Dr. Wayne Bartlett

And in fact, there were two ships that left Constantinople at the same time.

And Constantinople at the time was protected by this huge chain which stretched across the waters of the Golden Horn, stopping people from coming in and out.

And Harold comes up with this trick, very much in keeping with his overall persona, but he gets all his people on one of the ships and

And when they reach the chain, he gets them all to run to the front of the ship when the ship is resting on the chain with the extent, if you like, it almost topples over onto the other side of the chain.

So they're able to make good their escape that way.

The other ship with him, unfortunately, tried the same thing, but it didn't work.

And the ship capsized.

And I think pretty much everybody on it was lost.

So it's a fairly chaotic evacuation from Constantinople, though allegedly he did take with him a young princess called Maria, who allegedly there was a relationship or a possible relationship with her.

But he dropped her off soon after because he already had other romantic considerations back in Kiev.

She would have complicated matters enormously if she'd have gone with him.

So all a bit chaotic, I think, very much again in keeping with the story of Harold and his life more generally.

yeah i mean interestingly along these river systems there were various narrows which they had to negotiate and quite often they would have to literally take their boats out of the water and carry them around because the water was not deep enough or it was too rocky to actually sail them across so

This is one of the more extraordinary things, I think, of the Viking story, though actually you do see it in, for example, in Celtic stories in Scotland as well.

But from time to time where there's a piece of land which is blocking the passage for whatever reason.

The Vikings would literally lift their boats out of the water, carry them for a mile or so, and then plonk them back in on a piece of water on the other side.

So they're kind of like these narrows that they have to negotiate.

And that's part of the extraordinary story of the Rus.

They did have these ships, which were amazing, fairly shallow seaboard.

So that made them fairly useful in river systems.