Dr. Wayne Bartlett

During the battle, Harald is quite badly wounded and is taken away to safety by a guy called Roggenwald Brucesen.

to Sweden.

So a fairly tough journey over the mountains, not an easy trip at the best of times, but particularly when you're already wounded.

So Harold manages anyway, fortunately for him, to get across the mountains into Sweden where he's able to recover.

And he spends some time in Sweden

which was often a bolt hole for people making their escape from Norway at the time.

There he's able to recuperate a bit before he's now ready to go and set off and have a wider set of adventures beyond there.

Very much so.

I think it's fair to say that Sweden is particularly associated with these voyages to the east.

There are some exceptions.

I mean, we know Swedish mercenaries were fighting with Canute in England, for example.

But there being this long established tradition, if you like, of the Vikings from Sweden making their way across the Baltic

down some of the great river systems, the Volga, the Don, the Dnieper, places like this, right down eventually to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.

And they're basically establishing bases along some of these great rivers, trading centers, places where they could take some kind of refuge as well.

They're kind of heavily involved in the formation of very well-known places, particularly, for example, Kiev,

in modern Ukraine, and they are helping to set up links between Scandinavia and the Middle East, as we would now call it, particularly even Muslim territories as far away as Baghdad.

And there's this trading exchange network going on with things like furs and amber and even slaves flowing from the Scandinavian north down into the Middle East.

Vast quantities of silver in particular and spices and things like this making their way back the other way.

So I think you could almost think of these territories, which we call the land of the Rus, or Garthruiki to give it its precise name.

You can almost think of this as being like the medieval equivalent of the Wild West in 19th century America.