The Brutal Origin Story Of The First Vikings

[Music] they came out of nowhere to plunder and murder from the shores of Scotland to the Caspian Sea modern archaeology and science reveal for the first time the real driving forces behind the Viking raids from the Russian Plains to the North Atlantic [Music] while Viking enthusiasts of today live the life of the Scandinavian Warriors and fight set peace battles at the festival of voline scientists and archaeologists from all over Europe are making groundbreaking discoveries Recent research shows the Vikings from A New Perspective and in the brutal social context of their time spotlighting their incredible ability

to plan and execute their expeditions for maximum profit and psychological effect at the time when the Vikings attacked there was starvation in England there were dragons in the sky when the Vikings came it was like a part of the punishment from God they'd been pushed into the top of a ditch and they'd been very seriously trauma matized at death the the bodies were very hacked about legs arms missing the vertebral second vertebral body body indicates um decapitation marks as you see there's a cink cut through uh cervical spine to here the story of the Vikings

takes us to SAR Island in Estonia here a team of archaeologists from talin excavated an amazing cache of Viking artifacts that turned the history of these Scandinavian pirates on its head Yuri pets excavated one of the most impressive Viking burial sites known to experts today the remains of more than 40 human skeletons in two boat Graves were Unearthed in 2011 during road construction [Music] we can say for sure that it was a battle grave and that there was a sort of big battle I mean 40 bodies in two ships that says it all the battle

had to be hard we can see vicious wounds on the skeletons some for example have hacked hands and broken skulls so it was hard and they had to bury those victims fast talin researcher Riley alme is studying bones of the sarima Warriors and how they died the skeletons all showed signs of violent deaths and multiple battle wounds uh the upper arm has cut into four pieces there are more than four cuts into the bone um the hand position or upper arm position could have been some like like that because some of The Strokes are in

the same direction in the same angle and then the position has changed when the team from Talon applied modern dating techniques to the skeletons they were shocked by what they [Music] found analysis of the items we found including the skeletons and the organic material shows they go back to prev viiking [Music] times incredibly the ships and the bodies date back to at least 100 years before the first recorded Viking raid yet the weapons the shape of the ship and artifacts buried with them prove that the men found in the two boat Graves came from Scandinavia

these 40 bodies show that Vikings were raiding at least at least a century earlier than Scholars previously believed we can be sure that these men were Scandinavian Sailors who somehow met their death at Sal as we shall see the Viking age was one of incredible brutality and the Ferocious battle that raged on the beach of ARA must have been major if 40 warriors were hacked to pieces and then respectfully buried by their comrades uh I think that during battle he fell down he was attacked from the from behind and um maybe he fall down uh

he was fighting probably because the cats are in the in his right upper arm but in my opinion this um upper arm the hand was somehow fixed because you cannot make the um Strokes like this that they are in the same angle more or less and um finally I found this um ganas um one of the bones in the foot I show you um which also means that he should have been lying or something because the heat is somewhere here and U of course the final has been this decapitation in my opinion archaeological evidence in

Russia confirms that Vikings raided but also traded along the Great Rivers of Eastern Europe at least as early as the mid 8th Century Adrien Salin is a researcher in early Russian history at St Petersburg University Russia no one knew what was in ancient Russia everyone knew that somewhere around the Caspian Sea they were minting silver coins and that they could be exported to the rest of Europe in unimaginable quantities and it was this area between the Baltic and the Caspian Seas along the vulgar river that was the first to be colonized by Scandinavians here at

Aria ladaga on the shores of the volov river tree ring dating of wooden objects such as this stick carved with letters of the Viking alphabet called runes shows that Scandinavian Traders and warriors appeared here long before any mention of Vikings in the written Chronicles with regards to sta we can see that Scandinavian artifacts dating Back to Before the Viking age have been found in the oldest of all the sites in the area of sta the ancient Chronicles known as sagas and runic inscriptions in Scandinavia have given a name to these men whose exploits went unrecorded

for centuries before they slashed their way into the history books they were the Vikings they were men and women who left the safety of their homes to explore and plunder distant lands from modern-day Poland Ukraine and Russia to the islands of the North Atlantic And as far as America the Vikings spread not only Terror but also a web of trade the mystery of where the Vikings came from and why they attacked has now been revealed Scandinavian Warriors had begun plundering coastlines of the Baltic Sea and Atlantic Ocean early in the 7th Century by the end

of the 8th Century they had occupied the northernmost of the British Isles plundered Scotland and dispossessed the indigenous population the PS whose monuments still stand on orne today well I'm sure initially people came here trading and that would have been the first conf contact and the first Contact would certainly have have been on that level and they would have been finding out what it was like in chetland as a result of of that however and you get objects appearing in the pictish um contexts showing that kind of Link the degree to which it did or

didn't become aggressive um we don't really know here at yalof on Shetland the way the Vikings reused pictish dwellings is clearly visible what happened to the locals remains a mystery sometime in the 8th Century Warriors from Norway came here and the pictish culture disappeared the term Viking really only applies to the very first settlers who came who were in that initial uh exploratory possibly raiding phase which maybe in chatland perhaps only lasted as much as a generation I don't think it's as black and white as either you were a Raider and a pirate or you

were a farmer and um had your own industry or soapstone industry or whatever it was that you did I'm sure that all these roles were mixed up together and it's not clearcut the Vikings probably used hitandrun tactics to raid Coastal and Riverside communities in Scotland and Ireland for decades before they attacked a monastery in northern England where they found more more gold than they could imagine but they did not come for plunder alone a Titanic struggle was underway pitting the Christian Empire of Charlamagne against the last pagans of Europe the holy island of lindes van

is cut off from land during high tides today tourists flock here for the seabirds monks first came here because it was isolated in the distance the northumbrian castle of Bamber was close enough for the holy men to exert religious influence and receive protection no one expected The Vicious attack of the 8th of June 793 chronicler alquin of York commented behold the Church of St kpet spattered with the blood of the priests of God despoiled of all its ornaments a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to Pagan peoples aloin of

York however was far away in aren the capital city of the greatest Empire of Europe ruled by Charlamagne champion of the Christians Shaman's drive northwards and the 30-year long forcible conversion of the Saxons to Christianity brought his Empire to the very edges of pagan Denmark inevitably Christian chroniclers were the sworn enemies of the Pagan Vikings but according to marit Via the lead archaeologist at the Royal Palace at Oral NES Norway the pagans may have been reacting to Christian atrocities at that time Charlamagne was conquering territory after territory in Europe and charlamagne's War well his culture

Minister was alquin he had been to lindis Fan Monastery for instance the first attack known to us was at lindes Fan Monastery so one theory is that the raid was a response to charlamagne's aggression we shall see that Viking raids became invasions when politics in scandin Ava and in the great kingdoms of Europe created opportunities for attack the raids were planned to strike when the enemy was weakest and the potential for plunder the greatest shamine died in 815 ad and 30 years later his grandsons began a civil war that set three Frankish armies against each

other the opportunity to attack and pillage Into the Heart of the Empire was too great to be missed the Great River s flows into the English Channel and leads all the way to Paris in 841 Danish Viking asgar sailed up it with 13 ships less than a thousand men and burned down the city of Ruan he went on up the river to the Magnificent monry of jier where he ransomed the monks the Vikings stayed for the wi and ravaged the countryside the next year too in 845 the City of Paris itself was looted by a

certain Ragnar the Viking raids continued for the next 30 Years the Vikings avoided facing the Franks in battle but more often they were paid either to leave or to fight each other or serve as mercenaries they were also given land in the northern Netherlands and in the Rin estery in exchange for their military services we can't ignore the shock and the violence but nor can we see the relations between the Scandinavians and the Franks and other peoples as only this there were also other types of relationship including trade relations as well as other relations such

as discussions negotiations exchanges when they found resistance in France the Vikings turned to England which was little more than a patchwork of weak kingdoms Bamber was the seat of one of the northumbrian Kings and North hria was just one of four Kingdoms in England at the time North hria stretched from the Scottish border to the Humber River just south of York it was divided into two subkingdoms constantly at war with each other while the middle of England was occupied by Mercier the kingdoms of East Anglia and wessix occupied the east and west of the country

divided and mutually hostile they were unable to put up resistance to what initially was little more than a viking nuisance the part-time Warriors of the English kingdoms were no match for the determined Viking [Music] predators in 65 the four leaders of the great Heathen Army Iva halan obba and Guam landed in East Anglia and began a 20-year reign of terror they captured York on All Saints Day when both rival Kings of North hria were celebrating the Christian festivity they practiced the blood eagle torture on one of the Kings after killing the other in battle and

marched on to conquer the rest of England York became a viking capital for a century but what the history books tell us isn't always backed up by archaeology says Peter Connelly the director of the excavations in the hungate quarter of the city we talk about the archology of York as being angl Scandinavian so you have the Anglo-Saxon aspect and that Scandinavian aspect and it's very difficult to tease those apart so it it all already looks like we're dealing with a a more Cosmopolitan um population than say the historical records would would lead us to believe

the yorvik center at Coppergate in York holds significant artifacts of Scandinavian origin such as Combs which were a typical male adornment but also this Saxon helmet was found in a well while these boards from a Saxon ship were found as wall in a viking Storehouse in the hungate area after terrorizing the rest of northern England Iva captured repon an important religious and political Center in meria this pond at the back of Repton school and below the churchyard is what is left of the tytin river dock at The Viking Fortress here in the churchard 250 skeletons

mostly male were found gathered around a central grave dated to 873 by a Saxon coin it was the year Iva died nearby at Heathwood hundreds of small tumuli suggest that this was the Viking military cemetery in the same year one of the other Viking leaders halan raided into Scotland but left some of his Warriors to build farms the Vikings were here to stay but despite what the Christian chroniclers wrote the impact on the tiny population of England was relatively imperceptible we're not talking a massive population hundreds of thousands um say for the the north of

England into Scotland but I'd be very surprised if anybody estimated um upwards of a million Alfred King of wessix the only Saxon Kingdom to survive the Scandinavian onslaught defeated a second invading Viking Army at Ashdown but the campaigns continued for nearly 20 years with the Vikings drawing on help from Ireland where iva's Sons had settled the great Heathen Army campaigned tirelessly and almost successfully until the last surviving leader gam was defeated by Alfred in 878 and signed a pact to be baptized a vast area of England that came to be known as Dan Law would

be ruled by Vikings in York the peace did not last however as Viking bands from France and Ireland also joined in the fry in the following years as we shall see events in Norway and Denmark continued to influence the patterns of raiding Alfred's military reforms left wesix better equipped to fight the Raiders he instituted the first standing army in England and a series of Fortress towns known as burs where the rural population could seek Refuge when under attack England's renewed administrative efficiency assured the Loyalty of the local population the many sort of glances across to

the to Anglo-Saxon England is because of its well advanced taxation system um and um there are ways of Levering um people um out of the land and and that obviously comes with the fact that um you get this trickle down effect from the the the central power um call it king um to the way that land is given out that benefaction um buys loyalty Scotland too continued to be subject to attacks by Viking bands in 871 Iva joined a viking Army from Ireland to capture Dumbarton Castle an isolated British settlement in the heart of pictish

Scotland the population was enslaved and sent to Ireland on the east coast of Scotland the Vikings attacked danata Castle too just over the border with North hria in the year 900 when the pictish King domal was killed although the great Heathen Army had disappeared the raids by other leaders especially from Scotland and Ireland continued creating new states such as the New Kingdom of Strath Clyde famous for its Stone carving [Music] School in Denmark and Norway the territorial expansion of new ruling dynasties pushed Nobles who refused to be subdued to seek their Fortune abroad the Richer

the plunder the more they invested in ships and men to mount ever larger attacks each Norwegian Valley had its own King until the ruler of this strategic Strait along Norway's Coastline used his financial power to subdue those Lords in 870 Harold Fair began building the first Kingdom of Norway from here at orales on camoy Island what is certain is that all of haral fair hair's Royal Estates were located in rogaland and hland and even though all other places were ruled on haral Fair hair's behalf he himself only had the full control in these two counties

what was happening in the Viking Heartland affected the extent of the Viking raids in the east and west [Music] the Viking Onslaught against England and the Frankish lands was driven by Politics as well as by lust for plunder opponents to Harold those who saw no profit in paying tribute to him and serving as soldiers in his army may have taken to raiding and exploring the North Atlantic instead the hundreds of fiords were perfect places to hide and plundering the rich coastlines of England and the Frankish Empire Empire or sailing to Iceland must have seemed more

attractive than serving this upstart Danish Chieftain served as mercenaries for the Waring Frankish Kings and were invited to occupy Fria opening the way to attacks further down the Continental Coastline they brought home not only plunder but also Ambitions to rule as kings in their own homelands in 947 politics in Norway led to Strife in England defeated by his English educated brother Harold Fair's son Eric blax found Refuge among the Scandinavians of York the Nobles of North hria rebelled against their new Saxon King adre and elected Eric King in his place at rippen Cathedral edred reacted

mercilessly and ordered the cathedral burned terrifying the Rebellion Nobles into surrender the Norwegian Viking was killed in battle after a second attempt to gain the throne so if we think about Eric BLX he is disposed um of the the the king of the area in 954 a and it's around about 960 into the 970s that we see a whole new suite of development in hungate the area hungate is is in yorvik now it really is expanding past it and that then continues right through into the 11th century we have to bear in mind how Scandinavian

societies developed they themselves were the result of interaction with outside societies but this too is subject to debate because we can't imagine that all the stimulus for evolution comes from outside as has been said but there were developments within Scandinavian Society too [Music] Swedish Raiders dominated the Baltic Sea from Lake malan and the islands of gotland and Erland these two large islands with their vast coastlines were perfect bases for Raiders into Central and Eastern Europe and a halfway house for the markets of hadab and birka the market towns fillmed with Goods plundered from The Plains

of Eastern Europe and sto from the cities of the West a large number of treasures found on the islands of Erland and gotland now on exhibition in the Stockholm Museum show how profitable trade and plunder was and how even from the earliest times the Vikings sought the most transportable wealth available at the time bronze silver and gold they sold or stole Furs War Rus ivory Amber and slaves the Vikings had been raiding and trading along the rivers of Central and Eastern Europe for centuries before their first raid was recorded in the west as far as

I know today the widespread belief is that the appearance of the Vikings in Eastern Europe is linked to their interest in silver that goes back to the n Century between the 800s and 900s so in the 9th century several million silver durhams were exported from the Caspian Sea area there were no distinctions between Raiders and Traders one day they were plundering farmsteads and churches the next selling those same Goods at markets one such Trader was a certain Norwegian seaf farer orthera who disclosed to King alred of England what the trade rots of the Viking explorers

and warriors were he described a trip to the very north of Norway and round into the Arctic sea and down again in search of warus tusks and seal skins he described the market town of cowy in Norway and the trade routs into the Baltic Sea another Explorer woodan of hadab reported where the Vikings exchanged their goods for such wealth the travels of wolfan pro the extent of the Viking web of trade between West and East among the places wolfan visited was the great city of truso whose remains mik yiny found 20 years ago while riding

his bike home as I said truso was set up by the Scandinavian newcomers on the frontier with Baltic peoples and slaves the objects which we found in truso are mainly Scandinavian but we have ceramics I mean clay pots from Western slaves and also pots made by Baltic people I mean prce people the Viking Warlords dominated this Baltic trading Place turning it into a military base to supply Traders and warriors on their expeditions deep into eastern and southern Europe alongside articles of daily use mik yagodinski found a large quantity of Swords truso was a hub of

the Viking web of trade and pillage in my opinion we see a sort of globalization we find the same crafts the same Arab coins the same weights everywhere from Britain to North Russia so there was some kind of unification and this unification was fostered by trade and craft here in truso local Craftsmen worked amber made cones swords jewelry tools and weights slaves worked in production processes and as labor in the port the trading Emporia stretched all along the Baltic Coast from present day rosock to the NAA River where St Petersburg stands today the Slavic peoples

who inhabited this vast area lived in simple Villages and used slash and burn agricultural techniques they were easily dominated by the predatory Vikings on the other hand there is a widespread belief that the largest portion of goods exported from Eastern Europe to the Caspian Sea with the aid of the Scandinavians were slaves it is even said that in the 10th Century the Arabian slave markets were full of slaves from Eastern Europe the Vikings turned their military outposts into Market towns where Traders paid them for protection the Scandinavians forged new trade links between East and West

in 841 while in France the northmen were burning down ruang a Scandinavian Warrior ruic and his two brothers founded the kingdom of Novgorod they were invited by the Slavic tribes of present day Russia to give them peace and protection the finds here at r Gish just Upstream from novod show a significant Scandinavian presence the Viking artifacts that have been found in the novarad area are connected both to trade and warfare we find not only weapons but also scales and silver in the Scandinavian Graves which suggests that the dead person was a Trader the impressive rivers

and lakes of Northern Russia were the heart of the early Viking conquests lake ladoga is still a shipping thoroughfare and the vov river flows into it rising at Lake ilman 200 km further south the sphere river in northern Russia is one of the waterways that still today connects the Caspian and Baltic Seas weapons such as axes and swords from Novgorod and staria ladoga show that the were not only thriving trading centers but also military bases no that's we have to say that very few Scandinavian weapons have been found in the novarad area while objects to

do with trade and everyday life have been found in great quantities we should also say that Russia is crossed by many rivers travel was by river mainly and the Scandinavian I were Traders 50 years after the first recorded raid against lindes van Vikings had penetrated the Eastern European river system as far as the Black Sea Ric's successor Alek moved his headquarters down the daper and seized the town of Kiev in 907 he captured Constantinople by dragging his ships around the sea defenses in 911 in the same year the Vikings gained Normandy as their new home

in France Alek struck a trade deal with the Byzantine Empire turning Kiev into the capital city of a great ruling Dynasty part of the deal was to provide mercenaries to the Emperor as his own personal bodyguard known as the varangian guard by now half of England and much of France was ruled by the Vikings but this was not the end of the Viking raids Iceland sits halfway across the North Atlantic Ocean the most dangerous sea for Vikings to cross and yet by accident or by Design Scandinavians landed here already in 840 ad later political upheaval

at home led to an exodus of refugees who opposed the rule of Harold [Music] Fair the Vikings who left Norway for Iceland found a completely virgin land and brought their social structures with them the owners of the largest Farms were also the high Priests of the community and called gothier 40 gothier held an all thing or Parliament here at the all thing Stone every year here more than anywhere else the early Viking way of life was preserved from here the Viking ships plowed the Seas Westward to Greenland where two settlements were established from there they

traveled as far as the American continent for the first time around the year 1000 the travels to the land known as Vinland was recorded by a mon sailed with the Explorer LEF Erikson the sagas tell us about the Viking trips to America they are covered by The Saga literature we have to assume that there were many more voyages than described in the sagas we have also found traces of Viking settlements in America and there are also American Indian stories about these blue-eyed people that they met this blue blue the settlements on the American continent lasted

only a few years while the mini ice age of the 13th century onwards led to the decline of the Greenland settlements too in Europe the violent Viking age was reaching its climax in Europe the Viking Invaders struck fear even more than a century after the great raids the first Millennium ad was a time of widespread violence in 2012 18 skeletons were found in the grounds of St John's College Oxford Scholars immediately Associated the find with the 102 St Bryce's Day Massacre when the king of England ordered all of the Danes in his kingdom murder the

task of identifying who these men were fell to mark polard of the forensic archaeology Department we first radiocarbon dated a selection of them and for various reasons the radiocarbon age wasn't exactly what we would have expected to be um 1,02 ad but there are reasons that that might be the case so we then began to look at the carbon and nitrogen Isotopes in the bone collagen which is an indicator of diet um and we also looked at the strontium and oxygen Isotopes in the dental inal from the teeth um because that gives you some indication

of where those individuals uh grew up the skeletons from Oxford suffered a similar fate to another group found near the seaside town of Waymouth were they Vikings yeah we matched them with the the Vikings that had been recovered from wouth they're roughly contemporary from the radiocarbon dates and um other people had done strum and oxygen in their teeth and they found the same pattern that we found not from the south of England and actually on the diagram they're moving in a direction which suggests both an older geology which is consistent with possibly Scandinavia um and

also a a colder climate which is also consistent with Scandinavia while strontium isotope techniques suggested the victims were not from the south of England possibly from Dan Law therefore other marks hinted at their true identity several of the skeletons showed healed wounds which may plausibly have come from blade wounds and so I think you know in a group of 16 to 25 year old males if they're carrying um healed blade wounds then the chances are they've been in combat conflict um before so I think they're that you know they're not sort of a group of

people who were farmers and and just sort of happened to be passing by I think they are either professionals mercenaries or or Raiders of some description the beginning of the 11th century was a violent time and National identities were less important than local and Family Ties it's quite complicated to understand what identity would have meant at that time I think you know we tend to use these titles of these are Danes and those are Anglo-Saxons but all of this identity is a a sort of a created identity whether they are when we say they're Danes

whether they're people who come from Denmark or whether they might be second or third generation people born in Britain um but of originally Danish stock and perhaps uh holding to Danish customs and practices possibly dressing more light Danes than Anglo-Saxons it's very difficult to know far to the North in York another victim of murder was found buried under the Coppergate streets this Skeleton shows multiple blade wounds but knowing why this young man died is almost impossible why was the person killed obviously we'll never know it was it looks like it was violent um and um

you can tell that through the osteology but if you were to try and pinpoint me down to say why can we can we bring that to an event I I honestly can't say we we can but what we need to bear in mind is that what this person represents is um a a bloody and violent end to somebody's life still in an era in an era sorry when a lot of this um is going on although the legend of the violent Viking lives on the true nature of their society may be different from what Scholars

have written for centuries what Archaeology is very good at is breaking down this idea that the Vikings are compartmentalized the Anglo-Saxon world is compartmentalized the the the the PS and the Kelts are compartment ized and actually we start to bring that bleeding of the edges together and we start to see a lot more complex society and where people can Define themselves people obviously go to war about definition and power um but at the same time we get that that input of Continental imported goods we see goods from Britain going abroad and it just brings together

I think we make it a rich tapestry perhaps the most daring of all raids left Sweden for the furthest Eastern edge of the Viking world around 1040 ad ingvar the far traveled and a small army of a thousand men left Central Sweden for Russia and then on to present day Georgia then under Arab influence where they won a decisive battle the land ruled by sarens was known as sirland they may have crossed the Caspian Sea and reached Tashkent but only one of the many ships returned home 26 run stones in Sweden commemorate the men who

traveled with ingvar but most touching of all is this one now standing in the grounds of grip's Home Castle on Lake malan it tells the tale of ingvar's brother tler had this Stone raised in memory of her son harer ingvar's brother they traveled valiantly far for gold and in the East gave food to the eagle they died in the south in ciran ingvar may have been of Royal Blood and his family were among the leaders of the international Viking Elite who still LED their Warriors into battle 250 years after the raid on lindes fan the

most persistent myth about the Vikings is that they were thieves they were pirates they were great warriors they always won all the battles they were Brave they didn't fear death and so on but the truth is that they weren't better or worse than others at that time they did live in a violent time the year 1000 was a turning point in the story of of the Vikings the era of the early raids was over and Viking expansion had reached its high tide Mark but it was also the beginning of a century of even more Bloodshed

the freebooting Viking Chieftain faded away and in their place great Viking overlords Kings of whole countries who unleashed the power of Viking armies against England and against each other spil more blood than at any time in the preceding centuries Rich professional mercenary forces dominated eastern and western Europe their leaders learned the craft of kingship from their enemies and built states that are still with us today [Music]