Hi. You're watching 'The Real Vikings, on the Time Team Official YouTube
channel with me, Tony Robinson. Legend has it that in 1066, a single
crazed, axe-wielding Viking held an entire army at bay. Up there on Stamford
Bridge until he was speared from underneath, by an English soldier floating downstream. For centuries, this notion of an axe-brandishing maniac has been the popular image of
the Vikings. But now new discoveries, fascinating archaeology and cutting edge research
are painting a
different, much more complex picture. For a start, they didn't wear these. It's a dramatic, sometimes contradictory history where stories of raids sit alongside tales of trade.
Savagery goes hand in hand with settlement, all bound up in spectacular poetry and exquisite
craftsmanship. For the past year, Time Team have been at the heart of the latest digs and sniffing
out the very best research into the Vikings to tell the real story of a group of people who made
an emphatic and indelible mar
k on Britain. This is the island of Lindisfarne, and a thousand
years ago it was one of the holiest places in Britain. It's where the Lindisfarne Gospels were
written, and where the bones of the famous saint, Saint Cuthbert, were kept. It was also the target
of a notorious Viking attack in the year 793, a cataclysmic event that sent shockwaves through
Europe and changed the course of our history. Fierce foreboding omens came over the land of
Northumbria and wretchedly terrified the people.
The ravaging of heathen men destroyed God's
church at Lindisfarne through brutal robbery and slaughter. That description of the raid in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle over a thousand years ago cemented the image of the Viking
as a pagan marauder, hell bent on treasure seeking and terror. And at the start of the Vikings' ventures into early
medieval Britain, it's fair to say that that was a pretty accurate
picture. They were non-Christian. They pillaged and were pretty handy with a sword. The rai
d of Lindisfarne kicked off a 250 year period during which Vikings conquered
half the country. But there's another, more surprising legacy of this invasion: a
new culture. And over the last few years, archaeologists and historians have been building
up a completely different image of the Vikings as peaceful settlers and traders. I get very confused by you academics sometimes,
because half the time you seem to talk about the Vikings as though they
really were incredibly bloodthirsty and we w
ere right to be scared stiff of them. The rest of the
time you're going, oh no, no, no, it's all right. Actually, they were really nice farmers. Which is
it? I wouldn't have wanted to be sitting here at Lindisfarne when the Vikings turned up in 793.
Let's get that clear. But plenty of other people came from Scandinavia for a variety of different
reasons, and I think it would be wrong to label all of the people that came from Scandinavia as
bloodthirsty murderers. The word Viking literally m
eans pirate, but today it's commonly used to
describe all the different groups from Denmark, Norway and Sweden who started coming to Britain at
the end of the eighth century, whether as farmers, merchants or as raiders. How many invaders are
we talking about? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? It's clear from the impact of the
Scandinavians on the English language and on place names, that it was a considerable number.
Thousands. And it's quite clear from looking at the distribution of
place names, they settled in
particular areas. So some parts of northern and eastern England, there were dense concentrations
of Scandinavian settlers. This is York, and just 73 years after the bloody attack on
Lindisfarne, a great Viking army invaded here. Easily accessible from the North Sea via
the Humber Estuary and River Ouse, York was a cosmopolitan centre of culture and wealth and a
very attractive prize. Living up to their warrior image, the Vikings won York from the Saxons
and the
n waged a brutal ten year campaign to conquer all of England. But in 878, they agreed a
truce with the Saxon king Alfred, and England was cut into two, with the Vikings ruling a huge area
called the Danelaw, with York, now renamed Yorvic at its heart. In the 1970s, the city was the focus of
an incredible excavation when archaeologists found part of a Viking street. Copper Gate, or street
of the cup makers, stunned the world. Copper Gate produced an incredible 40,000 finds and reveals
that a
fter the initial invasion, Vikings settled as peaceful, ordinary people who rebuilt the town.
Richard Hall was the director of that iconic dig. That is arguably the most exciting single object
from the excavation. It's a coin die. Very rare. You have a pair of them. This is actually the
bottom one. You put a bit of silver on the top, another die on and so on, then bang and you make tens of
thousands of coins with these. So, technically, this is absolutely brilliant. This is a musical
instru
ment, believe it or not. This is a slab of boxwood, and they bored holes down into this.
It's like an old milk bottle. You blow across the top and it plays. Can I have a go? Please do.
For the first time, we characterise what the Viking Age city was like. Characterised
it in what way? Well, as this thriving, bustling street scene. People making things,
selling things, importing things. Big, big city growing under Viking control. But the 1970s dig revealed only part of the picture of Viking Y
ork. Fast forward a few decades, and there's
now another opportunity to open up a huge area near the Viking city centre. Hungate is uncharted territory, lying next to the River Fosse. Archaeologists are just midway through a five year
project, and Time Team have taken them up on the offer to share what might be their best year yet. While Helen Geake explores the written sources, Phil Harding will get his hands dirty in the
trenches. Meanwhile, Mick Aston's eager to explore the latest discover
ies made about
the city's Scandinavian inhabitants. Have you actually got anything of the Viking period yet?
We do, Mick. And that's a good question, because actually we're just coming into a space that is
part of a sunken feature building. We actually have... Under ten feet of waterlogged soil are the
remains of buildings, including this structure. Some seven metres long and four metres wide, its
basement, lined with timbers and with an earthen floor, is sunk two metres into the ground. So
the obvious question then, Pete, is how do you know that this is Viking? Everything that we've
recovered from the building and these posts in front of us are all oak. Oh, so you can get a date out of that?
We can get brilliant dendro dates. Two of the posts that we've already excavated even had
the bark surviving. And we know that that tree was cut down in the summer of 969 A.D.
The summer of 969, that's brilliant isn't it? On the south side of this building, our
planks are the ones that w
e've recovered so far, were cut from trees that were grown in southeast
England. And they're reused ship timbers. Good lord. So a reused part of a boat with timbers
that come from southeast England. Yeah. That's very unusual, isn't it? For Viking Age York.
It's unique. And what is it? Is it a house or a shed or something? The way it's been constructed
suggests that it's, it's just a cellar. It's a basement. It's somewhat like a warehouse, to tell
you the truth. Hun Gate's wet conditions mea
ns preservation here is pretty stunning. And as a thousand
year old timber from the warehouse comes out of the ground, Time Team’s Phil is on hand. There we go. So is this going to be sawn timbers or is it going to be done using an axe? This is
all done using an axe. That is incredible that you can get that level of a finish. God. You can't dig
your nail in it. Want to make a chair out of this! With the upright post removed, part of the Saxon
ship finally sees daylight. Oh, yes. Isn't that b
eautiful? Well, you've got the classic sort of
partly overlapped, clinker-built timbers on here. So we've got the bottom edge of this slightly
overlaps the top edge of that. I mean, you can't say whether it's likely to be a
merchantman or even a warship. We don't know, unfortunately. I want this to be a
successor of King Alfred's navy. I really, really do. Well, Phil, it's probably not King Alfred's ship
recycled into the building, but the archaeologists believe numerous boats
and goods wo
uld have been passing through this bustling site a thousand years ago. In fact,
remains of other buildings and finds suggests this whole area may have been set aside for merchants.
It's revealing a rather rich Viking York, a vital trading centre. But while many were happy as
peaceful settlers in York, a shocking discovery in Wales suggests other Viking warriors hadn't
given up their exploits as heathen murderers. If you want us to investigate more sites, you can
make it happen. So help us r
each 10,000 members on Patreon. According to some experts, we've
got the Vikings all wrong. It's too simplistic to think of them just as bloodthirsty marauders
bashing everybody and everything in their quest for booty. New archaeology offers a much more
complex story that they moved here, settled down, and assimilated relatively quickly. But if that's
true, why does this notion of the Viking as a farmer and trader always get trumped by the image
of the ferocious Viking berserker? This one s
eems to be chewing the top of his own shield. Did they
deliberately set out to look and behave fierce? The berserker fate seems to involve chewing on
shields like this chap, frothing at the mouth, howling like an animal, and generally displaying a
lot of bestial behaviour. The goal there is quite clearly to bolster the morale of their own army,
while at the same time intimidating the enemy army. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that our
image of Vikings is dominated by violence. They thems
elves relished their bloodthirsty reputation
and even wrote poetry about it. King Eric Bloodaxe was immortalised in the words of the equally
scary-sounding Egill Skallagrimsson. He's using rhyme. It must have been absolutely electrifying at the time, as
well as the traditional alliteration. That really is glorifying violence. You could
say that. And that's exactly what a man like Eric Bloodaxe would love to hear. But to
a certain extent, the ability to be a great war leader was a desirable
thing in a king. So
do we put too much emphasis on the Vikings as violent people? I think sometimes they are
made to be more violent than anyone else. But violence was not unusual. It's just that the Danes,
certainly in the earlier phases of the raiding, were much more efficient at the art of warfare.
But Mary, Do you think that by saying that they're no worse or better than anybody else, do you think
that that misses the point a bit? This raises an issue about how we sanitise the violence
of the
past. It is absolutely not acceptable to dress up as a Nazi right now, and I think there would be
universal or worldwide consensus on that. But it is acceptable to walk around the streets of York
in broad daylight dressed as a Viking. But I think it's important not to lose that, that sense of
the complexity of the past. We've clearly revelled in the glamorous violence of Vikings. Wagner's
operas gave us grand Vikings in winged helmets, and the Nazis hijacked the valiant Viking warrio
r
image for recruitment posters. And it's not just an image. There's archaeological proof the Vikings
could be cold blooded murderers. Llanbedrgoch on the Isle of Anglesey in north Wales, was a small
10th century settlement surrounded by a huge defensive wall. But archaeologists digging there
in the late 1990s found a village annihilated and five bodies, including a child casually buried
in a shallow ditch. All the burials dated to a period of Viking attacks in the area. We have an
adult m
ale, 35-45 years old, thrown in on top of an adolescent. The upper burial was notable for the
wrists may've been restrained behind the back, tied, tied together, tied together at that point.
It's not a natural position for a body of loose, dead body to fall into. The only one
possible injury is a blow across the left orbit of the skull, damaging the
nasal area here from a pointed tool. Yes, there was another burial of an adult male,
slightly older, 35-45 years old, who was hunched over on o
ne side, but his wrists came together
on to the font of the body. Traditionally, a Viking warrior will be buried with grave goods
as weapons. We don't have that in this case. So we can rule out a Viking burying a Viking. And
it's not a Welsh burial of kith and kin. So we only left with one option, really. And that's the
disturbing conclusion. These people, potentially all related, fell victim to savage Viking raiders. But Vikings weren't just masters of Warcraft. They led the way when it cam
e to the craft of making
weapons. At the Wallace Collection in London, metallurgist Alan Williams has been looking into
the steel content of Viking swords and discovered that technologically, they were years ahead of
their time. So now this is an example of the best sort of Viking sword. It's rather pretty. What
is surprising is that it's very uniform. Now, that's a very homogeneous crucible steel of
about 1% carbon, which is quite unlike any other medieval steel before or since until
the
Industrial Revolution. That steel is as good as any made today, and reveals the Vikings
to have been supreme metal workers. No wonder, then, that they saw their blacksmiths as semi
religious figures. A major pagan god worshipped by the Vikings was Thor, who carried a blacksmith's
hammer as a symbol of power. So are the Smiths really important? They were really important.
It required a vast amount of skill, knowledge, access to specific iron alloys, bringing it
all together. And that's what'
s great about the Vikings. They bring these different skills
all together. Everything is embodied in the blacksmith's art, from producing something
that is basically starts off as a red rock, that comes out as a white metal,
and then is transformed yet again into these phenomenal cutting blades. Armed with their incredible weapons, the Vikings were supremely confident invaders, and
even though some were settling down and trading in parts of the North, others continued raiding
in the south i
nto the nine hundreds. In Weymouth, a recent grisly discovery hit the headlines.
Archaeologists were stunned when they unearthed a massacre, the shocking aftermath of a Viking raid.
Angela, this is just one of a number of burials from a remarkable site. There were 51 skeletons in
this pit, all young adult males. They had perhaps been stripped as well and all decapitated. We
think that these individuals were executed. Incredibly, the archaeologists suspect these
individuals were actually Vik
ings outnumbered victims of some seriously angry Anglo-Saxons.
There are enough bodies to comprise one Viking raiding party, and they're the right age. The
bodies are also buried on a town boundary, a significant spot where Saxons routinely
executed criminals. But before execution, there was a horrific fight. This is a thoracic vertebrae here. So where's the...?
Just about here. So this is the back, and the rib cage is going to
be out there. That's right. Does that mean to say it's actually
had to cut through the rib cage?
The lower rib cage is just round about here. When it came to decapitation, it was no
holds barred. This is a vertebrae from about here, right? And you've got a slice from the front
through towards the back. Oh, I see! That's literally created by a sword blow. That's a
sword going through. And after decapitation, the Saxons really twisted the knife. This is
the jaw. Again, we have slices right the way through. Now, that looks like it's come from the
back. B
ut this individual also has cuts to the vertebrae from the front. You know, I mean, it's
really been chopped right the way through here, hasn't it? And again on that side there. A
number of the skulls and jaws have this kind of pattern of injuries. And it seems to
me that it is not related to the act of execution to the removal of the head. It's almost it's
almost like a kind of mutilation. Everybody's got this amazing idea of these fearsome Viking
warriors attacking monasteries and defence
less villages. Well, they obviously, they had a bad day,
on this occasion. Analysis of the teeth should confirm if these are Vikings. But this discovery
is dramatic evidence of an extraordinarily violent society, whichever side you were on. But while vicious clashes were continuing in the south of Britain in the 10th century, further north,
Vikings were putting their energies into craft instead of killing. Excavations in the Hun
Gate area of York are now revealing just how much effort went i
nto transforming the town into
a major Viking centre. This was a bustling area, possibly where goods were shipped in and out,
and where archaeologists have unearthed a Viking warehouse containing a very rare find. Here we have a thousand year old knife that, apart from a bit of surface concretion, is really
in pretty good knick. And an X-ray of the knife reveals it's a cut above the average blade. What
you can see is that there's a funny looking band of lines running just below the top of th
e knife,
like that. That's in sort of this position here on the knife. And I think those lines represent
what we call pattern welding. Top of the range metalworking technique, gives the blade extra
flexibility as well as strength. And that's very desirable in things like swords, where you've got
this long blade. You don't want to hit somebody, and the thing just shatters. You want that bit
of give and take in it, but it's pretty unusual in a knife. We don't know, really whether a
knife lik
e this would actually, in effect, have been a much better working object.
But there were people who wanted not just a common and garden £5 watch. They wanted the £500
watch. And I think it's the same with the knives, it's a way of flaunting your wealth and
your position. Pattern welding on a knife instead of a sword was effectively
Viking bling. It was just showing off, but making it would have tested the most skilled
of blacksmiths. As a metal worker, Andrew Bodley and his enthusiastic app
rentice have been finding
out. There's a lot of work involved in it. And the other dangerous part is that all the way along,
if you leave the metal on the forge too long, you can destroy hours of work very easily.
These seven separate bars of steel and iron all have different qualities, but once welded
and hammered together, they create a sharp, flexible blade with a distinctive pattern. Oh,
look at those sparks! Hit, hit, hit! That's in. Once hammered flat, the red hot bar is twisted in
a
vice, welded to another piece of steel and then shaped into a knife. But in a split second it can all go horribly wrong. That's too hot. As a working knife, that's now kaput. You've
damaged the structure inside the metal there. That's as a working knife, that's... throw it
away. Cut it off and go throw it away. Luckily, Andrew's got other irons in the fire and carries
on with an unburned blade. But it's a frustrating lesson in the difficulties of pattern welding. To speed up a process that w
ould have taken days, we're prepared to cheat with some
modern technology: an electric grinder to polish the knife, then acid to bring out the
pattern. Oh, wow. Now that is status. I mean, I can really appreciate why anybody owning one
of those would be, you know, top of the society. That's great stuff. That's surely great stuff. Evidence from York shows that by the mid-10th century, the Vikings here really were becoming a settled
and civil people. And there was a market for posh metal objec
ts, but not necessarily weapons. Because by this time there's evidence of another revolution in Viking society. They were giving up
their pagan gods, which included gods of fire and war, and embracing the rather gentler world of
Christianity, where swords were unwelcome at a Sunday service. But at Middleton Church near York,
there's evidence that finding God didn't mean forgetting your heritage. Oh, wow, look at that's
a Viking warrior, it's tremendous. That's wonderful, isn't it? You can se
e he's probably wearing a
helmet with the nose guard. Here is his shield and then his sword. And then below that, the axe.
You can see the axe head there. And on his lap, he's got a short sword or knife or a dagger. And
there's a great long spear there. In many ways, the image is reminiscent of pagan warrior burials,
because you get exactly the same arrangement of the dead person and all his equipment. But this
clearly isn't. It's a Christian monument which expresses both his Viking identit
y, but also his
adherence to the new religion without seeing any real problem between the two. They seem to be
very chameleon like. They can fit in with whatever society they find themselves in. They do,
but I would almost put it the other way around. I say that they're actually very open to new
ideas and willing to take on things that they come across, but they put their own stamp on it. The Vikings were now attending churches, instead of attacking them. They were showing a keenness
to int
egrate. Maybe the era of the Viking warrior was coming to an end. They certainly seemed to be eating rather well.
Believe it or not, this came from a human. It's Viking poo, dates
to around the ninth century. There's even a whole hazelnut in there somewhere. And
there's plenty more where that came from. So, together we brought Time Team back.
And now we're going to take Time Team to the next level. Help us achieve
10,000 ongoing members on Patreon. This is a Viking basement. It's rather lik
e
a present day walk-in fridge. It's damp and cold and secure. An ideal place for storing
food and perishable goods. And archaeologists are digging one exactly like this right now in
the centre of York. At this huge excavation in the Hungate area of the town, archaeologists
have found the remains of 10th century Viking buildings with sunken basements, one of
which was built using recycled timbers from a Saxon ship. It's compelling evidence
that a century after arriving in York, the Vikings
transformed what was wasteland
here into a thriving, managed goods in and out area packed with people. And at the back of the buildings, diggers have
found what seems to be loads of cesspits. Do you think that there
would have been a superstructure to this? Yeah, possibly. Don't need to go to this much
effort to have something that you're just gonna throw buckets of night soil into. More interestingly,
here is a little part of a boiled egg. So a thousand year old snack must have
survived.
It's quite nice. Digging these pits lets the archaeologists get up close and
really personal with the Vikings. You can tell it's poo if you give it a bit of a break and it's
quite crumbling. Some are green. Someone went to the loo a thousand years ago, and here we
are digging out their poo. There is no dignity. And it's really smelly. Oh, look at that. Literally
every speck of cesspit waste can hold unsavoury clues about Viking health. Can you see anything
that's, like a little, slightly a
mber brown lump in there? Slightly oval. That's right. Exactly. I can see it.
That is an egg of an intestinal parasitic worm that lives in the guts of people that are
passed with faeces. And where are they picking this up from? Just insanitary conditions?
Insanitary conditions. Food that's contaminated with excrement. Maybe small amounts, not properly
smeared with it. So what is that actually telling us about the population that was, that was
having these organisms in their guts? Well, it t
ells us that they were parasitised. They're
living in relatively unhygienic conditions by our standards. And with together with the food remains
that we've got, we can clearly say that this pit, this particular deposit was used for the disposal
of human excrement. So there was a sort of an organised way that people weren't just defaecating
indiscriminately. This stuff is being concentrated into particular features. With well laid out warehouses
and even organised cesspits, it's clear Hungat
e didn't develop as a haphazard sprawl. The
site's split into individual plots divided by gravel bands. These seem to be fairly regularly spaced
as you look up the excavation, and they seem to be alleyways giving access into the back lands
behind the buildings that we've been excavating. It does employ some serious town planning. Well, I
mean, I love the idea of Vikings coming along here with their ranging rods and maps of town planners
rather than the battle axes and swords. But yes, I thi
nk you can actually see sort of an
organisation of the land within York and a plan to it all, using all this space down
by the waterfront for industrial areas, laying out streets, commercial activity. That would be an
ideal thing to do if you're planning space in an organisational sense. But I don't think there was
a guy who sat down and said, all right, you know, in 200 years’ time, I want it to look like this.
I think that they recognised the topography, where the opportunities were and t
hey started to lay out
streets. They started dividing up the properties, one man's plot from his neighbours. And so it goes
on. You can pick it up right across the frontage here. Very deliberate, very careful, very regular.
Vikings transformed the whole of York. Originally laid out on a Roman grid plan, the Vikings built
curved streets to link new areas together. These erstwhile warriors were now putting their energies
into expanding York and making money. And there was one item every disce
rning Viking desired. Oh,
wow wee! It's a bone comb and it is complete. Apart from just where they've lost a few teeth in there.
Hungate was home to comb making on a massive scale. All of this antler came from one pit
on the site. That pit was about the size of there to there. Good god. So are they more than just
beautiful objects to comb your hair? I think so. You can see how decorative they are. That probably
takes a day to put together from start to finish. So these weren't roughly made
tools for a
job. There was something that you showed off you might well have made of your clothing. Hair
has all sorts of importance in terms of status, in terms of power, but if it bore down to
length of hair, I reckon I'd go down well in a Viking household. I think you'd do well. Alongside the combs, a jet pendant from nearby Whitby,
buckles and an Irish clothespin show York was the place to come
if you were a trader, especially if you came bearing exotic goods. This is Amber, isn't it?
It is, yes. These have all come from Hungate. Some of them have come out of the backfill of our
Viking Age building. We have complete amber beads, part of a half of a larger amber bead here. And
we also have a polished piece of amber. Beautiful polished piece of amber. Looks like plastic! It's a resin, like
plastic is a resin. It's a natural resin. This is probably come from the Baltic, you know, traded
across hundreds of miles. Well, I think we're looking at tangible relationships between t
he
southern Baltic and Jorvik, dating back to the mid to late 10th century, and an incredible, unique
glass bead from as far away as Egypt reveals York was plugged into a trade network that went
much further afield. The city became a gateway to the wider world. Vikings ruled the waves, and as
trailblazers in ship technology and navigation, they were sailing incredible distances, making
the world a much smaller place. A pivotal point where all the major seaways crossed was
Orkney. By the ni
nth century, these islands were an effective springboard from which the
Vikings could launch expeditions and expand, but they were also places that Vikings settled
and colonised wholesale within a few generations. Time Team’s Mick Aston followed them on the Viking trail.
So what's the attraction of the Orkneys to the Vikings at that time? When we're thinking about their expansion into
the North Atlantic, for a start, it's very close. Yes. So it's only a day's or so sail away from
Norway. And
if you look at the island groups, Orkney, Shetland, Faroes, Western Isles, Scandinavia,
it's all sort of like a crossroads at Orkney, isn't it? What was it? Magnus Magnusson called it? "Clapham Junction of
the Viking world". The Vikings are part of the fabric of these islands and have left stunning archaeology. There's one place you can even get inside the Viking mind. Maeshowe is a prehistoric
burial chamber, but the Viking saw it as a blank canvas and scribbled all over the walls. Oh,
thi
s is rather spectacular, isn't it? Well, what we've got in here is the largest collection
of runes outwith Scandinavia. Oh right. These runes are really just basic graffiti. This one
says, "Ingevjord the Fair Widow. Many a woman has walked in here stooping. A great show-off",
and it's signed by Erlanger. Right. So, what's going on? Well, perhaps this rune over
here might give you an idea. This one says, "Thorny bedded, Helgi carved." Oh, that sounds like a
euphemism for something. Yes, righ
t. How do we know that they are actually Vikings doing this?
We actually have the word Viking in one of the runes. Where's that then? So if you'd like to look up here.
Oh, I see. Yes. And it says a Viking came underneath into this place. So they're actually
calling themselves Vikings in the 12th century. In this instance, yes. Right. Extraordinary. And these extraordinary people lived in extraordinary places. The Brough of Deerness is basically a big
pillar of rock on the southern coast of O
rkney. It's isolated, exposed, and 80ft above the
sea. But perched on top of the rock was a village of 30 Viking houses, and a team from
Cambridge University are now excavating one of the biggest. This 10th century house was 11m
long, with walls and roof made from turf and a gable entrance. Archaeologist James Gerrard is
in charge of the trench, a room with a stunning view. So are we looking at a family home here or
just a place where warriors were? Warriors have families. They might be ver
y nasty people in
Wessex or Mercia. Yeah. But but they come back to a home life. And this is what we're looking at
here. There's evidence these houses were renovated and altered over two centuries suggesting long
term occupation here, despite the gale force winds. Whenever somebody asks me, why here?
Yeah. You know, part of the answer, of course, is that it is incredibly defensible. It's got
30 metre cliffs all the way around it. The very difficult path you came up is the easiest access
to
the site, but it's got an incredible vantage in terms of dominating the maritime landscape and
allowing you to see and perhaps equally important, allowing you to be seen. So what should I think of
this site as then, at the height of the Viking period? As a chieftain settlement that would
include his military retinue and their families, and as a base from which people would,
would go out into the world and they might be engaging in trade. They may very well be
engaged in piracy and in merce
nary activity. And that's the way it's quite a substantial
settlement could support itself on what is a stack, 80m wide. The chieftain settlement at Deerness
underlines how the Viking world worked. It wasn't just about great Viking armies capturing
major towns. From staging posts like Orkney, small groups could join together to conquer, spread
their influence and trade across the globe. These are the sort of silver coins acquired, spent and
traded by the Vikings. And the fact that they're f
ound all over the world is a big clue as to how
vast the Viking trade networks really were. At the British Library, Helen's met up with Sam Newton
and Professor James Montgomery, whose work has shed light on Viking trade with the Muslim empire.
On the one hand, the Muslims are appalled by their lack of purity and their lack of cleanliness. On
the other hand, they're impressed by their bravery and their capacity in battle. They're also
very interested in the goods that they bring. They bring
furs and skins, usually martens,
beavers, squirrels, possibly. And swords. The exchange these furs for what the Muslims refer
to as silent property, i.e. money and they tie the coins up in the waistband of their trousers.
Sam, do we have anything in the Sagas or the other Scandinavian sources that corroborates what we
hear from the Arabs? Well, a wealth of references, details about the commodities being traded, the
furs, the swords, the Frankish swords and Frankish spears are mentioned in
quite a few of the
sources. A measured view of English sources would also emphasize this trading side, particularly
the voyage of Volterra, who gives us an account of his trading up into the White Sea, over into
the Arctic Circle. And the great commodity he's bringing down from there is walrus ivory, which
is very highly prized. Literature and archaeology reveal that Vikings created an absolutely
staggering network of trade routes across the entire globe, from Scandinavia to the Baltic,
th
e Byzantine Empire and even North America, and then to the Volga, the Caspian Sea and the
furthest reaches of the eastern Islamic Empire. They covered literally thousands of miles. This is a map. Effectively, it works very much in the same principle as the London Tube map. So
one could go from far Locke here to Doran to Pullkarda and then Mulka. These would be
local stopping points for merchants and caravans. Hitching a ride with the Viking traders was Ibn
Rustah, the Islamic equivalent of R
analph Fiennes, who wrote a book in the 10th century
that I'll leave James to pronounce the name of. It is his 'Kitāb al-A‘lāq al-Nafīsa' - the Book of
Precious Objects. Ibn Rustah says they're very hospitable, providing you haven't done any damage
to any Viking previously. If you have, then they will be particularly inhospitable towards you.
And it also mentions that it is liable to do damage among themselves as they are to others, but
when provoked, they will unite and be unstoppable. So
Ibn Rustah gives us precisely this picture
of an adaptable people who are prepared to do business in particular circumstances and on their
terms. But once those terms are violated, then, they won't hold back. All sorts of goods and wealth from across the globe
must have passed through these warehouses at Hungate. And just
20 miles away, in the middle of an empty field, metal detectorists recently found a spectacular
silver gilt cup crammed with over 685 pieces of precious metal. A perfect d
emonstration of
the range and quality of what Vikings were trading. Conservators have hailed it the finest
Viking hoard for two centuries, and among the finds now on display at Yorkshire Museum are
unique coins from a previously unknown mint, a rare Russian gold arm ring and beautiful
Irish jewellery. Can I pick it up? Of course. Carefully. It is beautiful, isn't it? Well,
as a museum curator, it's the perfect hoard. And you can tell a really interesting story
about nearly every single bit
of it. What are these things on it? It's got a whole series
of little panels with animals. Lions, deer, horse, goats, and surrounded by
all kinds of plant ornament vinescroll, in particular. All of these have a Christian
significance. What do you think it was for? Well, I think it was probably originally made for use
in church ceremonies. It may have been made to hold the consecrated bread for the mass. So does
that mean we can work out where it's likely to have come from? The decoration w
ould suggest that
it was made somewhere in the Frankish Empire, quite possibly in Paris, and dates to the middle
years of the 9th century. The cup may well have been looted from a monastery, but the rest of
the hoard is the product of sophisticated trade. Here we've got coins that come from the Sassanid
Empire, from what today is Iran. We've got coins, I think, from Afghanistan. We've got material
that perhaps came from Russia, bit of hacksilver there that originated in Russia. We've got,
again, bits of hacksilver that come from Ireland. It's a real geographical hotchpotch of material
that's ended up in this field in Yorkshire. All thanks to this enormously widespread Viking
influence. The extraordinary thing about it to me is that it epitomises so much of
what we're learning about the Vikings, the politics, the trade, the world travel,
the craftsmanship. Absolutely. It's a perfect snapshot of the Viking Empire. But this comfortable and wealthy Viking world was about to be ro
cked. As they entered the 11th
century, they would once again have to go to war. Join a thriving worldwide community of
Time Team fans on Patreon. Your ongoing membership enables us to develop
more sites and more episodes. Over the past few months, Time Team has
been delving into the latest discoveries and digs up and down Britain in a quest to
understand the impact the Vikings really had on this country. In York, archaeologists
have been excavating an area called Hungate, where they've un
covered a fantastically preserved
Viking warehouse dating to the late 10th century. It's a dig that's transforming traditional
thinking about the Vikings. Archaeologists here are painting a vivid picture of York as
a prosperous trading Mecca, a kind of virtual Viking capital brimful of new ideas and industry
and culture. York's status captured the attention of contemporary writers. There's a lovely
quote that's written at the end of the 10th century. "The city rejoices in the multitude of
its population, which, counting men and women, but not infants, is numbered not less than
30,000." It's massive, you know, though, isn't it? Because even though today a town of 30,000
people isn't huge, when in those days, that would have been incredible. That's right. And when the
population, the whole country is probably, well, certainly no more than 5 million. And he goes on
to say, "the city is crammed beyond expression and enriched with the treasures of merchants who
come from all part
s, but above all from the Danish people." Months of excavation at Hungate
have now filled in blanks in the archaeological picture of York. It's not very often that you
get a chance to stand within a thousand year old building where you can see the walls of the
wooden lined timber around us. We have uncovered the entranceway that comes down into the building,
and the steps and the thresholds that the people would have walked over to step into the space.
It's here and it's fantastic. In your
mind's eye, how do you see this area all those hundreds
of years ago in Viking time? I think this area would have been amazingly colourful.
We've got boats moored on the edge of the river. Goods being traded up and down. And then
alongside this you have houses and warehouses. And we now know that Jorvik is a lot bigger
than previously expected. It's a big place, full of colour and life. And it's kept the original Viking street plan and word 'gate', which means street, to this day. 200 years
of Viking
influence, took York to its pinnacle as one of the most important towns in Britain. But while life on the ground was relatively harmonious, the ongoing power struggle at the top between
Vikings and rival Anglo-Saxons never really stopped. And it culminated in the famous Battle
of Stamford Bridge in 1066. The Vikings were outnumbered and outclassed by King Harald's Saxon
army, who had ironically learned the art of war from the Vikings themselves. The Viking era
was at an end. There
was never a Viking empire, was there, in the same way that there was a
Roman Empire. That's absolutely right. And I don't think there was ever any attempt for
there to be a Scandinavian empire, no single ruler trying to create one. But that doesn't mean
to say the legacy wasn't immense. But come 1066, and the Norman Conquest, the Vikings didn't get
up and all leave the country. Far from it. Proof can be seen in the names on an inscription from
the time at this church in North Yorkshire. We
have four names here. Orm, Gammel, Howarth, Brantd.
All four of them, Old Norse or Scandinavian names. In Domesday Book, for every one Old
English name, we find nine Old Norse names. It's evidence that many Vikings not only stayed
put in this area, but also married the locals, and wherever they went, they left an enduring
legacy, a legacy we've overlooked in our dismissal of Vikings as deadly but itinerant raiders. On the
whole, in Britain, people have been tolerant of newcomers and lived
alongside them and learned how
to live with them. And again, the Vikings really started that process and it's been going on ever
since then. It's in the words Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Words like egg, knife, window, scant. Even
the pronouns they, them and their, something in the region of 2000 words in modern English
come from Old Norse. It's Vicki the Viking, it's Marvel's Thor, it's American gods. They have
left an imprint on our imagination and our life in almost a way that no other c
ulture has. Thanks
to painstaking archaeology and stunning finds, our picture of the Vikings has been completely
transformed. They're no longer historical caricatures. They're real people and rather
modern people, actually. They're global traders, technological pioneers and frightening
invaders. A bit like the Americans, really. And like the Americans too, you either love them
or loathe them, depending on your point of view. But one thing's for certain. The Viking legacy
has helped change
the Britain we live in today. Join Time Team on Patreon to
access exclusive 3D models, masterclasses and behind the scenes insights.
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