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00:02This program is rated PG and contains mature subject matter. Viewer discretion is advised.
00:16Over a billion dollars worth of Viking treasure could still be found if you can decipher where
00:22they buried it. Their wealth comes from raiding and trading some of the greatest wealth of the
00:28world. Gold, silver, crowns, crosses, amulets. So if you find one of their burial mounds you may find a
00:36treasure beyond belief. To this day incredible discoveries keep turning up. This buried Viking
00:44ship is 78 feet long and inside is all kinds of treasure. Another person stumbles upon a completely
00:52forgotten Viking city filled with gold, silver and jewels. There are any number of places they could
00:58have hidden treasure. Many historians believe these riches are just the tip of the iceberg if you know
01:04where to search. They did not realize that it might be actually evidence of Viking presence in North
01:10America. Now we explore the top theories surrounding the Vikings lost treasure. A strange coin discovered
01:19on a beach in Maine could upend everything we know about the Vikings. If this map is to be believed
01:25it's
01:25a gateway to a hidden world. Are there any rich Viking hordes still waiting to be found?
01:32And if so, where are they?
01:49June 8th, 793. A peaceful day on the island of Lindisfarne in northeast England, home to the region's
01:58most significant Christian monastery. But that peace will soon be broken by a band of Viking warriors.
02:08The monks of Lindisfarne are going about their daily business. They're farming for their own sustenance
02:13or they're doing their monastic duty. They're a peaceful people. But this peaceful culture of worship
02:21is no match for the Vikings. The Vikings are fierce warriors and they are armed. The monks are not.
02:32They sweep in unopposed and it's a literal slaughter. The Vikings kill the monks, plunder the church's holy
02:41relics and take everything of value away in their longboats.
02:50You might think that a monastery full of monks wouldn't be the best place to plunder. But monasteries
02:57back in the Middle Ages were full of precious objects made of gold and silver.
03:02The Vikings discover unimaginable wealth in this monastery. Gold-encrusted crosses or jewels or
03:10manuscripts that have gold covers on them. For them, nothing is sacred here.
03:15The Vikings take all the treasure that they can see and then they disappear across the sea. Terrifying.
03:24In 793, with the attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne, the Viking Age had begun.
03:33Once they have a taste of attacking a monastery and seeing the incredible wealth inside,
03:40they begin systematically attacking monasteries, churches and fortresses across the British Isles.
03:47The Vikings are predominantly coming from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, where it's very difficult to
03:54do farming in certain parts. This is harsh land. So what the Vikings really grow is resilience.
04:04These are hardened people. They are competing for resources and they're doing it violently. They
04:22they're competing for resources and they're competing for resources. They're competing for resources.
04:24And that enables them to look to distant horizons. And what they do on those distant shores is plunder.
04:31So if you wanted to maintain your power as a Viking chieftain, you had to have wealth in order to
04:38buy
04:39the loyalty of other strong and impressive warriors. If they could do it through raiding,
04:44that was even better because now you get some free stuff in order to gain more power.
04:49This plundered Christian wealth is worth the equivalent of billions of dollars today.
04:55And it's for free, just taken with might. They're just looking for any way to enrich themselves.
05:02They are terrorizing Europe all over the Russian river system, through the Baltic coast,
05:08the North Atlantic and across the North Sea. And the Vikings didn't fear death in battle.
05:14They sort of anticipated it and looked forward to it. They believed that if you die this glorious death
05:21in battle, virgin warriors called Valkyries will take you and lead you by the hand to Valhalla.
05:28In essence, a warrior paradise, a warrior holy land. There they get to feast and drink and celebrate
05:36their battlefield exploits with their god, Odin. The Vikings who died on the battlefield
05:43were either cremated on funerary pyres or they're buried, often with their possessions.
05:49These are called grave goods. The Vikings thought that these treasures would follow them into Valhalla.
05:56They are usually their most prized possessions. So beautiful jewelry, ornate swords, gold coins,
06:03silver coins. Your grave goods are part of your identity and your personal belongings that you
06:08have the right to take with you to the afterlife.
06:11They would bury this wealth all across the world, but many times these hoards of treasure
06:17were forgotten and never discovered again.
06:19Some say the kind of treasure that could have been amassed by the Vikings over several centuries
06:25could number in the billions of dollars, but there is no surviving knowledge. There are no treasure maps
06:31to tell you where to find it. The knowledge of the Vikings' buried treasure is lost for nearly a
06:38thousand years until a chance discovery in England reignites interest in their plunder.
06:47In 1840, workers repairing a riverbank in northwest England come upon something unusual,
06:53a rotting chest lined with lead. What they find within will reignite interest in Viking culture
07:01almost immediately. It is a treasure trove the likes of which had never been seen.
07:12It is an amazing find. It's full of silver coins and ingots and jewelry. Altogether it's 8500 pieces.
07:21And it all dates back to somewhere between 903 and 910 CE.
07:27This discovery fuels a craze for Viking treasure. Archaeologists and amateur treasure hunters begin
07:34digging holes all over England, literally anywhere that Vikings are believed to have once been.
07:40Two months after the Curedale Hordes discovered, Queen Victoria declares this a treasure trove.
07:45It means that anything found is of historical value to the nation and thus belongs to the crown.
07:52Queen Victoria hands it over to the British Museum. And even though people know that if they find any
08:01kind of hoard like this, they have to turn it over, in 19th century England, aiding queen and country is
08:08one of the greatest acts of patriotism that somebody could perform. Everybody is looking for Viking coins.
08:15Everybody is looking for Viking burial sites. People start thinking, do I have a Viking site in my backyard?
08:20So it leads to a lot more discoveries. The raid at Lindisfarne Monastery in 793
08:27is one major milestone in the Viking expansion into England. But towards the 9th century,
08:34the Vikings start settling a section of England that's called the Danelaw.
08:38By the late 9th century, the Vikings have settled in Mercia, Northumbria, East Anglia,
08:45and they create their capital in today's present-day York.
08:49Sites all over England have these deposits of coins. Sometimes they're huge deposits,
08:55sometimes they're small deposits.
08:56In the 1880s, as much as $200,000 worth of coins is found in northeast England.
09:02In 1912, a catch is found in Scotland, valuing as much as $800,000. And a silver hoard was found
09:10in Herefordshire, valued at $4 million. It's an astounding amount of Viking treasure.
09:17By the 2010s, every known Viking settlement has been poured over by countless individuals with
09:25everything from shovels to modern metal detectors. Many scholars are confident that the English
09:32countryside has been picked clean of all the Viking hoards. They've all been found.
09:36But then, a single treasure hunter makes an unexpected discovery.
09:41There's a woman by the name of Kath Giles, who in 2018, retires after 30 years as a police officer
09:48on the Isle of Man. And she's really interested in this idea of the Vikings having left some sort
09:55of presence behind on her little island. She begins scouring the seaside with her metal detector,
10:02looking for Viking treasure. For many years, she doesn't find anything. But then, in 2021,
10:08she's out on the beach, and her metal detector goes crazy.
10:14She finds 87 silver coins, 13 pieces of hack silver armbands, and she finds certain artifacts from
10:24as far afield as Turkey.
10:27Hacksilver is when you would melt the coins down into these elaborate twisted silver necklaces,
10:32and are the hallmarks of a perfect hoard. If you were a chieftain, and one of your warriors does
10:39something pretty good, you might break off a little piece of your arm ring. If somebody does something
10:43spectacular, you'd give them the whole ring.
10:47The pieces are eventually dated to around 1,000 to 1035 CE. The total value of the find is yet
10:54to be
10:54determined. Similar items have been valued at $1,600, so if her collection is 100 pieces, she could be
11:00looking at $160,000 worth of treasure. Giles' find sets off another Viking horde searching fever,
11:10but no one really has much success. One couple from England finds a horde of coins,
11:17but they're so badly corroded, they're probably only worth like $1,000, and no one has found anything
11:22since. If treasure hunters really want to find Viking treasure, they might look not where the Vikings
11:30plundered, but where they died. Since the first recorded discovery of Viking treasure in 1840,
11:41people have searched for where else they may have buried their plunder.
11:45If you want to find Viking treasure, for a lot of treasure hunters,
11:49the best place to look is the place that brings them closest to Valhalla.
11:57Valhalla is deeply connected to Scandinavia, so the closer you are to Scandinavia,
12:02the closer you are to their heaven.
12:05The Vikings want to be buried there to shorten the length of that journey to the afterlife.
12:10If you could find one of these elaborate burial sites, you could probably also find treasure.
12:16There are burial mounds all along the coast of Norway and the rest of Scandinavia,
12:22full of, we presume, grave goods deposited with the person at the time of death.
12:31In 1879, in a little town called Gokstad in Norway, two teenage boys are asking their father
12:40repeatedly if they could maybe dig on a large mound that existed on their property. And the father says,
12:48sure, go ahead, dig. So they begin to dig and they strike wood. They break through and what they find
12:57is a burial chamber. Inside appear to be human remains.
13:03So the boys go running back to their father and he immediately contacts Oslo University and lets them
13:10know that perhaps they might want to send an expert out there.
13:13In 1880, archaeologist Nikolai Nikolaisen is dispatched to the site. And what he discovers
13:20is absolutely staggering. A 78-foot-long Viking ship.
13:27This is one of the best preserved Viking ships ever found. And it's dated to around 900 CE,
13:34so it's close to a thousand years old. But the ship itself is just the tip of the iceberg,
13:40because what it contained is even more exciting. It was the tomb of an important man.
13:46The ship turns out to be part of an incredibly elaborate grave. That's why this ship is discovered
13:54so far from water. Nikolaisen believes that whoever was buried here must have been an incredibly powerful
14:02and important person to have received a burial this grand.
14:07It appears, however, that the boys were not the first to find this tomb. There are very few artifacts
14:13within, so it probably been discovered by grave robbers once or multiple times before, perhaps as
14:21early as the Viking Age itself. The tomb raiders did miss a few things though. They find golden fish
14:27hooks, ivory amulets. There are even some bronze bracelets tucked away in the corner of the boat.
14:34Furthermore, the archaeologists find the bones of 12 horses, eight dogs, and two peacocks,
14:40most likely sacrificed to accompany the great man into the afterlife.
14:46As reports of the find circulate worldwide, a new generation of treasure hunters descends on the
14:53first homelands in search of other burial mounds. Countless Norwegians and Swedes and Danes take to
15:01their coastlines just like the English did. Unfortunately, all they find usually is just small,
15:07unmarked graves. Nothing of true scale like the Goughlin ship is ever found again.
15:14By the time we get to the last couple of decades, technology has really changed for these treasure
15:20hunters. So you now have ground penetrating radar, you have LiDAR, you have drones and satellite imaging.
15:28With the rise of new technologies comes the rise of illegal digging. Authorities speculate that Viking
15:35graves may have been found only for the treasure to be sold on the black market, so we may never
15:43know
15:43the scale of what's been discovered in recent decades. By 1999, illegal digging has become such an issue
15:51that a Swedish TV crew sets out to make a documentary about it. Their hope is to expose the culprits
15:57tearing up the countryside, but what they end up finding is far more newsworthy.
16:05They've come across a once illegal dig site that's been stopped by the authorities,
16:10and an archaeologist is using a metal detector. And to his surprise, the metal detector goes berserk. It's
16:19off the charts. They found several thousand coins. They thought they had found an amazing discovery,
16:26but the archaeologists came and did a more expansive excavation. The resulting hoard is the largest
16:33hoard that's ever been found, and it's still coming out today. It's an amazing amount of wealth
16:39worth about 10 million in today's dollars. Interestingly, the excavations revealed that the
16:45hoard had been deposited under the floorboards of a warehouse, probably for safekeeping.
16:52Why the treasure was never recovered is, of course, a mystery. Now, there's some evidence that the
16:58foundations of the warehouse may have been burnt, so maybe it fell to raiders and the treasure was lost
17:05under the debris. As you can imagine, treasure hunting skyrockets after this discovery. People
17:12come to these places hoping to see whether there are other possible treasures. Some Scandinavians use
17:19this opportunity to take advantage of the next wave of Viking treasure hunters. They start using it as a
17:27marketing tool to bring tourism around, and countless paying customers try to find the treasure.
17:35In Iceland, there is an ancient legend of a great treasure hidden beneath a waterfall.
17:40So now every campsite owner near a waterfall is advertising, visit, stay for a while, and look for Viking treasure.
17:49People will say to tourists that they're allowed to do this. It's absolutely not true.
17:53It is illegal. You have to have a permit. And if you do, you will get fined. And I think
17:59in some
17:59countries there's even jail time. So don't do it.
18:05For centuries, treasure hunters in search of Viking loot focused on Britain and Scandinavia.
18:11But some believe the greatest untapped fortunes were further east, in Russia.
18:18We tend to think that England was the beginning of the Viking period, but actually they were using
18:25the river systems in Russia in order to get to the east earlier than they had been going west.
18:32The raiding techniques that the Vikings were using in the Russian river system is definitely
18:37different than what they were doing in England and in France. They were targeting trade towns rather
18:42than monasteries. And they did eventually establish a stronghold at what we consider the city of Kyiv,
18:49where the rivers converge in modern day Ukraine.
18:53But far to the northeast, along the Volkov River, an extraordinary discovery suggests
18:59that the Vikings had great stores of wealth in the Russian heartland as well.
19:06In 1911, archaeologists discover an ancient Viking city that may date to as far back as 750 CE.
19:16The discovery of the site that's known today as Starilataka cemented the understanding that the
19:22Vikings were very active in Eastern Europe.
19:25A lot of what we know about the Vikings in the east was sort of shrouded in mystery,
19:31and there wasn't a lot of archaeological evidence prior to only a few years ago.
19:41So what's really interesting about this is that the Vikings are not just doing raids and getting
19:46the hell out of there, they kind of settle and spend a little bit of time. This shows that there's
19:51so
19:51much that we still don't know about the Vikings, that they are more than just a raiding party searching
19:57to die in Valhalla. They are people looking to establish communities in places that they've never
20:03been before.
20:04This was a thriving Viking community. Archaeologists find the remnants of metal shops for making
20:10armor. They find jewelry shops for making beaded necklaces. They widen their search from the site
20:17of the fortified town and they find up to 30 Viking burial mounds.
20:22Viking burial mounds is where you'd expect to find treasure, and undoubtedly there's going to be a
20:27lot of treasure that will be found in Sarilataka because of all the goods that pass through there.
20:32Any of these could theoretically hold a Viking king and all of the treasures and grave goods that went
20:39with him. But when Russian archaeologists open up 30 tombs, not a lot is found. They find a few runestones,
20:46they find a few metal amulets. It seems like these Vikings had settled and were more engaged in
20:55commerce in this life rather than amassing treasure for the next.
21:00After the initial discoveries, the political unrest and conflict that define Russian history
21:06in the 20th century make digs very difficult. But then, in the late 1990s, a Russian archaeologist
21:13named Sergei Kainov picks up the trail once again.
21:17Kainov follows the trail of the Vikings 100 miles down the Volkov River.
21:22In 2014, his years of searching finally pay off.
21:27After 20 years of looking, he finally discovers evidence of accumulated wealth in Novgorod,
21:34which is a major city in northern Russia.
21:37He's digging and he finds a pit that has been intentionally dug. And in this deposit, Kainov finds
21:46tons of Viking swords, weaponry, axes, things like that, all of them very badly damaged.
21:55That leaves Kainov to believe that this might be the site of a massive battle,
22:00and that this particular pit is a mass grave.
22:04The problem with this is there aren't the bodies excavated anywhere to kind of support this.
22:10So instead, what it looks like is some sort of votive horde, an offering to the gods.
22:18To the Vikings who disposed of these weapons, they were only valuable symbolically as an offering to
22:25the gods. But even in their battered state, they're today worth as much as $10,000 each.
22:30Since 2014, Kainov actually has found burial mounds that had the bodies of Viking warriors still
22:38wearing their armor, but he hasn't found any great treasure hoard.
22:43Finding a Viking chieftain in his armor with his weaponry helps to paint the picture of Viking
22:51activity that corresponds to what we know from the historical documents, that these were warriors
22:55claiming territory, establishing their own strongholds along the Russian river system.
23:00And many more caches of coins could come to light in the future.
23:05Vikings did make it far into the heart of Russia, and they weren't simply passing through.
23:11They were claiming it as their own. But if there is treasure out there, it remains hidden.
23:20After decades of searching Europe and Russia for hidden Viking treasure, some wonder if the greatest
23:26discoveries have already been made. Many treasure hunters are now looking thousands of miles beyond
23:32the known homelands of the Vikings. Among these places, the shores of North America.
23:39It's natural to expect to find Viking treasure in the British Isles or in Scandinavia.
23:46And yet one of the most interesting finds occurs in a very unlikely place, in 1957 off the coastline of
23:54Maine.
23:55Amateur archaeologist Guy Melgren comes across a curious find. It's a silver coin. It's badly eroded,
24:04but it has what looks to be a cross on one side and a long necked animal with a mane
24:11on the other.
24:13So they took the coin and they gave it to a numismatist and they discovered that it was conclusively
24:18a Scandinavian minted coin from the end of the 11th century. What they didn't realize was that
24:24it may have implications in terms of Vikings in North America.
24:29It becomes a hotly debated topic, like at what point did the Vikings actually land on American
24:37shores and where did they go and how long did they stay?
24:45A lot of people say that if the Vikings did come, they were landing farther up and certainly not as
24:51far down south as Maine. But only a few years later, Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his
24:58archaeologist wife Anne decide to find proof of the ancient Viking tales of voyages across the Atlantic.
25:06Helge Ingstad is dead set on trying to find evidence of the Viking settlements in North America.
25:13He thought it was most likely that the Vikings landed on the northern tip of Newfoundland Island.
25:18And in 1960, he and his wife make a major discovery.
25:22They find a Viking settlement they call Lanzo Meadow from somewhere in the late 10th and early 11th centuries.
25:32What they don't find is anything like the buried treasure of Britain and Scandinavia,
25:37but they've made a monumental discovery.
25:39Our understanding of Viking Age activities in North America was very mysterious and not well understood.
25:48Lanzo Meadows looks to be a base camp for operations all around the Gulf of St. Lawrence and perhaps further
25:53south.
25:54There's no evidence that it was a year-round settlement. Instead, it was utilized seasonally by Viking explorers.
26:04If it was a base camp, a launching point for explorations,
26:08those explorations could have taken the Vikings further south into North America.
26:13We have very conclusive evidence that the Vikings came to North America, even if they didn't stay very long.
26:20But this coin is another piece of possible proof that they were even further in North America at this time.
26:27Later, in the 1960s, more purported evidence comes up that the Vikings might not only have
26:35settled in North America, but might also have mapped it.
26:39After the discovery of Lanzo Meadows, Yale University purchases a Viking Age map showing North America
26:47that's called the Vinland map, and it is valued at millions of dollars if it is authentic.
26:54The map is published with great fanfare in 1965. There's tremendous interest all around the world
27:00that this map could lead to the discovery of new Viking settlements and new Viking treasures.
27:07But somewhat suspect about the Vinland map is how accurate the coastline of Greenland is.
27:12We today know Greenland is actually an island, but navigators in the Viking Age would not have been
27:18able to circumnavigate Greenland. It would have been icebound. But Yale University maintains its accuracy.
27:23And so once again, people think, well, if the Vikings were here, could they have left any treasure behind?
27:30Much of the speculation is that the Vikings made it a lot further south than Newfoundland.
27:35And the name Vinland means land of grapes. So logically speaking, people have thought,
27:41for instance, Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. Over the following decades, several alleged relics turn up
27:50in the U.S., suggesting that the Vikings did explore this far south. In 1984, on the coast of Rhode
27:57Island,
27:58a man digging for clams discovers a large sandstone boulder. And what's interesting is it appears
28:05to be inscribed with what looks like Viking symbols. Some believe that the carvings might be the last
28:14remains of a lost Icelandic settlement, and that this boulder could have been a boundary marker to claim
28:21territory. Even more contested and fantastical is the Kensington ruin stone, supposedly discovered by a
28:32farmer tilling his field in western Minnesota. This rune stone is covered by what some claim to be
28:39Viking letters from 1362. The Kensington rune stone is considered a forgery by most historians,
28:47but of course it does have some defenders. If the Kensington rune stone is an authentic artifact,
28:53it would be revolutionary to our understanding of Viking activity in North America. There's really no
28:59precedent for that except for the Vinland map that would even hint towards that level of sustained
29:04activity. With the crucial exception of L'Anse-Omedo, most so-called Viking discoveries in North America
29:11have been revealed to be hoaxes. This leads most historians to conclude that the Viking presence
29:17in North America has been vastly overstated. But these aren't the only indications of Viking plunder
29:25buried in North America. The team exploring Oak Island in Nova Scotia believes they've found evidence
29:32that Vikings reached the island and may have helped bury treasure there. Rick and Marty Lagina,
29:40along with their team, have explored Oak Island for 18 years and counting. They have a very interesting
29:46theory that the Vikings were associated with the Knights Templar, a military order of knights that emerged
29:56during the Crusades and became immensely wealthy. The brothers believe that there are clues to their
30:03presence in modern-day North America, and there are traces in Oak Island. The team found physical evidence,
30:11like an iron arrowhead that's 1,000 years old, just like the ones from Scandinavia. They've also found
30:19what they think is a Viking ship beneath a deep bog on Oak Island, but so far no Viking or
30:26Templar
30:27hordes have been found, although the brothers think it's only a matter of time.
30:34In the late 20th century, there's a new chapter in the worldwide search for Viking treasure. 3,000 miles
30:42away from Scandinavia lies the greatest city in medieval Europe, Constantinople.
30:50Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Empire, the jewel in the entire Mediterranean at this period
30:57of time. It was a beautiful, very wealthy, grand city, and the Vikings made their way to the city as
31:05well.
31:06In 1964, archaeologists discovered a strange inscription etched into the white marble of the Hagia Sophia.
31:14This was originally an Orthodox church in Constantinople, which today is a mosque in Istanbul, Turkey.
31:23The inscription is recognized as Viking runes, and it reads,
31:28Half Dan carved these runes, or Half Dan was here. Historians had long suspected Viking activity
31:34in the area. Now we have the Viking equivalent of carving your name in a tree trunk. There's always
31:41been evidence written on rune stones in Scandinavia, but this is one of the very conclusive pieces of
31:48evidence in Turkey itself. So that lends credence to the idea that there's probably more to be found
31:55there. Constantinople isn't just the capital of the powerful Byzantine Empire. It gives the Vikings
32:01access to a 4,000-mile trade route known as the Silk Road. If they're in Constantinople, then they would
32:10have been along the Silk Road, the most lucrative trade route of all time.
32:20The surest way to riches in the Middle Ages? It's along the ancient Silk Road.
32:25It was a network of trade routes spanning 4,000 miles, stretching from China all the way to
32:32Constantinople. It is immensely traveled. It is very wealthy. It is for 400 years the wealthiest tract
32:43of land in the world. It would have been desirable for the Vikings to have contact with the Silk Road,
32:49but they probably traded rather than raided. The Vikings got all the way down to Baghdad, and they
32:56would have traded their seal skins and seal fat and walrus tusks for gold coins.
33:04From the 9th to the 11th centuries, Baghdad is one of the great trading centers of the world.
33:11If the Vikings are conducting trade in Baghdad, you could easily imagine them stashing some of their
33:17loot along the Silk Road. Now, for a long time, people doubted this, because why would you bury
33:24treasure in a place that we're actually just passing through? That was the longstanding belief,
33:29until a discovery changed everything.
33:34In 2013, an archaeologist, excavating along the Sea of Marmara, discovers a very small hoard. There is an
33:43amber cross, there is a couple of other pieces of European jewelry and coins. This looks like the Vikings
33:51took this from some European church and deposited it here. If this is indeed Viking treasure,
33:59more could be waiting to be found somewhere along the ancient Silk Road. Then, in 2014,
34:06a remarkable discovery provides evidence that the Vikings along the Silk Road were doing much more than
34:15just trading. In September of 2014, an amateur treasure hunter is searching church-owned land in
34:22southwest Scotland when their device goes off, signaling something big. A county archaeologist is called in,
34:31and they manage to dig up a huge collection of artifacts from the Viking Age. It's called the Galloway Horde.
34:38It's staggering. There are hundred silver armbands, there are brooches, there are ingots, there are
34:44jewel-encrusted crosses. Ultimately, the Galloway Horde is valued by some accounts at 10 million dollars.
34:52But a single item among all this wealth is unlike any other treasure previously found in a Viking Horde.
34:59They find a lidded vessel that is clearly of Eastern origin. It's found to be ornately decorated with
35:09tigers and leopards and fire imagery. These are all images of Zoroastrian religious artifacts.
35:20It's a holy Zoroastrian object not to be used by outsiders.
35:26The Zoroastrian religion once thrived in the heart of the ancient Persian Empire,
35:32much farther down the Silk Road. One has to ask how the Vikings got Zoroastrian artifacts. They
35:40wouldn't have just given that up to the Vikings. The Vikings must have raided it on the Silk Road.
35:46The discovery of the Galloway Horde is one more example of the ongoing piecing together of the Viking
35:54past. There are discoveries on a regular basis and there's definitely hope for more to be discovered.
36:00The Galloway Horde really underscores that the Vikings were an active presence throughout the Silk Road.
36:08Unfortunately, with global situation being what it is, it's not really possible to go and excavate
36:15in Iraq or Iran. And until the political situation changes, we won't know what's there.
36:25It's a centuries-old mystery, what happened to the Vikings of Greenland. Some believe that solving this
36:32puzzle could lead to the biggest treasure hoard of all. For a long time in Viking history,
36:38the island of Greenland is ignored. It's almost entirely covered in ice most of the year and seems
36:44impossible to settle. The Viking activity in Greenland begins with the story of Erik the Red.
36:51He's this pure-blooded Viking around the year 980. And he is sent away from Iceland for committing too many
36:58crimes. He goes to Greenland and discovers it's not that bad a place to live. He finds that it has
37:05rich
37:06soil and a livable climate. He believes that he can settle, even thrive there. And so for several
37:13centuries, until the 1400s, more Vikings came to Greenland and also settled there.
37:21What happened to the Greenlandic colonies is kind of a bit of an open question. Their wealth comes from
37:27the hunting of walruses and walrus ivory. It was a very popular thing to trade and it was very lucrative.
37:34They tend to pasture land. They build stone buildings that you can still see in Greenland today.
37:40But sometime in the 15th century, their civilization collapses. Something of upward of 5,000 people
37:48disappear. No one knows what happened to them. No one knows where they went. This is a mystery.
37:56So there are various theories. There might have been starvation. There might have been disease.
38:01There could have been conflict with indigenous groups on the island. Then in 2023, a team of
38:07scientists from Penn State discovered something really interesting. They say that there's a
38:11catastrophic climate change in the 15th century. There was an unexpected rise in sea level. This could be
38:18the reason why there were no bodies found at the dig sites. They didn't disappear. They didn't die off.
38:25They fled due to a change in climate. It was an organized retreat. Something else that's never been
38:31found there is buried treasure, which is kind of surprising given that this was a center that
38:37prospered for centuries and traded with Europe. There's a theory that they didn't go to the east or the west,
38:43but they went into Greenland itself and took all of their treasures with them.
38:52Some people have started to entertain a more eccentric idea. It's a wild one, but if it's true,
39:00it would suggest that there would be a mountain of Viking treasure to find. In past antiquarian circles,
39:07they asked themselves what happened to the people of Greenland and this theory develops that they went
39:13into the hollow earth. The concept of a hollow earth dates back centuries and is first proposed by the
39:21esteemed scientist Edmund Haley. In 1692, Haley, who we know from the famous comet, proposes a
39:31interesting theory that the earth is made up of concentric circles with hollow spaces between each one.
39:39This is called the hollow earth theory. In the 19th century, a man by the name of John Cleve Sims
39:45really
39:46takes this theory and runs with it. He imagines that this hollow earth is this kind of paradise. There are
39:54plants and trees and animals that live there among this kind of Garden of Eden-like setting.
40:00He claims that the earth's outer shell is about 800 miles thick and the entrances to hollow earth are
40:07to be found at the earth's poles. This is a fantastic idea, but it becomes so popular that it influences
40:13none other than Jules Verne, who uses it as the basis for his novel, Journey to the Center of the
40:18Earth.
40:20Lending credence to it is a 16th century map that later followers of the theory say that it shows
40:29the entrance to the hollow earth in the north of Greenland. It's a gateway to a world no one has
40:36ever
40:36seen, and some believe it is the ultimate Viking hiding place. Facing rising sea levels, they didn't
40:43go back across the sea, they went down into the earth, taking their treasure with them.
40:50With all that is left unknown and all the treasure that is left undiscovered,
40:56all of these ideas are worth reevaluating because we never know where any of them are going to lead.
41:04Every year, professionals and amateurs continue to search for hordes of Viking treasure
41:09that may be just below their feet. And as archaeologists turn up new finds, like a stash of Viking
41:16jewelry discovered in Norway in late 2024, treasure seekers are more sure than ever that there are
41:22millions of dollars in loot waiting to be found. I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching
41:29history's greatest mysteries.
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