The Last Battle of the Vikings

Late summer, and under cover of darkness, a powerful armada

is bearing down on the British mainland.

It's one of the largest invasion forces to ever threaten our shores.

But these aren't Spanish men-of-war.

They're Norse longships.

And this isn't the English Channel...

it's the west coast of Scotland.

The Battle of Largs in 1263 was the last time

Norse invaders fought on our soil.

The final bloody twist in a relationship that was centuries old.

This is the story of the Vikings in Scotland.

It's a story of brutal violence and pitiless warfare...

..but it's also a story of new technology and exquisite art...

Of how the Scotland we know today was formed,

and how the Vikings were right at the heart of that change.

My name is Jon Henderson.

I'm an underwater archaeologist, and my work has taken me

across the globe, exploring sunken cities and lost civilisations.

That's quite a nice find... We've got the base of a bowl.

I'm fascinated by how ancient peoples exploited the power of the sea.

But there's one group that's always had a real, personal draw for me.

I grew up near the seaside town of Largs.

It's a place that isn't exactly shy about its Viking past.

But the truth behind the battle that was fought here has largely been forgotten.

The Norse connection in Scotland lasted longer than anywhere else in the British Isles.

Whole swathes of the country were effectively part of Scandinavia.

But why did the Vikings come to Scotland in the first place?

What lay behind their astonishing success?

And how did their grip on their Scottish territories

come to an end in such a dramatic way?

'To help answer these questions, I'm going to travel to the Vikings' fjord homeland...

'..and learn some of the secrets of their boatbuilding technology.'

Can you see the other end yet?

'I'm going to explore mysterious Viking ruins...'

It's a massive engineering operation.

'..and trace the route of the final invasion fleet.'

Because the Vikings never really went away.

They didn't just disappear over the horizon.

The Battle of Largs, 750 years ago, might have marked the beginning of the end

for Norse power in Scotland, but the Viking influence remained.

Part of a new nation. Part of us.

I'm beginning my journey into Scotland's Viking past on the Isle of Skye.

A team of archaeologists and divers are on their way

to one of the most extraordinary Viking sites in the whole of Britain.

And I've been invited to join them.

I've spent a lot of my working life on boats.

It's often the only practical way to get to some pretty remote spots.

To begin to understand Viking Scotland, you really have to

change the way you think about geography.

It's only recently we've thought of the sea as a barrier,

but for generations, going back to the Vikings and beyond,

it was the sea that connected communities and people.

For the Vikings, the sea was a super highway.

I've come here to Rubh' an Dunain to find out just how the Vikings

came to rule Scotland's sea routes.

Archaeologists have been visiting this secluded site for several years.

But on this trip, they've brought a new box of technological tricks to help them explore it.

This is a remote-controlled aerial drone.

It's equipped with a digital camera

and can manoeuvre high above the ground,

taking highly detailed images.

That's absolutely fantastic, what you've done there,

I mean, the resolution you've managed to achieve,

and just to get an aerial view of the whole site.

You can really see the connection between the sea and the loch.

It's brilliant.

Yes, and this is a true artificial canal with built sides and cut rock.

It's quite remarkable.

It's a serious bit of engineering, isn't it?

-These people were doing something important.

-Yes, absolutely.

It's certainly the oldest canal in Scotland, if not in Britain.

But what was the purpose of this complex site?

What exactly was going on here?

Could the answers lie below the water?

Originally developed for the offshore oil industry,

this is an advanced sonar rig.

OK. Good position. Just drop it in.

It's a system I've used before in the Mediterranean, but this will be

the first time it's been deployed on an archaeological site in Britain.

Almost straight away, it's identifying some intriguing targets

where the canal enters the loch.

So the sonar is picking out these linear features of stones

either side of the canal.

Nature doesn't make right angles. See, that's very elbow-shaped.

So I see this as a possible man-made structure.

My most recent research project has been on a sunken city in Greece.

The conditions in this cold Scottish loch couldn't be more different.

The visibility is very bad.

Salt water coming in the canal, mixing with the fresh water,

creates this strange optical effect...

A bit like adding water to whisky.

This murky environment might be challenging,

but it's ideal for preserving finds.

Boat fragments recovered from the loch have been dated to over 1,000 years ago.

And it's not just Viking-era timber that's survived.

Just here, you can see part of a constructed wall.

This is where the Vikings would have brought stones to construct a quay,

for loading and unloading ships.

It's a massive engineering operation.

Rubh' an Dunain was clearly a site that was regularly used by ships.

Enormous efforts went into constructing and maintaining it.

But just what were the Vikings doing here?

What purpose did this place serve?

Well, I think it's been, at one stage in its career,

a Viking raiding base where the ships have been able to come

right in through the canal here, up into the loch, where

they would have been safe and secure over the winter for maintenance,

for repair and possibly, they were building ships there, as well.

You get a sense standing here of a lost world.

The nearest road is six kilometres away. We had to get here by boat.

Yes, yes. Now it's a lovely deserted place but for the people who lived

and worked here, it was the centre of their universe,

a place from which they could sally forth, free as birds,

to raid wherever they wanted,

coming back here to live in safety with their ships over the winter.

Coming to this remote place has really brought home to me

just how formidable the Vikings were.

They were adaptable, they were tenacious

and they had the engineering skills to match their aggressive ambitions...

..because outposts like Rubh an' Dunain were just the beginning.

From these scattered beachheads, the rest of Scotland

lay within the Vikings' grasp.

The monastery island, of Iona.

This is where the Vikings burst into Scottish history with sudden,

shocking, apocalyptic violence.

In the early morning of the 24th July, 825,

the unmistakeable shapes of Viking longships

were spotted approaching the island.

The few monks that remained here knew exactly what would happen next.

The community dedicated to the cult of Saint Columba was in ruins.

For the past 30 years, Viking war bands had raided the island time and time again,

stealing, burning and killing.

So much so, that it was virtually suicide to stay here.

But suicide was something the remaining monks embraced.

As the longships drew nearer, the leader of the surviving group,

a man named Blathmac, prepared his followers for martyrdom.

The violent cursed host came rushing through the open buildings,

threatening cruel perils to the blessed men,

and after slaying with mad savagery the rest of the brethren,

they approached the holy father.

But he stood firm, and spoke to the barbarians,

in words such as these:

"I know nothing at all of the treasure you seek,

"where it is placed in the ground or in what hiding place it is concealed.

"But if by Christ's permission, it were granted to me to know it,

"never would my lips relate it to thy ears."

Hereupon, the pious victim was torn from limb to limb.

The account of Blathmac's torture and death has been dismissed by some

as Christian propaganda...

..but I think it's got the brutal ring of truth about it.

Iona had been bled dry by previous raids,

and you can almost sense the frustrated fury

of Blathmac's killers, as they searched for elusive treasure.

For the chroniclers, the Vikings were the ultimate other.

Their identity was unclear, their motives inexplicable.

All along the coastline of the British Isles,

the Vikings descended like harbingers of Doomsday.

Just who were they? Where had they come from? And what did they want?

Fjord country, western Norway.

It's a breath-taking landscape of high mountains,

plunging waterfalls and deep seaways.

Travelling in the fjords, you can't help but be blown away

by the sheer scale and raw beauty of the Viking homeland.

There are many theories about what exactly the word "Viking" means.

One of the most likely is that it comes from the word "vik",

meaning sea inlet.

But this labyrinth of winding channels

and hidden bays didn't just give these Viking sea-raiders a name -

it gave them a launch pad.

At the end of the 8th century, the Vikings exploded onto the world map.

Swedish Vikings travelled deep into Russia,

establishing trade routes that extended to the Black Sea and beyond.

From Denmark, Vikings raided eastern England,

eventually carving out their own kingdom.

But the Vikings who first descended on Scotland came from western Norway.

Bergen, Norway's second city, and centre of fjord country.

From here, the sea journey to Scotland is shorter than it is

to the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

It was from these western fjords that Vikings not only raided

the Scottish and Irish coasts,

but went on to eventually colonise the Faros, Iceland and Greenland.

They even gained a temporary foothold in North America.

But geography doesn't explain everything.

It doesn't explain why the Vikings decided to begin raiding in the first place.

Until recently, the most widely held theory on why the Vikings set out

was land hunger.

The steep-sided fjords contained very little farm land.

As the population grew, it simply had nowhere to go.

The only problem with that theory is that the Vikings who raided places like Iona weren't after land.

The men who murdered Blathmac weren't farmers who wanted to

settle down and till the soil.

So what was their motive?

Like any good detective story, you just have to follow the money.

Over the last century, the western fjords of Norway have given up

some rare archaeological treasures

that give a clue to why the people here first went raiding to Scotland.

These are old silver coins. VERY old silver coins.

In fact, this one dates from 763 AD.

But they're not from Norway. They're not even from Europe.

These coins come from Baghdad, which from the middle of the 8th century

was the epicentre of a powerful and rich Islamic world.

Baghdad merchants would pay hard cash for amber,

furs and walrus ivory from Scandinavia.

But the only problem was that the main trade routes for these goods

bypassed the western fjords of Norway.

And wanting to keep up with the Joneses, or rather,

the Johanssons, the chieftains of western Norway

looked for their own source of silver.

And they soon found it, not in the bazaars of Baghdad,

but in the monasteries of the British Isles.

The monastery St Columba, founded on Iona, might have been

a deliberately simple and ascetic place.

But like all monasteries, it accumulated wealth from its important patrons.

Rich and undefended, these religious communities must have been

irresistible targets for Viking raiders.

The ultimate opportunity to get rich quick.

These were brutal times in Scotland.

Raiding and warfare between different groups was common.

Violent death, a fact of life.

Perhaps in some ways, the Vikings were no worse than anybody else.

But what made them unusual,

was they had no qualms about attacking holy sites.

Christian chroniclers called the Vikings "heathens" and "gentiles".

Instead of the cross, these pagan warriors wore pendants

shaped as Thor's hammer around their necks.

Only people who worshipped the god of storms and thunder

would dare desecrate Christ's church.

And it wasn't just silver that brought the Vikings

to Scotland's monasteries.

There was another valuable commodity to be found in these scattered

centres of worship and learning -

human beings.

The island of Inchmarnock, just off Bute in the Firth of Clyde.

Today, it's uninhabited, but at the time of the first Viking raids,

this place was home to a small monastic community.

Nothing remains of the original buildings.

But recently, evocative traces of everyday monastic life on Inchmarnock have come to light.

Like all monasteries, Inchmarnock wasn't just about prayer,

it was about education.

Young novices aged anywhere between seven and 16 would have studied on this island,

laboriously learning how to write Latin and Gaelic.

But instead of paper or parchment, they would have used this stuff,

slate. And there's a lot of slate on Inchmarnock.

The whole island is made of the stuff.

I'm improvising with an old nail, but the students would have used

a metal stylus to scratch the slate pieces.

Actually, not that easy.

But it was more than their ABCs that these young boys carved.

A couple of years ago, archaeologists working on Inchmarnock

uncovered two pieces of old slate.

When they were joined together, they revealed an astonishing scene.

And one that must have been part of the everyday world of the boy who carved it.

The centuries haven't been kind to this picture, so we've had it

blown up and enhanced digitally, so we can see better what's going on.

A man has been roped by the neck

and he's being dragged by an armoured warrior towards a longship.

In front of them, are the partial outlines of two other warriors

wearing chainmail and carrying spears.

What this childish doodle reveals is key to understanding why

the Vikings came to Scotland.

Slavery.

The Vikings didn't invent slavery in Scotland,

but they did turn it into a professional industry.

Before the arrival of the Vikings, slavery was common amongst

the different people who lived in Scotland.

But slaves tended to be the by-product of war, not its object.

The Vikings changed all that.

For them, capturing slaves and selling them on was a lucrative trade,

and one which they developed on a mass scale.

Slavery, not silver or land, was the real engine of early Viking Scotland.

And Scotland's monasteries weren't the only targets for Viking slavers.

Guarding the entrance to the River Clyde,

is the vast and imposing shape of Dumbarton Rock.

In the 9th century, this was the centre of the kingdom of Strathclyde.

You can see why the Strathclyders chose Dumbarton Rock as their capital.

Its steep sides rise more than 70 metres from sea level.

It must have seemed impregnable, except that it wasn't.

In 870, Vikings arrived here and surrounded the fortress.

The siege lasted for four months.

Eventually, the water supply ran out

and the stronghold was forced to surrender.

The Vikings had hit the jackpot.

So many captives had been taken here on Dumbarton Rock

and the surrounding countryside, that the Vikings needed 200 ships just to transport them all.

Most ended up at the great slave market in Dublin.

Others were sold on to merchants around the Irish Sea.

Some may even have ended up as far afield as Spain or North Africa.

And what made all of this possible was the Vikings' secret weapon.

A new and terrifying invention - the longship.

Nothing says Viking as much as the longship.

It's become a potent image of myth and legend.

But here at a yard in southwest Norway, a group of experimental

archaeologists are investigating the reality behind the longship.

And they're doing it the hard way,

building a boat from scratch using only Viking-era tools and methods.

What they're discovering

is just how devastatingly effective the vessel was.

The Viking longship of Scandinavia was the stealth weapon of its day.

It was low, it was fast, it was manoeuvrable.

You can row this ship more or less silently.

It shows a very low profile, a very low silhouette on the water.

So these were the nuclear submarines,

if you like, of the early historic period.

Yeah, the connection is not too far-fetched.

It was a major step forward weapon-wise, military-wise, technically-wise.

-What have you learnt in this project?

-Oh, wow!

Well, firstly, enormous respect for the craftsmanship that the Vikings put down.

What we're doing here is copying bit by bit

a 1,200-year construction, down to the last details.

And to the see the quality of the hull and the quality

of the construction, how the hull planks fit like a symphony

that turns into the trademark high prow, it's beyond magical, actually.

The secret of the longship's success lies in its refined hull construction.

It's clinker built, using overlapping planks to create the form

rather than relying on a heavy internal frame.

This makes the boat light and flexible,

able to survive the steep waves of the North Sea and Atlantic...

-Can you see the other end yet?

-I can see the end, yes.

Though maybe not my hammering technique!

And now it will be much harder.

THEY LAUGH

Oh, dear God! Don't laugh quite so loudly!

Today is a big day at the yard.

They're fitting the elaborately carved figurehead.

Instead of the more familiar dragon's head,

this is a coiling snake design.

The researchers have discovered that the high carved prow was often

stowed on deck during sea voyages, and was only hoisted

immediately before a raid, to intimidate the enemy.

I love ships and boats, and as an underwater archaeologist,

I'm used to finding pieces of wreckage and the odd bit of timber underwater.

But to see an entire ancient ship like this take shape before my eyes is quite a privilege.

You get a real sense of not only the workmanship that's gone into this,

but also what the ship means as a symbol, what it would have said.

If you saw one of these coming towards you,

and they'd raised their dragon prow, you knew you were in trouble.

The all-conquering technology of the dragon ship

brought new territories within easy reach of the Vikings.

Amongst their first targets, the Northern Isles of Scotland.

By longship, Shetland was just two days' sail away from the western fjords of Norway.

Orkney only a little further.

By the 850s,

the islands had been completely overrun by Viking raiders.

But Orkney was much more than an armed camp.

Geographically, politically and culturally,

it was right at the centre of the Norse world.

And it gave rise to a new breed of Viking...

part raider...

part farmer.

In the famous Orkneyinga Saga,

there's a fantastic description of one of these Vikings.

A larger-than-life character called Svein Asliefarson.

"This was how Svein used to live. Winter he would spend at home,

"where he entertained more than 80 men at his own expense.

"In the spring, he had more than enough to occupy him,

"with a great deal of seed to sow, which he saw to carefully himself.

"Then when that job was done,

"he would go off plundering in the Hebrides and in Ireland on what he

"called his spring trip, Then, back home just after mid-summer,

"where he stayed till the cornfields had been reaped

"and the grain was safely in.

"After that, he would go off raiding again,

"and never came back till the first month of winter was ended.

"This, he called his autumn trip".

Viking colonisation changed every aspect of life in the Northern Isles.

Some of those changes were enduring. This is the Orkney Yole.

The workhorse of the islanders, this clinker-built,

double-ended vessel has the Viking longboat in its design DNA.

You'd be amazed at how much the Norse influenced the Yole.

The obvious thing is the shape of the boat.

But also, the names have kept on.

The bit of the wood on the bottom of the keel is the keeldright.

The bits of the wood for rubbing up and down on the beaches

when they were hauled ashore is the bilge-kods.

The parts of the joints of the boats are the hunnyspots and the helwel.

All Norwegian words that are still in use.

It's something that's survived for over 1,000 years from the Norse traditions.

It shows you how successful Norse boatbuilding was.

Yep, they're obviously fit for purpose

and you'll find that out if you're in a...a coarse sea.

The boat will look after you. You don't have to look after it.

There are few places in Scotland where you can feel the Norse

influence as strongly as here in Orkney.

The names of these scattered islands...

Papa Westray, Shapinsay, Eday, Egilsay,

reads like a verse from an ancient saga.

Sometimes, it seems as if there isn't a square centimetre of this

beautiful place that the Vikings didn't carve their names onto.

Even Neolithic tombs like Maeshowe bear the marks of the Norsemen.

In my day job as an underwater archaeologist, I'm used to

scrabbling about in the silt and sand to find buried fragments.

But here, the archaeology is literally spelt out

in front of your eyes.

These markings are Norse graffiti.

They might be hundreds of years old but really it's not much different

from something you'd read sprayed on your local bus shelter.

This one reads, "Haermund Hardaxe carved these runes."

While this one boasts, "These runes were carved by the man

"most skilled in runes in the western oceans."

And there's more raunchy stuff as well.

This chamber would originally have been used by the Neolithic people

to store the bones of their ancestors.

But the Vikings appear to have found another use. This reads,

"Thorni..."

Well, "Thorni bedded while Helgi carved."

The Norse graffiti at Maeshowe is great fun.

But I think these scratches spell out more than just

smutty messages or outlandish nicknames.

I think they spell out an attitude.

These people had swagger, they had self-belief.

They had the kind of confidence

that only generations of success can bring.

The sporadic Viking raids at the end of the 8th century

had developed into an unstoppable onslaught.

No-one seemed capable of turning back the Norse tide.

In 839 AD, the Vikings crushed the Picts on the east coast.

Less than ten years later,

they conquered the Gaels on the west coast.

All across Scotland, old kingdoms were crumbling.

Populations were on the move.

But out of the ashes of the Viking conquest

new alliances were being formed.

Gaelic refugees flooding eastward found sanctuary

in the remnants of the Pictish kingdom.

On mainland Scotland, a new culture emerged. A new nation was born.

It was called Alba and if you can trace the origins

of modern Scotland anywhere, it's to this fugitive kingdom.

A kingdom united in opposition to, and in fear of, the Vikings.

But Alba wasn't the only kingdom being born.

Across the mountains, the Norse were carving out

a new and powerful land.

To the Gaelic speakers of Alba it was Innse Gall,

the land of the foreigners.

This sprawling territory stretched from the northern tip

of the Hebrides, through Argyll, the Clyde islands,

Kintyre to the Isle of Man beyond.

It sat right on the middle of the crucial sea routes,

at a time when to rule the water, was to rule the world.

The future of these islands and these people,

which way they faced, would determine the fate of Scotland.

The Vikings and their descendants had put down roots.

By 1000 AD the Hebrides were as Norse-speaking as Orkney.

But at the same time, a sea change was underway

that would fundamentally affect Viking identity.

The island of Iona is dotted with ancient grave slabs

and stone crosses.

Amongst them is a fragment of an inscription that speaks volumes.

It's written in runes

and it's been carved on the edge of a stone with a Celtic Cross on it.

And it looks like it's been smashed.

You might think that a marauding Viking has come in

and vandalised this symbol of Christianity,

and then to add insult to injury, he's carved his name on it.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

This isn't casual graffiti like we've seen at Maeshowe.

This is something quite different.

The runes are incomplete but we can read,

"Kali the son of Olvir has laid this stone over his brother Fugl."

So it was a Norseman who commissioned this stone.

He'd seen the Celtic Cross design and wanted it for his brother.

He'd then arranged for his brother to be buried on the island of Iona.

The very island that had been ravaged by his ancestors.

The Vikings had become Christians.

And now Iona was their sacred ground.

It was an astonishing transformation.

Before the arrival of the Vikings, Iona had been

at the epicentre of Christianity in northern Britain.

The Vikings had destroyed all that.

But now, under the protection of its Norse rulers, Iona had risen again.

A place of pilgrimage and sanctuary.

The spiritual heart of Innse Gall.

The Vikings had stopped being Vikings.

They were Christians now, not pagans.

They were settlers now, not just hit-and-run raiders.

And although the Norse-speaking peoples of Innse Gall

had deep roots in the Scandinavian world,

they were very much their own people with their own identity.

This was a wealthy, sophisticated, connected culture.

And from it came one of the most famous treasures of medieval Europe.

The Lewis Chessmen.

So these amazing pieces were actually found

on a beach in Lewis and the argument was that it was just

a merchant passing through from somewhere else.

That is what a lot of people have believed ever since the discovery,

that these are such wonderful pieces,

Lewis is such a remote part of the world,

that clearly they don't belong.

But that begs the question, where is Lewis remote from?

Because Lewis was actually fairly central

in the extended Scandinavian world.

It was on the main trade routes that would take you from Greenland

where a lot of the walrus ivory to make these was coming from,

back through Iceland,

over to the west coast of Norway which is a fairly likely place for

these to be manufactured, and then down to Dublin and further afield.

So Lewis was fairly centrally positioned.

And on top of that, we do have evidence for important people,

people of high status, living in Lewis.

So it's not too difficult to imagine that there was somebody

with money, resources and status

to have splendid gaming pieces like the ones in front of us.

Well, I think probably like many people, one of my favourites

is this little guy here biting his shield.

I agree with you in that, you know. It really is fantastic, isn't it?

It's a reference to a cult in the Scandinavian world,

the cult of the berserkers.

Guys who were so psyched up before they went into battle

that they had to bite the shields in order to hold themselves back.

So what kind of force do you think the islands could have

mustered at this period?

If we're talking about all the islands, all the way from Lewis

right down to and including the Isle of Man, 10,000-plus.

And the ships to put them in.

And as you can imagine, 10,000 guys like this,

that was a very considerable power.

For centuries, the military and naval might of Innse Gall

had given its inhabitants a kind of independence.

Neither Norwegian nor Scottish, the Hebrideans straddled identities and

allegiances, maintaining a foot in both camps while belonging to none.

But as the 13th century dawned, that was no longer possible.

Now, it was time to choose sides.

When the Vikings first began raiding across the North Sea

there was no king of Norway, and no king of Scotland.

400 years later, both countries had been united

under powerful and ambitious kings.

Haakon the 4th of Norway and Alexander the 2nd of Scotland,

were born within a few years of each other.

They came to the throne around the same time.

And they were both absolutely determined

to expand their authority.

The problem was that both men regarded Innse Gall

as lying within their sphere of influence.

And nowhere did the political fault line run deeper

than amongst the islands of the Firth of Clyde.

At the beginning of the 13th century,

this was frontier territory.

The mainland was Scottish.

But the islands of Bute and Cumbrae just over there were Norse.

It was a war just waiting to happen.

The struggle to control the Clyde islands

spiralled into a battle over the whole of Innse Gall.

Over the next decades, forces loyal to Alexander and Haakon

fought a vicious running battle in the islands.

But Alexander's obsession with winning the Hebrides

was to prove fatal.

In 1249, Alexander sailed up the west coast with a powerful fleet.

It was the last journey he would ever make.

King Alexander dreamed a dream, and thought three men came to him

and enquired whether he meant to invade the Hebrides.

Alexander answered that he certainly proposed to subject the islands.

The spirits bade him go back and told him that

no other measure would turn out to his advantage.

The king related his dream and many advised him to return.

But the king would not, and a little after,

he was seized with a disorder, and died.

In Norway, King Haakon could now turn his attention to

some of the other Norse colonies.

In 1261, the Norse community in Greenland acknowledged him as king.

The following year, the independent-minded colony of Iceland

also submitted.

The Norwegian kingdom was now at the height of its power.

This is Haakon's Hall in Bergen.

When it was completed in 1261 it was one the largest

and most imposing buildings in the whole of Norway.

For Haakon, the completion of this architectural wonder must

have felt like the crowning glory in a career which had seen

the Norwegian kingdom grow larger and more powerful than ever before.

He must have felt supremely confident.

But this was also the exact moment that a new king of Scotland

made his move on the Norse territories in the Hebrides.

Like father, like son.

Alexander the 3rd wasn't content with diplomacy.

The 21-year-old king backed up his claim on Innse Gall

with a brutal show of force.

Ordering armed raids deep into Norse-speaking areas.

This wasn't just a land grab.

This was ethnic cleansing.

They burned villages, and churches,

and they killed great numbers both of men and women.

The Scots had even taken the small children and raising them

on the points of their spears shook them, till they fell down to

their hands, when they threw them away, lifeless, on the ground.

This was an outrage which Haakon couldn't ignore.

In the spring of 1263,

a large fleet left the Norwegian coast.

At its head was the flagship of King Haakon himself.

Haakon was a battle-hardened veteran.

But at the age of 59, he was already an old man

by the standards of his day.

His son Magnus had voiced concerns about him taking personal command

of the fleet, but for Haakon, this was unfinished business.

The chance to crush Scottish ambitions in the Hebrides

once and for all.

Haakon had enormous military resources he could call on.

He didn't hesitate to send out the order.

In Orkney, his already powerful fleet was joined by local forces.

It must have seemed an invincible armada.

But already, there were ominous signs.

While King Haakon lay in Ronaldsvo,

a great darkness drew over the sun, so that only a little ring

was bright round the sun, and it continued so for some hours.

In the Middle Ages, everybody knew that solar eclipses

were powerful omens.

But did this particular sign in the sky spell disaster for the Scots?

Or was it Haakon's expedition that was doomed to failure?

Haakon led his fleet down through the Hebrides.

Island by island, territory by territory, he demanded,

and received, the allegiance of the lords of Innse Gall.

Troops and vessels swelled Haakon's invasion fleet.

By the time he reached the disputed territories of the Firth of Clyde

he had 120 ships and up to 20,000 men under his command.

It was a force that rivalled the Spanish Armada

over 300 years later.

But if Alexander, King of the Scots,

was daunted by Haakon's show of force, he showed no sign.

It was a reversal of the usual stereotypes.

The young man, patient and wily.

The old man, hot-headed and given to impulse.

Alexander, based down the coast in Ayr, settled in for a waiting game.

He knew he stood no chance of defeating Haakon at sea.

But if he could just stall long enough then the autumn weather

might do what his own naval forces couldn't.

Haakon sent envoys to demand that Alexander withdraw his claim.

Alexander spun out the negotiations.

Furious, Haakon decided to ratchet up the pressure

and sent part of his fleet to attack along Loch Long and Loch Lomond.

Meanwhile, he moved his main force inshore, near Largs.

He was now just a stone's throw away from the mainland itself.

Still Alexander held his nerve.

Then, on the 1st of October, the weather broke.

The storm was so sudden and so powerful that survivors

could only imagine that it had been conjured up by sorcery.

Haakon's fleet was scattered with several ships driven ashore,

right under the noses of the local militia.

The next morning, Haakon managed to get ashore with 1,000 men

to salvage the ships and their cargo.

That was when the Scots pounced.

Haakon's bodyguard got the king back to the safety of the fleet.

But on the shore, the Norsemen were collapsing in disarray.

Those on the beach imagined they were routed.

Some, therefore, leaped into their boats and pushed off from the land.

Others jumped into the transport.

Their companions called upon them to return, and some returned, tho' few.

Many boats went down.

Finally, a longship managed to get ashore to reinforce

the beleaguered rear guard.

The Norsemen made a stand. The Scots retreated.

The Battle of Largs petered out into a long distance

and sporadic shooting match.

Neither side had won. There was no decisive victory.

Just the usual grim reckoning of warfare.

But if the skirmish fought on the Clyde coast

didn't decide anything, then the aftermath would.

Over the following days there was a window in the weather.

Haakon's men returned to the shore to retrieve the dead

and burn the stranded boats.

But what would the king's next move be?

Haakon's options were actually very limited. Winter was approaching.

Supplies were running low. His men were getting restless.

At a counsel of war, Haakon agreed that the fleet should disperse

and the troops return to their scattered homes.

He himself would overwinter in the Norse stronghold of Orkney.

In the spring, he would reassemble his forces

and wreak bloody revenge on Alexander.

Publically, Haakon was impatient for a rematch.

But privately, he was perhaps relieved

to reach the safe haven of Orkney.

Haakon was nearly 60 years old.

He had been king for 46 years.

Quite simply, he was exhausted.

The king was tired. He was sick.

He probably knew he was dying.

Here, at the cathedral in Kirkwall,

Haakon visited the shrine of St Magnus.

It was the pious action of a man who knew the end was near.

An obsession with the Hebrides had already destroyed a Scottish king,

Alexander the 2nd.

Now it claimed the life of a Norwegian one.

On the 16th of December 1263, Haakon the 4th died.

Haakon was buried here in St Magnus Cathedral.

Then in the early spring,

his body was disinterred, and taken back to Norway.

Haakon was the last Norwegian king

to mount a military assault on Scotland.

His son, Magnus Lawmender, wasn't interested in continuing the fight.

Magnus had his own problems at home to deal with.

Better peace with honour, than a draining foreign war.

Better cash on the table than blood on the ground.

For nearly five centuries, longships had set sail from

the western coast of Norway to raid, trade and colonise in Scotland.

Kingdom had been pitted against kingdom.

People against people.

It was a history of slaughter and slavery.

But also of rich cultural exchange and artistic marvels.

In the end though, all that was nothing compared to cold, hard cash.

Innse Gall was up for sale.

In 1266, Magnus accepted an offer of 4,000 marks from Alexander,

and renounced Norway's claim on the islands for ever.

The Norse Age was coming to an end.

And for the descendants of the Vikings in the Hebrides

things were beginning to change too.

Although the Battle of Largs had not affected their culture or identity,

it was to Scotland, not to Norway,

that they now looked for royal protection.

The long, slow process of becoming Scots had begun.

Over the next few centuries, Innse Gall, the land of the foreigners,

would become the heartland of a new Gaelic power.

But it was a power that owed everything to its Norse ancestors.

An archipelago bound together by the sea and the ships that sailed on it.

The Viking crews that once launched hit-and-run raids from bases

like Rubh' an Dunain in Skye were part of a long and epic history.

Of course, there was enormous brutality and destruction,

you can't just wish it away.

But in places like these, you get a glimpse of something else.

Today, Scottish islands like Skye

might sit on the outer rim of Europe,

but in the age of the Norsemen,

they were right at the centre of things.

They were at the centre of a network of contacts

that were beginning to criss-cross the globe.

The Vikings were pushing the boundaries of the known world

and I like to think that that questing, inquisitive spirit,

is part of what makes us, as an island people, who we are today.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd