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00:00:07So far, on this artistic journey through the Dark Ages, we've been hugging the Mediterranean and following the Sun.
00:00:18But the Dark Ages wouldn't be as significant as they were in the story of art if they'd stayed in
00:00:25the South.
00:00:26To be properly influential, they needed also to venture north.
00:00:36This is Lindisfarne, high up on the north coast of Britain. Holy Island, they call it.
00:00:45And this monastery you see there was founded early in the 7th century by an Irish monk called Aidan.
00:00:58What a place to build a monastery, eh? Cut off from the mainland, beaten up by the sea.
00:01:06It's so out of the way and impractical. And that's precisely why it was chosen.
00:01:17The Irish monks who founded Lindisfarne weren't looking for an easy life. They were looking for difficulties to conquer.
00:01:26These were hardcore northern Christians who'd isolated themselves up here on purpose, who worked their fingers to the bone and
00:01:37created something out of nothing.
00:01:41As they saw it, Jesus had sacrificed his life for them. So the least they could do was sacrifice their
00:01:50comfort.
00:01:54The hardcore determination of the Lindisfarne monks shows not only in the miraculous building of their great monastery, but also
00:02:05in the stunning book art they made up here.
00:02:08So intricate, so detailed, so difficult.
00:02:15And that's the thing about the north's contribution to the art of the dark ages.
00:02:21What it achieved, it achieved by going the extra mile, working the extra hour, adding the extra detail.
00:02:31Nothing was given to it on a plate.
00:02:47Whatever it achieved...
00:02:51A bonk in the black state...
00:02:53Being Herrlyons...
00:03:20In this film, we're going to be looking at the Carolingians,
00:03:24dark age expansionists from France, whose huge empire gobbled up most of modern Europe,
00:03:32but who made art of exquisite finesse and richness.
00:03:39Also, the Vikings, who despite their terrible reputation for raping and pillaging, were
00:03:47actually exceptionally inventive craftsmen.
00:03:50The extreme delicacy of dark age Viking art is an unexpected pleasure.
00:03:59Then up here, in the north of England, we'll be celebrating a dark age nation whose artistic
00:04:06handiwork was admired across the whole of Europe.
00:04:11I'm thinking, of course, of the Anglo-Saxons, so skilled, so hardworking, so ingenious.
00:04:22Speaking of hard work, one of the things we're going to be doing in this film is following
00:04:28the creation of an Anglo-Saxon jewel from start to finish.
00:04:38Later on, I'll introduce you properly to Sean Greenhoush here.
00:04:43For now, all that really matters is that he's going to be making something exquisite.
00:04:50A silver disc brooch in the Anglo-Saxon manor.
00:04:59Sean Greenhoush's Anglo-Saxon brooch is a pleasure we're saving for later.
00:05:05First, we need to confront the north's most notorious barbarians.
00:05:12We've tackled some terrifying warrior nations in this series.
00:05:18The Huns, the Vandals, the Goths.
00:05:22But when it comes to bellicosity, no one has quite as fearsome a reputation as the Vikings.
00:05:36You know, people get so much wrong about the Vikings.
00:05:40They didn't wear these ridiculous helmets for a start.
00:05:43These were invented in the 19th century by a stage designer working on a Wagner opera.
00:05:50He had to make one of the singing Vikings look particularly evil.
00:05:55So he stuck the devil's horns on a helmet.
00:05:58And the Vikings have been lumbered with these helmets ever since.
00:06:04This is what their helmets really looked like.
00:06:08The only surviving Viking helmet in the National Museum in Oslo.
00:06:17The Vikings were particularly interesting because while all the other Germanic tribes headed south and became thoroughly Italianate,
00:06:26the Vikings stayed in the harsh and windy north where they clung to the old ways.
00:06:33So they were a barbarian nation of a pure and exciting type.
00:06:40The Vikings were a living link to an older and deeper European past.
00:06:47There were forces at work in them that civilization hadn't dimmed.
00:06:52And that's what's so exciting about them.
00:06:59In fact, most of the time they were simple farmers, tending the land, keeping livestock, growing what they could.
00:07:07But in the lands of the Vikings, you can't go very far without encountering water.
00:07:13And this constant presence of the sea had turned them into superb sailors.
00:07:21Exactly where they reached is still fiercely debated.
00:07:26But they certainly got to Greenland and then to Newfoundland.
00:07:30The Vikings discovered America a long, long time before Columbus.
00:07:35So boatmanship was one of their great achievements and another of their great achievements was art.
00:07:46In the great years of Viking expansion, roughly 800 AD to roughly 1100 AD,
00:07:54the Vikings put almost as much energy into making their own art as they did into stealing other peoples.
00:08:04This trefoil Viking brooch was modeled on the buckles used by Roman soldiers on their sword belts.
00:08:13The Vikings adapted it and turned it into a brooch for ladies.
00:08:21Much of what they made is so intricate and fine, it's difficult to see.
00:08:28So to make absolutely clear what adventurous creatives they were,
00:08:34I've brought you to Oslo, to one of the great Viking museums,
00:08:40where I wanted to show you this whopping great nautical masterpiece.
00:08:48On 8 August 1903, a Norwegian farmer called Knut Rom knocked on the door of Professor Gabriel Gustafsson
00:08:58of the Museum of Antiquities here in Oslo.
00:09:02While digging on his farm, said Knut Rom, he'd come across a buried ship
00:09:07and he thought it might be Viking.
00:09:11Two days later, Professor Gustafsson arrived at the farm and confirmed the discovery of this thing.
00:09:19The Olseberg ship.
00:09:25Will you look at that, eh?
00:09:26It's made entirely of oak, over 60 feet long, 15 feet wide,
00:09:35and decorated at both ends with these boisterous Viking carvings.
00:09:44Inside the ship were two dead bodies, an older woman, who may have been a queen,
00:09:50and a younger woman, probably her slave, who was buried with her.
00:09:55There were also 14 horses, three dogs and an ox, all sacrificed together and buried with their master.
00:10:08In the stern of the boat was a four-wheeled cart, the first such Viking cart ever discovered.
00:10:17But no one seemed too sure what the weather was going to be like in heaven,
00:10:22because there were also four sledges.
00:10:28But it's the carving of these boats and carts and sledges that makes this particular Viking find so exciting.
00:10:36Look at the elegant line of this ship, how it ends so gracefully up there with the curved head of
00:10:45the snake.
00:10:46At either end, above the water line where they can be seen, are these busy expanses of carving, so active
00:10:55and lively.
00:10:57Scores of twisting bodies, clutching hands, staring eyes, sniffing snouts, all jumbled together excitedly.
00:11:07A gymnasium of animal acrobats, tying themselves into knots.
00:11:13You have to get your eye in with Viking carvings, otherwise they can frighten you with all this amazing complication.
00:11:21It's all based on animal shapes, all interwoven and overlapping.
00:11:28So that, for example, is one animal.
00:11:31There's the head and there's the tail.
00:11:34And this figure eight shape here, that's the whole of its body.
00:11:38And that's biting the tail of this animal here.
00:11:42And that animal is biting the tail of that animal.
00:11:46And so on.
00:11:47So imagine the 3D vision you need to carve this.
00:11:52The steady hand.
00:11:54The computer brain.
00:11:59So if anyone ever says to you, the Vikings were barbarous, grab them by the ear and tug them here,
00:12:08to Oslo.
00:12:15Runes.
00:12:19More runes.
00:12:24And still more runes.
00:12:29All over Scandinavia, Norway, Denmark, and particularly here in Sweden, you find these magnificent standing stones left behind by the
00:12:41Vikings.
00:12:42Covered in wobbly carvings.
00:12:46And all these runes.
00:12:52Runes are the bits of writing on the twisty snakes.
00:12:57You usually find them on Viking gravestones.
00:13:01These ones here say Girior loved her husband and remembers him with her tears.
00:13:12Because they're carved on these mighty stones and not written down on handy bits of parchment or vellum, there's a
00:13:21tendency to mythologize them.
00:13:23To see great truths in the runes.
00:13:29According to Norse mythology, the runes were found by Odin, the supreme god of the Norsemen, while he was hanging
00:13:38from the tree of life.
00:13:41The famous Yggdrasil.
00:13:46For nine days and nights, Odin stayed in the great tree, waiting, hoping, until eventually the runes fell into his
00:13:56hands and revealed themselves to him.
00:14:01Odin passed them to us.
00:14:04Thus, from the start, the runes were associated with magic and the mysteries of the cosmos.
00:14:16This splendid story about Odin up in the trees and the origin of the runes is another example of the
00:14:24extraordinary power that words had in these fateful years.
00:14:29Words, letters, symbols seemed to mean so much in the dark ages.
00:14:35They were so loaded.
00:14:37They had such resonance.
00:15:01It's actually quite a simple alphabet.
00:15:05So this shape here, that's a V sound.
00:15:09And that's an A, an L and so on.
00:15:12So that says Valdemar.
00:15:14And in fact, this whole message is, here stands Valdemar in Viking land.
00:15:29The runic alphabet, or foot-hark as it's called, had 24 letters in it originally.
00:15:37Later on, when the Vikings attacked Britain, they took the runes with them, and the foot-hark grew to 33
00:15:46letters.
00:15:51The new letters were needed to describe new sounds.
00:15:56Every time the Vikings conquered a new territory, and new words entered their language, they needed new letters to describe
00:16:04them.
00:16:05So, for example, originally there was no W, and I have to use a V sound for my name, Valdemar.
00:16:13So the runes were never some cobweb-covered dead language, fit only for a museum.
00:16:19They were always alive, vibrant, and constantly changing.
00:16:30What a good-looking alphabet it is, too.
00:16:34So energetic and upright.
00:16:37It's based on vertical lines, because verticals are easier to carve, particularly in wood, but also in stone.
00:16:49This vertical emphasis gives the runes a spiky presence, and a mysterious relationship with time.
00:16:59As if every mark is somehow counting down the days.
00:17:08The Vikings were the last of the great barbarian nations to convert to Christianity.
00:17:17It wasn't till the 10th century, a thousand years after the birth of Christ,
00:17:22that paganism's hold on the frozen north was broken.
00:17:26So around here, the paganism was stubborn.
00:17:31And in Viking art, it's often difficult to tell where the paganism ends and the Christianity begins.
00:17:42This is the biggest and most famous of all Scandinavian rune stones.
00:17:47The yelling stone.
00:17:51It weighs over 10 tons.
00:17:54It's two and a half metres tall.
00:17:58And as you can see, the entire stone seems to writhe with energy.
00:18:06What a fabulous thing.
00:18:09This inscription here, which goes all the way around,
00:18:13tells us that the yelling stone was put here by Harold Bluetooth,
00:18:20the energetic Viking ruler who's usually credited with converting the Danes to Christianity.
00:18:28I am Harold, it says here, son of Gorm, and I made the Danes Christians.
00:18:37It's carved on all three sides.
00:18:40And on this side, there's an image of a giant snake attacking a stylized lion.
00:18:47Now, obviously, there are no lions in Scandinavia.
00:18:49It's an image they found abroad.
00:18:52But the Vikings identified with the lion's fighting spirit.
00:18:56So it pops up a lot in their art.
00:18:58It's an image they made theirs.
00:19:03Now, I know what you're thinking.
00:19:06You're thinking, what lion and what snake?
00:19:09Well, inside the visitor's centre at Yelling,
00:19:13there's a coloured replica of the great stone,
00:19:16which shows you how the lion and the snake would originally have looked
00:19:21before all their paint fell off.
00:19:25But the most surprising sight is here on the biggest side.
00:19:30It's the culmination of the entire stone.
00:19:34But you can't see it yet.
00:19:36The light has to be exactly right.
00:19:49What you have to do is wait till the twilight begins to work its magic.
00:19:59Can you see it?
00:20:02It's a splendid Viking crucifixion,
00:20:05with this stern Christ in the centre,
00:20:09surrounded by all these writhing Viking knots.
00:20:13It's as if the whole stone can't keep still.
00:20:18And I like the way Christ hasn't actually got across.
00:20:22He's just standing there with his arms outstretched.
00:20:27So it's obviously another image that's been imported from abroad
00:20:32and is now being misunderstood so confidently.
00:20:48When the Vikings began behaving like Vikings and invaded Britain,
00:20:54they encountered the most exciting jewellers of the Dark Ages,
00:21:00the Anglo-Saxons.
00:21:03How do we know they were exciting?
00:21:06Because they've left behind this.
00:21:09The Sutton Hoo treasure.
00:21:17This is the finest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever dug up in Britain.
00:21:22One of the great treasures of the British Museum.
00:21:26Just look at it.
00:21:28My legs go weak every time I see it.
00:21:31Because it's in such excellent condition.
00:21:38Much of the art that survives from the Dark Ages has been battered by time.
00:21:45But not the Sutton Hoo treasure.
00:21:48In the finest pieces here,
00:21:51there's hardly a gram of gold bent out of place.
00:21:55Or a garnet missing.
00:22:00The Sutton Hoo treasure was dug up out of the ground in East Anglia
00:22:03just a few weeks before the start of the Second World War in 1939.
00:22:08So it couldn't be investigated properly till after the war was over.
00:22:14And what a torture that must have been for the waiting archaeologists.
00:22:21The treasure dates from around 620 A.D.
00:22:25and comes from the grave of an important East Anglian king.
00:22:31The king was buried in a ship, his transport to the next world.
00:22:37And all this was buried with him to serve him in the afterlife.
00:22:46These bits of sword here and the helmets mark him out as a mighty warrior.
00:22:51You wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of this man in heaven.
00:22:59They found a lyre in his grave as well,
00:23:02so the king could listen to his favourite music in the afterlife.
00:23:06And that's a recreation of it.
00:23:10He had to eat well, so this fabulous cooking cauldron was buried with him.
00:23:15Look at all the intricate Celtic decoration around it.
00:23:23Most important of all, the people who buried the king made sure that he'd look good in the next world
00:23:30by burying him with his best Anglo-Saxon ruler bling.
00:23:36Which is where this gold comes in.
00:23:39And those magnificent garnets.
00:23:45If you've ever seen finer jewellery than this,
00:23:49let me know where, because I want to go there.
00:23:53How did they do it?
00:23:56These Anglo-Saxon wizards.
00:24:02To penetrate their secrets, I've tracked down a man who knows.
00:24:09In his youth, Sean Greenhouse was a skilled forger.
00:24:15And some of the world's greatest museums have admired his output.
00:24:23Sean was finally caught and sent to prison, so he served his time.
00:24:28And these days, puts all that expertise to much better use as an independent craftsman.
00:24:34The methods he uses aren't exactly the same as the methods of the Dark Ages.
00:24:39The modern world has changed too much for that.
00:24:42But they're about as close as you can get.
00:24:45And what Sean's work gives us is an insider's view of how Anglo-Saxon jewellers actually made their pieces.
00:24:54So Sean, can you tell us what it is you're going to be making?
00:24:57Oh, it's an Anglo-Saxon disbrooch, silver with some enamel gilding, covering most of the aspects that the Anglo-Saxon
00:25:06jewellers would use.
00:25:07They obviously had lots of different techniques in the way they made their jewellery.
00:25:11Yeah, yeah.
00:25:12So which ones are you picking up here?
00:25:13Well, this is probably a 10th century. It's like a late Saxon disbrooch.
00:25:17The earlier ones were the golden garnet mostly, but these are religious symbolism on these.
00:25:24Is this based on an existing brooch?
00:25:26No, it's my own design, but it kind of encompasses elements of other things, kind of.
00:25:32So it's an original design in itself.
00:25:37The centre part will be done in gold ribbon, close on here, different coloured enamels.
00:25:42And that's a picture of an Anglo-Saxon king?
00:25:45Yeah, yeah. Just a generic long tash beard, whatever you have, and sword, and his right hand.
00:25:49And the element I have in tights will put it in.
00:25:52This is the hand of God over his shoulder.
00:25:55That'll be put in white and gold in that one.
00:25:58Wonderful. Let's get going.
00:25:59Okay. Let's get on bro.
00:26:07The delights of Sean's Anglo-Saxon disc brooch will have to wait.
00:26:14First, we need to cross the channel and search out those powerful Dark Age creatives.
00:26:22The Carolingians.
00:26:24Rulers of the Franks.
00:26:28The Franks were the ancestors of the modern French.
00:26:32Originally, they were Germans, just like the Anglo-Saxons.
00:26:37But they arrived in Gaul on one of those expansionist barbarian waves that we saw in film too.
00:26:44And early in their story, the Franks converted to Christianity.
00:26:50And they became particularly fierce defenders of the faith.
00:26:59Plenty of Dark Age societies liked their art to sparkle.
00:27:04A taste for gold is one of the Dark Age's defining characteristics.
00:27:11But when it comes to religious bling, the Frankish Christians were top of the charts.
00:27:23If you've ever wondered why the French sometimes conduct themselves as if they were the chosen people,
00:27:30it's because that's exactly what they thought they were.
00:27:34In 732 AD, the Franks, led by the heroic Charles Martel, Charles the Hammer,
00:27:42defeated an invading Muslim army which had come up from Spain hoping to conquer Europe.
00:27:51The Franks believed God had chosen them to save Europe from Islam.
00:27:58They were his chosen people.
00:28:02And their art seems particularly aware of this special position in God's good books.
00:28:14The mightiest of the Frankish kings, Charles the Great, or Charlemagne as he's usually called,
00:28:21came from a dynasty called the Carolingians.
00:28:28He was crowned in 768, and with typical Frankish modesty,
00:28:36pushed himself right to the front of Dark Age politics.
00:28:45Charlemagne was determined to expand the Frankish Empire.
00:28:51After all, it was God's chosen Empire.
00:28:56And the Carolingians were God's chosen leaders.
00:29:01And this expansion of Charlemagne's Christian Empire was achieved with deep brutality.
00:29:11In Germany, the Saxons, who were still pagans, were given a very simple choice.
00:29:19Convert to Christianity or die.
00:29:22If they didn't become Christians, they were killed.
00:29:25That was Charlemagne's choice.
00:29:32In 800 AD, in Rome, on Christmas Day itself, the Pope rewarded Charlemagne for his efforts on behalf of Christianity
00:29:43by crowning him as the Holy Roman Emperor.
00:29:49Charlemagne was now the leader of the largest empire Europe had seen since the fall of the Romans.
00:29:59The centre of gravity of Europe had shifted, and it had shifted to the north.
00:30:06This is the chapel that Charlemagne built here in Aachen on the Belgian borders.
00:30:12And from here, he ruled his new Christian empire.
00:30:17And this is actually the marble throne on which he sat.
00:30:27There's a spooky simplicity to Charlemagne's throne.
00:30:31Four slabs of ancient marble, a few metal clamps, six marble steps, and that's it.
00:30:40A gold-loving emperor is pretending to be a simple man.
00:30:52Charlemagne began building this chapel in 786 AD, and at exactly the same time, in Spain, the Muslims were building
00:31:03the great mosque in Cordoba,
00:31:05which I hope you remember from the last film.
00:31:09Such inventive and dramatic architecture, with those nimble double arches, and that gorgeous forest of columns.
00:31:26Charlemagne's chapel, this chapel, was intended to be a deliberate riposte to the Muslims.
00:31:34A Christian answer to the Cordoba mosque.
00:31:38Look up there, at the arches, and see how they have these alternating bands of colour.
00:31:45Just like the arches in the Cordoba mosque.
00:31:51But in Aachen, the stripy arches don't float or soar.
00:31:57Nothing does.
00:32:00This is architecture drawn with the biceps, not the wrist.
00:32:06Effortful and ponderous.
00:32:11I don't like this building.
00:32:13It feels brutal, clunky.
00:32:17This round shape was based originally on a Roman mausoleum.
00:32:22You can still sense the doom and cold atmospheres of the mausoleum in here.
00:32:33Gloomy.
00:32:35Expensive.
00:32:37Intense.
00:32:39Frankish Christianity bulldozes the senses.
00:32:44But it doesn't really pleasure them.
00:32:47At least, I don't think so.
00:32:51In the battle of the Northern Christians, give me Anglo-Saxon art any day.
00:33:21Christianity arrived in Britain from three directions at once, in a three-pronged religion.
00:33:30In the south, in ancient Kent, a team of monks led by St Augustine were sent here by the Pope
00:33:37in Rome.
00:33:38And they brought with them the official Roman version of Christianity.
00:33:45Up here, in the north of Britain, it was Irish monks from across the sea who came over to convert
00:33:52the pagans.
00:33:53And they brought with them a harsher, more basic, more penitential form of Christianity.
00:34:02They deliberately built their monasteries in difficult locations.
00:34:07And where they produced glorious art, with an ecstatic and insistent tone to it.
00:34:15Like the chanting of a great monks' choir.
00:34:21The third type of Christians, found in Anglo-Saxon Britain, were the ones who were already here.
00:34:28Remember in film one, how the Romans converted to Christianity under Constantine.
00:34:36And how one of the earliest known Christian house churches was found in Roman Britain, in Lullingstone, in Kent.
00:34:46We don't know much about these existing Christians.
00:34:50They were a modest Christian presence.
00:34:54But perhaps tiny droplets of this modesty were thrown into the melting pot as well.
00:35:05So the Anglo-Saxons would have had wood-heated kilns?
00:35:10A charcoal grazier, I should imagine.
00:35:14This is the silver I'm going to make the brooch out of.
00:35:17It's basically about 82% silver.
00:35:20Bit of copper, quite a lot of lead, which designates as Anglo-Saxon or Viking.
00:35:25A few other bits and that's in it.
00:35:27All the trace elements you don't get in modern silver.
00:35:32Sean melts down the Anglo-Saxon silver and to turn it into something useful, pours it into some moulds made
00:35:41from cuttlefish bones.
00:35:45So tell me about this cuttlefish. Is this what was used in ancient times to make moulds?
00:35:53It's been used for centuries. I should imagine it's a Roman tradition actually.
00:35:57If you take them out of the moulds, it should be relatively cool now.
00:36:01Right.
00:36:03That's how the actual thing got there.
00:36:04That's for the pin and the pin mount.
00:36:07So we'll quench that first of all.
00:36:12That basically just cools it down.
00:36:14It cleans it blown all the stuff off.
00:36:21Right.
00:36:24The next thing to do is to reduce this piece of silver for the main body down to about one
00:36:28and a half millimetres to replicate Anglo-Saxon disc brooches that are in existence.
00:36:34So first of all, you have to start with it from the centre to the outside.
00:36:40You always have to go outside to inside, inside to out, reverse it every time.
00:36:47So you're making it thinner?
00:36:48Yeah, basically, yeah.
00:36:49On the other side, you start in the centre and work to the middle.
00:36:53And that sole, you keep a uniform thickness because it tends to bowl to a natural bowl shape.
00:36:57It starts to split once you start to spread it out even further.
00:37:04You can hear the dull foot in it now.
00:37:06As we hammering it, it gets higher and higher the pitch.
00:37:09And with the, you can tell when it's hard enough so you don't crack it.
00:37:16That's more or less brought it to the next stage.
00:37:18So it's just a matter of us now repeating the process.
00:37:22And as we reduce it, the area will get larger.
00:37:26And once we've made a big enough piece, if we've reduced it to one and a half millimetres or thereabouts,
00:37:30we'll have a large enough piece to cut the disc out of.
00:37:33This is one and a half millimetres as you can see.
00:37:36That is just the same as this, it's just the same silver.
00:37:38When I've worked on it, it'll take about two days work, hammer work and a lot of ear bashing.
00:37:44Falling out with your neighbours and what have you to get it to that.
00:37:46So, we'll start on with this now.
00:37:49That is the basic shape of the brooch, is that right?
00:37:52The basic shape of the brooch.
00:38:02While Sean Greenhouse bangs away in his lair, back at the frontline of the Dark Ages,
00:38:09the Anglo-Saxon custom of burying the dead with things that would be useful to them in the afterlife,
00:38:16was, of course, a pagan custom.
00:38:22And, unfortunately, when the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity,
00:38:28that custom was stopped.
00:38:35In a Christian burial, you buried the body and that was it.
00:38:40So nothing as sumptuous as the Sutton Hoo treasure has survived in the Christian era.
00:38:47Instead, we get another kind of Anglo-Saxon treasure.
00:38:55It's a treasure made of granite and limestone.
00:38:59The resilient spiritual treasure that is the Anglo-Saxon funeral cross.
00:39:10Earlier on, we saw how the Vikings commemorated their dead with these mighty standing stones covered in runes.
00:39:20And this idea that stone is somehow eternal and lasts much longer than you,
00:39:27is something that was shared by all the voyaging tribes of the North.
00:39:35There's something splendidly basic about these Anglo-Saxon crosses.
00:39:40They're supposed to be Christian, but somehow their Christianity feels superficial and confined to the surface.
00:39:50Underneath, you can still sense the atmospheres of Stonehenge.
00:39:56A connection with the faraway past and the central mysteries of creation.
00:40:06See all this decoration here.
00:40:09It's called interlacing.
00:40:12It's Celtic in origin.
00:40:14You get it on the Anglo-Saxon crosses,
00:40:16but also on the great manuscripts written later in the monasteries, like Lindisfarne.
00:40:25A lot of people have written a lot of books on the subject of Celtic interlacing.
00:40:31What it means, why it was used.
00:40:34It's so beautiful to look at, but also so intrinsically mysterious.
00:40:44They say that its origins lie in basket weaving and plaiting, and we'll never know for sure.
00:40:51But my guess is that this is also an attempt by the Dark Age mind to grasp and mimic the
00:41:00rhythms of creation.
00:41:02To convey the sense that the cosmos goes on and on and on, and that everything in it is interrelated.
00:41:15This is a rather wonky specimen, which is why I like it so much.
00:41:21It's not quite right, so you just want to hug it.
00:41:25But because it's so wonky, the interlacing on the Lonan Cross in the Isle of Man is particularly clear.
00:41:38We're going to be seeing a lot of this Celtic interlacing and the marvellous manuscripts that are coming up.
00:41:45So I just wanted to show you quickly how it was done.
00:41:48It looks immensely complicated, but it's actually relatively simple.
00:42:08So first you need to mark out the grid.
00:42:13Say we want to do a decorative border or a gospel book.
00:42:18So here's the border.
00:42:21And we know from unfinished bits of manuscript that the monks have left behind,
00:42:25that the way they did it was to make this grid with dots to guide them.
00:42:32So we've got three dots, two dots, three dots, three dots, three dots, two dots, two dots, two dots, two
00:42:39dots.
00:42:39And like the dots on a dice.
00:42:42Three, two, three, two, three, two.
00:42:45Then you start filling in the spaces in between.
00:42:49Now the big rule in interlacing is that one line goes over and the other line goes under, over, under,
00:43:02over, under, over, under, all the way along.
00:43:07Now when you're about to get to the edge, you stop, because you need to work out how you're going
00:43:13to do the edges.
00:43:14Now I'm just going to square them off.
00:43:17That's the simplest way of doing it.
00:43:20But they also did all these elaborate things that leave out bits of the pattern and create this kind of
00:43:28asymmetrical symmetry.
00:43:31It's too complicated for me, I'm afraid.
00:43:34And once you've got your over, over, under, over, under, you start to fill in the bits of the background.
00:43:45Red and black.
00:43:46Red and black.
00:43:58There you are.
00:44:00Red and black.
00:44:01But a Celtic interlace.
00:44:07I've done this very big because I've got insensitive and stubby fingers.
00:44:13But if you are a dark aged monk pouring over a precious manuscript, then the borders you made were tiny.
00:44:23I mean, these people must have had extraordinary eyesight.
00:44:28Of course, if you're a sculptor, on the other hand,
00:44:33once you've designed your interlacing,
00:44:37you need to carve it into stone.
00:44:40And that's mightily difficult, too.
00:44:43And with this cross, the Lonan Cross,
00:44:46you can see that the interlacing
00:44:50is OK when it begins up here.
00:44:53But as it comes down,
00:44:55it gets wonkier and wonkier and wonkier.
00:45:07Back in Bolton, Sean Greenhouse has engraved the symbols
00:45:13of the Four Evangelists round the edges of his silver brooch.
00:45:19And he's now ready for the really difficult bit in the middle.
00:45:24The Anglo-Saxon king created so carefully with cloisonne enamels.
00:45:31The cloisonne enamel technique is a very old technique
00:45:35practiced by the Romans and the Celts, even, before then.
00:45:39It's just powdered glass, grown up, mixed in with water,
00:45:43and then just fired in the kiln.
00:45:45But the Anglo-Saxons and other people in the Dark Ages
00:45:47and into the Middle Ages
00:45:49would use Roman glass tesserers, grown up.
00:45:51The kind of thing you see in Walmores, Hakes, in Ravenna,
00:45:53and such places.
00:45:55Constantinople and such a...
00:45:57Because although they had the technology to make the glass,
00:46:00they didn't have the oxides to get the various colours,
00:46:03as you can see here, the yellows and the greens and the blues.
00:46:07The first stage is to lay down the king's outlines
00:46:11in a delicate framework of itsy-bitsy bits of pure gold.
00:46:18It's all fiddly, these little bits, you know.
00:46:22The eyes and the nose.
00:46:26Then, the really tough work begins.
00:46:30Getting the powdered glass into this labyrinth of gold cells.
00:46:37Right.
00:46:39You know, just fill in the background now, the dark blue.
00:46:42It's always better to get the background in first, the largest area
00:46:45to fill the largest area.
00:46:47And it kind of holds most of the wires in position then.
00:46:50So you're not pushing everything about.
00:46:54So careful you don't drop any into the other cells,
00:46:57but otherwise it all has to be washed off if you do that, you know.
00:46:59Start again, it's...
00:47:03Right, just got to work out the colour schemes now.
00:47:06I think the yellows can go in next.
00:47:08So I'll mix some yellow.
00:47:10Right, here we go.
00:47:18See, the difficult part to fill the small pieces because of just touching them with it,
00:47:22the surface tension tends to like glue them to the damn brush.
00:47:27So, slowly does it, I think.
00:47:35And then we'll put the tash in there.
00:47:38Long, droopy, they're good to confess a tash.
00:47:43That's the hair, a bit yellow.
00:47:46A general cluster hairdo.
00:47:49It's just slow, fiddle work, you know.
00:47:52I was fighting the surface tension with it.
00:47:57Right, pale green into the cloak itself,
00:48:00and then we're ready for firing when I've dried it out.
00:48:06All right.
00:48:08While Sean prepares to pop his Anglo-Saxon king into the kiln,
00:48:14I'm thinking that his brooch reminds me strongly
00:48:18of the most famous of all Anglo-Saxon jewels.
00:48:22The so-called Alfred jewel.
00:48:26They say that originally it was the top of a reading implement
00:48:31sent out to the bishops by King Alfred himself.
00:48:35It's now found in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
00:48:40And what a beautiful thing it is.
00:48:48So this style of brooch is obviously a late Anglo-Saxon, isn't it?
00:48:52Yeah, probably 10th century, I should imagine, the design.
00:48:55I mean, a lot of people always say that the Anglo-Saxon jewellery
00:48:58was at its peak earlier than that.
00:49:00They think of the Sutton Hoo hoard.
00:49:02Yeah, yeah, the Garnet stuff and the Garnet jewellery, the gold and whatever.
00:49:05That's right.
00:49:06Fashion's changed, I suppose.
00:49:07I prefer the later stuff.
00:49:09I think it's far more elegant and there's far more to it.
00:49:12Anyway, that's the Closone finished.
00:49:14Beautiful.
00:49:15So that's obviously an echo, if you like, of the Alfred jewel, isn't it?
00:49:21So it's kind of like a mish-mash of various things,
00:49:24but it's all of its time and period.
00:49:26Can I have a look at that?
00:49:27Yeah.
00:49:27I see, yes.
00:49:30Beautiful.
00:49:32And who is this figure you've put on there?
00:49:34It's kind of King Alfred, is it?
00:49:35Well, no, it's just a generic figure of a Saxon king, I suppose,
00:49:40with the long tash and the pointy beard and the blonde hair and the blue eyes.
00:49:45Beautiful.
00:49:45Kind of very like to portray themselves, I should imagine.
00:49:48Anyway, we just have to get on there and assemble it.
00:49:50Yes.
00:49:50So we'll do that next, shall we?
00:49:52Yes.
00:49:53Right.
00:49:55First thing to do is put the crystal into the silver gilt collar.
00:49:59And that just drops into there.
00:50:02And then this piece will be riveted on the back,
00:50:06with these little rivets, gilt-headed, so...
00:50:09Yes.
00:50:09So I'll put them in now, there's a little bit of fiddle, I guess.
00:50:25And there we have it.
00:50:27That it?
00:50:28It's finished.
00:50:30That's beautiful.
00:50:32The shorn greenhouse jewel.
00:50:36If you move it about in the light, you can get the edges of the actual gold.
00:50:40It kind of sparkles, yeah.
00:50:42Beautiful.
00:50:45I love quazonewack.
00:50:46I love it.
00:50:54Up in the harsher corners of the Anglo-Saxon world,
00:50:58the Irish monks who converted the north of Britain
00:51:02were deliberately cutting themselves off from life's little comforts.
00:51:08Exiles for Christ, they called themselves.
00:51:14Lindisfarne up there, where the monastery was founded by Saint Aidan in 635 AD,
00:51:21was deliberately out of the way, secluded.
00:51:25When the tide was out, the only way across was along this path here.
00:51:32The Pilgrim's Way, it was called.
00:51:34Marked out with these wooden stakes.
00:51:37But if you were coming from the other side of the island, from the sea,
00:51:42then Lindisfarne wasn't cut off at all.
00:51:45In fact, it was very tempting.
00:51:51The Viking raids on Britain, which did so much to tarnish the reputations of the Norsemen,
00:51:59began with a raid on Lindisfarne in 793.
00:52:04And for the next century or so, the Vikings kept coming back.
00:52:13Monasteries were easy pickings.
00:52:16They were basically undefended, manned by peaceful monks.
00:52:20And they were packed with sumptuous religious treasures.
00:52:24And excellently positioned for Viking raids.
00:52:31The monasteries of the Dark Ages were Aladdin's caves of treasures.
00:52:38Jewel-encrusted relic boxes.
00:52:42Golden crosses studded with rubies and pearls.
00:52:50We live in a world in which Louis Vuitton luggage and Jimmy Choo shoes seem precious.
00:52:58In the Dark Ages, they knew better.
00:53:06For the Vikings, the main attraction of the monasteries was obviously all that fabulous Christian gold in them.
00:53:15The rubies, the pearls.
00:53:17But it's recently been suggested that there were other reasons why they targeted the monasteries.
00:53:24Religious reasons.
00:53:26Remember, in 793 AD, when they raided Lindisfarne,
00:53:31the Vikings were still hardcore pagans.
00:53:35Stubborn believers in Odin, Thor and Freya.
00:53:42For these pagan Vikings, the fierce missionary enthusiasm of the Irish monks
00:53:48and the brutal conversion tactics of Charlemagne constituted an assault on their religion.
00:53:58The Vikings liked being pagans.
00:54:01They didn't like being told they were worshipping the wrong gods.
00:54:05So when they attacked the monasteries, it wasn't just to grab all this fabulous Christian loot.
00:54:13It was also a form of religious payback.
00:54:17You think our religion's wrong.
00:54:20We think your religion's wrong.
00:54:27The monks on Lindisfarne were also fighting a religious war.
00:54:32Their monastery was a hive of busy missionary activity.
00:54:38But unlike the Vikings, the preferred weapon of the monks wasn't the sword, but the word.
00:54:50You must have noticed that all the way through this series, I've been harping on about the power of words
00:54:57in the dark ages.
00:54:59I'm like a stuck record on the subject.
00:55:04Words, letters, inscriptions.
00:55:08They keep appearing in this story.
00:55:12And wherever they appear, they seem to glow with dark age urgency.
00:55:24If you controlled the word in the dark ages, you controlled the world.
00:55:32And for me, the most captivating evidence of this immense power that words had
00:55:38is the great book created here by the monks of Lindisfarne.
00:55:45The Lindisfarne Gospels.
00:55:53This isn't just one of the great masterpieces of British art.
00:55:59This is one of the great masterpieces of all art.
00:56:05Written and decorated on Lindisfarne by a monk called Ed Frith,
00:56:11the Lindisfarne Gospel contains a calligraphic cosmos of exceptional vitality.
00:56:22It contains the four gospels of the New Testament,
00:56:27the story of Christ as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
00:56:32And each of these evangelists gets a portrait to himself.
00:56:38So there's St. Matthew writing his gospel.
00:56:42And it says, Matteus, Matthew up here.
00:56:46All the portraits in here are rather traditional.
00:56:49They could easily be Italian or Byzantine.
00:56:53But then you turn the pages and you come across this.
00:57:01And this certainly isn't traditional or Italian.
00:57:05This is a uniquely British contribution to the art of the dark ages.
00:57:15Look at all this amazing Celtic interweaving that's filling all the letters.
00:57:22And all these cosmic swirls and twirls and spirals.
00:57:28It's like a magnificent garden of paradise that's erupted across the pages.
00:57:33And yet, it's got this pagan kick to it as well.
00:57:44This is St. John, the writer of the fourth gospel.
00:57:47That's his portrait.
00:57:49And there above his head, the eagle.
00:57:51That's his sign, just so we know who it is.
00:57:57And this is the actual beginning of John's gospel.
00:58:01And look how astonishingly beautiful it is.
00:58:05And do you know what this says?
00:58:08What all this amazingly complicated interlacing
00:58:12and all this cosmic calligraphy.
00:58:15Do you know what this says?
00:58:17It says,
00:58:19In principio erat verbum.
00:58:23Et verbum erat apod deum.
00:58:27In the beginning was the Word.
00:58:31The Word was with God.
00:58:38In the Lindisfarne gospel,
00:58:41Christian energy and Celtic inventiveness.
00:58:45Pictures and letters have come together in cosmic adulation of the Word.
00:58:57So that's the story of the Dark Ages.
00:59:00They weren't dark at all.
00:59:03The Christian's struggle to imagine their God
00:59:07was one of the most exciting struggles in art.
00:59:10The barbarians were inventive peoples who made glorious bling.
00:59:18Islam spent these years reaching for the stars.
00:59:23While the Anglo-Saxons were magnificent goldsmiths
00:59:28and brilliant wordsmiths.
00:59:32When William the Conqueror invaded Britain in 1066
00:59:37and brought the Dark Ages to some sort of official end,
00:59:42he brought to an end one of the great ages of art.
00:59:53Stay with us, the dragons are feeling festive as well as fiery,
00:59:56here on BBC HD in a few moments,
00:59:58with a Christmas special.
01:00:02Nican Cast.
01:00:02In the Lindisfarne.
01:00:02Yeah.
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