- 15 minutes ago
The Norse Vikings have arrived and taken control northeast Britain centered around York. Anglo-Saxon supremacy finally came after a major massacre. The archaeology sessions are a intriguing as always.
爱丽丝·罗伯茨（Alice Roberts）博士考察了一些能让人以全新视角看待维京人的考古发掘现场。她在外赫布里底群岛（Outer Hebrides）和奥克尼群岛（Orkney）搜寻早期的维京人定居点。一处维京首领的堡垒揭示了他们的生活方式；考古团队在奥克尼发现了最早一批维京定居者的踪迹，并考察了该维京首领堡垒的发掘现场。此外，她还重新审视了一些史上最著名的维京文物——包括目前正处于一项重大新研究焦点的“刘易斯棋子”（Lewis Chessmen）。
爱丽丝·罗伯茨（Alice Roberts）博士考察了一些能让人以全新视角看待维京人的考古发掘现场。她在外赫布里底群岛（Outer Hebrides）和奥克尼群岛（Orkney）搜寻早期的维京人定居点。一处维京首领的堡垒揭示了他们的生活方式；考古团队在奥克尼发现了最早一批维京定居者的踪迹，并考察了该维京首领堡垒的发掘现场。此外，她还重新审视了一些史上最著名的维京文物——包括目前正处于一项重大新研究焦点的“刘易斯棋子”（Lewis Chessmen）。
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:20We might be a small island, but we've got a big history.
00:24Everywhere you stand, there are worlds beneath your feet.
00:27And so every year, hundreds of archaeologists across Britain
00:32go looking for more clues into our story.
00:35Who lived here, when and how?
00:38There's a blade doing here, here.
00:40So he's being attacked from all angles.
00:43Archaeology is a complex jigsaw puzzle,
00:45drawing everything together from skeletons to swords,
00:49temples to treasure.
00:51He's biting his shield.
00:53Biting his shield, yeah.
00:56From Orkney to Devon, we're joining this year's quest
01:01on sea, land and air.
01:04We share all of the questions and find some of the answers
01:08as we join the teams in the field, digging for Britain.
01:32Throughout its history, Britain has been divided and enriched by invaders from overseas,
01:38and none have gripped our imaginations quite as much as the Vikings.
01:43But how much of what we think we know about the Vikings is just a stereotype?
01:49Do they really live up to their savage reputation?
01:52And how much did they influence and shape British culture?
01:58This year's archaeology is enriching and challenging our vision of the Vikings,
02:03with digs, artefacts and messages they left behind.
02:07Wow.
02:08That is a beautiful object.
02:10Like the fortress of a Norwegian Viking chief in Orkney.
02:14This cup is absolutely extraordinary, isn't it?
02:17The magnificent hoard of silver buried in a time of bloodshed.
02:22And the victims of a vicious nationwide massacre.
02:26But you're suddenly kind of connecting with this awful moment, which is his death.
02:35On the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides,
02:38archaeologists are just starting to bring evidence of the earliest Vikings to light.
02:49A team from the University of Birmingham is digging at a site called Horgobost.
02:54The name itself has a Norse origin, a strong hint that the Vikings were here.
03:09Just Over These Jeans is one of this season's targets.
03:12Now, archaeologists have been digging here before and they discovered an Iron Age settlement.
03:18But there is some archaeological evidence that the Vikings were here too.
03:22A couple of burials threatened by erosion seem to have been Norse.
03:26And small Norse finds have been discovered as well.
03:30But the archaeologists are really hoping that they're going to find evidence of a settlement.
03:36And if they do that, it will be the first of its kind on Harris.
03:43OK, then, Alice, what we have here is a very interesting Iron Age site with a bit of a mysterious
03:49end to it,
03:50which we're sort of trying to come to terms with at the moment.
03:53If you step this way...
03:54Some very striking layers in the grain there.
03:56Absolutely.
03:57The team is being led by Kevin Coles, and I joined them right at the start of the digging season.
04:03The site may hold the key to the first contacts between incoming Vikings and the Gaelic people already living here.
04:09Will it be a story of destruction?
04:12What's slightly more mysterious and slightly more interesting for me is this deposit here that's sealing everything else.
04:21What is that? It means a completely different colour as well.
04:23Completely different colour.
04:24It's almost a demolition debris full of very late Iron Age pottery.
04:29Right.
04:29And lots of charcoal, lots of sort of waste material.
04:34Sometimes archaeology works this way.
04:36They're finding subtle glimpses within the soil of a time of abandonment.
04:43The important thing is we need to find out when this occurred,
04:46and that's why we're taking samples for carbon dating and see if,
04:49hopefully see if it can be because of the Norse invasion or when the Vikings came to the islands
04:56and whether it sort of clashes with this site being abandoned.
05:00Close by, a building is emerging that seems to be rectangular in shape,
05:05a style that is Scandinavian and unlike the roundhouses favoured by Iron Age people.
05:10So could this be evidence of Vikings displacing the original inhabitants?
05:15No, there's a nice corner here.
05:17Absolutely.
05:17Yeah.
05:18And there's lots of stones in this vicinity which suggests that the feature is running under the dunes.
05:23Oh, I can see some here.
05:26Yeah, so they carry on going backwards, possibly in this direction.
05:29Absolutely, there's more here.
05:30Yeah.
05:31Are you going to extend the trench back?
05:33We will extend the trench back and see if we can get the full plan
05:35and see if it is a rectangular house which would be in line with a Norse longhouse.
05:40But so far, perhaps the strongest evidence of the meeting of these cultures
05:43comes from a scattering of objects found across the site.
05:47So we have, the things on this side are late Iron Age and date.
05:52So you've got a storage jar or a big cooking pot there made from ceramic.
05:59We've also got this very strange, looks like a rock.
06:02If you feel the coarseness of the outside edge when compared to the flat edge,
06:09it's been used and used constantly.
06:12Yeah, so what's that been used for?
06:14We suspect it's used for working animal hides.
06:17And that fits so nicely in your hand, doesn't it?
06:20It's very tactile.
06:21Yeah.
06:22So these finds are intriguing because they could be later Iron Age, they could be Norse.
06:26Absolutely.
06:27But you can't really distinguish between them.
06:29No, you can't.
06:30But from their early investigations comes the first conclusive proof of contact with the Vikings.
06:37A tiny scrap of steatite, or soapstone, a material often imported from Scandinavia
06:44and found in great quantities on Norse sites right across Britain.
06:48But what you can say from this fragment of soapstone bowl is that this is typically Viking.
06:54Either somebody who was already here learned how to make such a thing from a Viking,
06:59or they got it from a Viking, or it belonged to a Viking.
07:04Exactly.
07:05So the Vikings were here.
07:06Yeah.
07:14You can see why the Vikings might have felt at home here.
07:17This is a landscape that's perfectly suited to their seafaring way of life.
07:22You can just imagine their longships coming in and then being pulled up on these flat, wide
07:29beaches, ready to start a new life in a land that's completely surrounded by sea.
07:36And the arrival of the Vikings would mark the beginning of a new phase in this island's
07:42history, and one that would leave a lasting impression.
07:49It's a history that is still frustratingly just below the surface on Harris, but I don't
07:55have to look far to find more substantial evidence of Norse culture.
08:00Just up the road, on the adjoining Isle of Lewis, is perhaps the most famous and iconic
08:06Scandinavian treasure ever discovered in Scotland.
08:09It was found in the 1800s, but dates from the 12th century, a time when Lewis was controlled
08:16by the Kings of Norway.
08:18Still shrouded in mystery, it's a compendium of 93 ivory, chess and gaming pieces, known
08:25to us as the Lewis Chessmen.
08:28A selection of the chessmen has come back to Lewis some 180 years after they were first
08:34thought to have been found.
08:36They are such charismatic little figures.
08:38And I've been fascinated by them since I was a child, my grandparents had a replica chess
08:43set.
08:43Well now they're on tour following a new piece of research looking into their origins and
08:49their story.
08:50And it's so lovely to come here to Stornoway to see them, close to where they were discovered.
09:00The new research places the chessmen firmly at the heart of the once powerful but now forgotten
09:06Kingdom of the Isles, a hybrid Norse-Gallic state controlled by the Kings of Norway.
09:13The project has been led by Dr David Caldwell from the National Museum of Scotland.
09:19So we've got all the characters you would expect, we've got kings and queens and bishops and knights,
09:24and who's this character here?
09:26Right, this is a warrior or warder and nowadays he's normally represented by a tower.
09:35He's a rook in other words, yeah.
09:38Although this particular one, as you can just see there…
09:42He's biting his shield.
09:43Biting his shield, yeah.
09:44This in fact, I think is one of the key bits of evidence that these pieces were made in
09:50the Scandinavian world.
09:51Because that's a reference to a cult in the Scandinavian world, the cult of the berserkers.
09:57The berserkers were warriors who got so high before going into battle that they had to
10:04bite their shields to hold themselves back.
10:06Really?
10:07And I don't think this chessman is really a berserker but I think it's the carver in a
10:15way just showing his cultural roots or perhaps gently poking fun at some of his contemporaries
10:20by showing that.
10:24The finding of the chessmen is shrouded in mystery.
10:28Tradition has it they were lost by a passing merchant.
10:31But David thinks it's possible they were owned by an important person living on Lewis.
10:37Lewis was the centre or one of the centres of a Scandinavian kingdom, the Kingdom of the
10:43Isles, which people have now forgotten about.
10:46But it's a very important kingdom on a European model which was here until 1266.
10:53This was the year in which the Vikings handed the Hebrides over to Scotland for the sum of
10:584,000 marks, ending four centuries of Norwegian sovereignty on the islands.
11:04But who made these beautiful figures?
11:07Detailed study of their faces has revealed that they've fallen to five different types
11:11which suggests they were made by five different craftsmen.
11:15I mean this face, this face is beautiful.
11:18Yeah, that's one of my favourites.
11:21The craftsman who made this was exceptionally good and ivory is an amazingly tough material to carve.
11:30It must have taken days to do this, but just the subtlety of the expression there, just the look.
11:37And even when you move away from the face and you look at the knuckles, the detail there,
11:42you can almost sense that the hand is actually gripping that sword.
11:46Those little hands are absolutely beautiful.
11:48And the face, the contours of the face, there's even a change in contour when we go from the cheek
11:53down to the upper lip.
11:54That crease between the nose and the mouth is shown.
12:00These figures may be stylised, but there's every reason to believe they're based on living Scandinavians.
12:07The people who carved them were paying attention to authentic details.
12:14So the clays aren't just figments of the imagination of the carver.
12:18This is real attire that is being represented.
12:21Yes, they clearly have a very good understanding of what they're representing.
12:27They understand the different layers of vestments a bishop is wearing, the chasuples, albs and everything else.
12:35And they represent that very carefully indeed.
12:40These craftsmen probably worked in a major centre in Norway where they could closely observe high status Scandinavians,
12:47where they may even have had bishops or kings as their patrons.
12:55The Vikings came to the Western Isles and created a Scandinavian state to rival the kingdoms of England and Scotland.
13:03One that we've all but forgotten about.
13:05And we have potent Viking legacies in the form of amazing craftwork that reminds us of our shared Scandinavian genes.
13:13But what lured the Vikings here in the first place?
13:24Back on Harris is another site where the archaeology is reminding us that they first came here to plunder.
13:32It's a possible medieval monastery, the ultimate temptation for a seafaring pirate.
13:39History tells us that the riches of these Christian monasteries are what drew the Vikings to our shores.
13:47This site houses a ruined chapel and there are traces dating all the way back to an Iron Age broch
13:53or tower.
13:56Professor John Hunter is overseeing the excavations here.
14:00Anyway, if we stand here, if we just look round here, this is the outer face of the broch. Huge,
14:06huge stones.
14:07Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah.
14:08And you can see the collapse has fallen.
14:09A massive, massively thick wall.
14:12And the wall's four metres thick, roughly.
14:16If there was an early monastery here, you're directly on the Great Sea routes that bring Norwegian Vikings all the
14:23way down to Ireland,
14:24and they would have seen this. It would have been sweets for the taking, really would.
14:30Just outside the boundary of the possible monastery are some graves that might be Norse,
14:35and the team has discovered the first fragments of whoever was buried here.
14:40But is it a long-dead Viking?
14:43Oh, OK. So, as well as these bits of bone...
14:47A tooth? A tooth, yeah.
14:49All right, tell us about that, then. Where's it from?
14:51Er, well, it looks like a lower incisor, I think.
14:56And it's very worn.
14:59So, all of the enamel on the top has been worn down.
15:03I mean, it's somebody who's an adult and who's been wearing that tooth down for many years, yeah.
15:12Even if these are all that remains of a Viking, does it necessarily prove that he or she lived here?
15:18Or might this be the grave of a passing seafarer whose remains were brought to shore before the ship continued
15:26on its way?
15:28It's very exciting being here with archaeologists who are trying to work out what Harris was to the Vikings.
15:35As part of the Hebrides, it's on that sea route between Shetland and Orkney in the north,
15:40and Ireland, places that were all firmly part of the Viking world.
15:45But what about Harris? Was it just a stopping-off point?
15:48Were the Vikings here only transiently?
15:51Or did they actually settle here and put down roots, as the place names seem to suggest?
15:57Well, they're finding what look like Norse buildings.
16:02And we have that piece of steertite as well,
16:06which suggests that the archaeologists are just on the brink
16:09of finding the first hard evidence of Viking settlement here on Harris.
16:22In England, there's one city that boasts more evidence of Viking occupation than anywhere else in Britain.
16:31York, or Jorvik.
16:34The first Viking to take the city was Ivar the Boneless, a Danish Viking leader and reputed berserker.
16:42Jorvik became the capital of his new Danish territory in 866 AD.
16:48For the next 20 years, the Danes continued with their aggressive expansion
16:52until the English king, Alfred the Great, drew up a treaty with the Viking king, Guthrum.
16:58The country was sliced in two and the Danes were given their own territory in the north and east,
17:06the Danelaw, with York at its heart.
17:10Even though they only ruled here for 100 years, York is very much still associated with the Vikings.
17:17And an excavation in the 70s here at Coppergate
17:20dragged York's Viking past into the present in a very vivid way.
17:25Now all of that archaeology is sealed beneath these shops and cafes.
17:31But there's a current excavation going on in another part of the city not far from here.
17:36And again, we're starting to see the buried history of this city.
17:40So I'm going to visit the dig to find out what more we can learn about the Vikings of Jorvik.
17:52Archaeologists have been working in an area called Hungate in the centre of the city for four and a half
17:57years.
17:58It's a huge multi-layered excavation.
18:01But right now, the archaeologists are almost three metres below today's ground level
18:06and digging what I'm interested in, the Viking layer.
18:10And they're revealing that they were not just about looting and fighting.
18:15The Vikings were traders and builders of cities too.
18:20Once the Vikings had taken York, they stayed here,
18:24bringing up families and blending with the city's previous inhabitants,
18:28creating a unique culture known as Anglo-Scandinavian.
18:33And they remained even after the last Viking king had been expelled,
18:38expanding their town and putting up huge permanent buildings.
18:42So are you into the final phase really?
18:44Yeah, this is the very final part.
18:48Peter Connolly is running excavations here for the York Archaeological Trust.
18:54It's landscape archaeology, it just happens to be in an urban environment.
18:59Yeah.
18:59Most of the buildings here sit on an organised grid layout,
19:04unexpected evidence that the Vikings had a talent for urban planning.
19:09The land here slopes gently down to the river,
19:12making it an ideal loading and unloading spot.
19:16These buildings were probably storage warehouses.
19:21And right in the middle of these structures,
19:23the Vikings built something that would have been totally indispensable.
19:28The stuff that I'm digging through at the moment is effectively human waste.
19:33It's poo.
19:34Because what I'm sat in at the moment,
19:36it's the remains of a Viking toy little cesspit.
19:41All the bits of animal bone that we're finding in here as well,
19:45it's being used as a general rubbish pit as well,
19:49although the majority of it is human waste.
19:51You are getting other bits and pieces in here as well.
19:56But fortunately, it's not just rubbish that's come out of the ground at Hungate.
20:02Over the four and a half years that the archaeologists have been working here,
20:06they've turned up thousands of artefacts from the Viking period.
20:09Most of them are pottery and bone and represent household waste.
20:13But there is a handful of intriguing small finds which provide us with additional clues as to what the Vikings
20:20were doing in this part of the city.
20:24The finds researcher at York Archaeological Trust is Nicky Rogers.
20:29So Nicky, this is a collection of finds that are all from the excavation at Hungate.
20:33They are.
20:34They're really a fraction of what we've found over the five years that we've been excavating there.
20:39We've had over 12,000 individual artefacts.
20:42What's this here?
20:43Well, actually, this is a jet pendant.
20:46It's quite sweet, I think, because the whole, well, it's a bit off-centre.
20:51I like the shape of it. I mean, that's quite a modern-looking thing, isn't it?
20:54Well, it is, but that's a very typical shape from that period, in fact.
20:57So where would that have come from, the jet for that, do you think?
20:59Probably from Whitby.
21:00Right.
21:01Yes, from the north coast.
21:03Yeah.
21:03What about these beads? Are these amber?
21:05No, this is all amber here.
21:07So where would that have come from, that amber, do you think?
21:08Well, that's going to have come from the Baltic area.
21:12So the Vikings living in Hungate imported high-quality material.
21:17Their trade routes stretched hundreds of miles away across the Scandinavian world.
21:22But they also used less exotic material to turn out huge numbers of an item
21:27that's a little more surprising.
21:30Well, these are actually skates.
21:32Really?
21:33Yes.
21:34They're effectively very easy to make because the bone is already, you know,
21:40that size, that shape, very little has to be done to it to turn...
21:44So what is the bone?
21:45This is a metapodial, isn't it?
21:47Yes, it is.
21:47It's probably a...
21:48They're usually horse or cattle metapodials.
21:51Right, OK.
21:52All that's been done to this one, if you look at it, is...
21:55Well, on the bottom, it's been flattened and smooth.
21:58So that's a very smooth, flat surface.
22:01And that's been deliberately done?
22:02That has been deliberately done.
22:03Your foot would have sat on here.
22:05Yeah.
22:06Your heel there, your toe there.
22:07You weren't able to take your foot off the ice,
22:10so you were pulling yourself along with poles.
22:12So they're not ice dancing, they're not pirouetting round.
22:14They're keeping their feet on the ground
22:15and they're using them rather like cross-country skis.
22:18That's it.
22:19These simple bone objects connect us to customs
22:22imported from the frozen Norse homelands.
22:37The archaeology of Hungate, the buried evidence of people
22:40who lived here in Jorvik a thousand years ago,
22:43is not about monumental remains.
22:46We're not looking at the elite of society,
22:48but we're getting an insight instead
22:49into the lives of ordinary people
22:52as they started to plan their town.
22:56And we see how they adapted their buildings
22:58to suit the land and the specific purpose
23:02they wanted them for.
23:04These people lived in York,
23:05but they kept a connection with their Scandinavian homeland
23:08through the objects that they bought, used and wore.
23:12And in a very real way, a thousand years ago,
23:17they were laying the foundations of the York that we see today.
23:23While in York, the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons learnt to get along,
23:28throughout the rest of England, their relationship remained uneasy.
23:32Although pockets of Danes lived and traded here,
23:36they hadn't gained a permanent foothold,
23:38and full-scale Danish raids continued along the coast.
23:42The English king, Æthelred the Unready,
23:45was repeatedly forced to pay them off with huge sums of money,
23:48known as Danegeld.
23:50And the growing tension between these clashing nations
23:53led to a horrific act, the St Brice's Day Massacre.
24:02But the perpetrators of this slaughter were not Vikings.
24:06They were Anglo-Saxon.
24:08And what's more, the murder was sanctioned by King Æthelred.
24:12He decreed that...
24:14All the Danes who had sprung up in this island,
24:17sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat,
24:20were to be destroyed by a most just extermination.
24:29Some of the victims of this extermination
24:32may now have been discovered by archaeologists in a pit in Oxford.
24:37The skeletons of at least 35 people lay in a mass grave,
24:42where they'd been dumped a thousand years before.
24:48It is very rare that archaeologists get the chance
24:51to examine evidence from a particular historical event,
24:55and one that the scholars agree did actually happen.
24:59But I'm interested in the analysis of these bones.
25:03Do the bones show evidence of violence?
25:06Could they indeed represent the victims of this massacre?
25:15Osteologist Kerry Fallis
25:16has been examining their remains for signs of trauma.
25:22This was actually the first skeleton that we found,
25:24but it wasn't until we placed his skull back together,
25:27because it was in hundreds of fragments,
25:29that we actually saw the trauma.
25:31There's at least ten blade wounds.
25:35So there's a blade wound here, here, there, so that's three.
25:41There's a glancing wound here.
25:43And what about these little triangular holes?
25:45They're puncture wounds made by maybe a spear or something like that.
25:50It is awful, isn't it?
25:51I mean, you hold these bones,
25:52and these are the bones of somebody who died a very long time ago.
25:55Mm-hm.
25:55But you're suddenly kind of connecting with this awful moment,
25:59which is his death.
26:03Radiocarbon dating has shown that these people died
26:05between 998 and 1019 AD,
26:08which means it's possible they were killed on St Brice's Day,
26:121002, the day the Anglo-Saxons turned on the Danes.
26:18And he also has two puncture wounds to his back.
26:21There's one there.
26:23And one a bit farther down.
26:24So these are quite tiny puncture wounds into the spine.
26:28What do you think they could have been caused by?
26:29Possibly by a spear.
26:31Something being thrust rather than thrown.
26:34Yeah, so just the tip of a spear being pushed in.
26:36Yeah.
26:36Again, a young man hacked to death.
26:41Horrendous.
26:44Most of these men were between 16 and 25 years old when they died.
26:49Incredibly, the next skeleton I'm shown
26:52is that of a man whose murder was even more vicious than the last.
26:57His ear, just behind his ear, has been sheared off.
27:01Oh, yeah.
27:02Yeah, so straight through that mastoid process,
27:04that chunk of bone behind the ear.
27:05The side of his mandible's been sheared off.
27:07So there's evidence of blade injury here as well?
27:10Yeah, there's two definite blade wounds on that side of the jaw.
27:13He's got four wounds to his upper neck.
27:16So that's been chopped through, yeah.
27:19And the dens itself.
27:21So chopping through just underneath the ear,
27:25taking off the angle of the mandible,
27:26and then the blade carrying on through
27:28and cutting into the vertebrae of the neck.
27:31Yeah.
27:32Other parts of this man's skeleton
27:34show further signs of the frenzied nature of the attack.
27:38He has three punctures to his pelvis.
27:40There's two small wounds there,
27:43but they've actually come in from the back.
27:45You can see these very square-shaped puncture wounds,
27:48which have gone all the way through the bone.
27:51So these are the tips of a weapon of some kind,
27:54which are pushing all the way through to here.
27:56Yeah.
27:57So he was attacked from the back there,
28:01so on the left side somebody stabbed him just above the hip on the back,
28:05and then he's also been speared or stabbed through from the front as well,
28:10from about here, going in and then hitting his pelvis as it passes backwards.
28:17So he's being attacked from all angles.
28:19All angles.
28:20And if the multiple stab wounds weren't enough to finish this man off,
28:24for good measure he was set on fire.
28:28His forehead has been burnt.
28:30Yeah.
28:30Which accounts for the missing bone in the middle.
28:33And also his hand...
28:35Oh, yeah.
28:35..has been charred.
28:37Is this the only skeleton who has signs of burning?
28:39No, quite a few of them have got charring.
28:42Yeah.
28:42It's mostly to their heads, their pelvises and their hands.
28:46Terry, were you shocked when you got these veins cleaned up
28:49and into the laboratory at how much violence there was represented on them?
28:53Very shocked.
28:54I've never seen anything like this before.
28:57Yeah.
28:59And just to have so many different weapons used on one individual.
29:03These skeletons bore none of the wounds you'd expect to find on people
29:07who'd tried to defend themselves.
29:09So it's likely that they were murdered whilst running away.
29:12But were they Vikings?
29:15Isotope analysis was not conclusive,
29:18but did show that their diet was rich in seafood,
29:22suggesting they did at least live a Viking way of life.
29:26And then they may have been hunted down and killed for it.
29:35So what can we say for certain?
29:38We have over 30 skeletons, all of them men,
29:41all showing signs of extreme violence.
29:45Whilst we can't be sure that they were the victims
29:47of the St Brice's Day massacre,
29:49the types of injury and the date of the skeletons
29:52makes it at least possible.
29:54These young men were cut down,
29:58were hacked to death in a frenzy of violence.
30:01And a thousand years on,
30:02this mass murder is still shocking.
30:07Through trauma analysis,
30:09archaeology has allowed us to explore the awful possibility
30:12of the Vikings as victims.
30:16But a different kind of archaeological discovery
30:19has opened a window onto life
30:21for a Viking whose luck had run out.
30:27Every now and then,
30:28metal detectorists turn up interesting objects
30:30which have been lost or abandoned
30:32or even deliberately buried by their owners,
30:35and then they've laid hidden in the ground for hundreds of years.
30:38But it's extremely unusual to find a collection as diverse,
30:43and which illustrates as many different aspects of past society
30:47as the hoard I'm about to see now.
30:53It's one of the most important Viking finds of the last 150 years,
30:58and it's so rich in content that experts are still writing up their findings.
31:02It's currently on display at the Yorkshire Museum.
31:12So this is it.
31:13This is the Vale of York Horde.
31:15It was found four years ago by a father and son metal detecting team,
31:19and it really is an astonishing collection of silver objects
31:23with one piece of gold.
31:26But what's really amazing is that most of those objects were found inside that cup.
31:31It really is spectacular and beautiful,
31:34but what I want to know is can we learn anything
31:39of any real archaeological significance from these objects?
31:44And given what we know about this period of history in this area,
31:49might we be able to get an idea of the person
31:52who had this sort of wealth in their possession?
31:58The hoard comprises 617 coins and 67 pieces of silver,
32:04including items of jewellery,
32:06all objects which have a great deal to tell us
32:09about the Scandinavian world at the time of their burial.
32:13This cup is absolutely extraordinary, isn't it?
32:16Yeah, it's, I think, probably the finest thing in the hoard,
32:20all on its own.
32:22It's a gilt silver cup.
32:24So it's silver and it's been gilded with gold.
32:27It was also decorated with niello,
32:30which is a kind of alloy that's black.
32:33So when this was first made, it would have been,
32:34if you think of a wasp, a kind of quite gaudy yellow and black contrast.
32:39So the detail would have showed up amazingly well.
32:41Would you like to hold it?
32:42I'd love to hold it.
32:43If you sit it in your hands, it kind of gives you a real good impression
32:46of what this might have been used for when it was originally made.
32:50It feels like a cup which wants to be passed on to somebody else.
32:55What do you think it was used for?
32:57Given the kind of, the way that you hold it in both hands,
33:00the fact that it's been gilded and it may have had a lid,
33:02we think that it could be an ecclesiastical vessel,
33:05something that was used in a monastery.
33:07So it's possible that this cup, which experts believe came from the Frankish Empire,
33:12fell into Viking hands as loot or in payment of tribute.
33:16It was made in the mid ninth century, predating the rest of the objects in this collection.
33:23But it presumably had a lot of special significance and meaning because it lasted another hundred years.
33:28So I presume it was passed down through the family and then came to, you know, hold the contents of
33:33this hoard.
33:35This object gives us a rare insight into the mindset of a Viking.
33:39As an heirloom, it connects him back to his adventuring ancestors and their ill-gotten gains.
33:46But not all of the items in this hoard had sentimental value.
33:50So what about these objects that were inside it then?
33:52Are these pieces of jewellery typically Viking in nature?
33:55They are, yes. This is by far the most spectacular.
33:58That's the gold, that's the only gold piece, isn't it?
34:00This is the only gold piece in the hoard.
34:02If you'd like to hold it.
34:05Gosh, that's heavy.
34:06It is. It's quite a chunky thing.
34:08This single piece is a marker of extreme wealth.
34:12Finding gold in Viking hoards is exceptionally rare.
34:16Only someone of the highest social standing would have had access to it.
34:22And there are some complete items of jewellery, but then there seem to be a lot of pieces.
34:27This bit in particular, I mean, that just looks like a brooch or something that's been cut in half.
34:31And this is very typical of the way the Vikings did things.
34:34They had a lot of what we call hack silver.
34:37The Viking economy was based on the barter and exchange of silver.
34:41It was highly prized by the Vikings and valued by its weight and purity.
34:47Before being chopped up and used as currency, silver could be worn and transported as jewellery.
34:54This is what we call a penannular brooch.
34:55If you think of this as the terminal at one end, it would thin out, come in a big spiral
35:01and then fatten out again at the other end.
35:03Right.
35:04And you would have a huge pin through the middle.
35:06Yeah.
35:06And that would sit on your cloak to keep your cloak together.
35:09And this is a particularly beautiful example.
35:11I think it's got these lovely little roundels and it's kind of this really delicate interlaced pattern.
35:17Yeah.
35:17And actually it's made of little, looks like little beasts.
35:20Yes.
35:20Which are kind of chasing their tails around.
35:22Absolutely.
35:22Very popular in kind of Viking iconography, these little beasties.
35:26The Vikings travelled thousands of miles across vast sweeping trade routes to get their silver.
35:33And some pieces within this hoard connect the Vikings here in Britain with trading centres as far away as the
35:40Islamic world.
35:41Well that looks like Arabic script on there.
35:44It does.
35:44This is called a dirham and it's Islamic coin.
35:47It really is?
35:47It is.
35:48And it comes from Afghanistan.
35:49Wow.
35:51So this is evidence of Vikings trading all the way over to the Middle East.
35:56Absolutely.
35:57Yeah.
35:58One other coin here sheds light on the moment this hoard was buried.
36:02It's a coin of the English King Athelstan, minted in 927 AD, just after he captured York from the Vikings.
36:10And judging by the lack of wear on its surface, it was placed in the ground almost immediately.
36:17And if you look very closely you'll be able to see that this coin actually has the words Rex Tobrie.
36:23So R-E-X-T-O-B-R-I-E.
36:28Oh yeah, yeah.
36:28I can see that.
36:29That basically means king of all Britain.
36:32So this coin proclaims Athelstan as the king of all Britain.
36:35So he used this coin to say that he'd got rid of the Vikings and he'd unified the country and
36:41made it into one kingdom.
36:44But although the English king stamped his identity on his coins, the name of the person who owned these riches
36:51is lost to us.
36:53All we have are the clues passed down by his cherished possessions.
37:01This hoard of beautiful objects raises the tantalising possibility that what we're looking at is the treasure, the life savings
37:09of a man whose days amongst the ruling classes in northern England are numbered.
37:14And the hoard dates from precisely the time when there's this changeover of power between the Vikings and the Anglo
37:23-Saxons.
37:24So are we looking at a Viking running away and burying his wealth for safety?
37:30All that we can be sure about is that he never returned to dig it up.
37:43Govan in Glasgow might seem like an unlikely place to come looking for Viking archaeology.
37:48But I'm here to see what is perhaps the most extensive collection of Norse artefacts from any Viking site anywhere
37:57in rural Britain.
37:58Now these objects are not treasure, they are domestic items, things that Viking men and women would have used every
38:05day of their lives.
38:07And they're also at the beginning of their story because they've been excavated but the examination, the interpretation of them
38:15is very much still a work in progress.
38:17So what I want to find out is the potential of this collection for helping us understand Viking everyday life.
38:26The actual material is fine but as you see from the packaging…
38:30Beverly Ballin-Smith has a huge archaeological task ahead of her, the processing and recording of all the small finds
38:38from a site called the Udal in North Uist,
38:42the largest Norse settlement ever to have been excavated in the Western Isles.
38:47It was a monumental project which involved a dedicated group of volunteers who returned to dig again and again over
38:55a 30 year period starting in 1963.
38:59But the significance of the site is still only partially understood.
39:08I don't think I have ever seen so many bone needles and I imagine we're just starting.
39:14So, you wanted to have a look at…
39:17That little poppy one.
39:18Yeah.
39:19Can we take it out?
39:21Want to?
39:22Oh, look at that.
39:24That's really lovely.
39:25What are these made of?
39:26I think that's a bird bone.
39:29It's pretty, isn't it?
39:30It's really lovely, yeah.
39:31Wow.
39:32There are hundreds of decorated bone pins here, perhaps a reflection of their value in everyday life as something to
39:39fix a Viking's hair in place or to fasten his cloak.
39:42That's fantastic.
39:44In a sense, all these are lost objects.
39:47Yes.
39:48Things that have just dropped off people.
39:50Dropped off people and not…
39:51Where did that go?
39:52And they've trod it into the mud and then archaeologists find it centuries later.
39:56Wow.
39:56It's not unusual to find combs in a Viking settlement.
40:00They're commonplace personal objects.
40:03What's surprising about this collection though, is the sheer number of them found on one site.
40:09Oh, that's fantastic.
40:10It's got a little animal on it.
40:12A little horse's head, I think.
40:15And I love these roundels which are obviously kind of drilled into the bone.
40:20I think you look at things like this and you have this immediate contact with somebody who lived centuries ago
40:27and this was their comb.
40:29And you also know that you have the same kind of sensibilities that, you know, I quite like to have
40:34things that are nice.
40:35I like to have objects which aren't just functional but actually which are quite attractive as well.
40:39Yes.
40:41The massive task of excavating this site and all the finds buried there was effectively the life's work of historian
40:48and archaeologist Ian Crawford.
40:50But unable to continue with his task due to ill health, it's now fallen to Beverley.
40:56But he ended up amassing a huge collection of finds that you're still looking through now.
41:01So he obviously became…
41:03What happened? Did he become overwhelmed with the amount he was finding?
41:06I've been there myself and you work on a massive site with complicated stratigraphy.
41:13So he carried on digging.
41:15He produced interim reports for every year that he dug.
41:21But then there's the next stage of actually writing up and getting the information out to the public.
41:26And I think he was simply overwhelmed.
41:31Even since my visit, fresh research has suggested the volume of beautiful combs may be proof of a Viking comb
41:38-making industry here.
41:39It reinforces just how important the research into the Udall will be in years to come.
41:48It's great to see just a small part of this massive collection of everyday objects.
41:53They seem mundane in some ways, but they also show that just like us, the Vikings like to have nice
42:00things.
42:01And it's fantastic that this collection is being revisited.
42:05Archaeologically speaking, there's still an enormous amount to be learned about this site and all the artefacts it contained.
42:11And there must be people on North Uist who remember digging at that site in the dunes.
42:18And I imagine it's important to them to know that the last chapters in the story of Udall are finally
42:25being written.
42:35Off the north-eastern shore of Scotland lie the islands of Orkney, colonised by the Vikings in the 9th century.
42:47Sailing from their Norwegian homelands, it would have taken the Norse longships about a day to get here.
42:55And when they settled for good, the islands became the centre of Norse power in Scotland,
43:00right up until 1469, the last bastion of Scandinavian authority in Britain.
43:09Today, these islands are home to a classic Norse archaeological find,
43:13and also to new excavations that are offering tantalising glimpses of the Vikings in Scotland.
43:21My first destination is the dig currently taking place in the east of Orkney's mainland,
43:27near its ancient capital, Kirkwall.
43:30It sits on top of a 30-metre-high stack of sheer rock, the Broch of Deerness,
43:37which even today is challenging to access.
43:46This is such a wild place. There's nothing here but cliffs, sea and birds.
43:53And I'm walking up this path that I can't imagine was here a thousand years ago.
43:58So I do wonder how people got across from the land there to the Broch.
44:03This is such an exposed place. It's a lovely day today, but imagine this on a rainy, windswept day.
44:09The Broch is totally exposed to the legendary Orcadian winds.
44:14What an extreme place to choose as your home.
44:21Whether coming from the mainland or from ships secured in a nearby bay,
44:26getting here can't have been straightforward.
44:28The old path up the Broch has disappeared into the sea.
44:33So we're now coming up through the original entrance to the site?
44:36That's right. Exactly.
44:37Can we go and have a look at some of the archaeology that you're exploring?
44:42There was once a settlement of around 30 Viking houses up here.
44:46And Dr James Barrett and his team are excavating one of them this season.
44:53So would this have been the original doorway?
44:56This is the original doorway of the phase that we're excavating right now.
45:00So there was a settlement here before the Vikings came.
45:02And the ground level at that point was at the top of that layer.
45:06And then the Viking Age houses were literally dug into the ground.
45:12Right.
45:12And lined with stone walls, what you see here.
45:16And then above that at ground level,
45:17the rest of the house would have been built in turf and timber.
45:21It's likely that the Vikings dug their homes so deep into the ground
45:25to withstand the extreme winds that often blow here.
45:29And evidence of life inside one of those homes came to light during my visit.
45:35Oh, wow!
45:37Oh, my goodness!
45:38Right, so we're just going to come in here and do a little bit.
45:40That's just beautiful.
45:41It's moments like these that make archaeology so rewarding,
45:45discovering an unexpected find, a forgotten part of somebody's life.
45:50If you start cleaning off most of this loose around it...
46:02It sounds fantastic.
46:05This is just brilliant.
46:06This is a Viking gaming board that was thrown away,
46:09that was thrown into this rubbish pit, this midden,
46:12that we've just found in the corner of the trench.
46:15And it's wonderful to hold something that was obviously a very personal object to somebody,
46:20something that they would have enjoyed using a thousand years ago.
46:26It looks like a board for playing the popular Viking game, a nefertafel.
46:34It's something that might have kept people occupied
46:37in place of looking after crops or farming animals,
46:40a task that would have been impossible up here.
46:44So their food must have been brought in from other farms or settlements nearby,
46:48and only someone of the higher status could have demanded this of their neighbours,
46:53perhaps a Viking chief and his retinue.
46:57But it does beg the question, why live in such a difficult spot?
47:03The way it works is what you see.
47:06It's a site that is all about seeing and being seen.
47:11And when people ask me, why were they here?
47:15When I want to give a glib answer, it's to make a point.
47:18It gives you extraordinary control of the maritime vantage.
47:21And in addition to that, you will be seen.
47:24So if you imagine a large hall here, then if you're coming into the archipelago,
47:29you immediately know who you have to go and talk to.
47:32You know who's boss.
47:40I am quite taken by this ancient clifftop settlement.
47:43It seems such an extraordinary place to live.
47:46So wild and windy, with these crashing waves all around.
47:51The men and women who lived up here must have been very isolated in some ways.
47:57But on the other hand, they can't have survived here on their own.
48:00They depended on support from people living on mainland Orkney.
48:04But who were they?
48:07One of the reasons the Vikings seem so mysterious
48:10is that they left few written records in Britain.
48:14But it's wrong to think they didn't write.
48:16They used runes.
48:18And last year, James found a tiny bronze strip
48:21with a mysterious message etched into its surface.
48:27Professor John Hines examined it to see if he could make some sense of it.
48:33It takes quite a while getting used to it,
48:35but once you get your eye into these things,
48:38you start seeing certain letters that we're familiar with.
48:42So if you look on it here, we've got, see that letter like that?
48:47That's fairly clear.
48:49Then there's very clearly what we call an I, I,
48:51then another K, then we've got an U at the end of that.
48:55Some letters in the Scandinavian runic alphabet resemble our own,
48:59and others are more cryptic.
49:02To make it even more difficult, they changed over time,
49:05and experts continue to discover new letters and symbols.
49:12Unfortunately, going across all of the bits that I can read,
49:16I just cannot put enough together to form coherent words
49:23and coherent strings of words.
49:26Interestingly, practically every mark that we've got on that,
49:31we can identify as being the sort of things they were using as runes.
49:36They've abbreviated what they're writing rather like
49:40people who are younger than me do when they send text messages
49:43and I try and work out what they're actually saying there.
49:52It's frustrating to be so close and yet so far away from knowing
49:57what's been written down by this Viking living on the brook of Deerness,
50:01a message from Scandinavian Orkney that we'll probably never decipher.
50:08The Norse archaeology I've seen in Orkney has shown me some of the purest
50:12evidence of that culture, because when the Vikings came here,
50:16they transplanted their entire way of life from Norway.
50:23And this year's research has unearthed unexpected evidence of this Viking lifestyle,
50:29of how they settled and shaped our landscape as well as raiding here.
50:35Evidence like the ivory chessmen, carved in a Norwegian workshop,
50:40tangible proof of a wealthy forgotten kingdom.
50:44The buried life savings of a powerful Viking whose wealth connects us to vast trading empires.
50:55And the horrific St Brice's Day massacre, when men may have been killed just for being Scandinavian.
51:09And this year's research has been done.
51:09Through its invaders, Britain became firmly connected with the continent and beyond.
51:14And archaeology helps us understand how these outsiders came and enriched our culture
51:20and ended up becoming British.
51:22And so the digging continues.
51:25And so the digging continues.
52:02To be continued...
52:17The