"But, there is one they fear."
"In their tongue, he is Bluevakhiin, Chibiborn!"
"FUS RO DAH"
(Blue sings over the Skyrim menu theme)
-fah hin kogaan mu dra-AH OH God what're you doing here!?
(Coughs)
Uh, he-hey, you... caught me getting hyped for my video on the Vikings.
...So let's just you and I pretend this didn't happen.
'Kay?
Cool.
Thanks.
So um... Yeah, Vikings!
Yay, history time!
Let's go!
Before we get into any actual details of any sort,
we should all be on the same page about what exactly a viking
And that seems like it should be obvious,
but there's actually a lot of confusion about this.
Vikings, in the strictest sense,
were people of Scandinavian background, between the 8th and 11th centuries-
-who made a habit of sailing out to various places around-
-England, the North Atlantic, and Northern Europe,
And raiding them.
The word Viking itself pretty much just means "Raider".
But let's not confuse the point here, most Scandinavians probably weren't vikings.
Because it is difficult for a whole society to make-
-an entire lifestyle out of just raiding.
That's straight up unsustainable!
Most people were probably farmers, or craftspeople, or traders-
-or all sorts of other important jobs that people around that time would have had.
Scandinavia and the vikings is like Europe and knights,
there were plenty of knights in Europe,
but to say that the majority of the population regularly-
-engaged in knightly shenanigans would be absurd!
But in our common culture, viking has become a blanket term to describe-
-medieval Scandinavia in a way that implies all of the wrong assumptions.
If I describe something as "viking civilization",
you would be inclined to think that every weekend-
-the entire population of medieval Sweden dropped what they were doing-
-and hopped onto a ship to go wreck some tiny English town.
But that's just not true.
Vikings were always a subset of the broader-
-Scandinavian people and their culture.
So how then, might this misconception have come about?
Why have we been conditioned to believe-
-that all of Scandinavia made a habit of pillaging and berserking?
Partly it's because of our sources.
We have decent archeological records, which is good,
but almost all of our written sources-
-came a few centuries after the vikings died down.
So that's already a red flag.
Beyond that, those records were written by people-
-who had an axe to grind with the vikings,
i.e. the English and northern European Christians,
who would have been on the receiving end of a hefty handful of raids.
If someone showed up, unannounced, yoinked everything you owned,
and killed a non-negligible amount of people along the way,
you would be very justified in writing a one-star review of your guests.
We have an especially brutal picture of the vikings because our sources were -
- first and foremost -
- really angry at them.
In a lot of the records we have, they play up the most brutal aspects-
-of the viking and Scandinavian culture.
Because if you're a Christian who's complaining about Pagans,
saying "They killed my townspeople, stole our holy relics,"-
-"and went back to their lands to worship demons and sacrifice babies!"
Sounds a lot worse than "Yeah, I mean they're mostly peaceful"-
-"farmers over there, but occasionally a few of them get in a boat"-
-"and come take our stuff."
For the Christians who wrote about the vikings,
all they ever saw was the explicit viking part.
Not the more common Scandinavia part.
So it makes sense for multiple reasons-
-that our sources portray them as especially brutal.
But if that's all we consider, we'll have a very one-sided picture.
It's the same reason that Norse mythology seems especially brutal.
Our main records of it come from Christians too,
and if you're contrasting Pagan heresy-
-with the benevolent awesomeness that is Jesus,
you're going to want to make the Pagan stuff seem-
-as absolutely metal and ridiculous as possible.
Similarly, all of the stories about famous vikings like Erik the Red,
or Lief Erikson, or whoever else,
are all probably a little dubious.
Because those sagas were also mostly written down centuries after the fact.
So I think a good analogy is to treat those legends like we treat the Iliad.
Were they based in facts?
Yeah. Probably.
Should we treat them as accurate historical sources?
Nooo.
While the viking age fizzles out in the later 11th century-
-and doesn't have an exact end date,
the general consensus is that the era kicked off with the-
-raid of the Christian monastery of St. Cuthbert,
on the island of Lindisfarne, off the coast of England in 793.
And this pretty much sets the tone for the next three centuries of vikings-
-doing viking things, while Scandinavians did Scandinavian things.
Though this is an example of Pagans raiding Christians,
religion had almost nothing to do with it.
The much more relevant factor at play here was the abundance of valuable holy relics-
-and stuff just lying around relatively defenseless.
For the Vikings this was great! And it's no surprise that some of them thought:
"Wow. Okay. That was both really easy and incredibly lucrative."
"Let's find many more places like that"
And all the other vikings nodded their head and said:
"Mm-yeah, yup, yup. Good plan."
So they spent the next couple centuries doing a whole lot more of exactly that,
but Lindisfarne is in England, and the vikings came from Scandinavia.
And to get from one to the other, you need ships.
Now let me tell you just how awesome viking ships were:
In a time where the rest of the world wasn't puting much effort-
-into shipbuilding at all,
partially on account of the Mediterranean being cut in half by the Muslim conquests,
and no-one really having much motivation to sail anywhere;
the vikings were going all-out on ship design.
Their ships were lovingly crafted and brilliantly designed.
The general shape was long and narrow, which allowed them to handle the open sea,
and they were equipped with a Mediterranean-style square sail, and rows.
Honestly to my eyes it's basically a diet trireme.
One especially interesting innovation to the whole was-
-the so-called clinker build, where the planks were slightly overlapped-
-instead of being flush, which added to the ship's strength.
Even still, they were also super maneuverable on account-
-of their narrow build and ability to easily row backwards.
The combination of oars and a sail meant that they were amazingly versatile.
But perhaps the biggest advantage was the ship's very shallow draft, about 1m deep,
that allowed it to beach anywhere,
and sail down pretty much any river it came across.
It was because of the shallow design of the longboat that the vikings were-
-able to sail right up the Seine river in 845 and 886-
-and just show up in the middle of Paris for some good old-fashioned raiding.
Can you seriously imagine that?
An entire army of people, appearing in the middle of your city without any warning?
That is terrifying! No thank you.
But sailing a longboat, or whatever other kind of viking ship,
wasn't just a weekend gig.
It took serious coordination and teamwork.
The vikings get a lot of credit for being brutal and effective-
-for the reasons I discussed earlier,
but they don't get anywhere near enough credit for being smart.
The Scandinavians realized after a while-
-that raids were less effective in the long-term than trade.
So as the centuries went on, they shifted more and more towards building-
-trade networks, and creating constant streams of revenue instead of-
-ganking some monastery once and calling it a day.
These trade networks stretched all-across Northern Europe, into the Mediterranean,
and even into the Middle East.
And then even after setting up those trade routes,
the Scandinavians put a lot of effort into settling cities and running governments.
Famously building up Dublin from nothing into a prosperous, self-sustaining city.
So these guys were no slouches when it came to diplomacy,
sure some of it might have been done with the understanding of-
-"Trade with us or we'll raid you"-
-but it's better than nothing, right?
So, while the Vikings did do a lot of Vik-ing;
Scandinavian society as a whole was expanding through lucrative trade-
-and successful colonization.
Though in addition to all of this,
perhaps their most famous seafaring accomplishment-
-was sticking it to Columbus by sailing to America-
-a full 500 years before that Italian schmuck came around.
And while I'm talking about people - big air quotes - "discovering" America,
I'm just gonna go ahead and clear some stuff up.
In Columbus' time, and before, no-one thought the world was flat.
People who gave it more than 20 seconds of thought-
-knew that the world was round since ancient Greek times.
The issue for Columbus was that most calculations-
-for the size of the globe placed it at impossibly large,
making a direct trip across the ocean most likely to end in death.
But even still, distance itself wasn't a problem,
we have evidence of all sorts of ancient people sailing ridiculous distances.
The trip was really dangerous because he wasn't sailing near any coastlines.
For most of history, people have sailed by more-or-less hugging a coast as they went,
always making sure to keep land in relative eyesight-
-so they wouldn't get lost at sea.
Sailing across the Atlantic meant sailing across completely open ocean,
which invited all sorts of opportunities for dying.
Either getting lost, sailing in circles, running out of supplies,
or suffering from sickness with no land in sight.
OR just butting up against a casual kracken.
All options.
So Columbus passed the challenge, went to America, committed all sorts of genocide-
-yadda yadda, whatever; Back to the vikings.
See the vikings actually had it fairly easy, because they had a convenient-
-network of islands that they could easily hop between on their way to America.
The vikings would start in Scandinavia, hop over to the Shetland Islands, and
on to the Faroe Isles, then make the jump to Iceland, then to Greenland,
and then to America in fairly short order.
And we already know that the Scandinavians settled Iceland and Greenland-
-so America was a stone's throw away.
Now unlike Columbus, who sailed just under seven thousand kilometers-
-with no shoreline in sight,
the longest stretch the viking sailors would have to go-
-without seing the shore was just over one-hundred kilometers.
And if we account for sea mirages and semi-regular volcanic erruptions-
-it's entirely possible that the vikings had their destination in sight-
-throughout the entire journey.
Which makes it so easy it kind of feels like cheating.
So I guess, credit to Columbus for making the journey, but credit to the vikings-
-for doing the trial version 500 years earlier.
With that tangent about America out of the way, let's get back to france,
where 25 years after the second raid of Paris,
the french king said:
"Alright, screw it, have Normandy"
And proceeded to give them Normandy.
And here's where it's important to remember the distinction we made-
-between vikings and Scandinavians,
it was because of the viking raids that the Scandinavians got Normandy,
but the Normans were not vikings, because the Normans didn't-
-raid like the vikings did.
What the Normans did do was convert to Christianity and start speaking french.
And then in 1066 they decisively won the Battle of Hastings, which resulted in the-
Norman conquest of England, and a slew of resulting political reforms-
-that paved the way for the next millennium of English history.
Nice!
Then in the mid and late 12th century,
the Normans conquered southern Italy and Sicily,
and the resulting Kingdom of Sicily lasted for over 700 years.
Double nice!
Also I forgot to mention earlier because-
-I was probably too busy gushing about longboats,
but back in 882, the OG Scandinavians, no normans yet,
set up a colony thing in this place over here and called it the "Kievan Rus".
Triple Nice!
Though there's all this dope niceness going on between the colonizing,
the exploring, the trading, the farming, and of course the raiding,
all good things must come to an end.
Raiding slowed down drastically in the 11th and early 12th centuries,
as Christianity spread across Scandinavia.
Also, once easy pickings for raids became increasingly fortified,
and standing armies became more and more common,
the drive to go out and raid wasn't as strong as it used to be.
According to some people the last nail in the coffin was the-
-Battle of Stamford Bridge, a failed viking attempt in 1066 to conquer England.
That date might sound familiar, because the Norman conquest happened just-
-three weeks after that.
So... is the Battle of Stamford Bridge the last huzzah of the viking age?
Or does the fact that the Normans were mostly Scandinavian mean that-
-the glory of the old Norse lives on?
I honestly can't say what does and doesn't count.
Scandinavian influence most definitely lived on in centuries after,
between the Normans being Normans-
-and the various Scandinavian kingdoms doing the usual kingdom stuff;
But as far as vikings being vikings goes,
safe to say that the line to get into Valhalla was a little sparse.
I do have to say:
It's interesting how the viking age was suitably bookended by Christianity.
It opened on a whole lot of monasteries getting raided,
and it ended with Scandinavia becoming Christian.
I swear, between the Romans and the vikings, Christianity is-
-really good at having the last laugh.
You've got to give that to them.
Some people say if you can't beat 'em, join 'em,
but Christianity took a different approach.
If you can't beat 'em, just make 'em you.
Finally I'll admit that I really didn't talk that much about-
-viking arms and armor and all that,
and by much I mean, uh, at all.
I'll say that there's some pretty interesting points of comparison-
-between viking weapons and Roman weapons,
but you'll wanna hear that from someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
For all of that viking goodness, as well as some really awesome videos-
-about medieval swords, armor, weapons, castles, and way way way more,
I highly encourage you to check out a channel called "Shadiversity".
Because that guy, Shad, is the master of all things medieval.
I've been binging his videos for days now,
and if you're a fan of what we do on this channel,
I highly suspect you'll like what he does too, especially if you like history.
For me, as a history enthusiast, I really respect the way he treats-
-his sources, and how he argues his points,
and as a guy who thinks that swords are just plain awesome,
it's really really cool, and it's a giant nerd-out for me-
-every time I watch one of his videos.
I honestly cannot say enough good things about this channel,
so please, give him a look, link's in the description, check it out, have fun!
Now if you will excuse me, I have a dragon to fight.