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00:00On a calm summer morning in the year 793 A.D., the Viking Age is born.
00:30A.D., the Viking Age is born.
00:40A.D., the Viking Age is born.
00:50A.D., the Viking Age is born.
01:00A.D., the Viking Age is born.
01:06A.D., the Viking Age is born.
01:12A.D., the Viking Age is born.
01:33A.D. begins with a raid on the Christian monastery at Lindisfarne on the northeast coast of England.
01:44The attack is swift, savage, unexpected.
01:50The pagan raiders know full well that monasteries hold great riches.
01:55Great, unprotected riches.
01:59A.D.
02:07A.D.
02:09A.D.
02:12A.D.
02:17A.D.
02:22The news spreads quickly throughout Europe.
02:25A new prayer rises in Christian churches.
02:28Lord, protect us from the fury of the men of the north.
02:34It is a brutal beginning for a remarkable age of adventure and discovery.
02:44Over the next 300 years, warriors, farmers, and explorers from Scandinavia
02:50venture out to the limits of the world they know and beyond.
02:58In the end, the Vikings reshaped the world.
03:28The Vikings fascinate us, but some beliefs are simply not true.
03:56The Vikings never feared fog.
03:58On the contrary, they could take advantage of it when raiding.
04:02Nor did the Vikings ever wear those horned helmets,
04:06made familiar to us by Wagner's operas, Hollywood, and comic strips.
04:14The men from the north weren't all fearsome seafaring warriors either.
04:18During the Middle Ages, most people were farmers.
04:21The Vikings were no different.
04:23At the time of the raid on Lindisfarne,
04:25they were setting out to find new riches, fame,
04:29and especially new land.
04:34In earlier times, the people living in today's Norway, Sweden,
04:38and Denmark were mostly known as traders.
04:41In the eighth century, this changed rapidly,
04:44thanks to a great technological advantage, Viking ships.
04:51Viking ships made the Viking Age.
04:56Viking warriors and raiders sailed aboard revolutionary longships,
05:00whose dragon-shaped prow heads inspired terror.
05:04Viking traders, explorers, and settlers used a different kind of ship called the Gnar.
05:12It was made deeper and wider to carry goods, livestock, and people across the ocean.
05:18All Viking ships had hulls made of thin, overlapping planks, nailed together and sealed with tar,
05:32producing strong yet light and flexible vessels.
05:37They were steered by a side rudder hanging on a steer board,
05:41the origin of the nautical term starboard.
05:46The ships were fast and symmetrical
05:50and could reverse their course readily.
05:53The longships had a shallow draft,
05:55meaning they could sail far up rivers and could be beached easily.
06:00Shipbuilding required a variety of skills.
06:03Large square sails were woven from linen or thin wool,
06:07later waterproofed with fat.
06:10On longships in particular,
06:12oars were used for precise maneuvers and in windless weather.
06:19Shipbuilding was an art,
06:21and master shipwrights commanded great respect.
06:24Their craftsmanship was legendary.
06:27So much so,
06:28that tales of huge longships carrying 200 warriors
06:31were long thought to be the exaggerations of storytellers.
06:35Then, in 1997, a longship measuring 120 feet
06:41and capable of carrying 180 men was unearthed in Roskilde, Denmark.
06:47The giant longships had indeed existed.
06:50These ships give Vikings a strong superiority at sea,
06:56and thousands of them head out in search of wealth, land, and glory.
07:04In two centuries, the Norse, Danes, and Swedes,
07:08or Russe as they are known in the east,
07:10are everywhere in Europe.
07:12They take over large areas of England and Scotland
07:15as well as Ireland, where they found Dublin.
07:18In France, the Northmen take over a region of France
07:21that becomes known as Normandy.
07:23Viking raids reach as far south as the Mediterranean.
07:28To the east, the Russe use rivers to reach the Middle East,
07:33creating a thousand-mile trading network
07:35and founding their own kingdom, Russia.
07:42Success makes the Vikings even more ambitious.
07:45Large fleets mount major attacks.
07:50The city of Paris must pay an enormous tribute to be spared.
07:56Soon after, a great Viking army conquers York
07:59and much of eastern England.
08:03In the east, the Vikings attack Constantinople,
08:06today's Istanbul, with fleets of hundreds of ships.
08:11Twice, the great city resists,
08:13but the Byzantine emperors are so impressed
08:16that they hire Viking warriors as an imperial guard.
08:26Europeans saw the Vikings as heathens assaulting Christianity,
08:30but it went beyond that.
08:32It was a collision between cultures
08:34with different traditions and religions.
08:36Giants, dwarfs, beasts, and gods fill the crowded Viking pantheon.
08:47Warriors who die sword in hand gain a place in Valhalla,
08:51a paradise offering an afterlife of fights and feasts.
08:55Here, Viking gods are mortal.
08:59They can be tricked and lose battles.
09:02Still, wisdom reigns supreme among the gods.
09:05Odin, chief deity and a god of war,
09:08exchanges an eye for knowledge.
09:11Thor rules over weather and sends thunder and lightning.
09:18Frey gives fertility to nature, men, and their lands.
09:21These gods are still present in our daily lives.
09:26Odin's day is Wednesday.
09:28Thor's day is Thursday.
09:30And Frey's day is Friday.
09:34South and east of their homelands,
09:37Vikings come largely as raiders and warriors.
09:41Out west, they become mainly settlers and explorers.
09:44They have the North Atlantic to themselves.
09:49After settling several small islands,
09:52they find a huge land
09:53where only a handful of Irish monks has ever set foot.
09:57There, the Vikings build a new world.
10:00The Vikings build a new world.
10:03The Vikings build a new world.
10:04Legend has it that a man suffered an extremely harsh winter on this island,
10:33and that he vengefully named it Iceland.
10:37Yet, Vikings from Norway and the British Isles came in droves to this unspoiled country,
10:43a country sculpted by volcanic forces and immense glaciers.
10:48Iceland is a place of otherworldly beauty, an island of mountains, lava plains, sandy beaches, and deep valleys.
10:58It is a supernatural land, a land of the gods.
11:28But, it is an area for the National Anthem.
11:34It is a sense of this condition that you look past the outside of the island with a Indian,
11:41which is of course the most powerful in the mountains.
11:47And it is a spiritual culture of the island.
11:50So, here is the Melissa, our culture of the world.
12:25In Iceland, the Vikings, farmers above all, find what they treasure most, abundant, fertile
12:47land.
12:59By coming to Iceland, many Vikings are also fleeing the rise of self-proclaimed kings in
13:05Norway.
13:19In a new country, settlers can stake out property using the custom of land nam, or land taking.
13:28It allows any free man to claim a lot as large as he can walk around in a day.
13:34In a few decades, all of Iceland is settled in this manner.
13:39I am Leif the Lucky, son of Eric.
13:46I was born on a farm in Iceland.
13:48There, I learned the skills and customs of my people.
13:52I learned to praise virtues like wisdom, courage, and justice.
13:57And to honor warriors, poets, and artists.
14:00Art is ever present in our lives.
14:03It enhances everything from our most prized possessions to the most common objects.
14:11My family and my clan have always been my pride.
14:16Like every Viking, I have strived to excel in diverse skills.
14:20Warfare, farming, craftsmanship, seafaring.
14:24Like every Viking, I hope to gain the most desirable thing.
14:28A favorable reputation, for only fame is undying for those who win it.
14:37I hoped our poets, the Skulls, would tell our story with well-chosen words, generation after generation.
14:51Vikings put as much value in the telling of stories and the reciting of poetry as in the skills of warriors.
14:58And although they had an alphabet called runes, history and tradition relied essentially on the spoken word.
15:08Fortunately, two centuries after Leif, learned Icelanders wrote down these tales, including Leif's own story.
15:17Together, they are known as the Icelandic sagas.
15:20The word saga simply means what was said.
15:23The sagas contain a blend of history, poems, myths, and religious fables.
15:31They tell us how the Vikings lived and what mattered most in their lives.
15:41The thousands of beautifully handwritten pages of the saga manuscripts are a cornerstone of Viking heritage.
15:58The sagas are among the most important documents of the Middle Ages.
16:01They are kept in a secure vault and are under the permanent responsibility of the saga keepers.
16:15One story of interest is recounted in two sagas.
16:19A major turning point came when a few neighboring chieftains, each ruling over several families,
16:24gathered in a Viking assembly called a thing.
16:27This assembly acted as a local tribunal, resolved disputes, and if needed, decided punishment.
16:37In the year 930 A.D., 36 chieftains, representing all such assemblies in Iceland, came together at a site called Thingvellir.
16:51There, they created the All Thing, a national assembly that defined the laws of the land.
16:57Every summer, when it met, a law speaker would recite the code from memory, adding any new laws or rulings.
17:06It remains the longest-running national assembly in the world.
17:19Many came freely to Iceland.
17:22Erik, my father, had little choice.
17:24He was banished from Norway for a killing he couldn't defend.
17:31My father was a quick-tempered man who had all the qualities of a leader.
17:36Feared or respected, he was Erik the Red.
17:43In Iceland, Erik marries into a rich family descended from Irish kings and gains in reputation.
17:50But as the sagas tell us, Erik cannot escape his fiery nature.
17:55A dispute with a neighbor turns violent.
17:58People on both sides are killed.
18:00Erik is brought before the assembly.
18:02My father had as many supporters as opponents.
18:12But law prevailed.
18:14Erik the Red was banished from Iceland for three years.
18:16Erik, my father, made the best out of his exile.
18:30He headed for none-named land out west, a place seen by some sailors who had been blown off course.
18:35Vikings sailed without maps or compasses.
18:42They relied on landmarks, the sun, the stars, the presence of seabirds and the color of the water.
18:50Despite that, they often got lost.
18:53Sailors sometimes used ravens, mythical messengers of the Norse god Odin.
19:00Within 200 miles of land, a raven released into the sky would head towards it.
19:06Unknown to Erik, his destination was in fact the largest island in the world.
19:31The world is in fact the largest island in the world.
19:56For three years, Eric explored the island's western coast.
20:01The climate at the time was warmer than today.
20:05Icebergs abounded, but fjords weren't clogged up by ice
20:08during winter.
20:1885% of this island is covered by ice up to two miles thick.
20:23The land is harsh, mountainous, and barren.
20:30But Eric discovered areas of fertile land
20:33around the southwestern fjords.
20:53Eric did find traces of human occupation,
20:56but no one was there to challenge his rule.
20:58To make the place sound appealing to a community of farmers,
21:13Eric named the island Greenland.
21:17When his exile ended,
21:22Eric returned to Iceland
21:24and gathered volunteers to settle the land with him.
21:28Hundreds of people filled 25 ships with everything they could carry
21:35to start a new life in a place they had never seen.
21:38They had faith in Eric the Red.
21:46Our journey did not go quite as well as we had hoped.
21:50We had hoped.
22:20This is weak.
22:21We was persistent in miel.
22:22We cannot see.
22:23We can come quite as well as you can lead theurside into a fortress.
22:25Even now remember,
22:26the leader will be opposed in trouble.
22:27We may not have far any change of the sea while we are going with us,
22:28because in many ways they are sick.
22:29ом R.
22:31Only 14 of our ships reached the coast of Greenland.
22:5011 neither turned back or were lost.
22:54We did not turn back.
22:57My father would not give up the infinite promise of this new land.
23:01It was the most fertile land in Greenland.
23:20During his exile, Eric explored what became known today as Eric's Fjord.
23:26There he had found some of the most fertile land in Greenland.
23:31It is from this place called Bratelid, the steep slope, that Eric ruled Greenland.
23:42Under his leadership, the westernmost Viking settlement became a thriving colony.
23:47At the same time, Vikings everywhere were becoming Christians.
23:57Eric's wife, Chodild, had a chapel built on their farm and raised her children in the new faith.
24:03But Eric remained faithful to the Norse gods.
24:06We were still new to Greenland when a man named Bjarni arrived at Bratelid.
24:23Sailing from Iceland to Greenland, Bjarni got lost in a fog and drifted far to the west.
24:30He had come close to three unknown lands, but never put ashore.
24:37This moment changed my life.
24:40It took fifteen years for my time to come.
24:51I had earned the respect of my peers, and I had the temperament to lead.
24:57Yet I still had to make a name for myself.
25:00A name to surpass even that of...
25:03Eric the Red.
25:04I bought the very ship Bjarni had sailed, and gathered volunteers to retrace his journey.
25:19I had dreamed of these new lands since childhood.
25:36I could only hope they would be worth the trip.
25:39Leif and his crew first saw a rocky and icy land without trees or meadows.
26:08Unlike Bjarni, Leif was eager to go ashore.
26:12He called the land Heluland, or Flat Rocksland.
26:28They next found a land of vast forests touching the sea.
26:32This was of great interest for people from a country like Greenland, where a tree was no taller than a man.
26:41They came ashore.
26:43Leif named the territory Markland, or Forestland.
26:46For more than a day, Leif and his crew sailed the coast of Markland, along extraordinary stretches of white, sandy beaches.
26:59The Sagas called them the Wonder Beaches.
27:02We reached yet another land.
27:19Coming ashore, we saw dew on the grass, collected it in our hands, and drank it.
27:26We had never tasted anything as sweet.
27:33I decided we would build our camp nearby.
27:40The Sagas tell us that, as they explored this region, they found great grassy fields and grapevines with sweet grapes.
27:49There was no snow, and even in winter, the sun stayed high in the sky for many hours a day.
28:04Leif named this new land Vinland.
28:07But centuries later, scholars wondered, was there really a Heluland, a Markland, and especially a Vinland?
28:14In the 19th century, many interpretations of the sagas emerged.
28:25Looking for places where wild grapes could grow, scholars first looked towards Cape Cod, then Newport, Rhode Island, and even New York City.
28:35Others later proposed that the Gulf of the St. Lawrence River, or the coasts of Nova Scotia, could have been Vinland.
28:41The Vinland sagas contained conflicting information about who found what, and where.
28:52And there was no proof to be found.
28:56Skeptics wondered if the sagas could be trusted at all.
29:01Most people still thought that Christopher Columbus had discovered America, just like all the textbooks said.
29:06One Norwegian couple, explorer Helge Ingstad, and archaeologist Ann Steen Ingstad, set out to resolve the Vinland mystery.
29:22In 1953, Helge Ingstad first sailed to Erik the Red's Bratelid, where he started thinking that Vinland might be further north than previously thought.
29:32His impressions were reinforced by the Skalholt map.
29:40Drawn up in 1590, it shows Greenland, a Heluland and a Markland, as well as a Vinland promontory, remindful of Newfoundland's great northern peninsula.
29:51In the summer of 1960, Helge Ingstad sailed along the coast of Newfoundland.
30:00In every little fishing village, he asked about old sights and drew only puzzled looks.
30:07But when he got to his last port of call, Lasse Meadows, a fisherman named George Decker mentioned old Indian ruins.
30:14As he saw the traces in the ground, Ingstad was instantly reminded of the Norse sights he had seen in Greenland.
30:27A thousand years had put only six inches of dirt over the foundations of three Viking houses and five small buildings.
30:34Anstine Ingstad led seven years of archaeological digs at Lasse Meadows.
30:46She found indisputable evidence that this was a Viking settlement.
30:52Carbon testing dated the site to the year 1000, the time when Leif Erikson was said to have traveled to Vinland.
30:59The Sagas had it right.
31:07Leif's itinerary became clear.
31:10Baffin Island was Heluland and Labrador, Markland.
31:14There, Leif Erikson had set foot in America nearly 500 years before Columbus.
31:21Using Lasse Meadows as a gateway, the Vikings would sail across the Gulf of St. Lawrence into a vast region called Vinland.
31:29I had high hopes for Vinland, and the promise it held as a new Viking settlement.
31:37I spent a year exploring and gathering supplies before returning to Greenland.
31:44But there, within a few years, my father, Eryk the Red, died, and I became chieftain.
31:53I never returned to Vinland.
32:00Still more expeditions follow, including one led by Leif's brother, Thorvald.
32:05Only a few women make the journey to North America, including one known as Goodrid the Well-Traveled.
32:20While in Vinland, Goodrid gives birth to a baby boy named Snorri.
32:25He is the first European born in North America, and the only one for another 500 years.
32:30Over the course of a decade or so, relatives of Leif's family come to Lasse Meadows several times.
32:44Thorvald's expedition reveals an extraordinary fact.
33:01In these new lands, the Vikings are not alone.
33:05And for humankind, this encounter has an exceptional meaning.
33:10Since the dawn of humanity, our human ancestors had been migrating around the Earth.
33:20They crossed Europe and Asia, entered the Americas, and traveled as far as they could.
33:28When the Vikings landed in North America, humankind had come full circle around the planet.
33:34When Vikings and natives looked into each other's eyes, the world became smaller than ever before.
33:49Relations between Vikings and natives eventually turned into conflict.
33:53One saga tells us that Thorvald Eriksson once attacked nine natives as they slept.
34:08Eight were killed, but one escaped.
34:18The natives struck back.
34:20Thorvald's death showed that conflict with the natives was a serious obstacle to a permanent Viking settlement.
34:41Oscar Wilde said that the Vikings discovered America, but had the good sense to lose it again.
34:52He was only half right.
34:54Vikings regularly returned to Labrador to gather supplies, especially lumber.
34:59Evidence shows that they had regular contact with the ancestors of the Inuit people.
35:04Meanwhile, the Viking homelands were now ruled by Christian kings, much like other European countries.
35:21In places like Normandy, England, or Russia, the Vikings blended in with local populations,
35:27until they could no longer truly be called Vikings.
35:30Ironically, it was a Viking descendant who put an end to the Viking age in Europe.
35:38Duke William of Normandy led an army of French knights, not Viking raiders,
35:42to defeat English King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 A.D.
35:49The event is immortalized in the Bayeux Tapestry, an amazing 230-foot-long embroidered narrative.
35:56Viking Greenland lived on for nearly five centuries after the Vinland voyages.
36:14Greenlanders traded precious goods like walrus ivory and falcons.
36:17But farming slowly declined as the climate turned colder.
36:24Adapting might have meant living more like the Inuit, but the Greenlanders insisted on living like Europeans.
36:30The last recorded event in Greenland is a wedding at Valsey Church on September 16th, 1408.
36:37A few decades later, the Vikings had disappeared from Greenland.
36:55In places like Iceland, Viking settlements withstood the test of time.
37:01There, something of the Viking culture still survives.
37:04In their untamed, otherworldly island, Icelanders speak a language that the Vikings would have understood.
37:17Schoolchildren read the saigas as they were written centuries ago.
37:21It is an invaluable connection with their past.
37:24More than their warrior image and wide-ranging conquests, the Vikings' most valuable heritage is found in their love for words,
37:36their passion for memory, their sense of beauty, and their powerful drive to explore the world in search of a better place to live and prosper.
37:45The world-wide and sustained fascination for the Vikings endures.
37:52Thousands of companies, products, sports teams, and even space probes bear the name Viking.
37:59It is a badge of honor, a symbol of conquest and exploration.
38:05The best of the Viking spirit sails on.
38:09The best of the Viking spirit sails on.
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38:17The best of the Viking spirit sails on.
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