The Art of the Vikings Secret Knowledge

In 793, a chapter in the history of these islands began

when from out there, across the North Sea, came a new enemy.

Aggressive, well armed, complex and seemingly, beyond reason.

The Vikings turned the ordered, newly Christian world on its head,

made slaughterhouses out of monasteries,

adornments out of sacred artefacts.

Their footprints here were recorded by the monasteries they destroyed,

written down by monks, scribes,

Christians who had survived their attacks

or who'd heard about this terrible new threat.

"It is nearly 350 years

"that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land

"and never before has such terror appeared in Britain

"as we have now suffered from a pagan race."

That's how they were written into history,

fixed in time and imagination as barbarous aliens.

And once it was written down,

it was a label that stuck like a stain on their character.

The story goes that they came, wreaked havoc

and then, went away again

back to their primitive homelands in the dark North.

But is that really who they were?

And is that really what happened?

Well, not exactly.

In some parts of the UK,

as much as 60% of the population may be descended from them.

We are as related to them as we are to the early Britons

or Romans or Anglo-Saxons.

So why do we know so little about them and their culture?

I think the best way to understand who they really were

is to look beyond this old view of them as an alien enemy.

At the National Museum Of Scotland in Edinburgh, we can do just that.

This exhibition, called simply Vikings!,

comes mostly from the Swedish Historical Museum.

It shows us who the Vikings are when viewed from the inside

by people who consider them to be their direct ancestors.

It really is a remarkable collection of objects.

And what they would do is change your opinion on who the Vikings were

and who we are, cos what they do is tell us the story of the Viking within.

When I see a brooch like this

or a necklace like this,

I think, "Here is a voice from history. Here is a story."

This is more true with the Vikings

than probably any other European people,

because it's so difficult to hear them in any other way,

so little of their history was written down.

What we do have is less a written history,

more a set of carved-in-stone headlines,

a version of who they were that's intellectually slender

and struggles to convey their complexity.

The Vikings did have a form of writing,

it was known as runes.

It's got a very distinctive appearance,

it's all made up of straight lines,

which enabled it to be carved often with a knife.

And within the Futhark alphabet, as it was known,

each letter acted like a modern A, B, C,

liked the Latin alphabet,

but each word also had a meaning attached to it.

So this, for example, is the F-rune.

It's got the name Fe,

which, in old Norse, means wealth,

but also cattle, livestock.

Because in this barter society,

you could trade cattle as a means of accruing wealth.

So runes worked as a writing alphabet,

as a means of creating words out of letters,

but they also carried larger meanings,

sometimes spiritual and mystical meanings.

They could be used to make short statements,

so you can have a love poem.

"Think of me, I think of you, love me, I love you"

is carved on a wooden comb.

But they're not able to make sustained, long sentences

or develop a true literary language.

I think this has caused us

to underestimate the entire Viking culture.

Because the Latin language of the church was able

to capture the Viking identity,

it, in some ways, leads to this idea

that Christians and the native British people

were somehow superior to these Vikings,

because they're not able to identify and define themselves

in their own voice.

But that, of course, is far too simplistic.

So where did they store their religious beliefs,

their laws, their stories?

Well, they stored them in here,

although they weren't a literate society

in the sense that they didn't write down all this information,

they were orally literate

and had a huge capacity to memorise information.

So things like who owned what land, what hero performed what deed,

they were able to retain all of this.

It's said that a minstrel in the hall

could recite solidly for two days

one long poem that he'd committed to memory.

This shows great sophistication,

but it wasn't just their memories that retained this information,

they also reflected it through this remarkable collection of artworks.

The objects here have mainly been recovered

from archaeological digs and treasure hoards.

They tell us more about the Vikings

than the records of others ever could.

This brooch, for instance,

is made from gold, bronze and garnets.

The decoration is remarkable

and, because of its shape, it's thought to represent

the magical necklace of a Viking goddess.

It carries layer upon layer of sophistication.

So why have we come to think about them like we do?

I think that objects like the longship have a lot to do with it.

And no wonder.

Even this imaginary one,

of which all that remains are nails and rivets,

is an awe-inspiring sight.

These were raiding vessels for a raiding people.

This is cutting-edge technology of its time,

specifically designed for a purpose.

It has to be fast, manoeuvrable, it's got a shallow keel,

which means it can go straight up onto the coastline

and back out again quickly to get to the sea.

The Christian monasteries that the Vikings initially attacked

were ripe pickings.

Established just over 100 years earlier,

places like Iona and Lindisfarne

were deliberately placed on waterways

to allow them to trade,

but this made them very vulnerable to Viking attack.

And these places were poorly defended as well,

largely inhabited by monks,

these Christians that the Vikings just couldn't understand.

They saw them as militarily weak

with this idea of peace and piety coming into direct opposition

with their idea of military might and the heroic victory in battle.

So the Vikings could simply come and take what they wanted

and then go away again.

If the sight of a longboat once instilled fear,

today, it elicits a very different response in me.

I'm so impressed by what must have been an object

of great beauty and craftsmanship.

An astonishing amount of time

and raw materials would go into making a Viking longship.

You needed four different types of wood, so oak for the planks

and then pine for the mast

and you also needed willow and ash.

Then, on top of that, you needed another 130 tons of wood,

just for the charcoal to make the iron ore for these rivets.

You needed 600 horse tails to make the ropes

and 200 kilograms of wool to make the sail

that would have carried it across the sea.

The names that the Vikings attached to their ships

show that they held a particularly special place in their imagination.

So it's known as Tjaldfakr,

the steed of the sea.

Or in Old English, Aethelede, traverser of the waves.

As this picture stone shows, Vikings believed their boats

could traverse not just the waves, but worlds as well.

Boats were used as burial vessels, almost like enormous coffins.

So a very important person would be placed inside it

and then a large mound would be placed on top of it

so it was buried.

This extraordinary seafaring vessel was given up to the Earth.

It's important to remember that the dead don't bury themselves.

It's the living that organise these extraordinary burial rituals.

And it was a way of showing the status of the family.

So inside these burial ships,

you'd have everything you would need for the afterlife.

It had to be even better than your life on Earth,

so you needed your finest jewellery, your best weapons,

the most extraordinary array of foods and clothes.

Because you would be feasting and fighting for all eternity.

The Vikings, remember, were pagan.

But that doesn't mean that they were godless barbarians,

or without a religion that made sense of the world around them.

They were, in fact, quite structured in their religious beliefs.

There was a pantheon of gods.

At the top you have Odin.

Odin is the god of wisdom and war.

And he only has one eye,

because he gave the other one up to receive knowledge.

Then you have his son, Thor.

He is represented by a hammer,

and it's this idea of Thor bashing his hammer in the heavens

that gives us "thunder".

And alongside these warrior gods,

you also have fertility gods like Freya,

and here you have a balance to all this macho heroic behaviour,

with more of a focus on love, on procreation,

on fertility and the harvest.

If Vikings hadn't gone in for their pagan burials,

we might not know half as much about them as we do.

It really does hammer home the point that these burial boats,

designed to carry the dead to the afterlife,

have been blown off course through time.

And yet have managed to carry their precious cargo

over the centuries to us now.

And that this is probably not

what the occupant thought the afterlife looked like

when he took his last breath over a millennium ago.

Death and warfare are part of the longships' story.

But the boat allowed Viking culture to flourish in other ways.

It was a trading vessel,

and I think it's important to emphasise this, because it was trade

that grew the Viking ever closer and more permanently to these islands.

The term Viking refers to an activity, of going a-viking.

Men, women and children could go a-viking,

and it wasn't simply just raiding and destroying.

It was more about making connections.

In the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries,

the Vikings were travelling thousands of miles

and covering the known world.

This curious little object is a Buddha.

It's come from the Swat Valley, so right in the heart of Asia.

And what we can see is that it was obviously prized by the Viking

that brought it all that distance.

Did they enjoy the expression on his face?

Or just like the look of it?

Or did they engage in a more spiritual sense

with the Buddhists that they encountered on their journeys?

While it's very difficult to know what each of these objects

would have meant to this Viking that brought them with him,

they give us these tantalising glimpses into individual lives.

They really were cosmopolitan, well-connected people.

And if there is one object that helped shed some light

on the lengths the Vikings would go to to be able to trade, it's this.

This is known as ring money.

Now, these may look like bracelets, but there is a clue in the name.

They were used as currency.

What you have got here is silver that's been melted down.

It may have come from coins or from plunder.

But the Vikings have made an attempt to create

a high-quality standardised form of currency that they can trade with.

So what you would do is hack up one of these bracelets

and these would allow you to have different transactions -

a smaller one might go for a bag of grain,

you might use half a bracelet for a cow.

And this was a way of trading in a non-monetary society.

The Vikings on the whole didn't use coins,

but these allowed them to trade internationally.

Behind all this trading was a system of brutal exploitation.

This is an amazing little object.

It really encapsulates so much about what the Vikings stood for,

how they appeared to people.

And it's a piece of slate that's been carved into, etched into,

presumably by a child.

And it's akin to scratching with a compass into a wooden desk.

You need this replica, made from a cast, to bring the scene to life.

There is this wild-haired Viking here,

wearing a chainmail shirt, and he's moving towards

this longboat here, with the oars depicted there.

And dragging behind him there is this man

who's presumably a monk, because he's got

a reliquary box chained to his waist.

Now, this was designed to contain relics of saints.

So either parts of their bone

or else things that they came into contact with

like their books or their vestments.

And these were particularly prized within monasteries

as they were thought to connect the individuals

directly with the saints themselves.

And what it's showing is that during these Viking raids,

it wasn't just plunder that was taken. People were taken, too.

Slaves were very valuable, and could be sold on.

And the money that was transacted

could be turned into amazing objects like this.

This is a brooch. This was used to hold a cloak up.

And it's just such an extravagant expression of wealth.

It's enormous. It weighs nearly a kilogram.

And the decoration, it's all about display.

So there's a connection between these objects.

You've got this image of slavery and movement of goods

via these longboats, and then the finished product.

Slavery stretched across the entire Viking trading network.

Far afield, and also, as these manacles show, closer to home.

Slavery was at the very heart of the Viking world.

Not only were slaves important for trade,

they were also essential for agriculture and manufacture.

They formed part of a complex hierarchy,

where there were degrees of free and unfree people.

Indeed, Viking society was remarkably organised.

There were systems in place to organise the family,

the household and the tribe.

Society was held together in no small part by women,

who played a fascinating and powerful role.

We could see that reflected through the finds from their burials.

So this is the burial of a wealthy woman from Gotland in Sweden.

And here there are beads that are so colourful

and drawn from all number of exotic locations.

Then you've got this key, that's on a chain.

This is a symbol of her role as lady of the house.

She controls the key to the home, but also to the treasure chests.

While the men are away on raiding missions or trading,

Women had to control the wealth of the household.

And this symbolic key reflects that power and authority.

Then, there's more intriguing finds.

There's a spindle here, which suggests that she was involved

in the craft of tapestry making and weaving, but perhaps symbolically,

it also reflects this association between women and the Norns.

These mystical women who spun the strands of fate

and could cut off destiny.

What we can see from these sorts of grave goods is that women

were respected and revered, and even played a role

within the spiritual framework of the religious system.

It's interesting, when you think of the role of women

in Christian society, in a church that...

The hierarchy of which is predominantly male.

It seems that within Viking society,

women could exert that extra bit of power.

But Christianity and its new power structures

couldn't be kept at bay for ever.

And the objects here show how it began to influence the Vikings.

This little fellow, from a rich woman's grave,

is the earliest crucifix to be found in their world.

And it heralds the start of a new era.

Christians weren't supposed to trade with non-Christians.

And for a while, the Vikings were able to get around this

by making the sign of the cross

every time they encountered a Christian,

to imply that they shared this set of beliefs

and therefore could exchange goods.

But as Viking society was changing,

Christianity started to offer additional benefits,

so as the tribal structure was becoming more and more hierarchical

and certain individuals were growing in power,

almost becoming king-like in their power,

Christianity gave this structure whereby a king

gained their power on Earth from the king in Heaven.

So, Christianity offered the Vikings

not just increased potential

to trade but also a political and ideological framework that

could fit with their changing place in the world.

'So the Vikings, then, were pragmatists.

'The old world they'd turned their back on wasn't immediately lost.

'It was sometimes incorporated, at least symbolically,

'into the new one.'

Here is a necklace, made up of 35 separate pendants,

each one of which is gold, silver and bronze

and is in the shape of a fish tail.

The fish was an important symbol in Christianity

because of its name in Greek, Ichthys.

If you take each of the letters in Greek,

they spell out the phrase, "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour."

So, you have this elaborate play with this word,

and that was very important to Christianity.

It was a religion of the book, it was a religion that prized literacy,

and so its symbolism also plays with words.

But what's interesting is that the fish seems to have been

one of the symbols that made the greatest impact

on Pagan Germanic people,

and it's one of the first symbols that appears, I think,

because of the fact that it prizes this part of the natural world,

this living creature, the fish.

'The people we know as Vikings were many different people,

'spread over a vast area.

'They didn't all convert to Christianity at once.

'Nor did their new religion

'necessarily put an end to their raiding.'

Here you can see two small fragments of marble,

and this one has been used as a pendant at some point.

You can see there's a hole that's been drilled through

so it can be worn on a chain or a leather thong around the neck.

Similar pendants have been found

that have the residue of precious metals on their surface,

and it's possible that these are being used as touchstones to

assess the quality of gold and silver.

The metals rubbed against the stone

and then the quality can be assessed,

and what's interesting about this example is it's made of porphyry.

Now, porphyry was a marble that was used extensively

on the continent, in churches,

and here we have another piece of porphyry, and this seems to

have come maybe from the floor of a church in Rome, possibly.

It's clearly a tile that has been

prised up from the ground

and taken away as a souvenir.

But what these two examples demonstrate is

a re-appropriation of this precious marble, porphyry,

and all its associations with the Imperial past and the church.

It's gone from this sort of context to this sort of context.

It really makes me think that what at first can look

like destruction can actually be transformation and re-appropriation.

'And let's face it,

'the Vikings had a healthy appetite for re-appropriation.

'They returned time and again to Britain,

're-appropriating everything in sight, and eventually,

'the kings of the British Isles began to pay them to go away.

'This became known as the Danegeld.

'The Danegeld was a Medieval protection racket

'on an impressive scale.

'It goes down in history as one of those "good ideas at the time".'

What this meant, though, was that the Vikings kept coming back.

In the 10th and 11th century, they started to settle more and more,

taking over the land as well, so they never went away,

and this led to the creation of the Danelaw.

'The Danelaw was Danish-held territory in England,

'and it eventually stretched from Northumbria

'all the way to the Thames.'

'In Scotland, it was mainly Norwegian Vikings

'who made political centres across the Northern and Western Isles,

'and the very North of Scotland

'became their South, their Sutherland.

'By the early 11th century, much of the present-day British Isles

'were ruled and settled either by these Norwegian or Danish Vikings.'

In our search for the true impact of the Vikings on the British Isles,

we need look no further than that most seminal of dates, 1066.

Traditionally, the history books have it that the Anglo-Saxons,

led by Harald Godwinson, take on the Danes at Stamford Bridge

and win, before ultimately being defeated by the Normans at Hastings.

We have these three culturally distinct groups, the Danes,

the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans, but there's a wonderful irony to

the events of this year, because to some extent, all sides are Vikings.

The most obvious connection is with the Danes,

but when we look at the Normans, they get their name from being

"Norse men" that have settled in France.

Then we get the Anglo-Saxons, who, because of the Danelaw,

were profoundly influenced by Viking culture and society.

'As the objects here show,

'the Vikings infiltrated the culture as well as the DNA

'of the British Isles, as warriors and traders,

'family men and powerful women,

'ridiculous show-offs and devout believers, they became us.'

So, if you're still wondering how better to understand the Vikings,

then you just need to look within.

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