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00:09York. Founded by the Romans, by the 9th century AD, this was one of the great Christian cities
00:17of Anglo-Saxon England. But York had a shock coming, because in 866 AD, an entire army
00:25arrived here, turned the place Viking, and called it Jorvik. This city, and half of England
00:31besides, became part of Scandinavia. Today, even over a thousand years later, the image
00:41of the marauding Viking warrior is as strong as ever. Thank you. Especially up here. What
00:50we know, or think we know about the Vikings, is much more myth than reality. Even the famed
00:56horned helmets are a modern invention. So, just who were the Vikings?
01:07I'm going to find out the truth about the Vikings.
01:12Leaving Britain behind to enter their land. And their own mysterious world. Even now,
01:22this place feels like it's on the edge of everything. It's going to take me all over Scandinavia.
01:33And far beyond. These are Arabic dirhams, minted in places like Baghdad.
01:42And as an archaeologist, I'll be seeking out some of the most telling evidence of all.
01:49The remains of ancient people.
01:53This flamboyant hairstyle just adds to his allure.
02:00And the stunning treasures they left behind.
02:07All to get inside the heads of the Vikings themselves.
02:12Oh, wow. How can that be a thousand years old?
02:16The real Vikings, from their point of view.
02:39To start my investigation, I've come to Norway.
02:45Smoke salmon.
02:49In particular, Bergen.
02:52A port that faces the wild Atlantic Ocean.
03:00If I'm going to understand the origins of the Vikings, then this is the place to start.
03:04Because at the end of the 8th century, it's likely that the ships carrying those first raiders set out from
03:10this coastline.
03:14It's hard to imagine that it was from here, 1,200 or so years ago, that so much terror was
03:21unleashed.
03:23But this is how I wanted to feel at the beginning of this journey.
03:27So that I could try and understand this seismic moment in European history from the Viking point of view.
03:39The Vikings weren't just savage pirates, but sophisticated traders who crisscrossed the known world running silks and silver, as well
03:52as slaves and stolen booty.
03:56Epic adventurers who voyaged to the exotic cities of Asia and the unknown mysteries of America.
04:09While much of Dark Age Europe had been shaped by the civilising influence of Rome,
04:15up here in Scandinavia, the Vikings had emerged from a distinctive, in fact, a unique culture.
04:22They were untainted by concepts like the written law and life in towns, far less by belief in a Christian
04:30god.
04:32The Vikings bequeathed to us a part of our cultural DNA that's wilder, darker, more mysterious than anything that was
04:42to be had from Rome.
04:44And it wasn't just what they did that made them dangerous.
04:47It was what they thought and what they believed.
04:58Right here, in Bergen, are some of the preserved remains of one of the very earliest Vikings ever found.
05:08Although, it has to be said, they're not exactly in the best of shape.
05:19These poor fragments are all that remains of the skeleton of a man.
05:24These are arm bones.
05:27And these are parts of one leg.
05:33Alongside him were grave goods, including his sword, so it's safe to say that he was a warrior.
05:46But what's remarkable about him, what's fascinating, is that this individual is the first that we know of
05:55to have been buried in true classic Viking style.
06:03He was buried inside a Viking ship that was intended to take him to the afterlife, to Valhalla,
06:10where he would feast and fight alongside the Norse gods themselves.
06:14He was a seaborne warrior.
06:17He would have been carrying the responsibility and the expectations of his family,
06:22who would be hoping that he would return richer, more famous, with a great reputation,
06:26that would change not just his life, but theirs.
06:32A Viking wasn't only something you were, but something you did.
06:39To go a Viking was to head out into the open seas in search of adventure.
06:48Their transport was a technological miracle.
06:52The notorious Viking longboat.
06:55An icon of an entire age.
07:06From Bergen, it's just a short hop to Norway's capital, Oslo.
07:16Resting place of the finest Viking ship ever unearthed.
07:31Like our man, it dates from the very beginning of the Viking age.
07:38This stunning craft is the Osserberg ship.
07:42It's certainly the most famous Viking ship we have.
07:47And to my eyes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most beautiful.
07:53This was once one of the most sophisticated ships in the world.
07:59The epitome of technological brilliance and maritime audacity.
08:08The ship itself is the work of many craftsmen, but here in this carving is the imagination and the skill
08:17of just one artist, one person.
08:21It's this exciting, vivid depiction of a dragon or sea serpents twisted together, biting tails.
08:36And while it's one thing to be handed an object that you can hold in your hand and be told,
08:44this is a thousand or twelve hundred years old.
08:47It's of another order of magnitude to stand beneath something like this.
08:55This says that the Vikings were real people with huge ambition.
09:03This is just one of hundreds or thousands of ships built during the Viking age.
09:08This is what the Vikings were capable of.
09:20The Vikings may well have burst into our British history in a blizzard of flashing axes.
09:27But the culture that gave rise to them certainly didn't appear out of a clear blue sky.
09:32Instead, they were the product of thousands of years of cultural evolution.
09:39They were shaped by their land, by the sea and by countless generations of Scandinavian proto-Vikings.
09:47And it's only by understanding the world of their most distant ancestors that we can hope to dig down to
09:56their real roots.
09:57To distill the very Viking essence, if you like, and to see why and how the terrifying phenomenon of the
10:07Vikings ever came to be.
10:18To discover the very earliest roots of the Vikings, I'm leaving Oslo behind and heading east to the very heart
10:25of the Baltic.
10:30It's taking me 450 miles from Norway to a Swedish island called Gotland.
10:39To really get to grips with the Vikings, to have any chance of seeing who they were and where they
10:45came from,
10:46you have to dig down towards the roots of the world that bore them.
10:50And that means going all the way back to prehistoric Scandinavia.
10:55And I can tell you, there's some pretty strange stuff down there.
11:06The streamlined longboat was key to everything the Vikings achieved.
11:13And the very beginning of the longboat's story can be found here in the Baltic, on Gotland.
11:23Joachim Veilin is a local archaeologist who's promised to help me find some ancient rock carvings.
11:31The only trouble is, they're submerged, and in winter, also stuck under a lot of ice.
11:39And to make matters even worse, it's getting dark.
11:50This is exactly what they tell you not to do in all the warning films.
11:56Exactly.
11:57It's not...
12:02Oh, how frustrating.
12:03I mean, they're just...
12:04You can...
12:05I can see them.
12:06Honestly.
12:07Yeah?
12:07I've got...
12:08Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can.
12:10I can see it.
12:13You see there, the dark?
12:15There's the line of the boat.
12:16There it is.
12:17You can see the curving hull.
12:19It's there.
12:20Amazing.
12:20Yeah, it is.
12:22It's really cool, actually.
12:23That's great.
12:25Effectively, what we've got is a sunken Bronze Age rock carving.
12:30It's great.
12:33Just amazing.
12:37I suppose the obvious question is, why is that rock art here?
12:41Because it feels like the middle of nowhere.
12:44Yeah, today it's the nowhere, but back in the Bronze Age, I think this is a meeting place.
12:49People gathering around here.
12:50You see the open landscape.
12:52You have high points all over here.
12:54And in the Bronze Age, would the sea have been closer and therefore easier to see?
12:58Yeah, the sea would have been closer.
12:59And also there was a freshwater lake just next.
13:03You can see the remains just fine.
13:05So this is the only place for freshwater for you at the time.
13:09And so if it was a place that mattered because people were accustomed to coming here to talk or to
13:15trade or whatever,
13:17then it would have made sense to make carvings in the rock here.
13:22Exactly.
13:22If you look at the rock arts that's made on the mid-eastern part of Sweden, it is the same
13:28kind of rock art.
13:32There's something symbolic about something from so long ago being trapped under the ice.
13:41Rock carvings have been found all over Scandinavia, going back thousands of years into the Iron Age and beyond.
13:50And there's a very definite recurring theme.
13:55I can see right away the ships with people in them, with a crew.
14:00Yes, people with weapons, swords, and edsies.
14:04And the ships are actually really good.
14:06You know, there's quite a lot of detail.
14:09You know, this coming up at the bow.
14:12And then you've even got a serpent head at the bow of the ship.
14:16Yeah, and sometimes it looks almost like you can see the direction of it.
14:19Yeah, so the people who are making the carvings, you kind of get a sense of how familiar they are
14:26with ships.
14:27With the ships, yeah.
14:28Because there's detail and a real familiarity with the shape.
14:34The rock carvings are stunning.
14:37But they're not the only remains that testify to the Vikings' ancient, seafaring roots.
14:44Very evocative.
14:59Next morning, and still on Gotland, I'm searching out more evidence of the earliest maritime ancestors of the Vikings.
15:08What I've come to see here is much, much older than these trees.
15:13But the fact that it's partly concealed by a forest just adds another layer of mystery.
15:18And it kind of sets you up for the expectation that you're about to see something magical.
15:42This vast monument is called the Stone Ship of Ansarvay.
15:49And it's around 3,000 years old.
15:56Anyone coming here couldn't help but be struck by its sheer scale.
16:04I've walked into lots of stone circles in my time, but nothing like this.
16:11In a stone circle, you never quite know how to feel.
16:14You don't really know for sure what you're being told.
16:16But you come in here, and without anyone saying a word, you know exactly what this is.
16:25Like Britain's stone circles, the purpose of ancient ship monuments is mysterious.
16:38Many are graves, but not all.
16:44Every one of them, though, testifies to the symbolic importance of the sea, to the people who lived on Gotland
16:52long before the Viking Age.
16:57It's such a Baltic thing to do.
16:59You don't get ship settings in France or in Britain.
17:03But you get them here, lots and lots of them.
17:16The prehistory of Scandinavia was dominated by the sea.
17:20With its rugged coastline of fjords and inlets, it was often much easier to travel by sea than over land.
17:31In the Baltic Sea alone, there are over 50,000 islands, convenient stopping-off points, service stations or lay-bys,
17:40if you like, along an ancient maritime motorway.
17:46It was these ancient maritime skills that evolved into the seagoing prowess of the Vikings, their daring raids and their
17:56great, epic voyages.
18:02The ancestors of the Vikings had the salt of the sea running through their veins.
18:08But they were also a people who were shaped by their land.
18:17When you travel through Scandinavia, you begin to realise just how huge and varied a land the Vikings inhabited.
18:26From the cold northern mountains of Norway, where arable land was scarce.
18:33All the way down to the fertile plains of Denmark and the south.
18:42Travel in prehistoric Scandinavia might have been dominated by the sea, but survival depended on the land.
19:01The geography of Scandinavia provides for many different landscapes and many different climates.
19:07And people living in different parks are affected in different ways.
19:10In the far north, where the soils are thin and the winters are long and dark, it's very difficult to
19:17grow crops.
19:18It's even a challenge to keep animals.
19:20But in the south, especially during the Bronze Age, the time when people were making those ship carvings,
19:26there was actually an economic surplus.
19:28There was plenty of good grazing and the land was good for many crops.
19:40Having visited the coasts of Norway and Sweden, I'm now heading for Denmark and its capital, Copenhagen.
19:49Because just a hundred miles from here, there's a remarkable sight that reveals how Bronze Age people thrived off the
19:56fertile land of the south.
20:04Three and a half thousand years ago, this place was an important settlement of wealthy farmers.
20:12These are the burial mounds of Borum Eshoy, and they were built between 1,400 and 1,300 years BC.
20:24At that time, there were more than 40 mounds in this area alone, and 45,000 dotted right across Denmark.
20:35One of the many extraordinary things about these mounds is the effort, the colossal effort it takes to build them.
20:43And it's estimated that when this was first completed, it was eight times as big.
20:54To build one of these, you need 150 people working flat out for three or four months.
21:01So whoever commissioned it had to have resources to organise those people, to feed those people, and to give them
21:08the tools for the job.
21:09But all of this is and was rich farming land.
21:13It provides surplus grain and surplus animals.
21:18So the families who were buried in mounds like these weren't just trying to survive off the land, they had
21:24control over it.
21:28These mounds suggest that the people here enjoyed a relatively good life, especially compared to the tougher conditions of the
21:35north.
21:38But wherever you lived, north or south, surviving a Scandinavian winter wasn't easy.
21:53Experimental archaeologists, working here, have created an exact replica of the houses these Bronze Age farmers would have lived in.
22:03And since I've come here in February, it's just the right time to get a taste for the winter food
22:09their lives depended on.
22:14My guide is food expert, Bea Scarrop.
22:21You know, it's all very well for us in the 21st century, but what kind of challenges faced Bronze Age
22:27farmers as the long dark nights of winter set in?
22:31The most important thing was to get enough provisions to get you through the winter.
22:37If you were completely starved in the spring, you couldn't, you know, start working with the land.
22:45And that was very important.
22:46And is there anything interesting to drink in the Bronze Age?
22:49Yes, definitely. And I've made some for you.
22:51I was hoping you'd say that.
22:53Yeah.
22:57The residue of this drink was found in a bark bucket in a burial mound.
23:03OK.
23:03So it's malted wheat, honey, bark myrtle to give a bit of bitterness, and cranberries.
23:13Slangevar.
23:13It's cold.
23:20That's fantastic.
23:22That really is.
23:23It just tastes like fruit juice.
23:25Yes.
23:26But that's a fermented...
23:28It is, yes.
23:29And so that would last.
23:31It would.
23:31Yeah, that would see you through a winter's night, wouldn't it?
23:33Yes.
23:36Fermented drinks may have kept the cold at bay, but more of a problem was keeping food through the winter,
23:43especially meat.
23:45I brought some meat, marinated in whey.
23:49What sort of meat is that?
23:51It's pork.
23:52Right.
23:53And that is edible now, just having been soaked or sat in whey.
24:00Now, you're not just having me on, are you?
24:02No, I'm not.
24:03OK.
24:08It's got all the texture, but it only tastes very faintly of meat.
24:11Mm-hm.
24:12But, you know.
24:15But then I do like raw meat.
24:17I've always been drawn that way.
24:22Preparing for winter.
24:24Surviving it.
24:26Together.
24:27It's such a shared human experience for anyone in Northern Europe.
24:33I remember speaking to a woman in Shetland once and asking her how she coped with the winter.
24:39And she said she enjoyed it and looked forward to it.
24:41And I asked her why.
24:42And she said the satisfaction was preparing for it and feeling proof against the winter.
24:50And so the people here in the Bronze Age, they would have been making plans for the winter, laying down
24:56supplies.
24:57And as well as making sure they had the basics of life, they were finding time to prepare, you know,
25:04a few barrels of fermented drinks so that, as well as surviving, they could also take the edge off and
25:10enjoy themselves as well.
25:11So they'd been here with their extended families, with the animals for extra warmth.
25:17And if they had got their plans right and they pulled together, then they would survive.
25:22And having survived a winter like that, then I'm sure it would make the spring and the summer that followed
25:28that bit sweeter.
25:32Having eaten like a Viking ancestor, I'm going to spend the night like one in the moonlit shadow of those
25:39ancient mounds.
25:43Now, you can read all the books you want, but the only way to even get close to having a
25:50Bronze Age experience is to do it.
25:59And hopefully these sheepskins will make all the difference.
26:10I don't suppose there were many occasions when a Bronze Age person had a knight to him or herself inside
26:16a house like this.
26:17They would have been with their family almost all of the time.
26:24In Britain, Bronze Age people lived in round houses.
26:30But over here, the rectangular timber houses of Borum Eshoy were the direct ancestors of the Viking longhouses that would
26:40appear 2,000 years later.
26:50Well, there we go.
26:54So, I have to report, first of all, that despite all my best intentions, to report throughout the night, I
27:03fell asleep.
27:07All I can really say is it was warm enough.
27:13And here I am. I've survived by Bronze Age winter's night.
27:19It's quite good, really.
27:30Incredibly, it's even possible to get a glimpse of the very inhabitants of Borum Eshoy themselves.
27:42In Copenhagen, an entire 3,000-year-old family from the settlement has been carefully preserved.
28:03This is the mum.
28:06What's most moving of all to me is the preservation of the clothing that she was put into after she
28:13died.
28:14She's wearing a short-sleeved woolen blouse.
28:17The lower half of her body is covered by this perfectly preserved folded blanket or skirt also of wool.
28:25And you can't resist the possibility that if you could somehow bring someone back who was there that day,
28:33they could look at this and recognise her and know who she was.
28:43And this splendid individual is the sun.
28:51The fact that his hair has been preserved, this flamboyant hairstyle, just adds to his allure.
29:00And you get this sense, looking at how he's styled himself, that there is just a trace of his personality
29:10in there as well.
29:17But it's the husband and father whose remains are the most telling of all.
29:25Everything about this guy says big man.
29:29The size of him, his musculature, the mass of his bones, all of his life he had access to a
29:36good diet.
29:37That in itself suggests wealth.
29:41His fingernails were neatly manicured so that he was the kind of man who had the time to take care
29:46of his appearance.
29:48He lived to be around 60 years old, which is a good age really by any standards.
29:54In life and in death, he was the centre of the family.
30:03It's clear that in Denmark and the south, the Bronze Age ancestors of the Vikings lived a good life.
30:12But the further north you lived, the progressively tougher things must have become for anyone trying to farm the land.
30:26For the Vikings themselves, 2,000 years later, the varied geography of their lands would shape very different destinies.
30:38Scandinavia was always a land divided.
30:41In the south, there was plentiful farmland and relative affluence.
30:46But the north was always a different, a tougher prospect.
30:51There was land available, but it was limited.
30:54A lot of it around the sides of and at the necks of the fjords.
30:58So perhaps it's no surprise that of all the Vikings, it was the Norwegians who ventured furthest in search of,
31:06quite literally, pastures new.
31:09Where a man wasn't just wedged in between the mountains and the sea.
31:16But of course, we know that the Vikings weren't just expert sailors and skilled shipbuilders.
31:25They were also warriors.
31:29Even by the standards of the Dark Ages, the Vikings were especially adept when it came to the messy business
31:36of killing.
31:37And again, it was something deeply rooted in their Scandinavian past.
31:49To discover the origins of the Vikings' natural talent for bloody combat.
31:54And moving on from the peaceful farmers of Bronze Age Jutland to later and much more violent times.
32:05The Iron Age.
32:19This is the Hurt Spring boat.
32:21And it's one of the most famous seagoing vessels that you will ever lay eyes on.
32:28I've seen lots of photographs of this over the years, but they can't do it justice.
32:32It's a bit like if you've only ever seen a Hollywood star in movies and magazines, and then one day
32:37you find yourself standing next to them.
32:39And all at once you have to deal with their physical presence as well.
32:44So it's like that in here for me.
32:58The Hurt Spring boat dates to around 350 BC.
33:03That's around 1,000 years after our Bronze Age family.
33:09But still 1,000 years before the first Viking raids.
33:18About a third of it was recovered, enough to allow its shape to be recreated as a metal frame, cradling
33:25its precious timbers and revealing a form that was perfect for war.
33:32One of the most important things to notice about the Hurt Spring boat is that it's beautifully symmetrical.
33:39It has an up-thrusting prow at this end and exactly the same at the other.
33:47There's room for about two dozen men, each using paddles like these.
33:53These are made from maple wood.
33:54And they could fairly get it skipping along through the water.
33:59Now, because it's got the prow at each end, it means as soon as you beach it, you're already in
34:06position to go back out into the water as soon as you want.
34:09Why is that important?
34:11Because the Hurt Spring boat is designed for a quick getaway.
34:22We know that this very boat experienced bloody battle.
34:28When it was discovered, it was packed with shields, swords and spears.
34:35All the weapons of a small army.
34:39Men like these were well practiced in war and seaborne raiding, a thousand years before the first true Viking raid.
34:47And so the Vikings didn't just spring out of nowhere, fully formed.
34:52Instead, they were the product, the evolution of a dynamic and often violent history.
34:58All across Scandinavia, there were tribes with their own identities and territories and allegiances.
35:04And they learned to fight, first of all, by fighting each other.
35:10Warriors like those who paddled the Hurt Spring boat were the forefathers of the true Vikings.
35:15They were the seeds from which the Vikings grew.
35:22The Iron Age was a violent time right across Europe.
35:28And Scandinavia was no exception, as local tribes 2,000 years ago tussled for power.
35:38But as they did so, another force was on the move.
35:42The Romans.
35:47The southern edge of Denmark is as close as the Scandinavian world ever came to the might of Rome.
35:55And the presence of the Roman Empire would play its own part in how the Vikings came to be.
36:03Rome had seemed unstoppable.
36:05But in 9 AD, an event occurred that was to send shockwaves throughout Europe.
36:09And it even had implications for the far north and Scandinavia.
36:14About 250 miles to the south of modern-day Denmark, in the dense woodland of northern Germany,
36:22Rome's northern army was brought to an abrupt halt by an alliance of local Germanic tribes.
36:29Three legions of Roman soldiers, around 32,000 men, were lured deep into the Tutenberg forest.
36:36And there, annihilated.
36:41It marked the end of Roman expansion into northern Europe.
36:45Scandinavia was, and would always remain, outside the empire.
36:57The halting of Rome brought another level of division between the north and the south.
37:04Now, as well as their different geographies, you could add a divergent economic landscape as well.
37:13This land, Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia, was never ruled by Rome.
37:18But the Roman Empire had an insatiable appetite for exotic goods from the north.
37:24Animal furs, oils, and this stuff, amber.
37:28It's relatively common in Denmark and Norway, but it's extremely rare in the Mediterranean.
37:34And the Romans loved it for making jewellery.
37:37All of this meant trade, and trade meant new wealth for a few people.
37:42And a desire for luxury goods from the empire.
37:45The sort of stuff that only Rome could provide.
37:48And that only the rich and powerful could afford.
38:04Many Roman discoveries in Scandinavia are of simple pottery, or occasionally coins.
38:14But some finds have been spectacular.
38:22This is the Hobie burial horde.
38:24It was found in the grave of a chieftain.
38:28A man aged somewhere between 40 and 60 years old.
38:33We don't know how he died, but this collection that went into the ground with him,
38:39tells us a lot about what he had achieved in life.
38:44It's the kind of banqueting set that you would normally expect a high-ranking Roman official to have.
38:51It's a wonder to behold.
38:54It's so rich and elegant.
38:57But the piece de resistance are two solid silver cups, each weighing about a kilogram.
39:05Now the originals are a way being conserved and analysed.
39:08But what I have here, what I'm allowed to handle, are two replicas.
39:15What they show are various scenes from Homer's Iliad.
39:20This lavish collection was handed over to a man who could appreciate Roman finery,
39:27who was schooled enough in Roman ways to understand classical stories from the classical world.
39:38It's telling that nothing of this magnificence has ever been found in the far north.
39:53Scandinavia always remained outwith the Roman Empire.
39:56And it's important to remember that when thinking about how the countries here developed.
40:02We take it for granted, in the English part of Britain at least,
40:07that Rome brought more than the legions.
40:09It brought towns and roads, public entertainments.
40:14Towards the end of the period, it brought Christianity as well.
40:17But more than that, Rome brought literacy and the rule of law.
40:22You can quite justifiably argue that the Romans brought the time of our prehistory to an end.
40:28But none of that happened here.
40:31There were no towns, there was no literacy, there were no new religions.
40:36Right through the Roman period and the Viking Age itself,
40:39an extra thousand years of being left alone.
40:43And that made all the difference.
40:45Because here was a culture that was left to do what it wanted.
40:50People who were left to do what they wanted to do, their own way of being.
40:54They had their own leaders, their own gods.
40:57And so, in that light, perhaps it comes as no surprise
41:00that when those first Viking raiders attacked a remote Northumbrian monastery,
41:05they felt they had nothing to fear from a Christian god.
41:09Because he was obviously no match for Odin and Thor.
41:20Shipbuilding skills and warrior prowess gave the Vikings the means to terrorise the Christian world.
41:31But it was the Norse gods that defined their Viking spirit.
41:38Sagas written in the 13th century give us a unique insight into beliefs that can be traced right back to
41:45the Vikings prehistoric ancestors.
41:49They believe in a pantheon of gods, but the main god was Thor.
41:56Thor er sterkastur allra godana, which means Thor is the strongest of all the gods.
42:03Because I remember, as a little boy, from the comics that I was reading, knowing about Thor.
42:09Is it true? I mean, he had the hammer, he had the belt of power.
42:13Yes.
42:13Is all that in the old versions?
42:15Yes, yes.
42:15I remember Thor off three kost gripi,
42:19Eidner hammer and meolnir.
42:21Which means Thor has three special objects.
42:24One is the hammer, meolnir.
42:26I remember mighty Mjolnir.
42:28Does Mjolnir mean anything as a name?
42:31Does it have a sense of something powerful in the name?
42:33Um, it designates the crushing power that he has.
42:39It says that the giants are well familiar with the hammer because Thor is always crushing, crushing their skulls with
42:45it.
42:45There's the girdle of might, obviously.
42:48That's not quite so catchy, is it?
42:51And all hand best done grip, me and gather.
42:55So when he puts on this girdle, his strength doubles.
43:00And he gets a much neater waist.
43:03Probably as well.
43:05Is Thor top of the tree, top god?
43:10Well, he's among the top gods, but probably the highest one is Odin.
43:16And as it says here, he is the highest and most glorious of the gods that we know of.
43:23And so he's the one who is worshipped by chieftains and kings.
43:31Unlike Christianity, Viking belief wasn't so much about an immortal soul,
43:37but an immortal reputation.
43:41They didn't really care about the afterlife.
43:44They wanted glory and honour in this life.
43:48And then it says in Hávamál, the sayings of Odin,
43:53Deir fjö, deir frændur, deir vinnir, deir sjálfur er sama.
43:58Your cattle will die, your friends will die, you'll die.
44:02En ærstir, deir aldrei kveimur sig goðan getur.
44:05Your reputation will never die if you get a good one.
44:09That's why they weren't afraid of dying in battle with courage and honour.
44:15The worst thing that could happen to a Viking was to be said, um, a coward.
44:25The end of the Roman Empire, early in the 5th century, saw Scandinavia standing on the brink of the Viking
44:32Age.
44:35A final piece of the jigsaw was the emergence of bigger regional leaders.
44:44Heading back to Sweden, 40 miles north of Stockholm, there's evidence of a consolidation of power across ever greater areas
44:53of land.
45:02Stretching away ahead of me are the burial mounds of Gamla Uppsala.
45:08They were built sometime between around 550 AD and 700 AD.
45:14That's a time after the Romans, but before the coming of the Vikings.
45:24These mounds seem truly vast, even compared to those of Bronze Age Denmark, 2000 years earlier.
45:32And, crucially, these were only built for a very select few.
45:38We'll never know exactly who was buried here.
45:42The pyres, the funeral bonfires that raged here, and that these mounds were built on top of, burned so intensely,
45:48that nothing survived to be buried, except some charred human bone and some melted grave goods.
45:55But whoever they were, the people who could command this kind of burial,
45:58were certainly amongst the wealthiest and the most powerful in all of Scandinavia.
46:02And they wielded power all across the land.
46:20The mounds were built one after the other, during a period lasting a hundred years, maybe more.
46:27So it's tempting to think about a dynasty, a royal lineage,
46:32one family retaining control generation after generation.
46:36So the people buried in these mounds might be the very first kings and queens.
46:46In the shadow of these mounds, evidence has even been found of an ancient royal palace.
46:58Archaeologist John Younquist has found some remarkable remains
47:02that reveal just how lavish a palace it once was.
47:13Here we've got two of the spirals that we find on the doors of the hall.
47:21Oh, look at that.
47:23Oh, fantastic.
47:26I mean, there would have been a longer bit as well, extending.
47:29Yeah, but we would have had a tang going like this.
47:32Ah, okay.
47:33Unfortunately, it's broken on this one.
47:35Take it away.
47:36Take it from me.
47:39And what else?
47:42Oh, so that would have been, that would have been all as one?
47:46All one?
47:47Yeah, absolutely.
47:48Oh, that's amazing.
47:49You get that sense that it's not just a functional building.
47:53It's been decorated to be stunning.
47:56It's when you see these beautifully crafted, beautifully wrought finishing touches that you
48:01realise it wasn't just a big hall.
48:03It was the best hall, finished to the highest standards.
48:07Absolutely.
48:09It is a fantastic house.
48:11I've never seen anything similar.
48:14The fine ironwork adorned huge timber doors to an interior that would have both impressed
48:20and intimidated visitors.
48:24The inside would be huge.
48:26It's like a living room, 200 square metres big.
48:29Yeah.
48:30And the walls have been whitewashed.
48:33So it's not like a smoky, really dark age.
48:36It's really a very nice palace with white, shiny, nice walls.
48:42I wonder how they maintained it, because there would have been big fires inside as well.
48:45Yeah.
48:46So they'd have to be constantly whitewashing the inside.
48:49Yeah, yeah, yeah.
48:50Yeah, absolutely.
48:52This was the royals' persons, the princes' reception rooms in a reception area.
49:00And it's the lofty position that it has in the landscape.
49:03You know, down to those fields is way below us.
49:08You know, so the working people are literally beneath us.
49:12Yeah.
49:12And we are above everybody else.
49:15Just over there, of course, they've got the presence of their ancestors.
49:20Yeah.
49:20Buried in these mounds, they've got people.
49:22Yeah.
49:23So that they can say, this is ours.
49:25And I can prove that, because my father was here, and his father was here.
49:30Yeah.
49:34Gamla Uppsala is one of the most important pre-Viking sites in all of Scandinavia.
49:43It reveals a new centralisation of power in the east.
49:46The first people who are not just chiefs, but regional kings and queens.
49:54But it's important for another reason too.
49:56Because this place was also a centre of a very violent religion.
50:02A reminder that this world was very different to the emerging Christian kingdoms beyond the borders of the Viking world.
50:11There are disturbing reports of ritual sacrifice, of nine males, of every living creature, dogs, horses, even men,
50:23being taken to a nearby grove, and their dead bodies hung up on the branches where they were left to
50:30rot together.
50:36Archaeologists working hereabouts are tempted to think that this might be the location where it all went on.
50:43Now, all over the trees here, there are little runes, little offerings of little bits of jewellery and ribbons.
50:52Here, someone's even made and brought in a plaster cast of Thor's hammer.
50:57So, even after all this time, this place matters on some level to all sorts of people.
51:09Evidence of exactly what went on here has been lost.
51:14But one extremely rare pagan find has been unearthed nearby.
51:24The object is a clue as to why the people of Scandinavia were so different from those living in the
51:33rest of Europe.
51:34It's a bronze pendant.
51:36Once upon a time, it would have been worn around the neck of a woman
51:40who lived sometime towards the end of the 7th century.
51:45It's quite obviously a horse.
51:47But this is no ordinary horse.
51:50This is the mount of Odin himself.
51:53One of the most important and powerful of the old pagan gods.
51:58This is Old Norse.
52:00The woman who wore this didn't believe in one god.
52:04She believed in many.
52:15After a journey that's taken me all over Scandinavia, I'm coming back to Oslo.
52:25And to the Ossobird ship that also played its part in Viking belief.
52:35Because this vessel wasn't only to be used to ferry the living,
52:40but also the dead.
52:43Viking funerals, at least for the high and mighty, were massive, elaborate affairs
52:49with rituals lasting maybe weeks at a time.
52:54Of course, the dead had to be placed aboard because it was them who were making the journey.
53:00And then around them would be heaped all of the things that they might need and want in the next
53:05life.
53:05So, sumptuous clothes, jewelry for display, food and drink.
53:11And also, and importantly, there was usually an element of sacrifice.
53:17And so, dogs, maybe hunting dogs, and also lap dogs and pets,
53:22would be killed and put beside their owners.
53:26In this instance, as many as 15 horses were slaughtered and laid out for use in the next world.
53:33And you have to imagine the impact that that would have had on the people who were watching.
53:40For one thing, it was a display of wealth beyond their reach.
53:44This only happened to the few.
53:47And they would see all the valuables going in, then the animals being killed and put alongside.
53:55It would have stayed with those spectators for a lifetime.
53:59And they, in turn, would have passed stories about what they had seen down through the generations.
54:05So whoever went into the next life aboard this ship would never be forgotten.
54:19When I look out into the Atlantic from here, I feel a great deal of respect, if not downright admiration,
54:26for the people who embarked on their journeys.
54:29I don't think they were driven by greed, far less bloodlust.
54:35Instead, I think the motivations were ambition and opportunity.
54:39They were living at a time when the populations of Europe were expanding.
54:43But here in Norway, beautiful though it is, space is finite.
54:47There's a limit to how much good land there is available to expand into.
54:52So who could blame some of them when they knew that out there was plenty of land,
54:57as well as gold and silver, that might be acquired.
55:08I've seen how, over thousands of years, a strange and unique Scandinavian culture gave rise to the Viking Age.
55:20But when the magnificent Ossiburg ship burial was unearthed, it contained an unexpected twist in the tale.
55:33As an archaeologist, I tend to spend a lot of my time talking about powerful men.
55:40But when the Ossiburg ship was excavated, the big surprise was that it contained two women.
55:48And these are the remains of one of them. In fact, the older of the two.
55:58We can tell that this venerable lady was perhaps as much as 80 years old when she died.
56:06And it was cancer of some sort that finally claimed her.
56:12But beyond those two certainties, we know very little about this woman
56:19or about the other woman that she was buried alongside.
56:24The remains of a high-status woman is another reminder that the Vikings weren't all about warrior men.
56:32And analysis of the second woman makes things even more complicated.
56:39While there's every reason to believe that the older woman was Scandinavian born and bred,
56:44analysis of DNA taken from the younger woman's skeleton at least allows for the possibility that she was from as
56:52far away as the Middle East.
56:53So that by as early as the end of the 8th century, the Vikings were doing much more than just
56:59cause trouble for their neighbours, like the people in the British Isles.
57:03They had contacts into the East, into Eastern Europe.
57:13I started out on the Atlantic coast, wanting to discover how the Vikings came to be.
57:21But even the possibility that the younger Ossiburg woman came from so far away is the beginning of a whole
57:28new story.
57:32After thousands of years, the age of Vikings had begun.
57:36No borders or boundaries could contain them.
57:39And the oceans and rivers gave them unlimited access throughout the known world and beyond.
57:49Next time, the Vikings go east, building a vast trade network of luxuries.
57:59Silk was so valuable, it made the perilous river journeys to get here more than worthwhile.
58:05And slaves.
58:08These are slave collars.
58:10You can imagine the humiliation of having something like this placed around your neck.
58:17And beginning a process of colonisation that was the beginning of a Viking empire.
58:23By marrying the locals, their blood mixed with our blood.
58:28And they're still here with us today.
58:42Good evening.
58:54Bye-bye.
58:55We only wanted a чтобыumble up a look.
58:56Bye-bye.
58:56Bye.
58:56Bye-bye.
58:57Bye-bye.
58:58Bye-bye.
58:58Bye-bye.
58:58See you next screen.