Chapter 1: What is the new podcast Real Vikings about?
Hi listeners, today we're bringing you a preview of a brand new show from the Noisa Podcast Network. It's called Real Vikings. Hosted by Ian Glenn, the show takes you on a deep dive into the Viking Age. You'll board longboats bound for new lands, from Greenland to North Africa, Constantinople to Canada. Follow mighty warlords like Eric Bloodaxe and Olga of Kiev.
Meet master navigators like Leif Erikson. and uncover the real figures behind the legends of the sagas. You'll hear contributions from leading historians, as well as original music and immersive sound design. If you enjoy this taster episode, search Real Vikings in your podcast app and hit follow. You'll find more episodes waiting for you now.
The year is 789 AD. It's market day in the town of Dawnwarreichester, Dorchester as it's known today, in England's southwest. Dense clouds sweep in from the east, gathering mass. The air grows oppressive beneath them. Situated on the banks of the River Frome in the ancient kingdom of Wessex, Dorchester is an important settlement. It has royal connections.
The West Saxon king has a winter residence here, A man patrols the market stalls with a watchful eye. There's a haughty swagger to his walk as he taps his staff on the cobbles. Traders touch their forelocks respectfully. This is not a man you want to cross. His woolen clothes are of quality, revealing his high status. Meet Beadehard.
He's the Reeve, an official responsible for ensuring that the King's laws are upheld. The market is a honeypot for ne'er-do-wells, drunks, pickpockets, cheats, and it's Beardahad's job to police and punish every kind of criminality. There's one rule above all others that he's determined to enforce.
That the king must receive his portion, his cut, of every transaction that takes place in his realm. It's not just about the money, it's about maintaining order. When Beardahad overhears a group of men talking about some foreigners trading furs over the side of their boats, his ears prick up.
The alleged infringement is taking place on the Isle of Portland, down on the coast, about 30 miles to the south. Beardahad hurries to the Guildhall and gathers his attendants. If he's to confront these strangers, he's determined to impress on them the full dignity of his office. Dorchester is an old Roman town.
The roads are laid out in the classic grid pattern, but it's fallen into disrepair since the legions left long, long ago. The amphitheater turned to rubble, its arena overgrown. Sheep nibble at the grass where gladiators once fought. The Reeve leads his men along South Street. They leave through a gap in the town walls where the old gate used to be.
then take the long straight Roman road down to the sea. For Beardahad, the issue is simple. The foreigners are welcome to trade, but they must follow the rules. He sits up in the saddle. All he has to do is to show them who's boss. As they reach Chesil Beach, the thin isthmus that connects Portland to the mainland, Beardahad sees the stranger's boats drawn up ahead.
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Chapter 2: What historical events set the stage for the Viking Age?
Their hair and beards appear well-groomed. Dark green tattoos are visible on their exposed skin. Beadahar dismounts and strides towards them, one hand on the hilt of his dagger. He gestures towards a pile of lush Arctic furs. You can't trade that here, he shouts, explaining that they will have to pass through a king's port in order to pay the correct taxes.
The foreigners are unmoved by his words, if they even understand them. Then one of them reaches for a long-handled battle axe. His hand rises before shooting forwards and releasing the weapon. but time seems to slow down as it spins through the air. Beardahad is rooted to the spot as the axe hits its target, the middle of his chest.
With a deafening roar, the men from the ships rush forward and drag Beardahad's stunned men from their horses. As the storm clouds break, the strangers load up their long, sleek vessels and heave them back into the water. The only trace of their presence, the smoldering fire and the Saxon bodies lying on the blood-soaked pebbles.
Today, Chesil Beach, with its tidal lagoons, is one of Dorset's most popular tourist locations, a favoured spot for ramblers and birdwatchers. It's hard to imagine it as a setting for such a shocking drama. So who were these men who pitched up on this beach a millennium ago, dispensing such violence and casual brutality?
They are, in a word that will soon strike fear into the hearts of every Anglo-Saxon, every Celt, every Frisian, every Frank across the early Middle Ages, Vikings. Say the word Viking today and it conjures a certain image, one represented in countless films, TV shows, video games, comic books and superhero franchises.
One of pillage and savagery, a cliched world of horned helmets and blood eagles, of barbaric, hirsute heathens enthralled to gods and monsters, the Hell's Angels of the high seas. Men who came in longboats to terrorize and slaughter the innocents of Britain, France, Ireland and beyond. If those men who killed Beardahad are anything to go by, then certain aspects of this legend are true.
But it only tells part of a bigger story, of a people who were so much more than the fur-clad thugs of popular imagination. The Vikings hailed from a sophisticated and developed civilization. They were master navigators, fearless explorers, diplomats, traders, craftsmen, storytellers, and yes, warriors. Moreover, they were adventurers, men and women whose feet still defy the imagination.
A people who crossed vast oceans and discovered new lands, building up an impressive trading empire that spanned four continents, four centuries. The Viking Age is perhaps the most revolutionary, crucial and seminal period ever in the history of the Scandinavians.
We're dealing with a group of people who really transform the history of Europe. There's a real sense in which there's almost no parts of Europe they leave completely untouched.
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Chapter 3: Who was Beardahad and what happened to him?
Across the fjords and mountains, this territory of the north plays host to a rural society. Most folks live in villages and isolated farms, growing crops and raising cattle, as well as hunting and fishing. People subsist on fish, grain and meat – beef, pork, goat, venison, sometimes horse. They wear simple clothes spun from wool, flax, and hemp.
They are a practical people, handy craftsmen skilled at carpentry, metalwork. The further north you go, the sparser the villages become, breaking up into individual farmsteads. But even in these remote settings, up in the Hologaland, Land of High Fire, or the Northern Lights, bonds of community hold scattered neighbors together.
Lars Brownworth is the author of Sea Wolves, A History of the Vikings. About a third of Norway is above the Arctic Circle. This was a punishing climate. And so, you know, hospitality was obviously a very important thing. And women usually had greater rights than in the rest of medieval Europe because they were largely in charge of making sure there was enough food for the winter.
And this is obviously a job that lives depend on. It's a vast area. From the tip of Norway's North Cape to the present-day Danish-German border, it's over 1,500 miles. That's further than the distance from Copenhagen to Rome. The geographic variance is immense, from frozen tundra through dense spruce taiga to temperate grassland.
Eleanor Barraclough is a senior lecturer at Bath Spa University, an author of Embers of the Hands, Modern Histories of the Viking Age.
So we've got a huge span in terms of the geography. We've also got a huge span in terms of the different sorts of people who are living in this world. So, for example, if you're a trader or a craftsperson in Denmark...
Your experience of life is going to be much more multicultural, but much less centered compared to, say, if you live in an agriculturally prosperous valley somewhere in the lowlands of Norway or Sweden, where generations of your family have farmed.
So we already have to start breaking down this idea that it's just one thing and that we can know what it would be like to live at one time in the Viking Age. It's much more complex than that.
But there's one thing that unites all Scandinavians. Water. It connects. It defines. Traveling by land across a snowbound, mountainous interior is slow and hazardous. Far easier to navigate a river network from one trading settlement to another. Or skirt the jagged coast of Norway, ducking in and out of fjords, sailing the great North Way that gives that land its name.
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