15:34

by things like comic books and

15:37

male fantasies into sort

15:40

of Scandinavian

15:42

versions of Baywatch

15:45

women that a man

15:48

might watch and admire and lust

15:50

after when the actual accounts

15:53

from the sagas and whatnot

15:55

describe looking at a Valkyrie as

15:58

terrifying and akin to a akin

16:00

to staring into flame. The

16:04

entire universe in Norse mythology

16:07

is held together or

16:10

girded by a tree,

16:12

an evergreen ash

16:14

tree known as Yggdrasil.

16:18

And the Norns care for Yggdrasil,

16:20

and Yggdrasil is sometimes thought

16:23

by some to refer to sort of a

16:25

version of the Milky Way. And

16:28

Yggdrasil connects the various realms

16:30

of existence. This gets us back to our physicist

16:33

idea of other dimensions

16:35

or multiple world theories. I mean, Yggdrasil

16:38

connects like an interstate

16:40

highway, places like Midgard,

16:43

which is where human beings live,

16:45

and which is the term J.R.R.

16:47

Tolkien used and translated

16:50

into Middle Earth, connects Midgard

16:52

to Asgard. And Midgard

16:54

and Asgard to the realm of the giants, Jodhheim,

16:57

and the land of Midgard and

17:00

Asgard and Jodhheim to the lands

17:02

of fire and ice and all the other different

17:04

realms. There's

17:07

an interesting connection between

17:10

ancient Germanic religion across

17:13

Europe and this question of this sacred

17:16

tree, because

17:19

when the Christian bishops

17:22

are going around trying to convert people like

17:24

the Saxons or other

17:26

Germanic tribes or the Friesians or any of those

17:28

people, they all sort of have a tree that

17:30

is connected to their worship. In

17:32

fact, hundreds of years before when

17:35

Tacitus is writing about Germanic beliefs,

17:38

he talks about sacred trees in

17:40

sacred groves, where

17:42

they have sacrifices that

17:44

involve the bloody killings

17:48

of human beings and animals who

17:51

are then ritually hung up around

17:53

sacred sites. In

17:56

his 11th century writings, Adam

17:59

of Brain who has as his

18:01

source a Danish king

18:04

talks about one of these sacrificial

18:06

places at Uppsala in what's now Sweden.

18:10

And by the way, when Adam

18:12

of Bremen says Woden, that's

18:14

the more Germanic version of the name

18:17

Odin. When he says Frico,

18:19

he means Freyr.

18:22

And when he says Bjorko,

18:24

when he's talking about a city, he means the city

18:26

of Berka, which is the trade center in

18:29

the island in the middle of a lake that's so

18:31

famous. And he says, quote,

18:34

that folk, meaning the Swedes, has

18:36

a very famous temple called Uppsala

18:39

situated not far from the city of sick

18:41

turna and Bjorko in this

18:43

temple entirely decked out in gold.

18:46

The people worship the statues of three gods

18:49

in such wise that the mightiest

18:51

of them Thor occupies

18:53

a throne in the middle of the chamber. Woden

18:56

and Frico have places on either

18:59

side. The significance of these gods

19:01

is as follows. Thor, they

19:03

say, presides over the air, which

19:06

governs the thunder and lightning, the

19:08

winds and rains, fair weather

19:10

and crops. The other, Woden,

19:13

that is the furious, carries

19:15

on war and imparts to man

19:18

strength against his enemies. The

19:20

third is Frico, who bestows

19:22

peace and pleasure on mortals. His

19:24

likeness to they fashion with an

19:26

immense phallus,

19:28

but Woden, they chisel armed

19:30

as our people are want to represent Mars.

19:34

Thor, with his scepter, apparently

19:36

resembles Jove.

19:38

The people also worship heroes,

19:40

made gods whom they endow

19:42

with immortality because of their remarkable

19:45

exploits.

19:46

End quote.

19:48

The scepter that he says Thor has

19:50

is probably the famous hammer, mjolnir.

19:53

Adam

19:56

of Bremen then describes what

19:58

the sacrifice at these

20:00

various places is like, and he writes,

20:03

quote, The sacrifices

20:05

of this nature, of every living

20:07

thing that is male, they offer nine

20:10

heads, with the blood of which

20:12

it is customary to placate gods

20:14

of this sort, the bodies they

20:16

hang in a sacred grove that adjoins

20:19

the temple. Now this grove is

20:21

so sacred in the eyes of the heathen, that

20:23

each and every tree in it is believed

20:26

divine, because of the death or

20:28

putrefaction of the victims. Even

20:30

dogs and horses hang there with men.

20:33

A Christian, seventy-two years old,

20:35

told me that he had seen the bodies

20:38

suspended promiscuitously. Furthermore,

20:41

the incantations customarily chanted

20:43

in the ritual of a sacrifice of this kind

20:46

are manifold and unseemly.

20:49

Therefore it is better to keep silence about them."

20:52

End quote.

20:54

Even how little is actually

20:56

known about what went on at these sorts

20:59

of Viking religious ceremonies, one

21:01

wishes Adam of Bremen wouldn't have been so

21:04

scared or horrified and could

21:06

have told us what the Danish king told him

21:08

about them. But Adam

21:10

of Bremen's response to

21:13

this is what you would have expected from

21:15

most Christians of

21:17

the Middle Ages who would have seen

21:19

these Viking ceremonies as

21:22

little more than satanic rituals

21:25

designed to placate or even conjure

21:27

devils and demons

21:29

and the people involved in them as

21:31

folk who were headed for

21:34

the fiery pits of damnation.

21:37

Viking expert

21:39

and University of Oslo historian John

21:41

Vidar Sigurdsson in his book, Scandinavia

21:43

in the Age of Vikings, points out two interesting

21:45

facts about the Scandinavians

21:48

in this era and their belief system. He

21:50

says that the worship of

21:53

deities like Thor and Odin is

21:55

part of an ethnic religion, meaning it

21:57

applied to a specific people. contrast

22:00

that with something like Christianity, which

22:03

is a universal religion. Islam is too,

22:05

the idea that anyone can convert to this, and

22:08

it applies equally well to

22:10

people all over the world. Sigurdsson

22:13

points out that that's not how the Scandinavians would

22:15

have seen their gods. Their gods were exactly

22:17

that.

22:18

Their gods.

22:20

Sigurdsson also says that you could classify

22:22

this religion as an elite religion,

22:25

meaning the people that communicated with the

22:27

gods were people like the kings. And

22:29

this is key, because the biggest threat

22:32

to this religion in this time period

22:35

is people like Adam of Bremen, who

22:38

simply want to keep these people from the fiery

22:40

pits of hell and stop them from worshipping

22:42

demons and devils. But to the

22:44

people of Scandinavia, it's the same as saying

22:47

that you want to kill their gods

22:50

and destroy their worldview and make

22:52

them stop believing in the traditional spirits

22:55

and the invisible population, the elves,

22:57

the dwarves, and yes, the

23:00

giants and the Valkyries.

23:03

And as we said

23:04

in part one, the

23:07

Christian assault against the

23:09

traditional Viking beliefs is

23:12

a two-pronged one, both from above

23:14

and below. They're

23:15

able to

23:17

find inroads in the

23:19

Viking world through the Christian

23:22

slaves that the Vikings take, who can't

23:24

help but

23:26

share their belief system with their

23:28

slave masters

23:30

and also through the elite.

23:32

As Sigurdsson said, these are the

23:34

people who communicate with the gods. Well, what if you

23:37

convert

23:37

those people? And

23:39

you can see exactly what happens if

23:41

you look from a little earlier

23:43

in this story, when Charlemagne and

23:45

his Frankish Christians are able

23:48

to use this same sort of tendency among

23:50

the German peoples of Saxony to

23:52

achieve the same sort of result, the long-standing

23:55

tactic of converting the kings to

23:57

Christianity, who then take their

23:59

people with them.

24:02

But make no mistake about it,

24:04

Odin, Thor, and the rest of the Norse

24:07

pantheon are fighting

24:09

a defensive rearguard

24:11

action against the most dangerous

24:14

foes these gods

24:16

have ever faced. And it's not the giants

24:19

and the eventual destruction of Ragnarok,

24:22

it's the Christian god and

24:24

the many

24:26

powerful states and

24:28

their armies

24:30

who go to war under that

24:32

banner. But

24:34

the followers of Odin are not

24:36

the only peoples who feel

24:39

threatened

24:39

during this era.

24:42

The people that threaten the people

24:44

of Odin are themselves beset

24:48

by portance of doom

24:50

in their near future. The

24:53

Christian states of Europe and their power

24:56

is more latent than manifest

24:58

in this era. And we

25:00

see it more clearly

25:03

than the people living through this time

25:05

period, right around 899 900 ADCE

25:08

when Alfred the Great died. We see

25:11

it more clearly than they do. Because

25:14

like patrons in a movie theater

25:16

who've already read the book the movie's

25:19

based on, we know how

25:21

the 900s are going to go for Europe.

25:24

The people in Europe during the 900s

25:26

don't. And

25:28

they see a quadruple

25:31

threat on their horizon, the

25:34

first of which has been plaguing them for

25:36

more than 100 years by this

25:38

time period. The Scandinavian

25:41

Vikings have gone from smash

25:43

and grab piracy raids to

25:45

full on colonization

25:48

and settlement. Historian

25:50

Neoprice suggests that there were 40 to 50,000

25:53

Danes taking up residence

25:55

in Britain during this time, and they

25:58

control about half the island. It's

26:02

called the Danelaw. They

26:05

are settling elsewhere as well.

26:08

In addition, the long-running feud

26:10

between Islam and Christianity

26:12

takes a decidedly negative turn

26:15

during this time period in the

26:17

Mediterranean, where the

26:19

island of Sicily, which had been attacked

26:22

and temporarily occupied by Vikings

26:24

at one point, is finally swamped

26:27

and overwhelmed by Arab

26:29

conquerors from North Africa, and by 902 they

26:32

control the island, and they

26:34

are putting great pressure on the

26:36

Christian Byzantines in the

26:38

Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. Add

26:42

to that the latest and newest

26:44

threat from the Eurasian step-breaking

26:47

like a tsunami on the defenses

26:49

of Central Europe and penetrating them

26:51

the Magyar-Hungarian

26:54

peoples, who will raid into

26:56

Bavaria and then finally into southern

26:59

France. And

27:02

as Tom Holland in his

27:04

wonderful book The Forge of Christendom points

27:06

out, perhaps the greatest threat looming

27:09

on the horizon for Christians in 900 ADCE

27:11

is coming at the appointed date

27:16

a hundred years in the future when

27:19

the long-awaited promised

27:22

appearance of the Antichrist is expected,

27:25

like a giant exponentially worse

27:27

version of the Y2K virus

27:30

from the year 2000. All

27:33

of those things together create

27:36

a climate of pessimism

27:39

and negativity that

27:41

shows up in the sources in his classic

27:44

work, The Age of Faith, historian

27:46

Will Durant in a condensed

27:48

and edited account from a monk

27:52

in southern France gives

27:54

a sense of the feeling when that monk writes

27:57

quote, The cities are depopulated.

28:00

The monasteries ruined and burned.

28:03

The country reduced to solitude.

28:06

As the first men lived without law, so

28:08

now every man does what seems good in

28:10

his own eyes, despising

28:13

laws, human and divine. The

28:15

strong oppress the weak. The

28:17

world is full of violence against the poor

28:20

and of the plunder of ecclesiastical

28:22

goods. Men devour

28:25

one another like the fishes in the sea." End

28:28

quote. Now as I

28:30

always say, I'm addicted to context and

28:32

I also have a background in journalism, which

28:34

some people have said is

28:36

the first draft of history. And

28:39

there have always been criticisms about

28:41

journalism. For example,

28:43

one is the idea that stories

28:46

get chosen because

28:48

of their shocking

28:51

or violent nature. Maybe you've heard

28:53

the phrase, if it bleeds, it leads.

28:56

Well, maybe there's a little of that going on

28:58

in this story too because right after he uses

29:00

that quote we just cited,

29:03

the one about the men devouring each

29:05

other like fishes in the sea, Will

29:07

Durant in his nearly 75-year-old history, notices

29:12

that maybe there's a little trick history

29:14

is playing on us about

29:17

this as well. Maybe it's a case of historically

29:19

speaking something bleeding

29:22

and so making the history of books more

29:24

than the much more boring stuff

29:26

like peace and commerce and happiness.

29:29

And he writes quote, Perhaps

29:32

we exaggerate the damage done

29:34

by the Norse and Magyar raids. To

29:37

crowd them into a page for brevity's sake, darkens

29:39

unduly the picture of a life in

29:43

which there were doubtless intervals of security

29:45

and peace. Monasteries

29:48

continue to be built throughout this terrible

29:50

ninth century, he writes, and we're

29:52

often the centers of busy industry. Ruan, despite

29:56

raids and fires, grew stronger

29:59

from trade with the sea. Britain, Cologne,

30:01

and Mainz dominated commerce on the

30:03

Rhine, and in Flanders, thriving

30:06

centers of industry and trade developed." End

30:09

quote.

30:11

There's another line we used to have in the news

30:13

business,

30:14

and it was that, Another story's killed

30:16

by over-checking. And what

30:18

that meant is something that appeared to be a really

30:21

good scintillating tale. The

30:23

more you looked into it, the less

30:25

scintillating it appeared to be. There's

30:28

a case to be made that this very discussion

30:30

on the Vikings falls into this category, because

30:33

Hollywood and accounts

30:35

like Hollywood have so transformed the

30:37

Vikings into this uniquely

30:40

barbaric and terrible entity

30:43

that almost anything you do

30:45

to put a more accurate sort

30:47

of cast on top of them makes

30:50

them look,

30:51

well,

30:52

less worthy of leading because

30:55

of the lack of bleeding, if you will.

30:57

Also, because

31:00

I'm addicted to context, the

31:02

other reason that the Vikings look less outrageous

31:05

the more you dive into this time period

31:08

is because compared to the people they're up against,

31:10

they don't look anywhere near as barbaric.

31:13

They may score a 10 out of 10 on the barbarity

31:15

scale, but what Hollywood

31:17

doesn't often show is that the people

31:20

they're fighting would often score

31:22

a 9 or an 8 on the barbarity scale.

31:24

Take the opponents of these Viking

31:27

raiders in Europe, the proto-nights,

31:29

as I like to call them, these

31:33

horsemen from Western and Central

31:35

Europe, who several hundred years

31:38

after this time period will take all sorts of

31:40

vows to protect the weak

31:42

and the poor. Well they need to take

31:44

those vows because that contrasts

31:46

greatly with the behavior of the

31:48

proto-nights in this era. Well

31:52

Tom Holland in his book, The Forge of Christendom,

31:54

labels a gang of

31:57

male-clad thugs. who

32:01

prey on the peasantry of Europe

32:03

in ways that make them sound little

32:06

different than the Viking attacks. In

32:08

the Forge of Christendom, Tom Holland writes

32:11

about these gangs of male-clad thugs,

32:13

quote, �Month by month,

32:16

season by season, year by

32:18

year, their exactions grew ever

32:20

worse. How gruesomely apt

32:22

it was that their favorite mode

32:25

of torture should have been a garreting chain,

32:28

notorious for inflicting upon its

32:30

victims�now quoting a contemporary

32:32

source�not one but a thousand

32:34

deaths,� he continues, �a

32:37

literal tightening of the screws. Robberies,

32:40

too, and rapes and kidnappings

32:42

all were deployed with a brutal gusto

32:45

by hit squads determined to trample

32:48

underfoot every last vestige

32:50

of independence in the countryside and

32:52

to reduce even the most prosperous of peasants

32:55

to servitude.� End

32:57

quote.

32:59

As the old line goes, with friends like

33:01

that, who needs enemies?

33:04

And if your enemies are

33:07

barbaric,

33:09

how much less do

33:11

they stand out when your friends are pretty

33:13

barbaric, too?

33:16

In the 900s, the era we

33:18

are in this story, there will

33:20

be such a reaction to the depredations

33:23

of these gangs of male-clad thugs

33:26

that a movement that I was surprised to read

33:29

is considered one of the greatest peace movements

33:31

in world history will get going. It�s

33:33

known as the Peace of God. But

33:36

in the early 900s, we�re

33:38

still seeing the sorts of activities that

33:41

will create the equal and opposite

33:43

reaction that leads to that movement

33:46

in another century. This

33:49

is the era of the Castellans,

33:51

as they�re known, and Holland talks

33:54

a lot about them. Local warlords

33:56

who put up what we were considered

33:59

today to be rooted in the war. documentary, small,

34:01

primitive type castles wherever they

34:03

can, and then fleece

34:05

the local area that they could now control

34:07

using these castles and use the money

34:09

to hire more and more gangs of male-clad

34:12

thugs. And to

34:15

show how history can be seen in

34:17

multiple different ways, there are different

34:20

ways to view this development, whether it's

34:22

positive or negative. Let's

34:24

go back to Charlemagne in the late

34:27

700s with a united Europe,

34:29

which won't happen again for a thousand

34:32

years after Charlemagne's time. It'll

34:34

take Napoleon in the late 1700s, early

34:36

1800s through war to unite Europe similarly again.

34:42

This is often seen as a golden age by people who

34:44

laud all the benefits of centralization

34:49

who see the disintegration

34:51

of that empire as a terrible tragedy

34:53

and the fragmentation of it as something

34:56

that invited things like Viking attacks.

34:59

When you have something we would call today a failed

35:02

state, well that invites terrorism,

35:05

doesn't it? And warlordism. And

35:07

the era that is the

35:09

one that Europe is going into now is often, I have

35:12

a chapter of a book that calls it the rise of the dukes.

35:15

Well, who are these dukes and counts and lords

35:17

and barons? Well these are the Castellans

35:20

and the more glorified, more

35:22

decorated Castellans who will take

35:25

over areas that used to be all part of Charlemagne's

35:27

empire and rule all these little territories

35:30

themselves. Is this a plus or a minus?

35:34

History has seen it differently during

35:36

different time periods. If

35:39

you are a fan of centralized

35:42

authority and that whole thing, will you

35:44

see this as a terrible negative and Europe descending

35:47

into a fragmented, unable

35:50

to coordinate their activities sort

35:52

of entity? And you will say something like, well Charlemagne

35:55

didn't have Viking attacks to worry about

35:57

because he could fight those things off, he could build all sorts

35:59

of defenses. And the minute all that falls

36:01

apart into anarchy, well, that's

36:04

when you create the conditions

36:06

of, it's like taking the police force out

36:09

of your community and keeping all your doors unlocked,

36:11

you're inviting robbers

36:14

and interlopers. But

36:16

the other way to look at it, and it's been seen this way

36:18

throughout different eras also, is

36:20

that the decentralization here

36:23

is a reaction to things like Viking

36:25

raids. If the emperor or the

36:27

king is so far away that by the time they

36:29

were able to send soldiers to protect

36:31

the people who were hit by Viking raids, the Vikings

36:33

are long gone. Well, what if the central

36:36

authority isn't who sends out

36:38

the equivalent of the local police

36:40

force? What if that's a local Duke count

36:43

Lord Baron or what have you right

36:45

nearby with a little local castle right

36:47

there on the spot? So there

36:49

are historical accounts

36:52

over the eras that see this fragmentation

36:54

not as a downside, as a reaction

36:56

to the need to have local

36:59

protection and authority and decision-making

37:01

onsite, because otherwise

37:04

it's hard to respond to these quick

37:06

hit and run raids that the Vikings are launching.

37:10

But by the time we are where

37:12

we are in this story, we've gone from

37:14

the 700s to the 800s, now we're in the 900s, the

37:17

conditions on the ground are much different

37:20

and the easy pickings of

37:22

undefended monasteries and all that

37:24

from the 800s is a thing of the past.

37:27

Now the Vikings are encountering the equivalent

37:29

of locked doors, burglar

37:32

alarm systems and local police

37:34

forces nearby and the 900s

37:37

will prove to be an entirely different sort

37:39

of affair. As

37:42

we said in the last part of this

37:44

discussion, in places like

37:46

modern day France, West Francaia, they're

37:49

starting to fortify the bridges because

37:51

the Vikings use the river systems as

37:54

a kind of super highway to get into the inside

37:57

of the territory. Well if you fortify

37:59

bridges. at the mouths of these rivers,

38:02

well all of a sudden you have the equivalent of

38:04

a toll booth or a police

38:08

bureau or a guarded

38:10

border in

38:12

Britain. Kings like Alfred

38:15

the Great and his successors will start to create

38:18

fortified cities. They're called burrs and

38:21

they'll do similar sorts of things. They'll put

38:23

them at important sites where the Vikings would

38:25

use as superhighways roads

38:28

or river crossings and once again it

38:30

doesn't mean you can't have Viking attacks but it means

38:32

all of a sudden the defenses are there to

38:34

make something that used to be considered

38:37

you know a relatively easy score

38:39

something where you can expect to lose people

38:42

and maybe a lot of people and maybe just

38:44

lose because the 900s

38:46

start to see a lot more times

38:49

where the Viking raiders and maybe

38:51

even larger forces than raiders

38:54

start losing. Of

38:56

course losing in quotation

38:59

marks is a bit of an eye of the beholder

39:02

thing sometimes isn't it?

39:05

There's a phrase often used

39:07

about winning the war and losing

39:09

the peace. For

39:11

example one of the most important cases

39:14

of maybe winning the war and losing the

39:16

peace happens in the

39:18

year 9-11 when one

39:21

of the most famous Viking figures

39:24

in all Viking history and one of the earliest

39:26

that we can say conclusively actually

39:29

lived and was a real person and there's no doubt about

39:31

it is this guy known to history

39:33

as Rolo. His Viking

39:36

name was probably some version of Rolf

39:39

and his nickname because those Vikings often

39:41

had you know Rolf the in his case

39:44

it was Rolf the Ganger and

39:46

that supposedly was

39:48

a reference to his size and he was

39:50

supposed to be so large that

39:53

he couldn't ride a horse and that he had to walk.

39:56

He's not the only Viking that

39:59

that is set about.

40:01

But this Rolf the Ganger, the future

40:04

Rolo, the future Robert

40:06

is one of the many Vikings supposed

40:09

to have been involved in the famous siege

40:11

of Paris in the late 800s that we talked

40:14

about in the last segment of this discussion.

40:16

It is

40:19

not known whether he is

40:21

Danish or Norwegian. Both

40:24

traditions exist. The

40:26

Norwegians often claim Rolo

40:29

Rolf as one of their own. But

40:32

he gets into a scrap one

40:35

of many with the West

40:37

Francian King, what will

40:40

in the future be France, a guy named

40:42

Charles the Simple that we mentioned

40:45

earlier. And simple doesn't mean not

40:48

intelligent. It kind of means sincere,

40:52

right? Not simple minded. But

40:55

he will Rolf will lose this

40:57

encounter in West Francia. And

41:00

as part of the peace agreement, he

41:02

will be given a territory

41:04

that in the future will be called Normandy,

41:08

which is a reference to the people who

41:10

settled there after this peace agreements,

41:13

the North men

41:15

under

41:17

Rolf the Ganger.

41:20

Rolf is fully a

41:22

Viking right out of the Hollywood movie

41:24

trope. In his

41:26

book, Powers and Thrones, Dan Jones

41:29

writes quote, the creation

41:31

of Normandy was directly linked to

41:33

the dramatic siege of Paris in 885 886. Among the Viking

41:36

leaders of that expedition

41:40

was a man called Rolo, who was

41:42

probably born in Denmark and

41:44

whose career was described by a later

41:47

biographer, dudo of San

41:49

Quentin in idealized but

41:51

undeniably thrilling terms and

41:54

quote, Jones is going to intersperse some

41:56

of those quotes from dudo in this next part

41:58

where he says quote,

41:59

Dudo described Rallo as

42:02

a preternaturally tough and dogged

42:04

soldier, quote, trained in the

42:06

art of war and utterly ruthless,

42:09

end quote, who could typically be seen,

42:11

quote, in a helmet wonderfully

42:14

ornamented with gold and a male

42:16

coat, end quote.

42:18

Jones continues, quote,

42:20

Rallo was one of the most violent men

42:22

of his exceptionally bloody times.

42:25

On one occasion, he prevailed in battle

42:28

by ordering his men to kill all the

42:30

animals, chop their carcasses in

42:32

half and build a makeshift barricade

42:35

out of their freshly butchered meat.

42:38

But he was a canny negotiator, Jones

42:41

writes. During the second half of the ninth

42:43

century, Rallo made a tidy

42:45

living among the Franks, doing as

42:48

all thrusting young Northmen did, burning,

42:51

laying towns and villages to waste,

42:54

plundering and killing. By

42:56

the early years of the 10th century, he

42:59

and his Viking comrades had driven

43:01

the rulers of the Franks to distraction

43:03

and their people to the state of abject

43:06

war weariness,

43:08

end quote.

43:12

His biographer, Dudo, then says that

43:14

the

43:15

subjects of West Francia were

43:17

complaining to their king that

43:19

the land in the realm was, quote,

43:22

no better than a desert, for

43:24

its population is either dead through

43:27

famine or sword or is perhaps

43:29

in captivity, end quote.

43:32

So Charles the

43:34

Simple defeats Rallo

43:36

in a battle, a siege perhaps, and

43:39

the peace agreement is one

43:42

that the people who are the

43:44

fans of the highly centralized

43:47

sorts of governments decry as a huge

43:49

mistake, but those who see

43:52

the decentralized approach as

43:54

something maybe more akin

43:57

to, you know, doing the best with what you have

43:59

available. If you have

44:01

terrorists continually

44:04

destroying and raiding a region and taking

44:06

off captives and killing the population and robbing

44:08

everything, what would

44:11

you think of turning that area

44:13

over to the terrorists, telling

44:16

them that they now owe their allegiance

44:18

to you, that they need to convert

44:21

to your way of thinking? So in these

44:23

days we might make it a rule

44:26

that they have to then become a democracy,

44:28

but back in these times the rule

44:30

is you have to become Christians, and

44:33

then telling them to defend that territory

44:36

against other terrorists like themselves,

44:38

because that's going to be the deal.

44:43

Charles the Simple is going to grant

44:46

to Rollo the Viking

44:48

the areas that Rollo is sort of already

44:51

controlling and occupying, these areas

44:54

that will become Normandy around the entry

44:57

to the Seine River, and then tell

44:59

him that if you accept this

45:02

deal, you're my vassal, which

45:04

may sound weird, except

45:06

that this is the era, as we said, when the Dukes

45:09

and Counts and Lords and Barons

45:11

are going to start to come to the fore. And

45:14

what's the difference if your warlord happens

45:16

to be a locally grown

45:18

warlord, or if it's somebody from

45:20

outside? I mean, if

45:22

you're giving lands to a bunch of Barons who are going

45:24

to throw up their own castles and be sometimes

45:28

loyal to you and other times rebellious, well,

45:31

why not make it the guy who's already

45:33

in charge of that area and who knows

45:36

probably best how to repel

45:39

Viking raiders, because he

45:41

is himself a Viking raider, and in

45:43

his book Northman, historian

45:45

John Hayward writes

45:48

about Rollo and this

45:50

agreement, quote,

45:54

in return for his homage, conversion

45:56

to Christianity, an agreement to

45:58

defend the Seine against other Viking raiders,

45:59

Viking raiders, Charles appointed

46:02

Raulo as Count of Raul.

46:04

It was a mutually advantageous arrangement.

46:07

Charles got recognition of his sovereignty over lands

46:10

he did not actually control, while Raulo's

46:13

de facto rule over the Lower Seine

46:15

was legitimized." Haywood

46:19

then points out that this is hardly a new arrangement

46:22

and that other kings have done this with

46:24

Vikings before. In fact,

46:27

one can go all the way back to certain

46:29

Roman practices from the Roman Empire

46:31

that sound similar, including the

46:34

way the Romans treated the Franks themselves

46:36

when the Franks were much more Viking-like

46:39

than they are in this time period. Famously,

46:44

Raulo may not be

46:46

the submissive vassal

46:49

to Charles the Simple that

46:51

the peace agreement may have

46:53

expected.

46:55

The biographer, Dudo, tells a story

46:58

where at one point during the

47:00

ceremony Raulo is supposed

47:04

to kiss the feet of the Frankish

47:06

king and instead says he's

47:08

not kissing anyone's feet and orders

47:10

an underling to do it for him. Normally,

47:12

you bend down and kiss the feet of the king.

47:15

Instead, the Viking underling lifted

47:18

up the king's foot to his mouth, toppling

47:21

the king on his back. And supposedly the

47:23

Vikings all laughed about this. It's a sign

47:25

of exactly how much respect

47:27

they have for this agreement and this

47:29

king. But Raulo

47:31

did convert to Christianity, but like so

47:34

many other Vikings who did, first-generation

47:37

Christian converts from Scandinavia

47:39

often hedged their bets a little bit.

47:42

And John Haywood in Northman explains

47:45

how that worked for Raulo when he

47:47

says, quote, Although

47:49

Raulo was still a pagan when he won control

47:51

of Rome, it appears he allowed

47:54

what was left of the church to function

47:56

in that area under his control,

47:58

much as the Danish rulers of the Roman Empire. of York had

48:00

done. Pagan Vikings,

48:02

he writes, were rarely positively

48:05

hostile to Christianity. Sacking

48:07

churches and monasteries and selling their occupants

48:10

into slavery was just good business.

48:13

Even after his baptism in 912, Rallo,

48:16

like many first-generation Viking converts

48:19

to Christianity, hedged his

48:21

bets and worshipped the pagan

48:23

gods alongside Christ. Shortly

48:26

before he died, Rallo ordered 100

48:28

Christians to be beheaded as

48:31

an offering to the pagan gods, but

48:33

he also gave 100 pounds of gold

48:35

to the churches of Rouen. The

48:40

interesting thing about this, though, is

48:43

that you can see the long-term anti-terrorism

48:46

strategy at work here, what the Chinese

48:49

would have called in their long-term

48:52

anti-terrorism strategies with

48:55

their so-called barbarians

48:58

nearby them cooking, cooking

49:00

the barbarians, because you

49:02

turn them into people more like

49:04

yourself, and when that happens

49:07

it changes the relationship. It's

49:10

a good thing for a ruler like Rallo,

49:12

because becoming a Christian and

49:14

beginning to organize your society

49:17

the way the Christian states did, exalts

49:19

the king, turns the societies

49:22

into one organized as a hierarchy.

49:28

Not so good for the individual freedom-loving

49:31

Viking farmers who used to get

49:33

together at their assemblies

49:36

known as things and

49:39

make decisions that way, right? If you're

49:41

freedom-loving and you like a nice decentralized

49:44

system, having your ruler convert to Christianity,

49:46

then mandating all his people do, all

49:49

of a sudden puts you under the control of a much

49:51

stronger despotic

49:53

ruler, maybe.

49:56

The other thing, though, that it does for

49:58

the other Christian states is it takes away

50:00

one of the great Viking Scandinavian

50:03

advantages in war. All

50:05

of a sudden, instead of the circumstances

50:08

being that they can rage you, but

50:10

you can't go and attack them because they live

50:12

far away and who knows where and you can't get

50:14

to them, when the Vikings begin

50:16

to settle in places, for example,

50:19

in the Dain Law in the British Isles

50:22

or in Normandy, they lose

50:25

the main advantage that they have of mobility.

50:28

And now, all

50:31

of a sudden, their farms,

50:33

their homes, their families,

50:37

and their wealth are right

50:39

next door to the people that they're sometimes

50:42

making angry with them or vengeful

50:46

or warlike. And

50:48

now their foes can do to them

50:50

what they've done for more than

50:52

a century to their foes. And

50:56

one of the really interesting things to follow

50:58

during the Viking era are

51:01

these overseas settlements

51:03

by these Scandinavian pirates,

51:06

conquerors, colonists, settlers, whatever

51:08

you want to call them, because

51:11

they become part of

51:13

the societies that they're embedded

51:16

in over time. They become absorbed. I

51:18

think we compared the Viking

51:21

age in part one to

51:23

a hand grenade detonating in the

51:25

Scandinavian homeland and

51:28

spreading burning shrapnel in all directions.

51:31

It's part of why this story is so hard to follow.

51:33

You're following all those pieces of shrapnel

51:36

as they embed themselves in

51:38

the surrounding societies. But

51:40

if shrapnel doesn't kill you, eventually

51:43

the wound closes up and skin

51:45

forms around it. And

51:47

while the metal may impact your life and

51:50

cause a lingering amount

51:52

of influence forever, it

51:55

just becomes one piece of a larger

51:57

whole. stories

52:01

about Rollo, for example,

52:03

having dreams of

52:05

creating a society that

52:08

is the equivalent of a whole flock of

52:10

birds that shows up in one place

52:12

of all different breeds and types,

52:15

but all bearing the same blood-red

52:19

left wing and creating

52:21

what one historian refers to as a mongrel

52:24

society out of these many different parts,

52:27

sort of foreshadowing the

52:30

fusion to come. It reminds

52:32

me of the American experience where

52:34

the United States often referred to itself as the great

52:36

melting pot or head. Latin

52:38

phrase is associated with it like E Pluribus

52:41

Unum, E Pluribus Unum, which

52:44

means out of many one, and

52:47

that

52:48

is not a bad phrase to describe the

52:51

Normans and of course Norman just means Northman

52:54

and Normandy is the land of the Northman, but

52:56

these men came from all over and

52:58

quickly found themselves a part of the society

53:01

around them, maintaining perhaps

53:03

though something in

53:05

their blood or their DNA

53:08

or their cultural makeup that

53:10

harkened back to the ferociousness

53:12

and the fierceness of their Viking roots because

53:15

you can hear chroniclers and even historians

53:18

up until the mid 20th century and maybe even

53:20

today talking about that weird

53:22

sort of extra ferocity that

53:24

the Normans had even when they

53:27

were Christian and French and

53:29

you can see how quickly they're absorbed by the

53:31

local population Rallo who's the first

53:34

to settle there, right? This Viking

53:37

who is almost the

53:40

quintessential example of the type

53:42

will marry a local woman in the

53:45

Danish way we're told and

53:47

have a son who's already

53:49

only half Viking and who speaks French

53:52

and who's Christian. He will

53:54

have the respectively French

53:56

name of William

53:59

attached to him. and get

54:01

a surname or a nickname.

54:04

Afterwards he'll be known as William Longsword.

54:08

He will have a rebellion, Rollo's

54:10

son launched against him by a bunch

54:13

of his own Scandinavian Viking peoples

54:15

who consider him already too Francified.

54:19

And then he's gonna, in the Danish

54:21

way, which means sort of like a concubine

54:24

or a hookup, or what would they say

54:26

today, a baby mama, he will hook

54:28

up with another local woman, which

54:30

means that his kid, who will be named

54:33

Richard, is only one-quarter Viking.

54:35

So in the space of two generations

54:38

you can already see the burning

54:40

piece of shrapnel being absorbed

54:43

by the much larger West Frankish

54:45

body. But

54:48

as we've been saying all along,

54:51

what happens to Rollo and his

54:53

pirate Vikings in

54:55

what will be Normandy is just

54:58

a continuation of a process that's

55:00

been going on since long before the

55:02

Roman Empire fell, centuries beforehand.

55:05

It's the taming of these Germanic language

55:08

pagan peoples and earlier

55:11

versions of them from Goths to

55:14

Lombards to Vandals to Burgundians

55:16

to Franks, yes even these Frankish

55:19

people, they've already gone through this

55:21

process. They're being,

55:23

well 150 years ago somebody

55:26

would have seen a very superiority kind

55:28

of way of looking at things, so they're being civilized.

55:30

These savages are being turned into reputable

55:33

members of the Christian community, answerable

55:38

to God and the surrounding

55:40

other nobles. But if you're

55:43

an average Viking farmer

55:45

who goes on these raids as

55:48

your ancestors might have, doing a little piracy

55:50

work to better yourself, go home, marry

55:52

the girl next door and start a farm with

55:55

you know your winnings from your pirate affairs,

55:58

you might look at something like this. is being

56:00

sold out, right?

56:03

The big guys like Rolo and his

56:05

Jarls, and Jarl could mean Earl

56:07

or Lord or anything like that. Those

56:09

guys are the ones who benefit greatly

56:12

from these sorts of deals. It's

56:14

the average Viking who once upon a

56:16

time used to be considered sort of an equal

56:19

who loses. If you

56:21

want to make the Hollywood movie about the

56:23

Vikings and you want them to be these

56:25

barbarian type pirate movie

56:28

tropes and you want them to be a bunch of warriors

56:31

involved in an equal brotherhood that

56:33

when somebody says, Who is your leader? you say

56:36

we have none, right? That's a famous line

56:38

from the old Viking that we have no leader. We're all

56:40

equal here and you want to set your movie

56:42

in the 700s or

56:44

the 800s because in the 900s

56:47

ADCE the Viking world

56:50

begins to become more like

56:53

the non Viking Christian world and

56:55

the hierarchies that are

56:57

taking over in places that will

56:59

become France and Germany and

57:01

places like that arrives

57:03

in Scandinavia

57:06

and you can begin to see the

57:09

consolidation of these independent

57:12

small time rulers, these so-called

57:14

petty kings by

57:16

the great kings and

57:19

it's a bit like watching corporate

57:22

giants swallowing up

57:24

small-time businesses and mom

57:26

and pop operations until

57:29

they create the geopolitical

57:31

equivalent of a monopoly

57:33

and in keeping

57:35

with history's love

57:38

of consolidation and consolidators

57:41

the men who do this are often

57:43

lauded as the founding

57:46

fathers of the modern-day nations

57:48

of Scandinavia, right? Their version of

57:50

a George Washington type figure. It's

57:53

worth pointing out that the people

57:56

who do this in the

57:58

places like modern-day Sweden or

58:00

modern day Denmark or modern day Norway

58:03

are figures that you can't 100% confirm or

58:08

even real. Welcome to

58:10

the early middle ages. Take

58:13

for example the guy who famously does

58:16

this in what will become the

58:18

country of Norway. His

58:21

name is Harold Finehair, also

58:23

known as Harold Fairhair, also

58:26

known as Harold Hairfair. Neil

58:29

Price, the historian of

58:32

Viking times, says that his

58:34

nickname was Lufa, which means

58:36

Mophead. And Price points

58:39

out that these guys often had pirate last

58:41

names and nicknames, compare it

58:43

to something like Blackbeard

58:45

from the 16th or 17th century. And

58:48

Mophead is a famous figure

58:51

in one of the sagas written by one of the

58:53

most famous saga writers of all time,

58:56

an Icelandic writer named Snorri Sturluson.

58:58

And in his work known

59:01

as the Heimskringla or the Lives of the

59:03

Norse Kings, he writes about

59:05

Mophead and in very storybook-like

59:08

fashion traces his desire

59:11

to conquer all of Norway and

59:13

be the king that unifies the entire

59:16

place to a woman that

59:18

he wants. And he goes

59:20

to her and basically, you know, proposes that

59:22

he become her man. And she says something

59:25

like, why would a petty king like you

59:27

appeal to me? I mean, she says when we have

59:29

kings who are unifying Sweden and

59:31

Kings who are unifying Denmark, why

59:33

don't you go unify Norway and then come

59:35

back to me when you've made something of yourself. He

59:39

in the saga says something like, oh, yeah, thanks

59:41

for reminding me. I was always going to do that. And then he bows

59:43

to not cut his hair until he does.

59:45

And then he goes around like

59:47

a mafia don, making

59:49

the sort of offers that the other petty kings

59:52

can't refuse, because if they

59:54

do, he kills them and

59:56

all of their top men with

59:59

them. If they instead

1:00:01

join him, as we said with Rallo, all

1:00:03

his top men can become his men,

1:00:06

Jarls, and they can be bigger than the petty

1:00:08

kings of old, but if they resist, he's

1:00:10

going to kill them. And this

1:00:12

creates a Newtonian equal

1:00:14

and opposite reaction that

1:00:17

precipitates one of the things that

1:00:20

the Viking era is most known for,

1:00:22

right? The pushing out and exploring

1:00:24

farther and farther away lands, in

1:00:27

part because these people need to get away

1:00:29

from Harold Finehair, who's going to kill

1:00:32

them if he catches them. It's

1:00:34

a little bit more complicated than that, but

1:00:37

let's let Snorri Sturluson in

1:00:39

his work written, farther away

1:00:41

from the time that he's chronicling than

1:00:44

the American Revolution is to our

1:00:46

time, let's have him discuss

1:00:48

a little bit of the career of Harold Finehair

1:00:51

to show us what we're dealing with here.

1:00:54

I'm using the Erling Monson translation,

1:00:57

by the way, and it

1:01:00

needs to be pointed out that there are

1:01:02

reasons that people would resist what

1:01:04

Finehair is trying to do. They

1:01:06

often were people who were farmers

1:01:09

on ancestral land that had been handed

1:01:11

down from father to son, from time immemorial,

1:01:14

and all of a sudden this great king comes in and says, all this

1:01:16

land is mine, and you can stay on it if you

1:01:18

pay taxes. And a lot of people said to

1:01:20

help with you, I'm going elsewhere. And

1:01:23

that's described by Sturluson when he says, quote,

1:01:26

amid all the unrest, when Harold

1:01:28

was seeking to subdue all the

1:01:30

land of Norway, the pharaohs,

1:01:33

which are islands and Iceland lands

1:01:36

out beyond the sea were found

1:01:38

and settled. At that time also,

1:01:40

there was a great faring to Shetland

1:01:43

and many great men fled as outlaws

1:01:45

from Norway, and they went on Viking

1:01:48

raids to the west. In the winter

1:01:50

they were in the Orkneys and the Hebrides, but

1:01:52

in the summer they harried in Norway

1:01:55

and did great

1:01:56

scathe there in the land, end

1:01:58

quote. What

1:02:00

Sturluson means by that is

1:02:02

that these people didn't just run

1:02:05

away from Harold Finehair and everybody

1:02:07

let bygones be bygones. They

1:02:09

came back and treated Norway,

1:02:12

or what will become Norway, the same

1:02:14

way that Viking raiders had treated the

1:02:16

rest of Europe. They raided

1:02:19

and robbed and took slaves

1:02:22

from Harold Finehair's growing

1:02:24

kingdom. Sturluson recalls

1:02:26

something we said earlier in this story that before

1:02:29

the Viking Age supposedly

1:02:32

begins it was probably already

1:02:34

going on in the deep dark Scandinavian

1:02:38

mists before Europe ever knew about

1:02:40

them and it continued probably long

1:02:42

after the Viking Age officially

1:02:45

ends. The Vikings

1:02:47

raided Scandinavia too and

1:02:50

like all the kings of Europe whose

1:02:52

main job is protecting their subjects, Harold

1:02:55

Finehair's main job was protecting his

1:02:57

and so when Vikings who had fled Norway

1:03:00

came back and raided Norway, Harold

1:03:02

Finehair goes after them. Sturluson

1:03:06

continues, quote, King

1:03:09

Harold learned that the Vikings

1:03:11

who in the winter were in the Westlands, which means

1:03:13

Britain and Ireland, were harrying in

1:03:15

the Midlands, which means Norway. He

1:03:18

went out to war each summer and

1:03:20

ransacked the islands and the outlying

1:03:23

rocks, but when his army came near

1:03:25

the Vikings they all fled, most

1:03:27

of them out to sea, and when the king

1:03:30

was weary of this it happened

1:03:32

one summer that he sailed West with

1:03:34

his army across the sea. First

1:03:36

he came to Shetland and there slew

1:03:39

all the Vikings who had not fled thence. Next

1:03:42

he sailed south to the Orkneys and

1:03:45

cleansed them all of Vikings. Thereafter

1:03:48

he went right to the Hebrides and harried

1:03:50

there. He slew many Vikings

1:03:53

who before had warriors under them and

1:03:55

he held there many battles and

1:03:57

most often had the victory.

1:03:59

end quote.

1:04:02

So Harold Lufa, mop

1:04:04

head, hair fair, fine hair adopted

1:04:07

the same anti piracy strategy common

1:04:10

in the ancient world. When

1:04:13

it becomes too much, you go find

1:04:15

the pirate layers, launch

1:04:17

the equivalent of Marines from

1:04:20

your boats and wipe out

1:04:22

all the pirates where they live. Now, if

1:04:26

you're trying to clear pirates

1:04:28

out though, the problem

1:04:31

is, is how do you keep the areas

1:04:33

from being reestablished as pirate

1:04:35

bases later? If

1:04:37

you look at the history of the Mediterranean, for example,

1:04:40

and piracy in that area, you

1:04:42

can have successive

1:04:44

empires and kingdoms clear

1:04:46

out pirate layers only to have

1:04:50

those places get reinvested later,

1:04:52

usually because they're perfect. I mean, they're just, it's

1:04:55

easy to hide. They're these certain

1:04:57

islands that become known for piracy or right

1:04:59

along important shipping routes. They

1:05:01

just lend themselves to re infestation.

1:05:04

So according to the sagas, Harold will

1:05:07

put some of his own people in charge of these

1:05:09

islands like the Hebrides and the Orkneys and whatnot.

1:05:12

And their job is to sort of, you know, create

1:05:14

a stable business climate and settle

1:05:16

people there and make it one of those areas where

1:05:19

there's just too many eyes and too much law and order

1:05:21

and too many authorities for it to be a good

1:05:23

place for pirates anymore.

1:05:26

I don't know if that's true and the sagas are

1:05:28

not necessarily all that trustworthy

1:05:30

on this sort of stuff. There

1:05:33

is another aspect though of Harold's

1:05:35

rule that more modern histories are taking

1:05:37

a much more jaundiced view of them,

1:05:40

my earlier ones and that the sagas

1:05:42

take, which is that Harold's

1:05:44

tyranny and people fleeing

1:05:46

from it are the reason for many

1:05:49

of the great Viking discoveries, you

1:05:51

know, the islands overseas,

1:05:53

the Iceland's, the Greenland's, the East coast of the

1:05:55

Americas, and, you know, places like the

1:05:58

Orkneys and the Hebrides. And

1:06:00

the reason that modern historians are

1:06:02

discounting that as a major reason

1:06:05

is because the dating doesn't line up. He

1:06:07

couldn't have been...his tyranny couldn't have been the reason that the

1:06:09

Hebrides and the Orkneys and those places are settled

1:06:12

because they're settled long before Harold's time.

1:06:15

Even Iceland is settled before Harold is

1:06:18

putting immense pressure on other Norwegians.

1:06:22

And Greenland and the Americas aren't settled

1:06:24

until long afterwards, so the dating doesn't line

1:06:26

up. John Heywood points

1:06:29

this out in Northman. That couldn't have been

1:06:31

the reason, but what he does say is

1:06:33

it could be a reason for further settlement,

1:06:37

new waves of people leaving Norway

1:06:40

to escape the new restrictions

1:06:42

that a guy like Harold is putting into place

1:06:45

through consolidation. If you don't like it, get

1:06:47

out and they do. And where do you go? Well,

1:06:49

American draftees fleeing

1:06:51

the draft during the Vietnam War went over the border

1:06:54

to Canada. If you're someone

1:06:57

located in modern-day Norway, maybe

1:06:59

you go to the Hebrides or the Orkneys, or

1:07:01

if those are becoming too established

1:07:04

and controlled by Harold's men, maybe you

1:07:06

go farther.

1:07:07

And farther in Harold Finehair's lifetime

1:07:10

would have been a place like Iceland.

1:07:12

And then after his lifetime

1:07:15

would have been a place like Greenland. When

1:07:17

you look at how those places were probably

1:07:20

discovered, that's an interesting story

1:07:22

in and of itself. And something

1:07:25

that is undetermined as of yet,

1:07:27

but more and more the history suggests that some of

1:07:29

these places were found before

1:07:31

the Vikings even found them. Take Iceland,

1:07:33

for example. Iceland

1:07:35

may have had Irish monks

1:07:39

find the place first. Now, we

1:07:42

need to take a different sort of approach with a place

1:07:44

like Iceland than with most of the

1:07:46

places the Vikings settled in Europe. As we talked

1:07:48

about the piece of shrapnel,

1:07:51

the Vikings embedding themselves

1:07:53

in these larger societies and eventually being

1:07:55

absorbed, it's a little different when

1:07:57

the Vikings discover places that

1:08:00

don't have preexisting large

1:08:02

societies to begin

1:08:04

with. Then the shrapnel acts more like

1:08:06

a seed and grows into a real sort

1:08:08

of Viking settlement

1:08:12

and Iceland falls into that category because

1:08:15

Irish monks would have been

1:08:18

celibate anyway. They wouldn't have gone to a

1:08:20

place like Iceland to try to start families

1:08:22

and settle down and be fruitful

1:08:24

and multiply. And there's no

1:08:27

evidence that when the Vikings actually got

1:08:29

there, the Irish monks were still

1:08:31

there. Although they supposedly found some leftover

1:08:34

stuff. The bottom

1:08:36

line though is it's like finding free

1:08:38

land with nobody there occupying

1:08:40

it. The various histories

1:08:43

that I've read suggest what

1:08:45

would probably be considered a rather obvious

1:08:48

way that these places get discovered

1:08:51

initially. And that's not because

1:08:53

you seek out places cause no one knows

1:08:55

these places are here. They

1:08:57

get found accidentally when the

1:09:00

Scandinavian ships get blown off course. I

1:09:04

mean, if you're a sailing ship and all of

1:09:06

a sudden you get caught in a place like the

1:09:09

North Atlantic or the Atlantic

1:09:11

above what's now Scotland and those islands

1:09:15

and the wind starts taking you where it's going

1:09:17

to take you, you're kind of along for the ride, aren't

1:09:19

you? And

1:09:21

this is the part of the story that I find personally

1:09:24

terrifying. It is also the

1:09:27

part of the story where we've

1:09:29

been making connections between the Vikings

1:09:32

and their contemporaries and the Vikings

1:09:34

and their predecessors, right? The Germanic

1:09:36

language, pagan peoples, like

1:09:39

the Saxons and all these people who came before the

1:09:41

Vikings and the people in Western

1:09:43

and central Europe during their time period. And you're trying

1:09:45

to show the context that shows continuity

1:09:48

and how the Vikings don't really stand out so

1:09:51

much from all these other peoples

1:09:53

in most respects. The area

1:09:55

where they really do stand out and where they

1:09:58

break new ground completely. is

1:10:00

the seafaring part and that's the part that

1:10:02

blows my mind and has fascinated

1:10:04

people

1:10:06

well,

1:10:07

for a very long time. The Vikings became

1:10:09

very big in the 19th century but people

1:10:11

knew about these seafaring things long before

1:10:13

then. The people in Iceland,

1:10:15

for example, who were fascinated

1:10:17

because they were an immigrant people

1:10:20

too, like the United States and like

1:10:22

Australia and a lot of other places now, you

1:10:24

become fascinated with your roots and it was people

1:10:26

like Snorri Sturluson and all those

1:10:28

folk who were writing about how their

1:10:31

island originally got populated from the home

1:10:33

country and so everyone has been fascinated

1:10:35

with what the Vikings were doing

1:10:38

with ships because what they were

1:10:40

doing with ships was relatively unprecedented.

1:10:43

And I say relatively because there were other

1:10:45

peoples but they're some of the

1:10:47

most famous seafaring peoples in history. People

1:10:49

like the Polynesians and what maybe

1:10:52

we could call the Proto-Polynesians who

1:10:54

were doing similar things in the Pacific,

1:10:57

mostly south of the equator. And

1:10:59

the big difference between the Polynesians

1:11:02

and the Vikings and all the other seafaring peoples

1:11:04

before them was the willingness

1:11:07

to go out into the open sea.

1:11:11

Because seafaring pretty

1:11:13

much from the beginning of time until

1:11:15

about the Vikings and the Proto-Polynesians

1:11:18

was all about staying within sight

1:11:20

of land, hugging

1:11:22

the coast or going point to point

1:11:25

like a connect the dots game from this

1:11:27

island to that island to this island, never

1:11:29

getting too far away from land. Even when

1:11:31

you see, for example, the

1:11:34

transfer of shipping

1:11:36

or some of even the great naval battles in

1:11:38

the Mediterranean, you can always see

1:11:41

that it's a point to point to point navigation system. They're

1:11:44

never getting far away from land.

1:11:46

There's always an island here or there that

1:11:48

they're nearby. Once

1:11:51

you go, the old line was beyond

1:11:53

the Pillars of Hercules or

1:11:55

Heracles, the Gibraltar area

1:11:58

out into the Atlantic. Thank you for watching. you were going

1:12:00

off into the dragon territory

1:12:02

on the edge of the map where people go and never

1:12:05

come back. That's

1:12:07

where you lose ships. But

1:12:10

it's funny what you can discover while

1:12:12

still hugging the coast, the great Phoenicians

1:12:14

who was the greatest seafarers of

1:12:16

the ancient Mediterranean. They were able

1:12:18

to get allegedly all the way

1:12:20

up to the British Isles and, and the Scandinavian

1:12:23

areas and everything simply following the coastline. But

1:12:26

what the Vikings do is,

1:12:29

as far as I can tell, except for the Polynesian

1:12:32

types unprecedented in this era and

1:12:34

before, which is they will venture

1:12:36

out into the open sea.

1:12:39

Now, after pointing out that

1:12:42

both the Polynesians and the Malays in the

1:12:44

Indian Ocean had gone

1:12:47

farther distances in this era

1:12:49

or earlier eras than the Vikings, historian

1:12:52

John Haywood in Northman mentions that

1:12:55

both those peoples at least had

1:12:58

warmer weather and more predictable seas

1:13:01

working in their favor. Whereas these Scandinavians

1:13:04

are operating in close to arctic

1:13:07

conditions sometimes.

1:13:09

I mean, go look at a map, look at where the latitude

1:13:12

of a place like Iceland is. There

1:13:14

are no major cities above something

1:13:17

like Reykjavik that I can see.

1:13:20

It's sub-arctic maybe you would say.

1:13:23

And Haywood says that like

1:13:26

earlier peoples, the Viking Scandinavian

1:13:29

explorers and seafarers preferred

1:13:31

to stay within sight of land,

1:13:34

go point to point, you know, so that they

1:13:36

were going from island to island and stayed as close

1:13:39

as they could to areas, you know,

1:13:41

where they felt safe to pull their ships

1:13:44

into coves and harbors

1:13:46

and places where at nighttime

1:13:48

they didn't have to be out in the water, but

1:13:51

often they were out in the water.

1:13:54

And when you realize that these are open

1:13:57

boats in sometimes arctic,

1:14:00

conditions, it boggles the mind. You can go

1:14:02

online, by the way, and see videos of modern

1:14:04

recreations of Viking longships and

1:14:06

people traveling on them, and

1:14:09

you just can't imagine doing it for

1:14:11

days at a time, but that's

1:14:13

what had to be done. And

1:14:16

these Viking warships that are often used

1:14:18

in the recreations are usually

1:14:20

not the kind of ships that Viking settlers

1:14:23

traveled on. They traveled on tubbier

1:14:26

merchant men called Nars

1:14:28

or Nores, and Heywood

1:14:30

describes these, and he says,

1:14:33

quote, most of the

1:14:35

leading settlers or he uses

1:14:37

the Scandinavian word that means land

1:14:39

takers because that was the phrase used or

1:14:42

land takers arrived in their own ships.

1:14:45

These were not long ships, but sturdy merchant

1:14:48

ships called Nars with shorter,

1:14:50

broader, and deeper hulls than long ships.

1:14:53

Nars relied on sails alone, carrying

1:14:56

only a couple of pairs of oars for maneuvering

1:14:58

in harbor, end quote. He then

1:15:00

points out at the time of the settlements, the

1:15:02

Nars probably had a cargo capacity of 25

1:15:05

to 30 tons. This would go up as

1:15:07

the Viking Age went on to probably

1:15:09

more like 50 tons. He

1:15:12

says modern replicas of these merchant

1:15:15

vessels have sailed around the entire

1:15:17

world, but the one that sailed around

1:15:19

the entire world sank up the Spanish coast

1:15:21

in 1992. So, you know, just

1:15:24

like modern-day fishing

1:15:26

fleets, and I believe that fishing is

1:15:28

still considered per capita the

1:15:30

most or one of the most dangerous professions

1:15:34

you can have, and that's with satellites,

1:15:37

modern ships, coast guards,

1:15:39

and all those kinds of things. Imagine what it's like

1:15:42

with a wooden boat

1:15:44

with open decks and

1:15:47

people navigating, well, with

1:15:50

none of those tools. And

1:15:52

Heywood writes, quote, the

1:15:55

voyage to Iceland could take two to

1:15:57

three weeks, often with stopovers,

1:16:00

in Orkney, Shetland, and the Faroe Islands.

1:16:03

The voyage cannot have been a comfortable experience.

1:16:06

Nars were basically just large open boats,

1:16:08

without cabins to give crew and passengers

1:16:11

shelter in bad weather. Tents

1:16:13

were stretched over ships' decks to provide

1:16:15

shelter in harbor, but it is unlikely

1:16:18

that this could be done at sea because the tent

1:16:20

would catch the wind and drive the ship

1:16:22

off course. People probably

1:16:24

had to huddle under sealskin or

1:16:27

greased leather coats in the hold, along

1:16:29

with the livestock, to keep warm.

1:16:32

Nor was there any possibility, he writes, of

1:16:34

enjoying any hot food on the high seas.

1:16:37

Shipwreck was a real possibility in

1:16:40

one bad year of the 35 ships

1:16:42

sailing to Iceland. All but eight

1:16:45

were wrecked." I've

1:16:49

spent my entire life, except for when I was

1:16:51

in college, within a 35-minute drive of

1:16:53

the Pacific Ocean. I grew up

1:16:56

body surfing at an age that was almost

1:16:59

child-abusive, to have left me out

1:17:01

in the waters at that age. I'm very brave

1:17:04

on the coast, but you get me out into

1:17:06

the open water, and I

1:17:09

get just

1:17:11

terrified,

1:17:12

much more cowardly. I

1:17:15

remember a cousin of mine, an idiot cousin

1:17:17

of mine, tipping us over in a catamaran

1:17:19

three times in a day, until

1:17:21

the coast guard said, that's enough of that, you get to

1:17:23

go in, with inside of land,

1:17:26

and feeling absolutely helpless. I

1:17:29

can't imagine what it would be like in subarctic conditions,

1:17:31

in the middle of nowhere, with no

1:17:34

help anywhere. I

1:17:37

was looking for a count that could give us some

1:17:39

semblance of what it was like for these Vikings,

1:17:41

but they don't exist during this period. The

1:17:44

best ones that I found are actually in

1:17:47

a book called The Perfect Storm. You

1:17:49

might have seen the movie based on the book, but

1:17:51

the book is a very different animal. It combines

1:17:54

the story that the movie focused

1:17:56

on with historical accounts, first-hand

1:17:59

eyewitnesses. rememberances, the

1:18:01

science of the ocean and waves

1:18:03

and shipping and all that. It's absolutely fascinating.

1:18:06

You can get your hands on it. It's by Sebastian

1:18:08

Younger. It's wonderful. And he has some accounts that

1:18:10

give us a sense of what it might be like in

1:18:13

the open sea and how absolutely

1:18:15

terrifying it can be. So

1:18:19

for example, one of the scientific parts

1:18:21

of the book talks about the difference

1:18:23

between waves that are not

1:18:26

crashing versus waves that do crash

1:18:28

in the open ocean. And Younger

1:18:30

writes, quote, a general

1:18:33

rule of fluid dynamics holds that

1:18:35

an object in the water tends to do whatever

1:18:38

the water it replaces would have done.

1:18:41

In the case of a boat in a breaking wave,

1:18:43

the boat will effectively become part of

1:18:45

the curl. It will either be flipped

1:18:48

end over end or shoved backwards

1:18:50

and broken on instantaneous

1:18:53

pressures of up to six tons per square

1:18:55

foot have been measured in breaking waves.

1:18:58

Breaking waves, he writes, have lifted

1:19:00

a 2,700 ton breakwater and mass and deposited it

1:19:03

inside the harbor at

1:19:07

Wick Scotland. They have blasted

1:19:09

open a steel door, 195 feet above sea level at, I

1:19:15

think it's Unst light or Yoon's light

1:19:17

in the Shetland islands.

1:19:19

They have heaved a half ton boulder 91

1:19:22

feet into the air at Tillamook Rock, Oregon.

1:19:25

End quote.

1:19:27

So that gives us a sense of the power

1:19:30

of the waves that these early mariners

1:19:32

are having to potentially encounter. And

1:19:36

then Younger talks about a phenomenon

1:19:39

that used to be considered sort of an old

1:19:42

wives tale or one of those tall

1:19:45

stories that a salty sea captain would, would

1:19:48

relate. But it turns out that they're true.

1:19:50

And buoys in the middle of the ocean

1:19:53

and people in oil rigs in the middle

1:19:55

of the sea have now conclusively

1:19:58

proven that the phenomenon known as rogue

1:20:00

waves are real. And younger

1:20:03

points out that the problem with eyewitness

1:20:05

accounts is that a lot of people, especially

1:20:07

in the pre-modern seafaring

1:20:09

era who encountered large rogue waves,

1:20:12

never survived to tell anybody

1:20:14

about them.

1:20:15

Speaking about the rogue waves,

1:20:18

he writes, quote

1:20:20

in the dry terminology of Naval architecture,

1:20:23

these are called non-negotiable

1:20:25

waves. Mariners call them

1:20:27

rogue waves or freak seas.

1:20:30

Typically they are very steep and have

1:20:32

an equally steep trough in front of them.

1:20:34

A so-called hole in the ocean.

1:20:37

As some witnesses have described it ships,

1:20:40

he writes, cannot get their bows up

1:20:42

fast enough. And the ensuing wave

1:20:44

breaks their back. Maritime

1:20:46

history is full of encounters with

1:20:49

such waves. When Sir Ernest

1:20:51

Shackleton was forced to cross the South

1:20:53

polar sea in a 22 foot open

1:20:55

life boat, he saw a wave so

1:20:57

big that he mistook its foaming crest

1:21:00

for a moonlit cloud. He only

1:21:02

had time to yell, hang on boys,

1:21:05

it's got us before the wave broke

1:21:07

over his boat. Miraculously,

1:21:09

they didn't sink. He continues in

1:21:12

February, 1883, the 320 foot

1:21:14

steamship Glamorgan was swept bow to stern by

1:21:17

an enormous wave that ripped

1:21:19

the wheelhouse right off the deck, taking

1:21:21

all the ship's officers with it. She later sank

1:21:23

in 1966. He writes the 44,000

1:21:26

ton Michelangelo and Italian steamship carrying 775

1:21:33

passengers encountered a single massive wave in an otherwise

1:21:35

unremarkable sea. Her

1:21:39

bow fell into the trough and the waves stove in

1:21:41

her bow flooding her wheelhouse

1:21:43

and killed a crewman

1:21:45

and two passengers. In 1976 he says the oil

1:21:47

tanker Creton star radioed. Now

1:21:53

the radio message was quote vessel was

1:21:55

struck by a huge wave that went over the deck

1:21:57

and the oil tank was struck by a huge wave. quote,

1:22:00

and he says was never heard from again.

1:22:03

The only sign of her fate, he wrote, was

1:22:05

a four-mile oil slick off Bombay.

1:22:08

End quote. He

1:22:11

then tells an amazing story of one of the

1:22:13

people who lived after

1:22:15

seeing and surviving one of these

1:22:17

waves hitting, and the waves are

1:22:20

very different sometimes. Sometimes they create,

1:22:22

they come together, several waves come together

1:22:24

and get larger than the sum of its

1:22:26

parts, so to speak, and that's a phenomenon known

1:22:29

as the Three Sisters sometimes when

1:22:31

they come in threes, but this 1966

1:22:35

encounter off South Africa was

1:22:37

a wave that stretched from horizon

1:22:40

to horizon.

1:22:43

End quote. Most

1:22:45

people don't survive encounters with such

1:22:48

waves, and so first-hand accounts are hard to

1:22:50

come by, but they do exist. An English

1:22:52

woman named Beryl Smeaton was

1:22:54

rounding Cape Horn with her husband in the

1:22:56

1960s. I guess I

1:22:59

said 60s, 1960s, when

1:23:01

she saw a shoaling wave behind her

1:23:03

that stretched away in a straight line

1:23:05

as far as she could see, now quoting

1:23:08

the survivor, quote, The whole horizon

1:23:10

was blotted out by a huge gray

1:23:12

wall, she writes in her journal. It

1:23:15

had no curling crest, just

1:23:17

a thin white line along the whole length,

1:23:20

and its face was unlike the sloping face

1:23:22

of a normal wave. This was a wall

1:23:25

of water with a completely vertical face,

1:23:27

down which ran white ripples

1:23:30

like a waterfall. End quote. Younger

1:23:32

than points out that the wave flipped

1:23:35

the 46-foot boat end over

1:23:37

end, snapping the

1:23:39

eyewitnesses harness and throwing

1:23:41

her overboard.

1:23:44

Now I know in this era where

1:23:46

we see people surfing almost

1:23:48

100-foot tall waves and

1:23:52

whatnot, that we are blase

1:23:54

to the power of the surf sometimes,

1:23:56

but even a 12-foot wave,

1:23:58

and I've been in 12-foot waves.

1:23:59

waves,

1:24:00

churning around after wiping out

1:24:03

body surfing on the coastline. And I can just

1:24:05

tell you the power of a mere 12

1:24:08

foot wave is absolutely shocking.

1:24:11

And I can't imagine what this woman's experience

1:24:13

was like after being, having her ship turned

1:24:16

over with a wave like that

1:24:18

and then finding herself cord

1:24:21

snapped

1:24:23

in the open ocean.

1:24:27

And then I recall that all those vessels

1:24:29

that we just talked about

1:24:31

had multiple decks.

1:24:33

So you could go below deck when things got hairy

1:24:35

up above. They had

1:24:38

modern communications equipment, modern

1:24:40

navigational tools. They knew their

1:24:43

relative geographic position on the

1:24:45

map perfectly and it

1:24:47

still freaks me out. Now

1:24:49

imagine having none of those things

1:24:52

and being a Viking era Scandinavian

1:24:55

in an open boat, no communications

1:24:57

tools at all, no modern

1:25:00

navigational equipment at all. And

1:25:03

you know, no below decks and

1:25:05

you're out in the open ocean. There's

1:25:09

a part of me that thinks those people are crazy,

1:25:12

but that might be an eye of the beholder sort of thing,

1:25:14

right? Try telling them that

1:25:17

we routinely go up in manmade

1:25:19

metal tubes that fly higher than

1:25:21

birds fly and take us across whole

1:25:24

oceans, continent to continent

1:25:26

and see if they don't think we're the crazy

1:25:29

ones. And I imagine

1:25:31

if you told people like that, that we

1:25:33

could do what we do with air travel,

1:25:35

they'd probably want to see what manner of

1:25:37

human being it was who could

1:25:40

do that. And I feel the same way about them.

1:25:44

And if you discount the

1:25:46

sagas, which as I said, I don't know what

1:25:48

Hollywood would do in portraying

1:25:50

Vikings if they didn't use the sagas,

1:25:53

because discounting the sagas

1:25:56

means you're left with very few

1:25:58

eyewitness accounts of.

1:25:59

who these people were.

1:26:01

And like all eyewitness accounts from

1:26:04

people who found themselves on

1:26:06

the receiving end of violence

1:26:09

or mistreatment or even

1:26:11

just very different cultural norms and

1:26:13

standards, hard to accept

1:26:16

the idea that the Viking-era Scandinavians

1:26:19

are getting a good shake. I mean, if you're a monk

1:26:21

writing about these people who

1:26:24

as part of their business strategy aren't

1:26:26

just pagans, but like to assault

1:26:29

holy sites and monasteries and kill

1:26:31

monks, well, is a monks

1:26:33

account of these people going to be particularly

1:26:36

even-handed? I doubt it.

1:26:40

We do have the rare

1:26:42

accounts, though, that show up from eyewitnesses

1:26:45

who are not Christian monks and

1:26:47

who run into people who may be Viking-era

1:26:50

Scandinavians. And the most famous happens

1:26:53

right around where we are in this story.

1:26:57

It is an account which,

1:27:00

like the sagas, a lot of people have

1:27:03

to hang a lot of assumptions

1:27:06

on because you have so little to work with. And

1:27:09

it's such a famous account and so rare that

1:27:11

it has been used by fictional authors

1:27:14

to sort of build stories off of Michael

1:27:16

Crichton, the author

1:27:18

of Eaters of the Dead, for example, who

1:27:20

used this account as the foundation

1:27:23

on which to build a fictional story. And a movie

1:27:25

was built on top of that book

1:27:28

called The 13th Warrior, so you may have seen

1:27:30

that. But neither one of those

1:27:32

tales gets told, if not for the

1:27:35

original account, the eyewitness account

1:27:38

of a Muslim traveler named Ibn Fadlan.

1:27:41

And he traveled two regions

1:27:44

in what are now Russia

1:27:47

in the year 921 and 922 A.D.C.E.

1:27:49

And

1:27:54

along the way ran

1:27:56

into a people who were trading

1:27:59

on the river. back then who very

1:28:01

well may have been Viking-era Scandinavians.

1:28:04

Let's put some

1:28:05

disclaimers in here though, shall we?

1:28:08

For accuracy's sake?

1:28:10

Disclaimer number one, these

1:28:13

may not have been Viking-era

1:28:15

Scandinavians.

1:28:17

These may have been people who

1:28:19

were Slavic, for example, or

1:28:22

it may have been what

1:28:24

we would call today an international

1:28:26

crew of people, a mixed crew of people

1:28:29

that included some Scandinavians mixed with some

1:28:31

Slavs mixed with some Baltes, you just

1:28:33

don't know. Disclaimer

1:28:35

number two, even if these were

1:28:37

Scandinavians, they may

1:28:39

not be representative of the Scandinavians

1:28:42

back in Scandinavia or Vikings

1:28:44

in other places, even though it's very

1:28:47

possible that these same people that Ibn Fadlan

1:28:49

talks about were migrating back

1:28:51

and forth to Scandinavia and maybe then going west

1:28:54

to Britain and maybe then to France, you

1:28:56

just don't know because how representative

1:28:58

of Scandinavian culture back in a place

1:29:00

like what will be modern-day Sweden,

1:29:03

modern-day Norway, modern-day Denmark are

1:29:05

these seafarers. It's

1:29:07

possible that you could look at them the way we would

1:29:10

look at sailors

1:29:12

today who spent their life at sea

1:29:14

and then come back home covered in tattoos,

1:29:17

these salty Popeye the Sailor

1:29:19

slash Long John Silver

1:29:22

characters from Treasure Island where

1:29:24

they are people from your culture

1:29:27

but they're not representative of most of

1:29:29

the people in your culture. For example, one of the things Fadlan

1:29:32

talks about in this eyewitness account is

1:29:34

how dirty these people were but

1:29:36

this clashes with other accounts that

1:29:38

suggest that Viking-era Scandinavians

1:29:41

in Scandinavia were meticulously clean

1:29:43

people with clean clothes and clean hair

1:29:45

and all. So these are the disclaimers

1:29:48

in one of these very very rare eyewitness

1:29:51

accounts of a people that very well

1:29:53

may be or include Viking-era

1:29:55

Scandinavians probably, if so, mostly

1:29:59

Swedes. Now here's the backstory

1:30:01

of Fadlan's account. He

1:30:04

sets out from Baghdad, I think it was,

1:30:06

where his boss is and he doesn't want to

1:30:08

lie to them. So these aren't like Marco

1:30:11

Polo type accounts where, you know, there could be all kinds

1:30:13

of exaggeration. This guy's trying to give

1:30:15

a good account of what he runs into and he's not

1:30:17

looking for Vikings. Remember, in

1:30:19

the part of the world where Fadlan's traveling, they

1:30:21

don't call him Vikings. They call him Varangians.

1:30:25

And this is the era where these Varangian

1:30:27

people are morphing,

1:30:30

perhaps again, another disclaimer into

1:30:32

that people we introduced in part one, the Rus.

1:30:35

Who these Rus are is another one of these

1:30:38

great non-understood

1:30:40

things and historians over the eras

1:30:42

have had different opinions. I think we introduced the concept

1:30:45

of the Normanist and the anti-Normanist

1:30:47

controversy in part one when we

1:30:49

talked about the Rus because in a place

1:30:51

like the old Soviet Union, you

1:30:54

didn't want to assume or

1:30:56

acknowledge that there was any Scandinavian

1:30:59

influx of DNA or cultural influence

1:31:02

in a predominantly Slavic

1:31:05

sort of historical account. But

1:31:07

on the Germanic side, it was just the opposite.

1:31:09

I mean, Hitler and his Aryan supremacists,

1:31:12

I think Hitler famously said something like, if not

1:31:14

for the infusion of the Scandinavian

1:31:17

blood into the Russian blood line,

1:31:19

they would still be like rabbits in

1:31:21

the forest, right? The only reason they're

1:31:23

advanced in any way, shape or form is due to the Aryan

1:31:26

blood. So, you know, those are the two extremes of

1:31:28

the pendulum there. DNA,

1:31:31

bio-archeology and the

1:31:35

assessment of artifacts that

1:31:37

are being found is helping to clarify this.

1:31:40

This would be a different show if we could have this conversation 20

1:31:43

years from now. Nonetheless, Fadlian

1:31:46

talks about these people that he sees

1:31:48

on his travels to what's now Southern Russia.

1:31:51

He's there to talk to some step

1:31:54

nomad, maybe semi-nomad

1:31:56

by this point, leader of a group called the

1:31:58

Bulgars, right? This is a- You know Bulgarian

1:32:01

comes from that so this guy is Islamic

1:32:04

But his Balgars are practicing a form of

1:32:06

Islam that might not exactly be kosher

1:32:09

if you'll pardon the mixed metaphors there And

1:32:11

so he asks for some instruction

1:32:13

on the faith, you know, come on up here Tell us what

1:32:16

we're doing wrong in practicing Islam and oh

1:32:18

by the way I'd like to make some deals with you like to do some trading

1:32:20

with you so if I'd long goes up there and It's

1:32:23

like a travel log if you will and as with

1:32:26

anything from that long ago. It's a miracle.

1:32:28

It's come down to You know be read

1:32:30

by us today that it survived but

1:32:33

amongst the many people he talks about are these people

1:32:35

he calls the Rus or the Rissaiah Now

1:32:37

I'm using the translation by Richard Frye

1:32:41

There are others but fadlan

1:32:43

talks about these people that he encounters

1:32:45

along the rivers who are trading

1:32:49

And in the east if these are

1:32:51

Varangians if these are you know The Viking people

1:32:53

from Scandinavia trading in what's now

1:32:55

southern Russia They

1:32:57

are you know, what do we see in the first part of the show

1:33:00

that the Vikings in the West are like 60% raiders

1:33:02

and 40% traders in the east it's

1:33:06

it's reverse like 60% trader 40% raider

1:33:08

in part because there's a lot of Powerful

1:33:11

entities in the east that make it a lot tougher

1:33:14

to just go go along sacking everything

1:33:16

and killing everyone They'll be pushed

1:33:18

back and these Balgars are a perfect example

1:33:20

of the kind of people that would push back

1:33:23

So fadlan's account talks about these people now

1:33:26

to show you how difficult it is. He talks

1:33:28

about them having tattoos Now we

1:33:30

mentioned in part one There's all kinds of things

1:33:32

that they found on the Viking skeletons that

1:33:35

have been uncovered for example the tooth grooves,

1:33:37

right? horizontal Cuttings

1:33:40

or carvings in the teeth of

1:33:42

some of these skeletons that may have been died

1:33:44

when they were alive You know, so you put a die

1:33:47

in there so you can see them even more pronounced

1:33:49

And this may have been the mark of certain

1:33:51

warrior bands, right? It shows that you're in this

1:33:53

particular group of people There

1:33:56

are the accounts of course of the

1:33:58

eye makeup. What did we call it? Part One, war mascara

1:34:02

that the Vikings are supposed to have used.

1:34:05

And it was one of those things that was thought to be

1:34:07

so cool by other people who saw it that

1:34:09

the Anglo-Saxons in Britain, right

1:34:11

on the opposite side of this great divide between

1:34:13

they and the Danes, they start wearing

1:34:16

it. Sounds like the girls liked it.

1:34:19

Reminds you a little bit of like how the Romans in

1:34:21

the Roman era started adopting Gallic

1:34:23

and German fashions like the tight pants,

1:34:26

because once again, seemed to be popular

1:34:28

with the opposite sex, right? They can look cool like a barbarian

1:34:30

too. Give me that leather jacket. Give me those tight pants.

1:34:32

A little bit of the eye makeup, the guy liner, the war

1:34:35

mascara, and you know,

1:34:37

maybe the hairstyle.

1:34:39

There's an account by, I think it was a monk

1:34:41

in, I think it's in Britain who was talking about

1:34:43

how scandalous it was to see Anglo-Saxon

1:34:46

youth, you know, adopting the fashions

1:34:48

of the barbarians and the heathen. Well,

1:34:51

Fadlan has these people that he encounters.

1:34:53

He says they're tattooed. Now once again,

1:34:55

we're brought into the situation where do you extrapolate

1:34:58

that and say, well, we have an eyewitness account of Vikings,

1:35:01

so they must all be tattooed or

1:35:03

is this like Popeye the sailor and

1:35:06

Long John Silver? And this isn't what Vikings

1:35:08

are like at home. This is what the ones who go to see

1:35:10

and you know, it's a brotherhood of guys and they

1:35:12

act a certain way. We're dirty. We're

1:35:15

scroungy. We're, we're a bunch of guys on the road.

1:35:17

We're like musicians on the road. It's different on

1:35:19

the road. You get home and you know, you're amongst your

1:35:21

own kind and you want to look clean and pretty

1:35:24

and reputable and maybe you look different. So

1:35:27

don't know how much you can extrapolate the

1:35:29

Fadlan stuff, but what he says is awesome

1:35:32

and more awesome because it's one

1:35:34

of the few accounts you have. This isn't a saga, right?

1:35:37

This is a guy who saw these people. And

1:35:39

this is what he writes from the Richard Fry translation

1:35:42

of Ibn Fadlan's journey to Russia.

1:35:46

Quote, I saw the Russia

1:35:48

or Russia when they came here,

1:35:50

they're on their trading voyages and

1:35:52

had encamped by the river. I tell

1:35:55

or a tell. That's the Volga, by the way.

1:35:58

I have never seen people. rights, with

1:36:00

a more developed bodily stature than

1:36:03

they. They are as tall as date

1:36:05

palms, blond and ruddy,

1:36:07

so that they do not need to wear a tunic

1:36:09

nor a cloak. Rather the men among

1:36:11

them wear a garment that only covers half

1:36:14

of his body, and leaves one of his

1:36:16

hands free. Each of them

1:36:18

has an axe, a sword, and a knife

1:36:20

with him, and all of these whom we

1:36:22

have mentioned never let themselves be separated

1:36:25

from their weapons. Their swords

1:36:27

are broad-bladed, provided

1:36:29

with rills, and of the Frankish

1:36:31

type. Each one of them has from the tip

1:36:33

of his nails to the neck, figures,

1:36:36

trees, and other things tattooed

1:36:38

in dark green."

1:36:41

So this jibes with what we know about the Vikings,

1:36:43

that they don't stray too far from their weapons.

1:36:46

It also jibes with the fact that they

1:36:49

like Frankish swords, but if you're in Europe

1:36:51

who doesn't, the great arms manufacturers

1:36:54

of the Frankish war warehouses

1:36:56

and factories produce the best European

1:36:59

weapons, so everybody wants them. It

1:37:01

does show how much the trading

1:37:03

though is completely interactive

1:37:06

and interspersed in Europe so that if

1:37:08

you can get your hands on a good Frankish sword, it's

1:37:10

like a Winchester rifle of that era, you

1:37:12

get it.

1:37:14

Now he also talks about, as I said, how

1:37:16

dirty these people are, and

1:37:18

as we've said, this doesn't necessarily

1:37:20

jibe with other things that are

1:37:23

asserted about life at home, but this may

1:37:26

be like a bunch of dudes on

1:37:28

the road, and we don't have to be so

1:37:30

clean. And when we get home, we'll smarten

1:37:33

up, clean up a little bit, get the nice

1:37:35

clothes out. But we've been on

1:37:39

safari here for a long time, and

1:37:41

your clothes get a little dirty, and we live

1:37:43

a little rough and ready and close

1:37:45

to the ground, and Fadlan writes, and remember,

1:37:47

he's from a very, in air quotes, civilized

1:37:50

place during this time period where there are lots of

1:37:52

manners, cleanliness, a lot of white collar

1:37:54

jobs going on, we would say, in his world,

1:37:57

and he writes, quote,

1:37:59

they are the

1:37:59

dirtiest creatures of God. They

1:38:02

have no shame in voiding their bowels and

1:38:04

bladder, nor do they wash themselves

1:38:06

when polluted by a mission of semen, nor

1:38:09

do they wash their hands after eating. They

1:38:11

are then like asses who have gone astray."

1:38:16

Now he starts to talk about what

1:38:18

they're selling. And they're selling

1:38:20

goods, but the number one goods that they're

1:38:23

trying to sell off to

1:38:25

other people are other people. The

1:38:28

Vikings were great slavers. These

1:38:31

people are too. They take

1:38:33

slaves according to the Muslim accounts,

1:38:36

often from the Slavic people. And

1:38:38

there are historians who say that the term

1:38:41

Slav is connected to the term slave.

1:38:43

But this is the

1:38:45

part that people sometimes minimize when

1:38:47

you talk about people like the Vikings.

1:38:50

They are a great slaving people, and

1:38:53

they're a great trading people. And the

1:38:55

number one thing probably

1:38:57

that they make the most money off of are slaves,

1:39:00

and a lot of their raids are connected to the

1:39:02

idea of getting more, shall

1:39:04

we say, raw materials for sale.

1:39:08

This is also where you get a chance to see

1:39:10

a reminder, shall

1:39:12

we say, of the absolute

1:39:15

horrificness of slavery, of human bondage,

1:39:18

because there are women for sale,

1:39:21

mostly from according to Fadlan's

1:39:24

account anyway, the people he run into are selling women.

1:39:27

And when they're selling women, they're also using women.

1:39:29

It's horrible. It's rape. It's

1:39:32

slavery. And he writes, quote,

1:39:34

they come from their own country, more

1:39:36

their boats on the strand of the idol,

1:39:39

which is a great river. It's the vulgar,

1:39:41

right? And build on its

1:39:43

banks large houses out

1:39:45

of wood in a house like this, 10 or 20

1:39:47

people, more or less live

1:39:50

together.

1:39:51

Each of them has a couch whereupon

1:39:53

he sits and with them are fair

1:39:55

maidens who are destined for sale

1:39:57

to the merchants

1:39:59

and they may have. course with their girl, while

1:40:01

their comrades look on. At

1:40:04

times a crowd of them may come together,

1:40:06

and one does this in the presence of the

1:40:08

others.

1:40:09

It also happens that a merchant who comes into

1:40:11

the house to buy a girl from one of them may

1:40:14

find him in the very act of having intercourse

1:40:16

with her, then he, the roos,

1:40:19

will not let her be until he has fulfilled

1:40:21

his intention."

1:40:25

One gets the vibe, again,

1:40:27

this is a non-historian vibe, so take

1:40:29

it for what it's worth, but one gets

1:40:32

a sort of a vibe here that this

1:40:34

is not how these guys are going to behave amongst

1:40:36

their own women folk back in Scandinavia.

1:40:39

This is a bunch of dudes far away from

1:40:42

women folk and manners and

1:40:44

oversight and, you know, wink, wink,

1:40:46

nod, nod, what happens in Vegas stays in

1:40:48

Vegas and the levels

1:40:51

of cleanliness and upkeep may not

1:40:53

meet the standards expected of them

1:40:55

back in their home territory,

1:40:57

and Fudlon writes, quote, As

1:41:01

a matter of duty, they wash daily

1:41:03

their faces and heads in a manner

1:41:05

so dirty and so unclean

1:41:08

as could possibly be imagined. Thus

1:41:10

it is carried out. A slave girl

1:41:13

brings each morning, early, a large

1:41:15

vessel with water, and gives the

1:41:17

vessel to her master, and he washes

1:41:20

his hands and face and the hair of

1:41:22

his head. He washes it and combs

1:41:24

it with a comb into the bucket, then

1:41:26

blows his nose and spits into

1:41:28

the bucket. He holds back nothing

1:41:30

impure,

1:41:30

but rather lets it go

1:41:33

into the water, end quote, so far no

1:41:35

problem, right?

1:41:36

Guys just being clean, washing,

1:41:38

you know, that whole thing, but the problem comes

1:41:40

with what Fudlon says next, quote,

1:41:44

After he has done what was necessary, the

1:41:46

girl takes the same vessel to the one

1:41:48

who is nearest, and he does just

1:41:51

as his neighbor had done. She carries

1:41:53

the vessel from one to another until

1:41:55

all in the house have had a turn at it, and

1:41:58

each of them has blown his nose spat

1:42:00

into and washed his face and hair

1:42:02

in the vessel." End quote. Remember

1:42:05

what's so unusual about this is this

1:42:07

isn't some story from some monk

1:42:09

that some monk may have heard or is lying about. This

1:42:12

is an eyewitness writing for his master.

1:42:15

His accuracy is probably

1:42:17

better than any other accurate account you're

1:42:19

going to get about the Vikings in this period.

1:42:22

Asterik here, if these are

1:42:24

Vikings. Then

1:42:28

it gets truly dark. Where

1:42:30

he talks about what happens when

1:42:32

one of their numbers, one of these chieftains

1:42:35

of this group dies.

1:42:38

He gets to witness this. He says he's curious

1:42:40

and wants to see what happens and what the burial practices

1:42:43

are like. By the way, one of these

1:42:45

Rusea people comes up to him

1:42:47

and tells him through an interpreter that people

1:42:50

like him are stupid. Where he comes from because

1:42:52

they bury their loved ones who allow them

1:42:54

to be eaten by worms and frogs and slimy

1:42:57

things. He says, we burn them. Then they

1:42:59

go straight to paradise. No must, no fuss.

1:43:02

But the ceremony itself is

1:43:04

a scene

1:43:06

of gang rapes,

1:43:09

drunkenness, killings.

1:43:13

The archaeology of Scandinavian

1:43:16

Viking era burial practices seem

1:43:18

to indicate that at least some

1:43:21

of the things Fadlan witnesses is in simpatico

1:43:26

with what has been found archaeologically

1:43:28

speaking and he writes quote

1:43:30

When a high chief dies his family

1:43:33

says to his slave girls and servants Which

1:43:36

one of you wishes to die with him then

1:43:39

one of them answers I

1:43:41

When he or she has said this

1:43:44

he is bound he can in no way

1:43:46

be allowed to withdraw his word If

1:43:49

he wishes it or she wishes it it

1:43:51

is not permitted for the most part

1:43:53

this self-sacrifice is made by

1:43:55

the maidens endquote

1:43:58

Then there's a whole ceremony involves a lot

1:44:00

of drinking, a lot of pronouncements

1:44:03

and all kinds of things. It also involves

1:44:05

a person, a female, known,

1:44:08

he says, as the angel of death.

1:44:11

Remember, he's an eyewitness to this.

1:44:13

This is why this account is so important. He's not telling

1:44:16

you something he's heard. This is something

1:44:18

he saw. How many

1:44:20

people ever wrote anything down like

1:44:22

this? And of course, you know, how many of those

1:44:25

accounts ever survived to come into our hands

1:44:27

today? So he

1:44:29

talks about this boat that

1:44:31

is laid out with all sorts of precious

1:44:34

material and whatnot and a couch

1:44:36

is put on it and the boat is dragged on the

1:44:38

shore and they build sort of a facade,

1:44:41

rounded and over it, and then talks

1:44:44

about the slave girl who drinks to insensibility,

1:44:46

makes a bunch of pronouncements. She's got a role to play

1:44:48

in this whole ceremony too. And then

1:44:51

he writes, quote, there

1:44:53

upon an old woman came whom

1:44:55

they call the angel of death and

1:44:57

spread the draperies mentioned over

1:44:59

the couch, meaning the couch on the boat. She

1:45:02

had held the oversight over

1:45:05

the sewing of the garments of the deceased

1:45:07

and their completion. This old woman

1:45:09

kills the girl. I saw

1:45:12

that she was an old giantess, fat

1:45:14

and grim to behold. End

1:45:16

quote.

1:45:18

He says that they then bring a bunch