Viking Art: A Culture Show Special The Culture Show

MUSIC: "Gopher Mambo" by Yma Sumac

Longships. Battle-axes. Burning abbeys.

These are the defining images etched into our minds

from the traumatic period of history known as the Viking Age...

..when ship-borne warriors from Scandinavia unleashed terror

across Western Europe and beyond.

Taking no prisoners, exacting cruel retribution,

priding themselves on their bloodthirsty talents -

who could forget the notorious Vikings?

It was Mark Twain who once said that the very ink

with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice,

and when it comes to the Vikings, we have tended to see them

rather through red-tinted glasses as violent,

marauding pagans whose main interests were rape, pillage and...

Well, more rape and pillage.

But a new exhibition here at the British Museum

aims to broaden the picture

and show that they also had a surprisingly sophisticated taste

for art.

Whether the Vikings are interpreted as barbarians or civilisers,

the art they created is deeply original and expressive.

A bright shaft of light piercing the so-called Dark Ages.

Defined by beautiful, intricate styles

that are distinctly Scandinavian,

yet laced with intrigue and mystery.

So, just for now at least,

put aside any preconceptions you may have

about bloodthirsty thugs in horned helmets,

and prepare to be enthralled by the splendours of Viking art.

You can't begin to explore the world of the Vikings

or to look at Viking art

without first acknowledging some of the bad things they did.

In a sense, the Vikings' sins.

This is the Holy Island of Lindisfarne,

the site of the first monastery in Britain to be attacked

in a Viking raid.

One day in June 793,

a load of Viking longships moored up in that harbour.

And they came into this place of monastic retreat and sanctuary

and they desecrated it, they killed the priests,

spilled their blood on the altar.

The Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin wrote

that they removed the relics of the saints from their reliquaries,

spilled their blood on the stones of the church

and trampled their bones as if it were dung.

He finished his lament by asking,

"Where, where is our God to save us from these pagans?"

Early historians came to record the raid on Lindisfarne as marking

the beginning of the Viking Age,

when the Vikings began an aggressive expansion across Western Europe

and beyond.

This and the other raids that followed earned the Vikings

their reputation for violence.

They knew that the monks would be unarmed.

They also knew that they would find some objects here

made of silver and gold.

I think the Vikings may well have come at night,

and they swarmed across the island

and simply, as it were, fell on the monastery.

-Like stinging hornets, as one of the Anglo-Saxon accounts...

-Much worse.

-That's it.

-Mm-hm.

Was there fire involved?

Yes, indeed. The monastery was largely wood.

Entirely wood, at that time, as far as we know.

And certainly a good deal of it was burned down.

And then, for some of the people at least,

the whole thing was over very, very quickly.

What they saw I... I don't think we can imagine.

The raid on Lindisfarne sent shockwaves

throughout Anglo-Saxon England.

The Vikings had arrived.

And they'd made quite an impression.

What's your opinion of the Vikings?

What do you think of them as a people?

Where do they stand in your estimation?

The Vikings that came here

seem to me to be really nothing much more than murderous thugs.

I can't think that they came here for any other purpose than to grab,

to steal, to raid,

and they didn't allow anything whatever to get in their way.

And they seem to me to be exactly like a great deal

of the extremely horrible things

that are happening in the world nowadays.

So, to me, they are terrorists.

It does seem pretty unlikely that art

was on the minds of the Vikings who attacked.

But if it had been, ironically, Lindisfarne was the place to come.

When the Vikings raided in 793,

Lindisfarne was one of the centres for production

of illuminated manuscripts.

And, sadly, just one survives - the great Lindisfarne Gospels.

Held by the British Library, this is a facsimile.

A very good facsimile.

It gives you some idea of the immense skill and sophistication

reached by the illuminating artists here on Lindisfarne.

Here on the title page of the Gospel Of Luke

we see the saint writing away - very much painted in the Greek style.

A Byzantine saint.

Turn over the page

and you enter a completely different world of design and decoration.

A combination of Anglo-Saxon pattern-making, Roman elements.

Very much Celtic as well.

Now, why is it that the Lindisfarne Gospels managed to survive?

Perhaps one of the monks managed to secrete it away

just as the Vikings arrived.

But we do know that the Vikings were not interested in books.

They burned the texts they found in the scriptorium,

perhaps as a gesture of contempt for the religion of their enemies.

Anything that they didn't consider as booty...

they simply destroyed.

Not the behaviour you'd expect, perhaps, from an art-loving people.

But over the next 300 years,

the Vikings would create their own artistic masterpieces.

Viking art, which is to be featured in a new exhibition

at the British Museum,

the largest exhibition on the Vikings for more than 20 years.

The show is being housed in a brand-new wing of the museum.

And not only will it include

some impressive examples of Viking art...

..but also a gigantic, 120-foot-long Viking warship.

-Wow!

-So, this is the new Sainsbury exhibition centre.

-It's enormous!

-It is. It's huge.

Gareth Williams is the exhibition curator,

and he's preparing for the delivery of the Viking warship -

one of the largest objects the museum has ever put on display.

Tell me about this huge new door that you you've had built.

What the door allows us to do - we're on the ground floor,

so street level of the museum,

and for the first time,

what this allows us to do is to back a lorry straight

into the exhibition space,

and can unload into this space.

And the Viking boat comes out here?

Well, it comes out in sections. It's been, basically, flat-packed.

-It's been preserved...

-As you do.

-As you do.

It's Scandinavian design. It's been conserved...

ANDREW LAUGHS ..timber by timber.

We have round about 20% of the ship itself survives,

that's been conserved timber by timber,

that comes in one big container, which is carefully conditioned

to maintain the right humidity, the right temperature,

that can be backed into this space,

which will already have been prepared for it,

and unloaded directly into this space.

-And you reassemble it here?

-We reassemble it here.

There's a second container...

-Like a very, very complicated piece of IKEA furniture.

-Basically.

Does it have a name? Is it called something like Bjorn?

-It's called Roskilde 6, simply because...

-Perfect!

It's a wonderful story.

It was found by chance underneath the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.

They were building an extension to house all the replicas

of the Viking ships which they've already got on display there,

and they found nine more ships underneath, including this,

including the longest Viking ship ever found.

In a few months' time,

the gallery will be crammed full of Viking objects,

from the very large to the very small...

..many of which have never been seen in the UK before.

It'll all amount to a multifaceted view of Viking society

and Viking culture.

Are you trying to complicate the stereotypical view of the Vikings

as a bunch of bloodthirsty raiders, pirates from the north?

What we're showing is there's a breadth to society

in the Viking Age.

Violence and warfare were important parts of this,

and it's very much a warrior society,

at least at the higher levels of society, but at the same time,

trade was one of the driving forces for this huge expansion

across the Viking world, and we have craftsmanship,

we have poetry. There's a lot going on apart from just hitting people.

ANDREW CHUCKLES

I think that should be the strapline to the exhibition!

"There's a lot going on apart from just hitting people."

-Yep.

-It's official.

-But the hitting people's important too.

I'll be coming back here a little bit later

for a behind-the-scenes look at the preparations for this

fascinating exhibition,

but to explore the true origins of Viking art,

I've got to leave the sanctuary of the British Museum behind,

and travel to the Viking homeland of Scandinavia.

On my quest, I'll be searching the epic fjords and frozen wilds

of the far north for the very stuff of Viking legend.

Great beasts, ribbon animals, coiling snakes -

the creatures that seem to haunt the Viking mind

and live in their art.

And it all begins here at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo,

with what's been described as the greatest

of all Viking Age discoveries.

This is the Oseberg ship.

Absolutely fantastic.

We wouldn't have it if it weren't for a farmer called Oskar Rom,

who decided in 1903 to dig up an intriguing-looking mound

on his farm in Oseberg, about 40 miles away from here.

Now, if you think it's impressive from down here...

..come up to the viewing platform.

The ship is 1,200 years old.

Astonishing to think that a wooden object could have survived

the ravages of being buried underground for that long, but look!

Isn't that something? How does that survive?

How does that survive for so long?

And not only is this an extraordinary archaeological find,

but it's also a vital relic for our understanding of Viking art,

because it's decorated with these ribbons and bands

of finely carved animals. In fact, in a sense,

the whole thing has been conceived as a piece of seafaring sculpture,

because at the far end you've got a serpent's head,

and here you've got a serpent's tail, so the whole thing is designed

to resemble a gigantic sea snake riding the waves.

What a wonderful object.

It's thought that the Oseberg ship was built around 820 AD,

towards the very beginning of the Viking Age.

It's discovery caused a sensation in Norway.

Nothing quite like it had ever been seen before.

The ship had been buried in the ground,

in accordance with Viking tradition,

following the death of a lady

who must have been a very important Viking -

perhaps a Viking queen.

Her body had been placed together with that of her maid

in a specially constructed wooden burial chamber

on the top deck of the ship,

on board for the great symbolic journey to the afterlife.

I just love this boat!

I remember the first time I saw it. It was ten years ago,

and I walked in and I just felt like a child seeing

a dinosaur for the first time, I was just completely overwhelmed.

I mean, if you look at it,

you wouldn't have believed that it was actually made in 820.

So, Signe, I have to confess,

I do sometimes get a little bit confused by the wriggling,

tangling nature of Viking illustration,

so how would you advise me to find a beast?

-A particular beast.

-Well, everybody gets confused by these animals.

You have to start with a head.

If you get hold of the head, you're all right.

HE LAUGHS Look for the eye.

If you get hold of the head, you're all right - I like that.

-That's the eye, the round eye.

-Yeah.

And you look for the jaws, and they're profile in this case.

And then you look for the neck.

And the neck will take you to the body.

So, the front portion of the body, here,

which has been opened up a bit in order to let the animal look through,

and then a middle part of the body

and the hind portion of the body, with the legs...

-And the feet.

-..here and there. And the feet.

-Fantastic.

And all this would have been painted?

All of it would have been painted.

And perhaps, if it were painted, it might be slightly easier to see.

Yes.

And they used reddish, a deep blackish-blue, a yellow and a white.

It's a wonderful thought,

to think of this ship sailing through the sea

with the sun catching the prow

with all of those colours gleaming in the light.

And once you think of it in that way,

this would not be so different

from the marginal paintings in a manuscript.

Absolutely. I was just going to say, yeah. That's a lovely thought.

And it's a very similar sensibility, isn't it,

that you're almost decorating the margin of a ship.

Yes, exactly.

The piece of the ship that isn't actually designed for use,

-like the part of the page that you don't read...

-Mm-hm, that's it.

..you decorate.

But the ship was not all that was discovered at Oseberg.

It was Viking custom to be buried with your possessions,

and it seems that our mysterious Viking queen also kept

a fantastic collection of art...

..much of which had been carefully stowed by her side

in her burial chamber.

Take this decorated textile wall-hanging -

a kind of Viking version of the Bayeux Tapestry,

but at least two centuries older...

..and a rare example of narrative art from the early Viking age.

But the majority of the art from the Oseberg burial

consists of beautifully carved wooden objects,

like these bizarre wooden sledges.

Or this, the Oseberg wooden cart.

Everything decorated with deeply mysterious ornamentation.

So, here we are - the world's most beautiful wooden cart.

-Yes. Ever seen anything like it before?

-No.

-No, I never. I mean, it's unique, isn't it?

-It is.

It is funny - when we look at the ship, for instance, these animals

are much less competently carved, they seem more haphazardly composed.

-He's not the same craftsman.

-No, definitely not.

-And I agree with you, not as gifted...

-No.

-..technically,

-but there's a tremendous sense of energy about it.

-Yes, it is.

So, Signe, tell me something about the decorations we've got here.

There seem to be some narrative elements.

Well, the decoration is extremely interesting,

because it is one of the very few narrative carvings we have.

If you look at it, you've got the man on a horse,

and he's being attacked from the back by a dog,

and he is stopped by this standing man, who holds a sword...

Yeah.

..and seems to be about to attack him.

And next to the man is a woman, standing here and holding his arm.

She's holding the man back, or she's egging him on.

There's no saying which.

-It's quite dramatic, isn't it?

-It is.

It's a scene of conflict, a scene of...

I mean, you know, you're riding along and you're being attacked

-from the back AND from the front.

-Yeah.

You're really in a lot of trouble.

But now let's walk around and look at the end of the cart.

-It's absolutely crammed with ornament, isn't it?

-It is.

And it also has these nice catlike animals

with their hands or front paws to their heads,

suggesting very much the day after the night before.

-But that's just my imagination.

-They do! They look like, "Mmm..."

Cats with hangovers, that's what they look like.

-Yeah.

-They've got such quizzical expressions on their faces.

Their eyebrows are raised, they're saying, "What's happened?

"What's going on?"

-"What's happening inside my skull?"

-"What's happening inside my brain?!

-"How did I end up here..."

-Yes.

-"..on a Viking ritual chariot?

-"What did I do?"

-THEY CHUCKLE

It's wonderful, but it's also, I think, deeply mysterious.

-Yeah.

-You can have theories and theories and theories,

-but when there's so little text to put together with object...

-Yes.

..it's just... In the end, we have to hold up...

We have to go like that!

You're at the deep end, in fact.

Yeah, we're at the deep end, we don't quite know.

These wonderful creatures have been given the name "gripping beasts",

and together with the strange ribbon animals carved on the ship,

they appear to be a defining feature of one early style of Viking art.

It's been dubbed the Oseberg style,

preserved in all its glory in this incredible museum.

The remains of the Oseberg burial

amount to the greatest treasure trove of Viking art

anywhere in the world.

And I have to say I find them oppressive

as much as I find them fascinating.

Look at these studded sledges with these beast heads,

snarling faces, brains that look as though they're wrapped in snakes -

there's something terribly sinister about it.

Imagine being a hapless Anglo-Saxon

and taken into captivity by these people.

Suddenly you're among this.

Look at these extraordinary animal heads.

We don't know what these were for, but aren't they extraordinary?

The delicacy of the carving, the depth of the carving

into this hard wood, and the fineness of detail.

It's the sculptural equivalent of illuminated manuscripts.

It's absolutely fantastic, but, again, forbidding.

Quite dark.

There's an extraordinary description by an Arab writer,

an ambassador from Baghdad trading with the Vikings in Russia,

of all places, written in 923. Ibn Fadlan.

And he describes a Viking chieftain's burial,

saying that at the end of it, at the end of it all,

a hapless slave girl is systematically raped

by all of the warrior chieftains

and thrown into the burial ship, with the Viking chieftain.

These were hard, hard people.

Dangerous people.

Deeply superstitious people.

But, boy, did they know their stuff.

When it came to raiding

and when it came to seafaring, they had no equal.

And, for me, this is one of the most extraordinary things

ever made by the hand of man.

This is the Gokstad ship. What a thing it is!

And it suggests to me that their greatness,

if we can talk about their greatness as craftsmen, as artists,

as designers, lies in a profound, innate, deep understanding

of natural process.

Look at the way they've shaped the wood,

and look at the way they've shaped the wood to float on the sea,

to fight the ocean.

To cut through it.

To me, it's almost as if they've drawn inspiration from a whale -

doesn't it look like a whale made of wood?

What a thing!

What a thing.

If you want to feel Viking power, just stand in front of this

and imagine it cutting through the ocean towards you.

By the end of the 9th century,

the Vikings were engaged in a full-scale conquest

of vast swathes of Europe...

..expanding eastwards into Russia,

establishing colonies as far afield as Iceland and the Faroes,

and conquering large parts of England.

It seems that raiding Anglo-Saxon monasteries had just been

a phase the Vikings were going through.

In places like Cumbria, Yorkshire and East Anglia,

they were now settling...

..and bringing with them their culture and artistic traditions.

These beautiful objects of Viking jewellery

were all discovered not in Scandinavia, but in England.

They're from a variety of periods within the Viking Age,

and show different artistic styles.

I'm at the British Museum with archaeologist Jane Kershaw,

who's an expert on the art of Viking jewellery.

We have a number of different types of objects here.

We have some very high-status,

expensive items of jewellery.

These oval brooches, for instance,

are very distinctly Scandinavian pieces

that are likely to have been imported,

probably on the clothing of female settlers,

as is this lovely silver pendant.

That's a lovely thing.

This is probably from around 900, so late 9th, early 10th century.

And that's from Scandinavia, you think,

and brought to England by Scandinavian settlers.

I think that's most likely.

It's identical to examples that we find in Scandinavia.

It's actually quite fierce when you see it up close, isn't it?

Yeah, it's gripping,

it's gripping its own body with this kind of claw-like hand.

And plus, you've got these little beast heads

around the circular frame, so it is a rather fierce composition.

Even the brooch tells you, "Ooh! OK. Be careful.

-"Don't get on the wrong side of her."

-Exactly.

It's beautiful, though.

And these are rather less daunting, aren't they?

These would have been worn in a pair, on the shoulder,

and their function is to hold up the straps

of a particular type of dress.

What's going on in this brooch? Are there hints of animal motifs?

There are animal motifs.

You can just about make out an eye and a face, one on each side,

and then the body's rather contorted and abstract, coming down.

You have a spiral hip and then it ends in three-toed feet.

Do you have any idea what the animals might be?

I don't think they represent any animal that we would recognise,

they're kind of fantastical.

Sometimes you have four-legged animals in Viking art,

but these are rather more abstract, I think.

The designs revealed in the jewellery

reflect the different styles of Viking art.

Look closely and you'll find animal claws, eyes and heads,

elements of the gripping beast.

The creatures of Viking art live and breathe in this jewellery,

and it's nice to think that these beautiful items were once worn

in England.

You've brought objects that are lower down the scale as well,

I'm assuming. I mean, some of these objects,

although they're also rather beautiful,

they're distinctly humbler in feel, are they not?

Yes. Some of, actually, the more recent,

and in some ways more interesting, finds from Norwich Castle Museum

are slightly lower status,

much more affordable - the sort of things worn in everyday dress.

So, we see on trefoil brooches, for instance,

this style is a sort of simplified version

of one we get in Scandinavia,

and we can tell also from the pin lugs on the back of the brooch

that it's more of an Anglo-Saxon type,

so it's something that was probably made in England

according to Scandinavian tastes.

And once they started settling,

do you think their relations with the Anglo-Saxons became friendlier?

That they started trading with them instead of beating them up.

I'm sure they did, I'm sure there was a lot of Anglo-Scandinavian

cultural integration, and we see that on some of the brooches

that combine Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian styles.

But it is quite remarkable that this Scandinavian female dress

is upheld in England.

You might expect that they get rid of their oval brooches,

they get rid of their strapped dresses

and they start wearing Anglo-Saxon costumes -

that would be the natural path for social integration.

But, actually, we don't see that.

We see that they're keen to uphold dress styles from Scandinavia.

When we get new styles coming in,

women in England adopt those new Scandinavian styles,

so they're staying in touch with fashions

in the Scandinavian homeland,

so they're very keen to display their Scandinavian inheritance.

It's a nice thought, trying to think of, you know,

presumably this fair-haired Viking lady

walking down the street wearing those for the first time!

"Look at me!"

-It's definitely a bit of bling.

-Definitely a bit of bling.

The recent finds give us a fascinating insight

into the Vikings in Britain in the late 9th century onwards.

Now the Vikings were staying and settling in Britain,

bringing with them their jewellery and their fashions, bling and all.

But the development of Viking art tells a deeper story

about the interaction between these two cultures,

the native Anglo-Saxons and the invaders from Scandinavia.

The conquerors would become the conquered.

Gradually, the Vikings would shed their pagan beliefs

and embrace Christianity.

Strange things began to happen as the Viking settled in England.

Not only did the newcomers begin to adopt

the Anglo-Saxons' Christian religion...

..but they were also strongly influenced by their art.

It seems that Anglo-Saxon stone crosses, like this beautiful example

in the village of Irton in Cumbria, made quite an impression.

Stone-carving hadn't been something the Vikings had traditionally done,

but that was about to change.

In the 19th century there was a great surge of interest

in northern Norse mythology and legend -

think of Wagner's Twilight Of The Gods -

and the echoes were heard as far afield

as this quiet corner in Cumbria,

where, in 1880, a local doctor called Charles Parker,

who was also an antiquarian,

found his eyes drawn to this intriguing stone cross.

At first sight it seemed much like many of the Anglo-Saxon crosses

to be found elsewhere in the region,

but there was something different about it,

this Borre-style intricate patterning of its surface,

the height of the object.

He asked his coachman to clean it off, to get up on a ladder

and scrub it down so that he could inspect its details,

and when he did, he noticed some rather unusual features.

Yes, there's Jesus Christ on the Cross at the centre of this side,

but he also noticed these strange writhing figures

who don't seem to be explicable by any of the stories of the Bible.

It turns out that what he'd rediscovered,

with a little bit of help from his coachman,

was one of the very few surviving masterpieces

of Viking stone sculpture created here in England.

The Gosforth Cross would have looked very different in Viking times.

Like the Oseberg ship, it would have been painted in bright colours,

and the carvings would not have been worn down, as they are today.

But even if they were easier to see,

what they depict is still extremely mysterious.

Richard Bailey is an archaeologist who has studied Viking Age sculpture

in northern England.

So, Richard, are you able to help me decipher

this extremely puzzling scene

involving what seems to be an upside-down man on a horse,

a prone figure here...

I can't work out, is it a pig, a dog, a person, a deity?

It's quite deliberately a puzzle, a riddle.

The whole monument is comparing, contrasting,

making you think about things.

So, Christ is there and, in a way, that's the end of a world.

That's the end of the world of the Old Covenant,

of the end of the world of the Old Testament.

But then there's another end of the world here,

which is the end of the world of the old gods.

-The Viking gods.

-The Viking gods. The Ragnarok,

which tells the story of the giants and the forces of evil

under the devil-god Loki,

and down here we've got the devil-god Loki,

who was bound by the gods and punished by them

by having a serpent placed over his head,

and the poison dropped from its fangs onto his forehead.

And he had this faithful wife, Sigyn - that's Sigyn just there,

with a long, trailing pigtail, just like a Viking Age woman.

I thought Sigyn was a rabbit!

-No, no. Sigyn is his wife.

-I was seeing a rabbit with its long ears!

And she's holding a bowl,

and she stops the poison from dropping onto his head

but Loki breaks loose and leads the forces of evil

in this great final battle.

A final battle which involves people like Odin

being swallowed by the wolf,

and Odin's son Vidar taking revenge on the wolf

by breaking open the wolf's jaws,

and round on the other side, right at the very top,

up above that figure of Christ, we've got Vidar

with his foot stuck in one jaw and pushing,

wrenching the jaw up with the other.

Gosforth Cross is a truly remarkable object,

and even in the days of the Vikings, I suspect it was

a bit of a challenge for everyone to understand it.

This is Viking art making a bold statement,

fusing the old beliefs with the new.

A collision of pagan and Christian iconography.

What do you think of the object

as a creation of the stonemason's art or craft,

or the sculptor's art and craft?

This is one of the most accomplished craftsmen

whose work has survived in this country.

This chap is marrying up the traditions of stone carving

in Anglo-Saxon England,

and also the kind of figural art of the Viking tradition,

and he's pulling those two together.

It's a very sophisticated monument.

It seems almost certain that the artist who carved the Gosforth Cross

was working for a local Viking ruler who'd converted to Christianity.

Inside the neighbouring St Mary's Church,

there are some other striking examples of Viking stone sculpture

from the same period.

-So, this is a miniature Viking sculpture gallery.

-It is!

We have two of the most stunning carvings you're going to see.

These are remarkable carvings. They're what's called "hogbacks".

They were grave monuments,

prestigious, you know, high-status grave monuments.

But this was above the tomb...

This was above the tomb, the body would lie below it.

What they'd seen, somehow or other,

was those solid shrines that were over the top of saints' bodies

-in England...

-Exactly, like Thomas a Becket's shrine.

That's right, yes, and it goes right the way back to Roman sarcophagi...

Yeah, yeah, exactly! So, isn't that fantastic?

Building-shaped monuments,

but it's all done in the shape of a Viking house,

with a curved roof on it,

and then, behind it, you've got another hogback, not much bigger,

carved by the same man as carved the large cross outside,

but it's got these interlacing serpents running along

with men fighting them within.

-Oh! I've just seen here!

-Well, here we've got a crucifixion...

This sort of face staring out at me!

Yes, well, that's a crucifixion which exactly matches the one

that's outside on the cross outside, with that pear-shaped head,

sunk into the shoulders,

and a kirtle or a dress which goes out at the corners.

Oh, yes! It's Christ dressed in a Viking fashion.

-That's right, yes.

-They're wonderful things.

Isn't it great, you can be in this 19th-century Gothic church

looking at Viking tombstones

inspired by medieval Christian versions of the Roman sarcophagus?

There's an awful lot of unusual knottings.

That's right, and enormously impressive carvings.

-I mean, these are huge things.

-Yeah.

And the amount of effort involved in carving those things down.

-They've really committed to Christian burial.

-Yes.

-No more burial at sea in flames.

-No, no.

I want to be buried beneath the ground with a stone monument.

And no more burying out in barrows

in the middle of the countryside, either.

They are behaving like the locals behave,

but still looking back to and celebrating

-their Scandinavian ancestry.

-Yeah.

How very, very English, somehow.

Yes.

For now, the hybrid wonders of Christian-inspired Viking art

were confined to the places in the British Isles

where the Vikings settled.

For the time being, most Vikings and Viking art were still pagan.

It would be many years before Christianity would spread

throughout the Viking homeland of Scandinavia.

The greatest change was yet to come.

I'm returning to the British Museum

to catch up on the preparations for the Viking exhibition.

The last time I was here, the gallery was a construction site.

But the builders have now left, and in their place,

teams of curators are busy unpacking objects and putting them on display.

So...

Lots of packing crates, but big changes, big changes.

Yes, it's come on a bit since you were last here.

Well, the gallery's been built,

and there's something rather large in it!

Yes, doesn't look quite so much like a warehouse now.

And as you see, the ship is in full progress of reconstruction.

The ship in question is Roskilde 6,

a warship once large enough to carry 100 Viking warriors.

It was built around 1025, during the reign of King Cnut,

the Viking king who ruled Denmark and England.

And it's made a special journey from the National Museum of Denmark

for the exhibition.

The total length of the keel is nearly 32 metres.

-The keel alone is longer than any other surviving Viking ship.

-Wow.

Every part, you can see, is numbered here.

And that's vitally important,

because everything has to fit together in the right place.

We have a plan which shows exactly where every part belongs,

and the frame that it's standing on has been shaped precisely to

hold every piece in place.

-How long does it take you and your team...?

-Yeah...!

Well, I shouldn't put you on the spot,

-because you're still doing it...

-Yeah.

-But how long do you hope it takes?

-To build the ship now?

-Yeah.

Well, it takes ten working days to build the ship now,

from the base to the top of the stems.

That's probably cos you've got a bit of practice.

I think it would take most people a bit longer.

Yes, but it's also... It is because of the practice,

but also because of the way everything has been built,

because it's been designed to be easy to work with.

-Ah, so...

-From the start, yes.

Do you think, in a sense, when you re-enact the making of the boat,

and you can do it quite quickly, that shows how sophisticated

the Vikings were in devising a method to make a boat quite quickly?

Well, you could say that, because they were organised, as well,

and they planned their work.

Well, it's a wonderful object.

-Good luck...

-Thank you!

-..with your work.

-Yes!

We mustn't interrupt you, or ten days will become ten-and-a-half.

-Oh, I don't think so.

-Good luck.

The exhibition will display more than 300 artefacts,

many from lenders around the world.

But there's one particular object I can't wait to see.

It's from the 10th century,

and gives its name to a new style of Viking art - the Mammen style.

This is one of the finest items, I would say, in this exhibition.

It's a decorated axe head from Mammen in Denmark.

It's made of iron

-and it's inlaid with silver and also, here, with gold.

-Gosh.

And we have these bands interwoven with each other,

with spirals at the joints,

and then the thicker strands filled in with dots.

And in fact, if we turn this over,

the other side is even more impressive.

There's a creature in there, isn't there?

Yes. We've got a bird here.

The head there, the body coming round.

There's another of these spiral joints

where the back leg joins the body,

and then this long tail, with long, curling tail feathers

coming out behind.

Would that be a peacock's train that's been tilted up?

It's possible.

Certainly there are illustrations elsewhere in Viking art

that have been interpreted as peacocks,

which is an allegory for vanity,

and certainly vanity would be appropriate enough

for anyone carrying an axe like this.

-Now, this is a battle-axe, it seems to me.

-That's right.

It's made for that purpose, it's not meant for chopping wood.

No, this isn't a tool, it's a weapon.

Why would you have, if you were a Viking warrior,

why would you have a wonderful peacock - if it is a peacock -

on your axe? What purpose would that serve?

This is a period in which weapons often have individual names,

and it ties into the concept of the warrior hero.

It's not just about killing people in battle,

it's knowing who's killed them.

In a modern football match, yes, you want your team to win,

but you want your name on the score sheet at the end.

So I think there's...

So you want everybody to see your name on the back of your shirt.

-If you kill someone with the axe known as the peacock...

-Exactly.

An axe like that, that would catch the eye as you are fighting.

If you're going to hack someone to death,

then why not hack them to death with style and elegance?

With the preparations for the Viking exhibition in full swing,

I'm returning to Scandinavia.

Around the time of the Mammen Axe, a new craze emerged in Viking art.

The Viking picture runestone.

This, the Jelling Stone, is the most famous example.

Carved in the Mammen style, it shows Christ on the Cross,

and its runic inscription

proclaims the king to have made the Danes Christian.

I've come to the island of Adelso near Stockholm

to meet the nearest equivalent there is to a modern-day Viking artist.

His name is Kalle Runristare,

and he's taken up the challenge of reviving this Viking art form.

I'm meeting Kalle on the Viking farm that he's building.

It's all set up to be the perfect setting for carving runestones

in the old, time-honoured way.

You want to actually live like a Viking.

You are going to experiment, to live like a Viking.

-That's the best way to learn.

-Yeah.

-First I show you the house.

-Yeah, yeah.

We start building this house last year.

The inside will be great.

Also, we have the boat here for the winter.

How will you stay warm?

Where our boat is standing just now is going to be an open fire.

-What, in the middle?

-Yeah. It's a long fire.

A long fire... How will the house not just be full of smoke?

-It's going to be.

-It's going to be full of smoke?!

-Yeah.

And that's OK!

-The Vikings...

-You can stand it.

-We're going to have open places in the roof...

-Yeah.

At the end, both ends. We hope the smoke goes out.

So, I was hoping you might show me

how you go about the business of creating a runestone.

-Yeah?

-Yeah, I'd like to see.

It's a little bit up here.

Kalle has been carving runestones for over 20 years.

His most prestigious commission was to carve

a runestone in memory of the Viking explorer Leif Ericson,

who's thought to have discovered North America 500 years

before Columbus.

Some of Kalle's runestones are replicas

of those from the Viking Age.

But most, like the one he's currently working on,

are his own designs.

Here's the runestone. I'm carving it just now.

Wow! It's great.

How long have you been working on it?

This is a long-time project.

Long-time project! How long is long-time?

Truly. I start with this, 1996.

-That's a long time.

-Yes.

Wow!

Would you mind showing me how you actually carve?

Yeah, of course.

-I have a sledgehammer...

-It looks like a shoe-cleaning kit.

-Except for these bits...

-Yes!

This is the way to make the lines soft and straight.

Who taught you?

The old rune-carvers.

Now I change the chisel.

-I have a small, thin line here...

-Yeah.

-..to open up.

I take a chisel that is wide, and I put it across.

To open it up.

You see? That's become powder instead of...some bigger pieces.

So, this line is going to be deeper and stay for a longer time.

There are more than 2,000 Viking runestones in Scandinavia.

Most are Christian monuments,

with runic inscriptions commemorating the Viking dead...

..and more than half are decorated with the Christian cross.

Kalle's runestone is in the late-Viking Urnes style.

There's a strong rhythm and energy about it, and for the first time,

we can ask the Viking artist what it actually means.

On here...

you have one dragon. It's got feet, goes up, with two claw...

and a thumb.

-Ah...

-And then the body goes around.

Why do you have a dragon so prominent on the runestone?

This dragon is protecting the stone and the runic inscription.

-So, he is like a watchdog...

-Mm.

-..but you need a leash on him,

otherwise the dragon will go away.

So, where's the leash?

-That's the snakes.

-Ah!

-So, the snakes are a way of keeping the dragon tethered.

-Yeah.

May I ask, oh Viking,

why is there no Christian cross on your runestone?

I don't like it to be there.

The Christian cross, for me, is...something extra.

But most of the runestones that I've seen

seem to be extremely Christian.

Maybe if I read a runic inscription for you, you'll understand why

it's no Christian cross.

-If you could read it to me and then perhaps translate it...

-Yes.

Um...

HE READS THE RUNES

"Old gods become happy when people...

"again searching for knowledge and the old belief...

"to find answer to the future," or something.

It means don't do the same mistake again.

-Yeah. Learn from history.

-Yes.

HORN BLASTS

Kalle's runestone is unusual, in that it's dedicated to the old gods.

By the 11th century, throughout Denmark, Norway and Sweden,

the Vikings had officially converted to Christianity.

Violent raids on Anglo-Saxon monasteries

were now a distant, regrettable memory.

The Vikings were worshipping the same Christian God

as their former enemies.

It's fitting, then, that our final piece of Viking art

should take us to a Christian church.

Located in a remote fjord in western Norway,

it's a stunning setting for the final chapter of Viking art.

It's a great time of year to venture into the Norwegian wilderness.

It's that little window of autumn.

Beautiful colours.

I feel like I'm in a Romantic landscape painting.

Why am I here?

To see one of the oldest stave churches in all of Norway,

and a place that marks, in a sense, the swan song of Viking art.

-Marit, thank you for waiting.

-Hello!

-I'm sorry we've been delayed.

-It's OK.

-Welcome here!

-It took a very long time to get here.

The Urnes Stave Church that we see today

was built around the middle of the 12th century.

But at least 100 years before, Vikings were coming here,

to the same site, to pray.

Isn't it beautiful? It's very intimate.

-Yeah.

-It has a very friendly feeling.

How long have you looked after the church?

From 1979.

Are there still services here?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-It has been used the whole time.

-The whole time?

-Yeah.

-So, for more than 1,000 years,

-really, if we go back to...

-Yeah, to...

..to the very first church that was on this site.

That came in the end of the 900s.

The elaborate Romanesque decoration inside the church

dates from the mid-12th century.

It shows some influence from Viking artistic styles,

but it's too late to be considered Viking.

And yet, throughout the church, there are traces of the Viking past.

-You've actually got a Viking ship as the candelabrum.

-Yes.

-That's amazing!

-It's a Viking ship with nine candles.

And here, a lamb. The Lamb of God.

And how old is the Viking ship?

That is from the 12th century,

so I think it has been here from that time.

So, for 800 years, here in Urnes,

instead of a more conventionally Christian candelabrum,

they've had a Viking ship. That's wonderful.

And is there a significance to the number of the candles?

Yeah. Nine candles, three times three.

-A holy number.

-The Holy Trinity.

-Yeah.

So I think that...

It's a tremendous image of the way in which

I think of, as what's happened here,

is that we've got this Viking culture that has now been absorbed,

or is being absorbed, by a Christian culture.

And it's almost as if the Viking culture has got smaller,

and now here it is on the Christian altar.

I think the Viking ship as a candlestick on the altar

symbolised that a Viking from here went to England or Ireland

and become Christian, and brought the light back to Urnes.

That's a beautiful idea.

With its proud structure made from wood and its setting over the fjord,

the Urnes Stave Church has itself almost the feel of a Viking ship.

Yet the part of the church that's most truly Viking,

and dates from the Viking age, I've yet to see.

What makes this church so special

are the wooden carvings preserved on its outside.

These are pure Viking decoration.

This was, in fact,

the Viking entrance to the church that stood on this site

just 100 years before this one was created - in other words,

in the middle of the 11th century.

And they are absolutely spectacular.

Perhaps the most spectacular surviving wooden carvings

from the Viking Age anywhere in the world.

What do they show us?

These extraordinary coiling carved decorations

in which writhe and intermingle images

that seem to suggest vegetation...

To me, it's the equivalent of walking through brambles,

looking at this.

Animals that are struggling, fighting -

not gripping beasts so much as writhing beasts.

What seems to be a dog -

perhaps it's meant to be a schematic lion, symbol of Christ -

nipping away at a coiling, writhing serpent.

We're not quite sure what the images actually suggest,

but I think as a total ensemble...

..what it says to me is just how...

just how far the Vikings have travelled,

and how hungry an appetite they had for the visual styles

that they encountered on their different journeys.

And at the centre, you've got this remarkable, remarkable entrance.

This was actually the very narrow door

to the original church.

And what's that remind you of?

Well, it reminds me of...

..Islam. Isn't that an Islamic arch?

And weren't the Vikings active in Spain?

We know that they raided Arab Spain in the 9th century.

That they travelled into the Islamic world,

that they traded with the Arabs.

These patterns also seem to me to suggest Arab scimitars,

perhaps even Arab calligraphy.

So, within this patterning, there's almost a map of the Vikings' trade,

the Vikings' influence, the Vikings' travels,

the Vikings' journeys.

But this is also, I think,

a poignant image of their last journey,

because when they opened that door, what were they going into?

They were going into a Christian church,

and turning their longship in the direction of God.

Within a few decades of the Urnes wood carvings being created,

the Viking Age had drawn to a close.

The era of Viking longships, expeditions overseas,

the settlement and the conquering of foreign lands, all was over...

..to be replaced by a new, enlightened age of Christianity.

But what mysterious, wonderful art the Vikings had left behind.

The beautiful, dancing rhythms of the late Urnes style.

The intricate gripping beasts

and ribbon animals of the Oseberg burial.

And with so little Viking literature to explain its meanings,

this is an art, I feel, that's still kept many of its secrets.

The new exhibition, Vikings - Life And Legend,

is at the British Museum until 22nd June.

Dominating it all is the magnificent Roskilde 6 warship,

its surviving timbers now fully assembled in its metal frame.

And alongside the impressive collections of Viking weaponry,

there's also Viking art.

This is the Hiddensee Gold Hoard,

most likely made in Denmark in the late 10th century.

This single set of jewellery ranks amongst the most spectacular

and extravagant of the whole Viking Age.

This wonderful Valkyrie was unearthed in December 2012.

It's the only 3D depiction of a Valkyrie known to exist

from the Viking era.

And this, another highlight, a gilt bronze weathervane

that once decorated the prow of a Viking ship.

This is the first major exhibition

devoted to the Vikings at the British Museum

for more than 30 years,

and it's all the more impressive

when you consider that many of the objects on display

have had to survive the ravages of time for more than 1,000 years.

From these fragments I think Viking civilisation emerges far more whole.

Yes, they were raiders, but they were also explorers,

traders, Christians, artists.

Now, should we be surprised that a bloodthirsty warrior

should also be capable of appreciating objects

of extreme beauty?

Well, I don't think so.

I think what this show has done is give these back their complexity,

and remind us all that they were every bit as contradictory

as any of us.

MUSIC: "Back In Black" by AC/DC