Episode 1 Vikings

York.

Founded by the Romans,

by the 9th century AD,

this was one of the great Christian cities of Anglo-Saxon England.

But York had a shock coming.

Because in 866 AD, an entire army arrived here,

turned the place Viking and called it Jorvik.

This city, and half of England besides,

became part of Scandinavia.

'Today, even over 1,000 years later,

'the image of the marauding Viking warrior is as strong as ever...'

Thank you. '..especially up here.'

What we know, or think we know, about the Vikings

is much more myth than reality.

Even the famed horned helmets are a modern invention.

So, just who WERE the Vikings?

'I'm going to find out the truth about the Vikings...

'..leaving Britain behind to enter their land

'and their own mysterious world.'

Even now, this place feels like it's on the edge of everything.

'It's going to take me all over Scandinavia...'

Do you have a map?

'..and far beyond.'

These are Arabic Dirhams, minted in places like Baghdad.

'And, as an archaeologist,

'I'll be seeking out some of the most telling evidence of all...

'..the remains of ancient people...'

This flamboyant hairstyle just adds to his allure.

'..and the stunning treasures they left behind...

'..all to get inside the heads of the Vikings themselves.'

Oh, wow! How can that be 1,000 years old?

'The real Vikings - from their point of view.'

'To start my investigation, I've come to Norway...'

Smoked salmon.

'..in particular, Bergen, a port that faces the wild Atlantic Ocean.'

If I'm going to understand the origins of the Vikings,

then this is the place to start,

because at the end of the 8th century, it's likely that the ships

carrying those first raiders set out from this coastline.

It's hard to imagine that it was from here, 1,200 or so years ago,

that so much terror was unleashed, but this is how I wanted to feel

at the beginning of this journey, so that I could try and understand

this seismic moment in European history

from the Viking point of view.

The Vikings weren't just savage pirates,

but sophisticated traders, who criss-crossed the known world,

running silks and silver, as well as slaves and stolen booty.

Epic adventurers, who voyaged to the exotic cities of Asia

and the unknown mysteries of America.

While much of Dark Age Europe had been shaped

by the civilising influence of Rome,

up here in Scandinavia, the Vikings had emerged from a distinctive,

in fact, a unique, culture.

They were untainted by concepts like the written law and life in towns,

far less by belief in a Christian God.

The Vikings bequeathed to us a part of our cultural DNA

that's wilder, darker, more mysterious

than anything that was to be had from Rome.

And it wasn't just what they did that made them dangerous.

It was what they thought and what they believed.

'Right here in Bergen are some of the preserved remains

'of one of the very earliest Vikings ever found...

'..although, it has to be said,

'they're not exactly in the best of shape.'

These poor fragments are all that remains of the skeleton of a man.

These are arm bones...

..and these are parts of one leg.

Alongside him were grave goods, including his sword.

So it's safe to say that he was a warrior.

But what's remarkable about him, what's fascinating,

is that this individual is the first

that we know of to have been buried in true, classic Viking style.

He was buried inside a Viking ship

that was intended to take him to the afterlife,

to Valhalla, where he would feast and fight

alongside the Norse Gods themselves.

He was a sea-borne warrior.

He would have been carrying the responsibility

and the expectations of his family, who would be hoping that he would

return richer, more famous, with a great reputation,

that would change not just his life, but theirs.

A Viking wasn't only something you were,

but something you did.

To go a-Viking, was to head out

into the open seas in search of adventure.

Their transport was a technological miracle,

the notorious Viking longboat -

an icon of an entire Age.

'From Bergen, it's just a short hop to Norway's capital, Oslo...

'..resting place of the finest Viking ship ever unearthed.'

Like our man, it dates from the very beginning of the Viking Age.

This stunning craft is the Oseberg Ship.

It's certainly the most famous Viking ship we have

and, to my eyes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most beautiful.

This was once one of the most sophisticated ships in the world...

..the epitome of technological brilliance and maritime audacity.

The ship itself is the work of many craftsmen,

but here, in this carving,

is the imagination and the skill

of just one artist, one person.

It's this exciting, vivid depiction of a dragon or sea serpents

twisted together, biting tails.

The scales on the skin are picked out

with these carefully-etched lines.

And while it's one thing to be handed an object

that you can hold in your hand

and be told, "This is 1,000 or 1,200 years old",

it's of another order of magnitude to stand

beneath something like this.

This says that the Vikings were real people with huge ambition.

This is just one of hundreds, or thousands, of ships

built during the Viking Age.

THIS is what the Vikings were capable of.

The Vikings might have burst into our British history

in a blizzard of flashing axes,

but the culture that gave rise to them

certainly didn't appear out of a clear blue sky.

Instead, they were the product of thousands of years

of cultural evolution.

They were shaped by their land and by the sea

and by countless generations of Scandinavian "proto-Vikings".

And it's only by understanding the world

of their most distant ancestors

that we can hope to dig down to their real roots,

to distil the very Viking essence, if you like,

and to see why, and how, the terrifying phenomenon of the Vikings

ever came to be.

'To discover the very earliest roots of the Vikings,

'I'm leaving Oslo behind and heading east,

'to the very heart of the Baltic.'

It's taking me 450 miles from Norway,

to a Swedish island called Gotland.

To really get to grips with the Vikings,

to have any chance of seeing who they were and where they came from,

you have to dig down towards the roots of the world that bore them.

And that means going all the way back to pre-historic Scandinavia.

And, I can tell you, there's some pretty strange stuff down there.

The streamlined longboat was key to everything the Vikings achieved.

And the very beginning of the longboat's story

can be found here in the Baltic, on Gotland.

'Joakim Wehlin is a local archaeologist,

'who's promised to help me find some ancient rock carvings.

'The only trouble is, they're submerged and, in winter,

'also stuck under a lot of ice!

'And to make matters even worse, it's getting dark!'

ICE CRACKS

This is exactly what they tell you not to do in all the warning films.

ICE CREAKS AND CRACKS

Exactly. It's not...

Oh, how frustrating. I mean, they're just... Oh, I can see them!

-Honestly, I've got...

-Yeah?

-Yeah, yeah, I can. I can see it.

You see there, the dark. There's the line of the boat.

-You can see the curving hull. It's there. Amazing.

-Yeah, it is.

-It's really cool, actually.

-It's great!

Effectively, what we've got is a sunken Bronze Age rock carving.

It's great!

Just amazing.

I suppose the obvious question is, why is that rock art here?

Because it feels like the middle of nowhere,

Yes, today, it's the nowhere, but back in the Bronze Age,

I think this is a meeting place. People gathering around here.

You see the open landscape. High points all over here.

In the Bronze Age, would the sea have been closer

-and, therefore, easier to see?

-Yeah, the sea would have been closer

and also there was a freshwater lake just next. You can see the remains.

So this is the only place for freshwater at the time.

And so, if it was a place that mattered,

because people were accustomed to coming here to talk or to trade

or whatever, then it would have made sense

-to make carvings in the rock here.

-Exactly.

If you look at the rock art that is made

on the mid-Eastern part of Sweden, it is the same kind of rock art.

There's something symbolic about something from so long ago

being trapped under the ice.

'Rock carvings have been found all over Scandinavia,

'going back thousands of years, into the Iron Age and beyond.

'And there's a very definite recurring theme.'

-I can see right away the ships, with people in them, with a crew.

-Yes.

People with weapons - swords and axes.

And the ships are actually really good.

There's quite a lot of detail.

You know, this...

This coming up at the bow and then you've even got a serpent head

-at the bow of the ship.

-Yes, and sometimes it looks almost like

you can see the direction of it.

So the people who are making the carvings, you, kind of, get a sense

of how familiar they are with ships, with boats,

because there's detail and a real familiarity with the shape.

'The rock carvings are stunning, but they're not the only remains

'that testify to the Vikings' ancient sea-faring roots.'

Very evocative.

'Next morning, I'm still on Gotland. I'm searching out more evidence

'of the earliest maritime ancestors of the Vikings.'

What I've come to see here is much, much older than these trees,

but the fact that it's partly concealed by a forest

just adds another layer of mystery and it kind of sets you up

for the expectation that you're about to see something magical.

This vast monument is called the Stone Ship of Ansarve...

..and it's around 3,000 years old.

Anyone coming here couldn't help but be struck by its sheer scale.

I've walking into lots of stone circles in my time,

but nothing like this.

In a stone circle, you never quite know how to feel -

you don't really know for sure what you're being told,

but you come in here and, without anyone saying a word,

you know exactly what this is.

Like Britain's stone circles,

the purpose of ancient ship monuments is mysterious.

Many are graves.

But not all.

Every one of them, though,

testifies to the symbolic importance of the sea

to the people who lived on Gotland long before the Viking Age.

It's such a Baltic thing to do.

You don't get ship settings in France or in Britain

but you do get them here - lots and lots of them.

The prehistory of Scandinavia was dominated by the sea.

With its rugged coastline of fjords and inlets,

it was often much easier to travel by sea than over land.

In the Baltic Sea alone there are over 50,000 islands,

convenient stopping-off points,

service stations or lay-bys, if you like,

along an ancient maritime motorway.

It was these ancient maritime skills

that evolved into the seagoing prowess of the Vikings,

their daring raids, and their great epic voyages.

The ancestors of the Vikings

had the salt of the sea running through their veins.

But they were also a people who were shaped by their land.

When you travel though Scandinavia,

you begin to realise just how huge and varied a land

the Vikings inhabited.

From the cold, northern mountains of Norway,

where arable land was scarce...

..all the way down to the fertile plains of Denmark and the South.

Travel in prehistoric Scandinavia might have been dominated by the sea

but survival depended on the land.

How successfully you could tend animals and grow crops.'

The geography of Scandinavia provides for

many different landscapes and many different climates

and people living in different parts are affected in different ways.

In the far north,

where the soils are thin and the winters are long and dark,

it's very difficult to grow crops -

it's even a challenge to keep animals.

But in the South, especially during the Bronze Age -

the time where people were making those ship carvings -

there was actually an economic surplus.

There was plenty of good grazing and the land was good for many crops.

Having visited the coasts of Norway and Sweden,

I'm now heading for Denmark, and its capital, Copenhagen.

Because just 100 miles from here,

there's a remarkable site that reveals how Bronze Age people

thrived off the fertile land of the South.

3,500 years ago,

this place was an important settlement of wealthy farmers.

These are the burial mounds of Borum Eshoj

and they were built between 1,400 and 1,300 years BC.

At that time, there were more than 40 mounds in this area alone...

..and 45,000 dotted right across Denmark.

One of the many extraordinary things about these mounds,

is the effort, the colossal effort it takes to build them

and it's estimated that when this was first completed,

it was eight times as big.

To build one of these you need 150 people

working flat out for three or four months,

so whoever commissioned it

had to have resources to organise those people,

to feed those people and to give them the tools for the job.

But all of this is and was rich farming land,

it provides surplus grain and surplus animals.

So the families who buried in mounds like these

weren't just trying to survive off the land, they had control over it.

These mounds suggest that the people here

enjoyed a relatively good life,

especially compared to the tougher conditions of the north.

But wherever you lived, north or south,

surviving a Scandinavian winter wasn't easy.

Experimental archaeologists working here have created

an exact replica of the houses

these Bronze Age farmers would have lived in.

And since I've come here in February, it's just the right time

to get a taste for the winter food their lives depended on.

My guide is food expert, Bi Skaarup.

It's all very well for us in the 21st century,

but what kind of challenges faced Bronze Age farmers

as the long dark nights of winter set in?

The most important thing was to get enough provisions

to get you through the winter.

If you were completely starved in the spring,

you couldn't start working the land and that was very important.

Is there anything interesting to drink in the Bronze Age?

Yes, definitely, and I've made some for you.

-I was hoping you'd say that.

-Yeah.

The residue of this drink

was found in a bark bucket in a burial mound.

So its malted wheat,

honey, bog myrtle to give a bit of bitterness, and cranberries.

-Slainte mhath.

-Skol.

That's fantastic, it really is.

-It just tastes like fruit juice.

-Yes.

-But that's a fermented...

-It is.

-..drink. So that would last.

It would.

-That would see you through a winter's night, wouldn't it?

-Yes.

Fermented drinks may have kept the cold at bay,

but more of a problem was keeping food through the winter.

Especially meat.

I brought some meat, marinated in whey.

What sort of meat is that?

-It's pork.

-Right.

And that's edible now just having been soaked or sat in whey?

-Now, you're not just having me on, are you?

-No, I'm not.

-OK.

It's got all the texture,

-but it only tastes very faintly of meat.

-Mmm-hmm.

But, you know...

But then I do like raw meat, I've always been drawn that way!

Preparing for winter, surviving it, together.

It's such a shared human experience for anyone in Northern Europe.

I remember speaking to a woman on Shetland once

and I asking her how she coped with the winter

and she said she enjoyed it and looked forward to it.

And I asked her why, and she said

the satisfaction was preparing for it

and feeling proof against the winter.

And so the people here in the Bronze Age,

they would have been making plans for the winter,

laying down supplies,

and as well as making sure they had the basics of life,

they were finding time to prepare a few barrels of fermented drink

so that, as well as surviving, they could also take the edge off

and enjoy themselves as well.

So they'd be in here with their extended families,

with the animals for extra warmth,

and if they had got their plans right, and they pulled together,

then they would survive,

and having survived a winter like that,

then I'm sure it would make the spring and the summer that followed

that bit sweeter.

Having eaten like a Viking ancestor,

I'm going to spend the night like one,

in the moonlit shadow of those ancient mounds.

Now, you can read all the books you want,

but the only way to even get close to having a Bronze Age experience...

..is to do it.

Hopefully these sheepskins will make all the difference.

Don't suppose there were many occasions

when a Bronze Age person had a night to him or herself

inside a house like this.

They would have been with their family almost all of the time.

In Britain, Bronze Age people lived in round houses,

but over here,

the rectangular timber houses of Borum Eshoj

were the direct ancestors of the Viking longhouses

that would appear 2,000 years later.

Well...

..there we go.

I have to report, first of all, that despite all my best intentions

to report throughout the night, I fell asleep.

All I can really say is, it was warm enough

and here I am.

I've survived my Bronze Age winter's night.

Quite good, really.

Incredibly, it's even possible to get a glimpse

of the very inhabitants of Borum Eshoj themselves.

In Copenhagen,

an entire 3,000-year-old family from the settlement

has been carefully preserved.

And this is the mum.

What's most moving of all to me

is the preservation of the clothing

that she was put into after she died.

She's wearing a short-sleeved woollen blouse,

the lower half of her body is covered

by this perfectly-preserved folded blanket or skirt also of wool,

and you can't resist the possibility

that if you could somehow bring someone back who was there that day,

they could look at this and recognise her and know who she was.

And this splendid individual is the son.

The fact that his hair has been preserved,

this flamboyant hairstyle,

just adds to his allure

and you get the sense,

looking at how he's styled himself,

that there is just a trace of his personality in there as well.

But it's the husband and father

whose remains are the most telling of all.

Everything about this guy says big man -

the size of him,

his musculature, the mass of his bones -

all of his life, he had access to a good diet.

That in itself suggests wealth.

His fingernails were neatly manicured

so he was the kind of man

who had the time to take care of his appearance.

He lived to be around 60 years old,

which is a good age, really, by any standards.

In life and in death, he was the centre of the family.

It's clear that in Denmark and the south,

the Bronze Age ancestors of the Vikings lived a good life.

But the further north you lived,

the progressively tougher things must have become

for anyone trying to farm the land.

For the Vikings themselves,

2,000 years later,

the varied geography of their lands

would shape very different destinies.

Scandinavia was always a land divided.

In the south, there was plentiful farmland and relative affluence,

but the north was always a different, a tougher prospect.

There WAS land available, but it was limited.

A lot of it around the sides of and at the necks of the Fjords,

so perhaps it's no surprise that of all the Vikings

it was the Norwegians who ventured furthest in search of,

quite literally, pastures new,

where a man wasn't just wedged in between the mountains and the sea.

But, of course, we know that the Vikings weren't just expert sailors

and skilled ship builders.

They were also warriors.

Even by the standards of the Dark Ages,

the Vikings were especially adept

when it came to the messy business of killing.

And again, it was something deeply rooted in their Scandinavian past.

To discover the origins

of the Vikings' natural talent for bloody combat,

I'm moving on from the peaceful farmers of Bronze Age Jutland -

to later, and much more violent times.

The Iron Age.

This is the Hjortspring Boat,

and it's one of the most famous sea-going vessels

that you will ever lay eyes on.

I've seen lots of photographs of this over the years

but they can't do it justice.

It's a bit like if you've only seen a Hollywood star

in movies and magazines

and then one day you find yourself standing next to them

and all at once,

you have to deal with their physical presence as well,

so it's like that in here for me.

The Hjortspring Boat dates to around 350 BC.

That's around 1,000 years after our Bronze Age family.

But still 1,000 years before the first Viking raids.

About a third of it was recovered,

enough to allow its shape to be recreated as a metal frame,

cradling its precious timbers,

and revealing a form that was perfect for war.

One of the most important things to notice about the Hjortspring Boat

is that it's beautifully symmetrical.

It has an up-thrusting prow at this end

and exactly the same at the other.

There's room for about two-dozen men,

each using paddles like these, these are made from maple wood,

and they could fairly get skipping along through the water.

Now, because it's got the prow at each end

it means as soon as you beach it you're already in position

to go back out into the water as soon as you want.

Why is that important?

Because the Hjortspring Boat is designed for a quick getaway.

We know that this very boat experienced bloody battle.

When it was discovered

it was found packed with shields, swords, and spears.

All the weapons of a small army.

Men like these were well practiced in war and seaborne raiding

a thousand years before the first true Viking raid.

And so the Vikings didn't just spring out of nowhere, fully formed,

instead they were the product,

the evolution of a dynamic and often violent history.

All across Scandinavia there were tribes

with their own identities and territories and allegiances,

and they learnt to fight, first of all, by fighting each other.

Warriors like those that paddled the Hjortspring Boat

were the forefathers of the true Vikings.

The were the seeds from which the Vikings grew.

The Iron Age was a violent time right across Europe.

And Scandinavia was no exception,

as local tribes 2,000 years ago tussled for power.

But as they did so, another force was on the move.

The Romans.

The Southern edge of Denmark

is as close as the Scandinavian world ever came

to the might of Rome.

And the presence of the Roman Empire

would play its own part in the how the Vikings came to be.

Rome had seemed unstoppable,

but in 9AD an event occurred

which was to send shockwaves throughout Europe

and even had implications for the far north and Scandinavia.

About 250 miles to the south of modern-day Denmark,

in the dense woodland of Northern Germany,

Rome's Northern army was brought to an abrupt halt

by an alliance of local Germanic tribes.

Three legions of Roman soldiers, around 32,000 men,

were lured deep into the Teutoburg Forest, and there, annihilated.

It marked the end of Roman expansion into Northern Europe.

Scandinavia was, and would always remain, outside the Empire.

The halting of Rome brought another level of division

between the north and the south.

Now, as well as their different geographies,

you could add a divergent economic landscape as well.

This land, Denmark,

and the rest of Scandinavia was never ruled by Rome.

But the Roman Empire had an insatiable appetite

for exotic goods from the north,

animal furs, oils, and this stuff - amber.

It's relatively common in Denmark and Norway,

but it's extremely rare in the Mediterranean

and the Romans loved it for making jewellery.

All of this meant trade and trade meant new wealth for a few people

and a desire for luxury goods from the Empire,

the sort of stuff that only Rome could provide.

And that only the rich and powerful could afford.

Many Roman discoveries in Scandinavia

are of simple pottery, or occasionally coins.

But some finds have been spectacular.

This is the Hoby Burial Hoard,

it was found in the grave of a chieftain,

a man aged somewhere between 40 and 60 years old.

We don't know how he died,

but this collection that went into the ground with him

tells us a lot about what he had achieved in life.

It's the kind of banqueting set that you would normally expect

a high-ranking Roman official to have.

It's a wonder to behold,

it's so rich and elegant,

but the piece de resistance

are two solid silver cups, each weighing about a kilogram.

Now, the originals are away being conserved and analysed,

but what I have here, what I'm allowed to handle,

are two replicas.

What they show are various scenes from Homer's Iliad.

This lavish collection

was handed over to a man who could appreciate Roman finery,

who was schooled enough in Roman ways

to understand Classical stories from the Classical World.

It's telling that nothing of this magnificence

has ever been found in the far north.

Scandinavia always remained outwith the Roman Empire

and it's important to remember that

when thinking about how the countries here developed.

We take it for granted, in the English part of Britain at least,

that Rome brought more than the legions,

it brought towns and roads,

public entertainments,

towards the end of the period it brought Christianity as well.

But more than that, Rome brought literacy and the rule of law.

You can quite justifiably argue

that the Romans brought the time of our pre-history to an end.

But none of that happened here,

there were no towns, there was no literacy,

there were no new religions,

right through the Roman period and the Viking Age itself.

An extra thousand years of being left alone

and that made all the difference.

Because here was a culture that was left to do what it wanted,

people who were left to do what they wanted to do,

their own way of being,

they had their own leaders, their own Gods.

And so, in that light, perhaps it comes as no surprise

that when those first Viking raiders

attacked a remote Northumbrian monastery

they felt they had nothing to fear from a Christian God,

because he was obviously no match for Odin and Thor.

Ship-building skills and warrior prowess

gave the Vikings the means to terrorise the Christian world.

But it was the Norse Gods that defined their Viking spirit.

Sagas written in the 13th century

give us a unique insight

into beliefs that can be traced right back

to their prehistoric ancestors.

They believe in a pantheon of Gods,

but the main God was Thor.

READS FROM BOOK IN OLD NORSE

Which means, "Thor is the strongest of all the Gods."

Cos I remember, as a little boy,

from the comics that I was reading, knowing about Thor,

is it true he had the hammer, he had the belt of power?

-Yes.

-Is all that in the old versions?

Yes.

READS FROM BOOK IN OLD NORSE

Which means Thor has three special objects, one is a hammer. Mjolnir.

I remember Mighty Mjolnir.

Does Mjolnir mean anything, as a name?

Does it have a sense of something powerful in the name?

It means... it designates the crushing power that he has.

It says that the Giants are well familiar with the hammer

because Thor is always crushing their skulls with it.

There is the Girdle of Might, obviously...

That's not quite so catchy, is it?

READS FROM BOOK IN OLD NORSE

So when he puts on this girdle, his strength doubles.

And he gets a much neater waist.

Probably, as well.

Is Thor top of the tree, top God?

Well, he's among the top Gods, but probably the highest one is Odin.

And as it says here,

he is the highest and most glorious of the Gods that we know of,

and so he is the one who is worshipped by chieftains and kings.

Unlike Christianity, Viking belief

wasn't so much about an immortal soul

but an immortal reputation.

They didn't really care about the afterlife,

they wanted glory and honour in this life.

And then it says here in the sayings of Odin...

READS FROM BOOK IN OLD NORSE

"Your castle will die, your friends will die, you'll die."

READS FROM BOOK IN OLD NORSE

"Your reputation will never die if you get a good one."

That's why they weren't afraid of dying in battle,

with courage and honour.

The worst thing that could happen to a Viking

was to be said a coward.

The end of the Roman Empire early in the 5th century

saw Scandinavia standing on the brink of the Viking Age.

A final piece of the jigsaw

was the emergence of bigger regional leaders.

Heading back to Sweden, 40 miles North of Stockholm,

there's evidence of a consolidation of power

across ever greater areas of land.

Stretching away ahead of me are the burial mounds of Gamla Uppsala.

They were built sometime between around 550AD and 700AD,

that's a time after the Romans but before the coming of the Vikings.

These mounds seem truly vast,

even compared to those of Bronze Age Denmark, 2,000 years earlier.

And, crucially,

these were only built for a very select few.

We'll never know exactly who was buried here.

The pyres, the funeral bonfires that raged here

and that these mounds were built on top of burned so intensely

that nothing survived to be buried

except some charred human bone and some melted grave goods.

But whoever they were,

the people who could command this kind of burial

were certainly amongst the wealthiest and the most powerful in all of Scandinavia

and they wielded power all across the land.

The mounds were built one after the other

during a period lasting 100 years, maybe more,

so it's tempting to think about a dynasty, a royal lineage,

one family maintaining control generation after generation

so the people buried in these mounds might be the very first Kings and Queens.

In the shadow of these mounds

evidence has been even found of an ancient royal palace.

Archaeologist John Ljungkvist has found some remarkable remains

that reveal just how lavish a palace it once was.

Here we've got two of the spirals that we find

on the doors of the hall.

Look at that! Fantastic.

There would have been a longer bit as well, extending...

Yeah, would have had a tang like this,

but unfortunately it's broken on this one.

Take it away. Take it from me.

And what else?

-Oh, so that would have been all as one, all one.

-Yeah.

-That's amazing.

You get the sense that it's not just a functional building,

it's been decorated to be stunning.

It's when you see these beautifully crafted,

beautifully wrought finishing touches,

that you realise it wasn't just a big hall,

it was the best hall finished to the highest standards.

Absolutely, it is a fantastic house, I've never seen anything similar.

The fine ironwork adorned huge timber doors to an interior

that would have both impressed and intimidated visitors.

The inside would be huge,

it's like a living room 200 square metres big.

And the walls had been whitewashed.

So it's not like a smoky, really Dark Age,

really a very nice palace with white, shiny, nice walls.

I wonder how they maintained it, cos there would have been big fires inside as well,

so they'd have to be constantly...

-Yeah!

-..whitewashing the inside.

-Yeah, absolutely!

This was the royal person's,

the Prince's reception rooms and the reception area.

And it's the lofty position that it has in the landscape,

down to those fields, it's way below us.

So the working people are literally beneath us

and we are above everybody else.

And just over there, of course, they've got the presence

of their ancestors buried in these mounds,

they've got people so that they can say this is ours and I can prove that,

-because my father was here and his father was here.

-Yeah.

Gamla Uppsala is one of the most important pre-Viking sites in all of Scandinavia.

It reveals a new centralisation of power in the east,

the first people who were not just chiefs,

but regional kings and queens.

But it's important for another reason too,

because this place was also a centre of a very violent religion.

A reminder that this world was very different

to the emerging Christian kingdoms beyond the borders of the Viking world.

There are disturbing reports of ritual sacrifice,

of nine males of every living creature,

dogs, horses, even men, being taken to a nearby grove

and their dead bodies hung up on the branches

where they were left to rot together.

Archaeologists working hereabouts are tempted to think

that this might be the location where it all went on.

Now, all over the trees here, there are little runes,

little offerings of bits of jewellery and ribbons,

here someone has even made and brought in a plaster cast of Thor's hammer,

so even after all this time, this place matters on some level to all sorts of people.

Evidence of exactly what went on here has been lost...

..but one extremely rare pagan find has been unearthed nearby.

The object is a clue as to why the people of Scandinavia

were so different from those living in the rest of Europe.

It's a bronze pendant,

once upon a time it would have been worn around the neck of a woman

who lived sometime towards the end of the 7th century.

It's quite obviously a horse,

but this is no ordinary horse.

This is the mount of Odin himself,

one of the most important and powerful of the old pagan Gods.

This is Old Norse,

the woman who wore this didn't believe in one God,

she believed in many.

After a journey that's taken me all over Scandinavia, I've come back to Oslo.

And to the Oseberg ship that also played its part in Viking belief.

Because this vessel wasn't only to be used to ferry the living.

But also the dead.

Viking funerals, at least for the high and mighty,

were massive, elaborate affairs with rituals lasting weeks at a time.

Of course, the dead had to be placed aboard

because it was them who were making the journey

and then around them would be heaped

all of the things they might need and want in the next life,

so sumptuous clothes, jewellery for display,

food and drink,

and also, and importantly, there was usually an element of sacrifice,

And so dogs, maybe hunting dogs and also lap dogs and pets,

would be killed and put beside their owners,.

In this instance, as many as 15 horses were slaughtered

and laid out for use in the next world.

And you have to imagine the impact that would have had

on the people who were watching.

For one thing, it was a display of wealth beyond their reach,

this only happened to the few,

and they would see all the valuables going in,

then the animals being killed and put alongside.

It would have stayed with those spectators for a lifetime,

and they in turn would have passed stories about what they had seen

down through the generations

so whoever went into the next life aboard this ship

would never be forgotten.

When I look out into the Atlantic from here,

I feel a great deal of respect,

if not downright admiration,

for the people who embarked on their journeys.

I don't think they were driven by greed, far less bloodlust,

instead I think the motivations were ambition and opportunity.

They were living at a time when populations were expanding,

but here in Norway, beautiful though it is, space is finite.

There's a limit to how much good land there is available to expand into,

so who could blame some of them when they knew that out there

was plenty of land as well as gold and silver that might be acquired.

I've seen how, over thousands of years,

a strange and unique Scandinavian culture

gave rise to the Viking Age.

But when the magnificent Oseberg ship burial was unearthed

it contained an unexpected twist in the tale.

As an archaeologist,

I tend to spend a lot of my time talking about powerful men,

but when the Oseberg ship was excavated

the big surprise was that it contained two women.

And these are the remains of one of them, in fact the older of the two.

We can tell that this venerable lady

was perhaps as much as 80 years old when she died

and it was cancer of some sort that finally claimed her.

But beyond those two certainties,

we know very little about this woman

or about the other woman she was buried alongside.

The remains of a high-status woman is another reminder

that the Vikings weren't all about warrior men.

And analysis of the second woman makes things even more complicated.

While there's every reason to believe the older woman

was Scandinavian born and bred,

analysis of DNA taken from the younger woman's skeleton

at least allows for the possibility

that she was from as far away as the Middle East.

So that by as early as the end of the 8th century

the Vikings were doing much more

than just cause trouble for their neighbours,

like the people in the British Isles.

They had contacts into the East, into Eastern Europe.

I started out on the Atlantic coast wanting to discover how the Vikings came to be.

But even the possibility

that that younger Oseberg woman came from so far away

is the beginning of a whole new story.

After thousands of years,

of the Age of Vikings had begun.

No borders or boundaries could contain them,

and the oceans and rivers gave them unlimited access

throughout the known world and beyond.

Next time, the Vikings go East...

..building a vast trade network of luxuries.

Silk was so valuable, it made the perilous river journeys to get here more than worthwhile.

And slaves.

These are slave collars.

And you can imagine the humiliation of having something like this placed around your neck.

And beginning a process of colonisation that was the beginning of a Viking Empire.

By marrying the locals, their blood mixed with our blood.

And they're still here with us today.

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